Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches - Frank Thomas Bullen - Страница 11

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Despite the inroads made upon sail by steam, a goodly fleet of sailing ships still survive, many of them magnificent specimens not only of marine architecture, but also of the cunning handiwork of the modern “rigger.” The enormous sail-area shown by some of these ships and the immense spread of their yards would have staggered the daring skippers of forty years ago, when the China tea-clippers were the greyhounds of the seas, and the Yankee flyers were wiping the eyes of their sturdy British compeers. But in order to see these majestic vessels at their best it is necessary to be on board one of them on a voyage to or from the Far East. Their troubles are often many and their hindrances great until they reach those Southern parallels where, after a spell of “doldrums” varying with the season, they pick up those brave west winds that, unhindered, sweep in almost constant procession around the landless Southern slopes of the world. This is no place for weaklings either among ships or men. If a passage is to be made and a vessel’s reputation for swiftness, apart from steam-power, to be either sustained or acquired, here is the field. There is none like unto it. Not only should canvas, hemp, and steel be of the best, but the skipper must be stout of heart, not to be daunted by threatening skies, mountainous seas, or wandering islands of ice. More than all these, he must to-day be prepared to face the probability of his scanty crew being quite unable to handle the gigantic pinions of his vessel should the favouring breeze rise, as it often does, to such a plenitude of power as to make it most dangerous for them to be longer spread.

To take a typical instance: the 5000 ton four-masted sailing ship Coryphæna, laden with general merchandise for Melbourne, reached the latitude of Cape Frio on the thirty-fifth day from London. Like all of her class, she was but weakly manned, but as if to provide against any possible emergencies of sail-carrying, her enormous masts of mild steel were quadruply stayed with steel cables, until they were almost like an integral part of the massive fabric herself. From truck to mast-coat not a shaking of hemp was used for cordage where steel wire rope or chain could be made available. Neither were any old-time lashings, lanyards, or seizings to be seen. Their places were filled by screws and levers, whereby one man could exert more power on a shroud or a guy than was formerly possible to a dozen, aided by a complicated web of tackles. And the sails, those vast breadths of canvas that, when set, made the mighty hull appear but a trivial thing beneath their superb spread, were of the heaviest quality woven, their seams, leaches, and roaches fortified by all the devices known to the sailmaker.

The skipper paced the poop with uncertain steps, hardly able to conceal his impatience at the dallying of the light airs that only made the great squares of canvas slam sullenly against the masts, and wear themselves thin. Longingly his eyes lingered on the western horizon, hungering for sign of the “Westerlies.” His eager gaze was at last rewarded by the vision of a sombre arch of lowering cloud, which slowly upreared its grim segment above the setting sun. The fitful south-easterly airs, dregs of the “Trades,” which in their feeble variableness had so sorely tried his patience, gradually sank like the last few breaths of some expiring monster, leaving the sea glassy and restful under the dark violet of the evening sky. Only a long, regular swell came rolling eastward in rhythmical march, its placid undulations swaying the huge vessel gently as the drowsy rocking of an infant’s cradle. But its indications were sufficiently precise to satisfy the skipper, who, after a peaceful pipe, retired early to rest, leaving orders to call him in the event of any sudden change. His manner, however, indicated that he expected nothing of the kind. After his departure the chief officer prowled restlessly about the quarterdeck, being a man to whom the stagnation of a calm was an unmitigated calamity. At present his only satisfaction lay in noting how steadily the celestial bridge astern grew in breadth and altitude, while at the same time the swell became deeper, longer, and more definite in its direction.

By four bells the summits of the climbing cumuli forming the immeasurable arch in the west were right overhead, while the sky within its radius was now overspread with a filmy veil that hid the stars from view. Suddenly a chill breath touched his ear, sensitive as a hound’s, and immediately his fretful lassitude was gone. He stood erect, alert, every nerve tense, ready for action. “Stand by, the watch!” he roared, and in response a few dark figures slouched into sight from the shadowy corners where they had been dozing away the leaden-footed hours. Then a cool stream of air came steadily flowing from the mysterious centre of the gloom abaft. “Square the main-yard!” shouted the mate again; and with eerie, wailing cries the great steel tubes were trimmed to the coming breeze. The order was hardly executed before, with a rush and a scream, out leapt the west wind from its lair, while with many a sharp report and grinding of gear being drawn into its grooves the huge fabric obeyed the compelling impulse and began her three thousand league stretch to the eastward. By midnight it blew a gale, to which the same vessel, had she been bound in the opposite direction, must needs have shown but a scanty spread of sail. Now, nothing was further from the intention of the gleeful mate than the starting of a single thread.

At the relieving of the watch the skipper was called and informed of the change, so that upon him should rest the responsibility for “carrying on.” For the driving fragments of storm-rent cloud were low, and by their meteor speed foretold that this was but a foretaste of the tempest to follow. Planting himself in his favourite attitude on the extreme weather-quarter, the captain fixed his eyes on the upper sails with a look of supreme content, though to an inexperienced gaze they would have seemed on the point of bursting into shreds, their very stitch-holes strained to gaping a quarter-inch long. Every one of her thirty-four wings were spread and drawing, for the wind being well on the quarter, allowed of the yards being canted forward, while the ship went “steady as a church,” with a ten-degree list to port. Still the wind increased and faster drove the ship, until by daylight she was going a full sixteen knots, which, in spite of the Yankee yarns anent the James Baines, her main skysail, and her twenty-one knots, is about the maximum possible under sail. The first cheerless gleams of the new day revealed an awe-inspiring view. Far as could be seen the ocean surface was torn into snowy foam by the raging wind, for the sea had not yet time to get into the gigantic stride it would presently take in sympathy with the irresistible march of the all-compelling storm. “Fine breeze, sir,” chuckled the mate, rubbing his hands with delight. “Only hope it’ll hold,” replied the skipper, peering keenly aft into the eye of the wind. There, to a landsman, the sight was ominous, almost appalling. Dense masses of distorted nimbus came hurtling out of the deep gloom, which seemed to grow blacker and more menacing every hour. So through the howling day the big ship fled onward like a frightened thing, steady and straight as an ice-yacht over Lake Michigan, although at times an incipient sea smote her broadside, and, baffled, cast its crest aloft, where the shrieking blast caught it and whirled it in needle-like particles as high as the upper topsails.

When night drew in the sea had fairly risen, and came bellowing along in mountainous masses many miles in length at a speed that bade fair to overtake the fleeing ship. Strange it was to note how, as the waves grew, the ship seemed to dwindle until her huge bulk appeared quite insignificant. And now, at frequent intervals, enormous bodies of broken water hurled themselves on board, often filling the spacious decks flush fore and aft with a seething flood. And still the “old man,” hung on, his courage and faith in the powers of his ship being justly rewarded by a week’s run of over two thousand miles without the loss of a rope-yarn. Then the breeze gradually faltered, swerved from its steadfast direction, and worked round by the south, until at south-east it dropped lifeless for an hour or so. Then out from the north-east it rushed like a raving genie, almost catching the ship aback, and giving the scanty band of toilers a tremendous task to handle the immense squares of canvas that thundered like infuriate monsters against their restraining bonds. But in a short time the gale had veered round into the westward again, and the Coryphæna resumed her headlong race to the east. Running upon the arc of a great circle, she gradually worsened the weather as she reached higher latitudes. Stinging snow squalls came yelling after her, hiding everything behind a bitter veil. Past gigantic table-topped icebergs, floating mountains against whose gaunt sides the awful billows broke with deafening clangour, flinging their hissing fragments hundreds of feet into the gloomy sky. At last so fierce grew the following storm that the task of reducing sail became absolutely necessary. All hands were called and sped aloft to the unequal conflict. Scourged by the merciless blast, battered by the threshing sails, they strove for dear life through two terrible hours of that stern night. A feeble cry was heard,—a faint splash. Only a man dropped from the main top-gallant yard,—through one hundred and twenty feet of darkness into the yeasty smother beneath, and ere the news reached the deck, calm and peaceful below the tumult, more than a mile astern, swallowed by the ever-unsatisfied maw of the ravening sea. And onward like a meteor sped the flying ship, “running her Easting down.”