Читать книгу Dick Rodney; or, The Adventures of an Eton Boy - James Grant - Страница 9

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Could I have anticipated all that was still before me, in the form of suffering and of peril—suffering enough to shatter a stronger frame and shake a stouter heart than mine—I would have returned in any vessel bound for any part of Europe, and trusted to Providence for the means of again reaching home, rather than have remained in the Eugenie.

But who can lift the veil which so happily hides the future from us?

So I turned my thoughts toward the West Indies with pleasure; I resolved not to be an idler or loblolly boy, and was allowed by Captain Weston to take my watches and share of deck duty with the rest of the crew; and at intervals, I worked hard at a Spanish grammar with Marc Hislop, who could read Don Quixote in the original, with a fluency that even my old tutor at Eton might have envied.

We were now clear of the Channel; and, after a hard battle with the wind and sea, we felt the long roll of the mighty Atlantic.

On the third night after my rescue, we encountered dark and cloudy weather, with a strong gale, which set all the cabin afloat. My watch was over, and I had just turned in, when I heard the voice of Captain Weston who was on deck, shouting through his trumpet to "close reef the maintopsail, hand the mainsail, foresail, and fore topsail. Look alive there, lads," he added, "or as sure as my name is Sam Weston, I'll give the colt to the last man off the deck!"

This threat, so unusual in one so good-natured, together with the bellowing of the wind, the flapping of the wetted canvas, the rattle of the blocks and cordage, and the laboring of the brig, which was so deeply laden that every timber groaned, all gave such indications of a rough night, that I sprang from my berth, and proceeded to dress again in haste.

To my astonishment, at that moment I heard the hoarse rattle of the chain cable, as it rushed with a roaring sound through the iron mouth of the hawse hole; then I was sensible of a violent shock, which made the brig stagger, and tumbled me headlong against the panelled bulk-head which separated the cabin from the after-hold.

Hislop, who had been dozing on the cabin-locker in his storm jacket, started up with alarm in his face.

"Have we come to anchor?" I asked.

"Anchor in more than three hundred fathoms of water?" he exclaimed, as he rushed on deck, whither I followed, and found that a very strange incident had occurred.

In the murky obscurity of the stormy night, a large Dutch lugger, in ballast apparently, and running right before the wind, with steering canvas set, came suddenly athwart us, and hooked the anchor from the cathead on our larboard bow—by some unwonted neglect it was not yet on board, nor had the cable been unbent—with her starboard fore-rigging, and thus bore away with it, until the chain came to bear, when there was a tremendous shock. Several feet of our bulwark were torn away, and two seamen, Tattooed Tom, and an old man-o'-war's man named Roberts, were nearly swept into the sea, where, in such a night, and amid the confusion of such an incident, they would inevitably have perished unaided.

Then we heard a shout, mingled with a crash upon the bellowing wind, as the Dutchman's foremast snapped by the board, and then, fortunately, our anchor tumbled from his side into the sea, where it swung at the whole length of the chain cable.

We manned both windlass and capstan—got the anchor, which was drifting, roused to the cathead, hoisted it on board, unbent the cable, and stowed it in the tier; but long ere all this was done, we had lost sight of our lubberly friend, who, when last seen, was tossing about like a log in the darkness, and drifting far astern of us. But for some defect in the pawls and notches of the windlass collar, I am doubtful if the chain would have run out so freely; but as to this I cannot say.

We had hard squalls and a sea that ran high until daybreak; there was lightning too; red and dusky, it seemed at times to fill the whole horizon. We could see for an instant the black summits of the waves as they rose and fell between us and the glare; and when it passed away, all again would be obscurity and gloom.

"More canvas must be taken off the brig, sir," suggested Hislop, looking aloft and then over the side, where the foam-flecked sea whirled past us.

"Well, in with the trysail, foretopsail, and maintopsail," ordered Weston.

As the light of dawn stole over the angry sea, through clouds of mingled mist and rain, the gale abated, and all but the watch went below.

"That lugger making off with our anchor," said Hislop, "reminds me of how, after we failed to run off with a whale, he fairly ran off with us."

"How?" said I, my teeth chattering as I tucked myself into bed again.

"You must know, that about ten years ago I was an apprentice aboard a small whaler, a ninety-ton schooner, out of Peterhead. We were returning in very low spirits after an unsuccessful voyage, and, by stress of weather, were forced toward the rocky and dangerous coast of Norway, where we came to anchor one evening in a solitary bay, among the rugged islets which stud the mouth of the Hardanger-fiord, to repair some trifling damages. As day broke, there was a shout raised by the watch on deck.

"'A whale!—a whale!—in the shoal water!'

"And there, sure enough, far up the bay, we saw one sporting and gambolling, blowing and diving; and though it was a kind of robbery, perhaps, we resolved to make a dash at him, for the place was lonely, and not a Norwegian eye upon us—not a house upon the shore, nor a man upon the mountains, so far as we could discern by our glasses.

"The boats were cleared, the harpoons prepared, the lines were coiled away in the tubs, and the schooner was hove short on her anchor; but just as we lowered the whaling-punts, down dived our fish, tail uppermost, and then we knew that he was searching for his favorite food, of which plenty is to be found in these Norwegian fiords."

"What is it?" said I.

"A kind of small salt-water snail, and the medusa, or sea-blubber. As you have been at Eton, you must have read all about it in Linnæus," continued our learned Scotch mate. "Just as the first boat was lowered, the schooner received a shock so violent that her masts strained almost to snapping; her bows were dragged down till her billet-head dipped in the water, and every thing and everybody on deck went toppling and tumbling forward in a heap about the windlass bitts. Then a shower of bloody spray fell over us as the craft righted again, but with such violence that the water splashed under the counter and over the quarter. Then she was torn through the sea at the rate of thirty knots an hour!