Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
with the wind till that work could be performed. He threw his helm hard
over. Mayo had been riding the main boom astraddle, hitching himself
toward the captain, to make him hear. When the volunteer saw the master
of the _Polly_ trying to turn tail to the foe in that fashion, he leaped
to the wheel, but he was too late. The schooner had paid off too much.
The yelling spitter caught them as they were poised broadside on the top
of a wave, before the sluggish craft had made her full turn.
What happened then might have served as confirmation of mariners'
superstition that a veritable demon reigns in the heart of the tempest.
The attack on the old _Polly_ showed devilish intelligence in team-work.
A crashing curler took advantage of the loosened deckload and smashed
the schooner a longside buffet which sent all the lumber in a sliding
drive against the lee rail and rigging. The mainsail had been only
partly secured; the spitter blew into the flapping canvas with all its
force and the sail snapped free and bellied out.
The next instant the _Polly_ was tripped!
She went over with all the helpless, dead-weight violence of a man who
has caught his toe on a drooping clothes line in the dark.
The four men who were on deck were sailors and they did not need
orders when they felt that soul-sickening swing of her as she toppled.
Instinctively, with one accord, they dived for the cabin companionway.
Undoubtedly, as a sailor, the first thought of each was that the
schooner was going on to her beam-ends. Therefore, to remain on deck
meant that they would either slide into the water or that a smashing
wave would carry them off.
They went tumbling down together in the darkness, and all four of
them, with impulse of preservation as instant and true as that of the
trap-door spider, set their hands to the closing of the hatch and the
folding leaves of the door.
Captain Mayo, his clutch still on a knob, found himself pulled under
water without understanding at first just what had happened. He let go
his grip and came up to the surface, spouting. He heard the girl shriek
in extremity of terror, so near him that her breath swept his face. He
put out his arm and caught her while he was floundering for a footing.
When he found something on which to stand and had steadied himself, he
could not comprehend just what had happened; the floor he was standing
on had queer irregularities.
“We've gone over!” squalled Mr. Speed in the black darkness. “We've gone
clear over. We're upside down. We're standing on the ceiling!”
Then Mayo trod about a bit and convinced himself that the irregularities
under his feet were the beams and carlines.
The _Polly_ had been tripped in good earnest! Mr. Speed was right--she
was squarely upside down!
Even in that moment of stress Mayo could figure out how it had happened.
The spitter must have ripped all her rotten canvas off her spars as she
rolled and there had been no brace to hold her on her beam-ends when she
went over.
Captain Candage was spouting, splashing near at hand, and was bellowing
his fears. Then he began to call for his daughter in piteous fashion.
“Are you drownded, Polly darling?” he shouted.
“I have her safe, sir,” Mayo assured him in husky tones, trying to clear
the water from his throat. “Stand on a beam. You can get half of your
body above water.”
“It's all off with us,” gasped the master. “We're spoke for.”
Such utter and impenetrable blackness Mayo had never experienced before.
Their voices boomed dully, as if they were in a huge hogshead which had
been headed over.
'“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,'”
quavered the cook. “If anybody knows a better prayer I wish he'd say
it.”
“Plumb over--upside down! Worse off than flies in a puddle of Porty Reek
molasses,” mourned Mr. Speed.
The master joined the mate in lamentation. “I have brought my baby to
this! I have brought my Polly here! God forgive me. Can't you speak to
me, Polly?”
Mayo found the girl very quiet in the hook of his arm, and he put his
free hand against her cheek. She did not move under his touch.
“She has fainted, sir.”
“No, she's dead! She's dead!” Candage began to weep and started to
splash his way across the cabin, directed by Mayo's voice.
“She is all right--she is breathing,” the young man assured the father.
“Here! This way, captain! Take her. Hold her up. I want to see whether
anything can be done for us.”
“Nothing can be done!” whimpered Candage. “We're goners.”
“We're goners,” averred Oakum Otie.
“We're goners,” echoed Dolph.
Mayo gave the girl into the groping arms of her father and stood for a
few moments reflecting on their desperate plight. He was not hopeful. In
his heart he agreed with the convictions which his mates were expressing
in childish falsetto. But being a young sailor who found his head above
water, he resolved to keep on battling in that emergency; the adage
of the coastwise mariner is: “Don't die till Davy Jones sets his final
pinch on your weasen!”
First of all, he gave full consideration to what had happened. The
_Polly_ had been whipped over so quickly that she had been transformed
into a sort of diving-bell.{*} That is to say, a considerable amount of
air had been captured and was now retained in her. It was compressed
by the water which was forced up from below through the windows and
the shattered skylight. The pressure on Mayo's temples afforded him
information on this point. The _Polly_ was floating, and he felt
comforting confidence that she would continue to float for some
time. But this prospect did not insure safety or promise life to the
unfortunates who had been trapped in her bowels. The air must either
escape gradually or become vitiated as they breathed it.
* The strange adventure of the _Polly_ is not an
improbability of fiction. A Bath, Maine, schooner, lumber-
laden, was tripped in exactly this fashion off Hatteras.
Captain Boyd Mayo's exploit has been paralleled in real life
in all details. My good friend Captain Elliott C. Gardner,
former skipper of the world's only seven-master, the _Thomas
W. Lawson_, furnished those details to me, and after writing
this part of the tale I submitted the narrative to him for
confirmation. It has received his indorsement.--H. D.
There was only one thing to do, he decided: take advantage of any
period of truce which their ancient enemy, the sea, had allowed in that
desperate battle.
A sailor is prey to hazards and victim of the unexpected in the
ever-changing moods of the ocean; he must needs be master of expedients
and ready grappler of emergencies.
“Where are your tools--a saw--a chisel?” demanded Mayo. He was obliged
to repeat that query several times. His companions appeared to be wholly
absorbed in their personal woes.
At last Mr. Speed checked his groans long enough to state that the tools
were in “the lazareet.”
The lazaret of a coaster is a storeroom under the
quarter-deck--repository of general odds and ends and spare equipment.
“Any way to get at it except through the deck-hatch?”
“There's a door through, back of the companion ladder,” said Mr. Speed,
with listless indifference.
Mayo crowded his way past the ladder after he had waded and stumbled
here and there and had located it. He set his shoulders against the
slope of the steps and pushed at the door with his feet. After he had
forced it open he waded into the storeroom. It was blind business,
hunting for anything in that place. He knew the general habits of the
hit-or-miss coasting crews, and was sure that the tools had been thrown
in among the rest of the clutter by the person who used them last. If
they had been loose on the floor they would now be loose on the ceiling.
He pushed his feet about, hoping to tread on something that felt like a
saw or chisel.
“Ahoy, you men out there!” he called. “Don't you have any idea in what
part of this lazaret the tools were?”
“Oh, they was probably just throwed in,” said Mr. Speed. “I wish you
wouldn't bother me so much! I'm trying to compose my mind to pray.”
There were so much ruck and stuff under his feet that Mayo gave up
searching after a time. He had held his breath and ducked his head under
water so that he might investigate with his bare hands, but he found
nothing which would help him, and his brain was dizzy after his efforts
and his mouth was choked by the dirty water.
But when he groped his way back into the main cabin his hands came in
contact with the inside of the lazaret door. In leather loops on the
door he found saw, ax, chisel, and hammer. He was unable to keep back a
few hearty and soul-satisfying oaths.
“Why didn't you tell me where the tools were? They're here on the door.”
“I had forgot about picking 'em tip. And my mind ain't on tools,
anyway.”
“Your mind will be on 'em as soon as I can get forward there,” growled
the incensed captain.
Mayo was not sure of what he needed or what he would be obliged to do,
therefore he took all the tools, holding them above water. When he waded
past Captain Can-dage he heard the old skipper trying to comfort the
girl, his voice low and broken by sobs. She had recovered consciousness
and Mayo was a bit sorry; in her swoon she had not realized their
plight; he feared hysterics and other feminine demonstrations, and he
knew that he needed all his nerve.
“We're going to die--we're going to die!” the girl kept moaning.
“Yes, my poor baby, and I have brought you to it,” blubbered her father.
“Please keep up your courage for a little while, Miss Candage,” Mayo
pleaded, wistfully.
“But there's no hope!”
“There's hope just as long as we have a little air and a little grit,”
he insisted. “Now, please!”
“I am afraid!” she whispered.
“So am I,” he confessed. “But we're all going to work the best we know
how. Can't you encourage us like a brave, good girl?” He went stumbling
on. “Now tell me, mate,” he commanded, briskly, “how thick is the
bulkhead between the cabin, here, and the hold?”
“I can't bother to think,” returned Mr. Speed.
“It's only sheathing between the beams, sir,” stated Captain Candage.
“Mate, you and the cook lend a hand to help me.”
Oakum Otie broke off the prayer to which he had returned promptly.
“What's the use?” he demanded, with anger which his fright made
juvenile. “I tell you I'm trying to compose my soul, and I want this
rampage-round stopped.”
“I say what's the use, too!” whined Dolph. “You can't row a biskit
across a puddle of molasses with a couple of toothpicks,” he added, with
cook's metaphor for the absolutely hopeless.
Mayo shouted at them with a violence that made hideous din in that
narrow space. “You two men wade across here to me or I'll come after
you with an ax in one hand and a hammer in the other! Damn you, I mean
business!”
They were silent, then there sounded the splash of water and they came,
muttering. They had recognized the ring of desperate resolve in his
command.
Mayo, when he heard their stertorous breathing close at hand, groped
for them and shoved tools into their clutch. He retained the hammer and
chisel for himself.
“That's about all I need you for just now--for tool-racks,” he growled.
“Make sure you don't drop those.”
The upturned schooner rolled sluggishly, and every now and then the
water swashed across her cabin with extra impetus, making footing
insecure.
“If I tumble down I'll have to drop 'em,” whimpered Oolph.
“Then don't come up. Drowning will be an easier death for you,” declared
the captain, menacingly. He was sounding the bulkhead with his hammer.
The tapping quickly showed him where the upright beams were located on
the other side of the sheathing. In his own mind he was not as sanguine