The Sea-Wolf
with all our canvas spread, what disaster in such event awaited us. The
whispers of wind became puffs, the sails filled, the _Ghost_ moved. Wolf
Larsen put the wheel hard up, to port, and we began to pay off. The wind
was now dead astern, muttering and puffing stronger and stronger, and my
head-sails were pounding lustily. I did not see what went on elsewhere,
though I felt the sudden surge and heel of the schooner as the
wind-pressures changed to the jibing of the fore- and main-sails. My
hands were full with the flying-jib, jib, and staysail; and by the time
this part of my task was accomplished the _Ghost_ was leaping into the
south-west, the wind on her quarter and all her sheets to starboard.
Without pausing for breath, though my heart was beating like a
trip-hammer from my exertions, I sprang to the topsails, and before the
wind had become too strong we had them fairly set and were coiling down.
Then I went aft for orders.
Wolf Larsen nodded approval and relinquished the wheel to me. The wind
was strengthening steadily and the sea rising. For an hour I steered,
each moment becoming more difficult. I had not the experience to steer
at the gait we were going on a quartering course.
“Now take a run up with the glasses and raise some of the boats. We’ve
made at least ten knots, and we’re going twelve or thirteen now. The old
girl knows how to walk.”
I contested myself with the fore crosstrees, some seventy feet above the
deck. As I searched the vacant stretch of water before me, I
comprehended thoroughly the need for haste if we were to recover any of
our men. Indeed, as I gazed at the heavy sea through which we were
running, I doubted that there was a boat afloat. It did not seem
possible that such frail craft could survive such stress of wind and
water.
I could not feel the full force of the wind, for we were running with it;
but from my lofty perch I looked down as though outside the _Ghost_ and
apart from her, and saw the shape of her outlined sharply against the
foaming sea as she tore along instinct with life. Sometimes she would
lift and send across some great wave, burying her starboard-rail from
view, and covering her deck to the hatches with the boiling ocean. At
such moments, starting from a windward roll, I would go flying through
the air with dizzying swiftness, as though I clung to the end of a huge,
inverted pendulum, the arc of which, between the greater rolls, must have
been seventy feet or more. Once, the terror of this giddy sweep
overpowered me, and for a while I clung on, hand and foot, weak and
trembling, unable to search the sea for the missing boats or to behold
aught of the sea but that which roared beneath and strove to overwhelm
the _Ghost_.
But the thought of the men in the midst of it steadied me, and in my
quest for them I forgot myself. For an hour I saw nothing but the naked,
desolate sea. And then, where a vagrant shaft of sunlight struck the
ocean and turned its surface to wrathful silver, I caught a small black
speck thrust skyward for an instant and swallowed up. I waited
patiently. Again the tiny point of black projected itself through the
wrathful blaze a couple of points off our port-bow. I did not attempt to
shout, but communicated the news to Wolf Larsen by waving my arm. He
changed the course, and I signalled affirmation when the speck showed
dead ahead.
It grew larger, and so swiftly that for the first time I fully
appreciated the speed of our flight. Wolf Larsen motioned for me to come
down, and when I stood beside him at the wheel gave me instructions for
heaving to.
“Expect all hell to break loose,” he cautioned me, “but don’t mind it.
Yours is to do your own work and to have Cooky stand by the fore-sheet.”
I managed to make my way forward, but there was little choice of sides,
for the weather-rail seemed buried as often as the lee. Having
instructed Thomas Mugridge as to what he was to do, I clambered into the
fore-rigging a few feet. The boat was now very close, and I could make
out plainly that it was lying head to wind and sea and dragging on its
mast and sail, which had been thrown overboard and made to serve as a
sea-anchor. The three men were bailing. Each rolling mountain whelmed
them from view, and I would wait with sickening anxiety, fearing that
they would never appear again. Then, and with black suddenness, the boat
would shoot clear through the foaming crest, bow pointed to the sky, and
the whole length of her bottom showing, wet and dark, till she seemed on
end. There would be a fleeting glimpse of the three men flinging water
in frantic haste, when she would topple over and fall into the yawning
valley, bow down and showing her full inside length to the stern upreared
almost directly above the bow. Each time that she reappeared was a
miracle.
The _Ghost_ suddenly changed her course, keeping away, and it came to me
with a shock that Wolf Larsen was giving up the rescue as impossible.
Then I realized that he was preparing to heave to, and dropped to the
deck to be in readiness. We were now dead before the wind, the boat far
away and abreast of us. I felt an abrupt easing of the schooner, a loss
for the moment of all strain and pressure, coupled with a swift
acceleration of speed. She was rushing around on her heel into the wind.
As she arrived at right angles to the sea, the full force of the wind
(from which we had hitherto run away) caught us. I was unfortunately and
ignorantly facing it. It stood up against me like a wall, filling my
lungs with air which I could not expel. And as I choked and strangled,
and as the _Ghost_ wallowed for an instant, broadside on and rolling
straight over and far into the wind, I beheld a huge sea rise far above
my head. I turned aside, caught my breath, and looked again. The wave
over-topped the _Ghost_, and I gazed sheer up and into it. A shaft of
sunlight smote the over-curl, and I caught a glimpse of translucent,
rushing green, backed by a milky smother of foam.
Then it descended, pandemonium broke loose, everything happened at once.
I was struck a crushing, stunning blow, nowhere in particular and yet
everywhere. My hold had been broken loose, I was under water, and the
thought passed through my mind that this was the terrible thing of which
I had heard, the being swept in the trough of the sea. My body struck
and pounded as it was dashed helplessly along and turned over and over,
and when I could hold my breath no longer, I breathed the stinging salt
water into my lungs. But through it all I clung to the one idea—_I must
get the jib backed over to windward_. I had no fear of death. I had no
doubt but that I should come through somehow. And as this idea of
fulfilling Wolf Larsen’s order persisted in my dazed consciousness, I
seemed to see him standing at the wheel in the midst of the wild welter,
pitting his will against the will of the storm and defying it.
I brought up violently against what I took to be the rail, breathed, and
breathed the sweet air again. I tried to rise, but struck my head and
was knocked back on hands and knees. By some freak of the waters I had
been swept clear under the forecastle-head and into the eyes. As I
scrambled out on all fours, I passed over the body of Thomas Mugridge,
who lay in a groaning heap. There was no time to investigate. I must
get the jib backed over.
When I emerged on deck it seemed that the end of everything had come. On
all sides there was a rending and crashing of wood and steel and canvas.
The _Ghost_ was being wrenched and torn to fragments. The foresail and
fore-topsail, emptied of the wind by the manœuvre, and with no one to
bring in the sheet in time, were thundering into ribbons, the heavy boom
threshing and splintering from rail to rail. The air was thick with
flying wreckage, detached ropes and stays were hissing and coiling like
snakes, and down through it all crashed the gaff of the foresail.
The spar could not have missed me by many inches, while it spurred me to
action. Perhaps the situation was not hopeless. I remembered Wolf
Larsen’s caution. He had expected all hell to break loose, and here it
was. And where was he? I caught sight of him toiling at the main-sheet,
heaving it in and flat with his tremendous muscles, the stern of the
schooner lifted high in the air and his body outlined against a white
surge of sea sweeping past. All this, and more,—a whole world of chaos
and wreck,—in possibly fifteen seconds I had seen and heard and grasped.
I did not stop to see what had become of the small boat, but sprang to
the jib-sheet. The jib itself was beginning to slap, partially filling
and emptying with sharp reports; but with a turn of the sheet and the
application of my whole strength each time it slapped, I slowly backed
it. This I know: I did my best. I pulled till I burst open the ends of
all my fingers; and while I pulled, the flying-jib and staysail split
their cloths apart and thundered into nothingness.
Still I pulled, holding what I gained each time with a double turn until
the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and
Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up
the slack.
“Make fast!” he shouted. “And come on!”
As I followed him, I noted that in spite of rack and ruin a rough order
obtained. The _Ghost_ was hove to. She was still in working order, and
she was still working. Though the rest of her sails were gone, the jib,
backed to windward, and the mainsail hauled down flat, were themselves
holding, and holding her bow to the furious sea as well.
I looked for the boat, and, while Wolf Larsen cleared the boat-tackles,
saw it lift to leeward on a big sea and not a score of feet away. And, so
nicely had he made his calculation, we drifted fairly down upon it, so
that nothing remained to do but hook the tackles to either end and hoist
it aboard. But this was not done so easily as it is written.
In the bow was Kerfoot, Oofty-Oofty in the stern, and Kelly amidships.
As we drifted closer the boat would rise on a wave while we sank in the
trough, till almost straight above me I could see the heads of the three
men craned overside and looking down. Then, the next moment, we would
lift and soar upward while they sank far down beneath us. It seemed
incredible that the next surge should not crush the _Ghost_ down upon the
tiny eggshell.
But, at the right moment, I passed the tackle to the Kanaka, while Wolf
Larsen did the same thing forward to Kerfoot. Both tackles were hooked
in a trice, and the three men, deftly timing the roll, made a
simultaneous leap aboard the schooner. As the _Ghost_ rolled her side
out of water, the boat was lifted snugly against her, and before the
return roll came, we had heaved it in over the side and turned it bottom
up on the deck. I noticed blood spouting from Kerfoot’s left hand. In
some way the third finger had been crushed to a pulp. But he gave no
sign of pain, and with his single right hand helped us lash the boat in
its place.
“Stand by to let that jib over, you Oofty!” Wolf Larsen commanded, the
very second we had finished with the boat. “Kelly, come aft and slack
off the main-sheet! You, Kerfoot, go for’ard and see what’s become of
Cooky! Mr. Van Weyden, run aloft again, and cut away any stray stuff on
your way!”
And having commanded, he went aft with his peculiar tigerish leaps to the
wheel. While I toiled up the fore-shrouds the _Ghost_ slowly paid off.
This time, as we went into the trough of the sea and were swept, there
were no sails to carry away. And, halfway to the crosstrees and
flattened against the rigging by the full force of the wind so that it