On Board the Esmeralda Part 20

However, the good-natured fellow, seeing how earnest I was in the matter, promised to take the chart to the skipper, who was lying down in his cabin again, feeling far from well of late, as, indeed, his looks lately showed--and we were all afraid he had caught the same sort of low fever like Mr Ohlsen, the second mate.

"An; I'll tell him as mildly as I can, Mister Leigh, of this here mare's nest as you've found out, so as not to make him angry with you again."

"Thank you, Jorrocks," I replied heartily; but, just at that moment, hearing the whales making a noise quite close to the s.h.i.+p's side as I thought--although I could not see them within the limited circle of dusky light to which the surrounding gloom narrowed my vision, I said, "What a row those whales are making, are they not? They're quite near, and yet, although it's not dark enough yet to hide them from our gaze, there's not a trace of one in sight!"

Jorrocks c.o.c.ked his head on one side and listened; but in an instant there was a striking alteration in the quizzical look with which he had at first regarded me, under the evident idea that I had discovered another "mare's nest."

"By Jingo, Mister Leigh, you're right after all!" he exclaimed, his face turning pale as if with sudden fright.

"What, do you think we're running on the rocks I spoke about?" I asked, anxiously.

"Aye, not a doubt of it," he answered, in the same quick way, bending his head again to listen over the side. "Either them identical ones, or else we're on the Rocas off the Brazilian coast."

In another moment, however, if in doubt previously, his suspicions were apparently confirmed; for, springing up again, and rus.h.i.+ng aft as if he were suddenly possessed, Jorrocks roared out at the pitch of his voice-- the words ringing like a trumpet note through the s.h.i.+p--

"Breakers ahead on the weather bow! Hard up with the helm--hard!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

PAT DOOLAN "CARRIES ON."

Jorrocks's cry to put the helm up was instantly obeyed by the man at the wheel, who jammed it hard-a-port with all his strength. The hands belonging to the watch on duty, at the same time, knowing with the apt.i.tude of seamen what this order necessitated, rushed to the lee braces, easing them off without any further word of command, while those on the weather side were hauled in, thus squaring the yards and getting the s.h.i.+p round before the wind, when she ran off to the north-westwards, on a course almost at right angles to her former direction--which was on a bowline, with the sou'-south-east wind nearly on her beam.

"Hoot mon, what d'ye mean?" shouted Mr Macdougall, when he had recovered from the surprise which the unexpected order of the boatswain, so rapidly carried out, had caused. "Are ye gone clean daft?"

But Jorrocks had no need to explain the reason for his interference with the mate's duties.

As the vessel payed off, the sound of surf, loudly thundering against some rocky rampart projecting from the deep which opposed the onward roll of the ocean billows, was heard louder and louder; and, in another instant, Mr Macdougall and those who stood beside him on the p.o.o.p held their breath with awe as the _Esmeralda_ glided by a triangular-shaped black peak that seemed as high as the foretopsail yard--so closely that they could apparently have touched it by merely stretching out their hands, while over it the waves, driven by the south wind, were breaking in columns of spray, flakes of which fell on the faces of all aft, as they looked over the side, and trembled at the narrowly-avoided danger.

"Whee-ew!" whistled Jorrocks through his teeth. "That were a squeak, an' no mistake!"

It was.

We had been saved by a miracle.

Five minutes, nay, half a minute longer on our previous course, and the _Esmeralda_ would, with the way she had on her, have been dashed to pieces on the jagged teeth of these isolated rocks standing in mid- ocean, when never a soul on board would have lived to tell the tale of her destruction; for, in the pale phosph.o.r.escent light emitted by the broken water surrounding the crag, some of the sailors averred, as we sheered by, that they saw several sharks plunging about--ready to devour any of us who might have tried to swim ash.o.r.e had the vessel come to grief.

It was an escape to be thankful for to Him who watches over those who travel on the treacherous seas, and protects them from its perils "in the night, when no man seeth!"

A dead stillness prevailed for a moment on board after the bustle of wearing the s.h.i.+p round had ceased, so that you might have heard a pin drop, as the saying is, although in the distance away astern the melancholy cadence of the waves breaking on Saint Paul's Islets was borne down to us on the wind. As I stood in the waist, whither so far aft I had followed Jorrocks, I could have caught any words spoken on the p.o.o.p above me, but I noted that Mr Macdougall didn't utter a syllable in continuance of the reprimand he had begun against the boatswain for his "officiousness," as he apparently considered his order to put the s.h.i.+p off her course. He was terror-stricken on realising the motive for the boatswain's interference; however, before he had time to open his mouth again, the skipper, who had been roused up by the sudden commotion on the deck over his head, rushed past me up the p.o.o.p ladder like lightning.

Captain Billings' first look, sailor-like, was aloft; and noticing the vessel was before the wind, while the spanker, which had been eased off, prevented him from seeing the shoal we had so narrowly avoided, he turned on the mate for explanation.

"Hallo, Macdougall!" he exclaimed, "what's the reason of this, eh?"

But the mate did not answer at once. He still seemed spellbound.

"We've just wore her, sir," said Jorrocks, stepping forwards, and accompanying Captain Billings as he made his way to the binnacle.

"So I see," drily replied the skipper, after a hasty glance at the standard compa.s.s. "But what has been the reason for thus altering the course of the s.h.i.+p? I gave orders for her to be steered south-west by west; and here we are now heading direct up to the northward again!

What's the reason for this, I want to know? Speak, now, can't you?"

Macdougall, on this second inquiry being directed to him by the skipper--who for the moment seemed to ignore the boatswain's presence beside him--mumbled out something about the rocks, but he spoke in so thick and indistinct a voice that Captain Billings believed he was intoxicated.

"Rocks, your grandmother!" he cried angrily. "The only rocks hereabouts are those built up in your brain through that confounded bottle you're always sucking at below!"

"Indeed, sir," put in Jorrocks at this point, taking the mate's part, "Mr Macdougall's right, Cap'. We've just had the narrowest squeak of going to the bottom I ever 'sperienced in all my time. Look there, sir, o'er the weather taffrail, an' you'll see summat we pretty nearly ran foul of just now--it were a risky shave!"

Captain Billings, somewhat puzzled by the boatswain thus "shoving his oar in" for a second time unasked, cast his eyes in the direction pointed out to him, where, now lighted up by the newly risen moon, could be distinctly seen the Penedo de San Pedro, with the surf breaking over it in sheets of silver foam.

He recognised the place in a moment, having pa.s.sed close by the spot on a previous voyage; and he was greatly astonished at our being in its near vicinity now.

"Good gracious!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "what an escape we must have had; but how came we near the place at all?"

"That I can't explain, sir," replied Jorrocks meaningly. "Perhaps, though, as how there was something wrong in the s.h.i.+p's position on the chart to-day."

"Ha, humph!" muttered the skipper to himself. "This comes of my being ill and entrusting my duties to other hands; but I'll never do it again, I'll take care! Mr Macdougall," he added aloud, "I beg your pardon for what I said just now in the heat of the moment, and I hope you'll excuse it, as I was greatly flurried, and do not feel very well yet. What position did you place the vessel in to-day, by the way, when you took your observation at noon?"

This was a ticklish question, and the mate hardly knew how to answer it, recollecting, as he did in an instant, what I had said--of our being much further westwards than the skipper thought. Even if he did not agree with me, the point should have been referred to Captain Billings, as it so vitally concerned the interests of all on board. Almost tongue-tied, therefore, now by his former silence on the subject, he temporised with the difficulty, determined not to be cornered if he could help it.

"'Deed an' I mad' it e'en the same as the deed reck'nin' cam' to, Cap'en, a wee bit to the westwar' o' twenty-seven, and close to the leen."

"Then your s.e.xtant must have been out of order, or your calculations wrong," replied the skipper, shortly. "We are evidently much to the westwards of your reckoning. How did you observe the danger--was there a man on the look-out?"

"Nae, sir, I didna think we required yon," answered Macdougall, now at his wit's end for a reply.

"No, I should think not," said Captain Billings, in his dry way; "but who was it that warned you in time to wear the s.h.i.+p?"

"Mister Leigh, sir," put in Jorrocks, thinking the time now come to speak up for me. "He heard the noise of the breakers first, and called my 'tention to 'em, and I then sung out to put the helm up."

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the skipper, quite taken aback by my name being thus suddenly brought up by Jorrocks--just as he was thinking of me and my recent shortcomings, as he afterwards explained to me.

"Yes, sir," continued my old friend the boatswain, believing it best to push the matter home, now he had once introduced me on the carpet; "and he begged me to tell you, sir, as how he'd left his chart on the cabin sky-light, where he'd jotted down summat as he'd diskivered when taking the sun, before the rumpus arose 'twixt him and Muster Macdougall."

"Chart!" interposed the mate, making a step towards the sky-light, and trying to throw the tarpaulin that was hanging there over it whilst pretending to drag it off, "I see no chart here."

"Why, here it is," exclaimed the skipper, noticing one end of the roll, which projected from beneath the tarpaulin; and, pulling it out, he walked back again towards the binnacle, by the light of which he inspected my tracing of the s.h.i.+p's path on the chart carefully.

"Pa.s.s the word forwards for Martin Leigh," he cried out presently; and I, listening below in the waist, just under the break of the p.o.o.p, to all that had transpired, very quickly answering to the call of my name as it was sung out by Jorrocks, mounted up the p.o.o.p ladder, and advanced aft to where Captain Billings stood.

"Leigh," said he, quietly, "I have sent for you to explain matters about this chart. Did you take an observation to-day as I told you?"

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"And did you agree with Mr Macdougall?"