On Board the Esmeralda Part 26

Fortune was cruel. Mishap had followed on mishap. The powers of evil were piling Ossa on Pelion!

The skipper, however, was not daunted yet.

All hands had rushed aft, without being specially called, roused by the crash of the falling spars, so he immediately set them to work with the hatchets fastened round the mainmast bitts, cutting away at the wreckage; and then, as the clouds cleared away and a bit of blue sky showed itself aloft, Captain Billings expressed himself hopeful of getting out of the meshes of that network of danger in every direction with which we seemed surrounded.

"Look alive, men, and don't despair," said he to the crew, encouraging them; for they were almost panic-stricken at first, and it was all that Jorrocks and I could do to get them to ply their tomahawks forwards and cut away the rigging, which still held the foremast with all its top- hamper attached to the s.h.i.+p, thumping at her sides as the lumber floated alongside, trying to crunch our timbers in. "Look alive, men, and put your heart into it; all hope hasn't left us yet! The gale has nearly blown itself out, as you can see for yourselves by that little bit of blue sky there overhead, bigger than a Dutchman's pair of breeches; so, as soon as the sea goes down a little, we'll hoist out the boats, so as to have them handy in case we have to abandon the s.h.i.+p, should the fire in the hold get too strong for us, although I don't fear that yet, my hearties, for the water may drown it out soon, you know. But work away cheerily, my lads, and clear away all that dunnage, so that we can set a little sail presently on the mainmast and mizzen, which we still have standing, when we can make a run for some islands lying close by under the lee of Cape Horn, where I'll heave her ash.o.r.e if I can; but, if the vessel don't reach the land, you needn't be afraid of not being able to do so in the boats, which we can take to as a last resource, so there's no fear of your lives being lost, at any rate!"

"Hurray!" shouted out Jorrocks, leading a cheer; and Pat Doolan seconding him heartily, the hands started at the rigging with greatly renewed vigour, slas.h.i.+ng at the shrouds and stays until they parted, and the foremast was at last cut away clear, floating astern on the top of the rolling waves.

"There it goes!" cried the skipper, "and joy go with it for deserting us in that unhandsome way!"

"Ah, sir," observed Haxell, the carpenter, who was standing close beside him now, quiet a bit after exerting himself like a navvy in helping to clear the wreck, "you forgets as how the poor dear thing never recovered that spring it had off Madeiry!"

"No; for it has lasted well, nevertheless, and I oughtn't to complain of it now," said Captain Billings, with a responsive sigh to the carpenter's lament over the lost foremast. Haxell looked upon all the s.h.i.+p's spars as if they were his own peculiar private property, and spoke of them always--that is, when he could be induced to abandon his chronic taciturnity--as if they had kindred feelings and sensibilities to his own!

The dark threatening clouds which had enveloped the heavens for the past twenty-four hours now cleared away, although the wind still blew pretty fresh from the south-west, and the sun coming out, Captain Billings told me to go and fetch my s.e.xtant in order to take an observation so as to ascertain our true position; for, first with the north-easter, and then with the squall from the south, we had been so driven here, there, and everywhere, that it was difficult to form any reasonable surmise as to where we really were--especially as there was a strong current supposed to run round Cape Horn from the Pacific towards the Atlantic Ocean at certain tides.

I fetched my s.e.xtant and took the sun; and I may say confidently to all whom it may concern that this was the last observation ever made by any one on board the ill-fated _Esmeralda_!

The skipper checked me in the time, from the chronometer in the cabin; and when I had worked out the reckoning, we compared notes on the p.o.o.p.

"What do you make it?" said he.

"56 degrees 20 minutes South," I said.

"And the s.h.i.+p's time makes us about 66 degrees West. Ha! humph! we must be about forty miles to the south of Cape Horn; and, by Jove," he added, looking to the north-west, where the blue sky was without a fleck save a little white cloud, like the triangular sail of a boat, seen dimly low down on the horizon, "there's my gentleman over there, now!"

The knowledge of the vessel's position appeared to give the skipper greater confidence; and, the waves ceasing to break over us, although the huge southern rollers swept by in heavy curves, he gave directions for getting some tackle rigged to launch the long-boat, which, although it was right in the way, had escaped injury when the foremast fell. At the same time, the mainsail and mizzen staysail were set, and the vessel steered in the direction of that Cape which she seemed destined never to round.

"We'll run for the Wollaston group," said the skipper--"that is, if the fire will let us stop aboard till we reach there; and if not, why, the less distance there will be for us to trust ourselves to the boats in this strong sea."

No time was lost in making preparations to quit the s.h.i.+p, however-- provisions and stores being brought up from the steerage by the steward and a couple of seamen who were told off to help him.

In the last few hours the fire had made considerable headway; for thin wreaths of smoke were curling up from the deck forwards, where the pitch had been melted from the seams, and the heat was plainly perceptible on the p.o.o.p, accompanied as it was by a hot sulphurous smell.

"Be jabers, I fale like a cat on a hot griddle," said Pat Doolan, as he danced in and out of the galley, engaged in certain cooking operations on a large scale which the skipper had ordered; "I'll soon have no sowl at all, at all, to me cawbeens!"

The men laughed at this, but there was a good deal of truth in the joking words of the Irishman, as, although washed with water, the deck was quite unbearable to one's naked foot.

It was now early in the afternoon, and the long-boat and jolly-boat were both launched and loaded with what stores were available, the skipper personally seeing that each was provided with a mast and sails and its proper complement of oars and ballast--barrels and barricoes containing water being utilised to this latter end, thus serving for a double purpose.

Other things and persons were also attended to.

Mr Ohlsen, the second mate, and Harmer, the seaman who had had his leg broken when thrown against the bulwarks--and who, by the way, had the injured limb excellently set by Mr Macdougall, who had pa.s.sed through a hospital course in "Edinbro' Toon," he told us--were brought up from the cabin in their cots, being both invalids. The skipper likewise secured the s.h.i.+p's papers and removed the compa.s.s from the binnacle; while I, of course, did not forget my s.e.xtant and a chart or two which Captain Billings told me to take. The foremast hands having also selected a small stock of useful articles, all of us were ready to leave the vessel as soon as she gave us notice to quit.

The fire was waxing hotter and hotter, the curling wreaths of smoke having expanded into dense black columns of vapour, and an occasional tongue of flame was licking the edges of the coamings of the fore hatchway, while sparks every now and then went flying up in the air and were wafted away to leeward by the wind.

"She can't last much longer now without the flames bursting forth," said Captain Billings. "The sooner we see about leaving her the better now.

Haul up the boats alongside, and prepare to lower down our sick men."

"Hadn't we better have a whip rigged from the yard-arm, sir?" suggested Jorrocks. "It'll get 'em down more comfortable and easy like."

"Aye, do; I declare I had forgotten that," said the skipper; "I'm losing my head, I think, at the thought of the loss of my s.h.i.+p!" He spoke these words so sadly that they touched me keenly.

"No, no, Cap', you haven't loosed your head yet, so far as thinking about us is concerned," observed Jorrocks, who was watching the man he had sent out on the mainyard fasten a block and tackle for lowering down the cots of the two invalids. I'm sure we all acquiesced in this hearty expression of the boatswain's opinion, for no one could have more carefully considered every precaution for our comfort and security than the skipper, when making up his mind to abandon the s.h.i.+p.

No further words were wasted, however, as soon as the boats were hauled alongside.

Mr Ohlsen and Harmer were lowered down carefully into the long-boat, and the provisions, with the captain's papers and instruments, were subsequently stowed in the stern-sheets by the side of the invalids. A similar procedure was then adopted in reference to the jolly-boat, only that there were no more sick men, fortunately, to go in her; and the skipper was just about mustering the hands on the after part of the main deck, below the break of the p.o.o.p, when there was a terrible explosion forwards, the whole fore-part of the s.h.i.+p seeming to be rent in twain and hurled heavenward in a sheet of flame as vivid as forked lightning!

I don't know by what sudden spasm of memory, but at that very instant my thoughts flew back to my boyish days at Beachampton, and my attempt to blow up Dr h.e.l.lyer and the whole school with gunpowder on that memorable November day, as I have narrated. The present calamity seemed somehow or other, to my morbid mind, a judgment on my former wicked conduct--the reflection pa.s.sing through my brain at the instant of the explosion with almost a similar flash.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

HERSCHEL ISLAND.

"Maircy on us!" exclaimed Mr Macdougall, who at that moment was just gingerly pa.s.sing down the standard compa.s.s to Jorrocks, the boatswain, standing up in the stern-sheets of the long-boat alongside, and stretching up his hands as carefully to receive the precious instrument; and the sudden blinding flash of the explosion and concussion of the air that it caused, almost made him drop this in his fright. "Whateever on airth ees that noo?"

"Matter?" repeated the skipper after him coolly, taking in cause and effect at a glance. "Why, the gas generated by the heated coal in the hold has blown out the forepeak, that's all! It is providential, though, that the wrench which the foremast gave to the deck-beams and bulkhead there when it carried away, so far weakened the s.h.i.+p forwards as to enable the gas to find vent in that direction, otherwise the entire deck would probably have been blown up--when it would have been a poor look-out for all of us here aft!"

"Gudeness greecious!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the mate again, blinking bewilderedly, like an owl unexpectedly exposed to daylight; but Captain Billings did not waste time in any further explanations or unnecessary words.

"I hope n.o.body's hurt! Run forwards, Leigh, and see," he said to me.

Fortunately, however, all had escaped without a scratch, although fragments of the knees and other heavy portions of the vessel's timbers had been hurled aloft and scattered in all directions, as if a mine had been sprung below--the woodwork descending afterwards in a regular hailstorm on our heads, blown into small pieces no bigger than matches, and mixed up with a shower of blazing sparks and coal-dust, making us all "as black as nayghurs," as Pat Doolan said.

The stump of the foremast, in particular, described a graceful parabolic curve in the air, coming down into the water in close proximity to the bows of the long-boat--where, under the supervision of the boatswain, the steward and the carpenter were stowing provisions under the thwarts, making the two almost jump out of their skins. It descended into the sea with the same sort of "whish" which the stick of a signal rocket makes when, the propelling power that had enabled it previously to soar up so majestically into the air above being ultimately exhausted, it is forced to return by its own gravity to its proper level below, unable to sustain itself unaided by exterior help at the unaccustomed height to which it was temporarily exalted.

And in this respect, it may be observed here, although I do not believe the remark is altogether original, that a good many human rockets may be encountered in our daily life, which exhibit all the characteristic points and weaknesses of the ordinary material model that I have likened them to--composed of gunpowder and other explosive pyrotechnic substances, and familiar to all--for, they go up in the same brilliant and glorious fas.h.i.+on, and are veritable s.h.i.+ning lights in the estimation of their friends and the fickle testimony of public opinion; only, alas, to descend to the ordinary level of every-day mortals, like the rocket- stick comes down in the end!

I need hardly say, though, that I had no thought of these reflections now; for, immediately after the explosion forwards, the flames which mounted aloft with it burst forth with full vigour, released from the confined s.p.a.ce of the hold to which they had been previously limited, and the entire fore-part of the s.h.i.+p, from the waist to the knight- heads, became a ma.s.s of fire, the cavity disclosed by the riven deck adjacent to the fo'c's'le being like a raging volcano, vomiting up clouds of thick yellow smoke from the glowing ma.s.s of ignited coal below, which almost suffocated us, as the s.h.i.+p went too slowly through the water for the vapour to trail off to leeward.

The mainmast was still standing, with the mainsail set before the southerly wind, that was blowing in towards the land, the force of the explosion not being vented much further aft than the windla.s.s bitts; but, almost as we looked, tongues of flame began to creep up the main rigging, and the huge sail was presently crackling away like tissue paper to which a lighted match has been applied, large pieces of the burning material being whirled in the air.

The heat now became unbearable, and Captain Billings, much to his grief, saw that the time had come for him to abandon the s.h.i.+p.

"We must leave her, Leigh," said he to me, with as much emotion as another person might have displayed when wis.h.i.+ng a last farewell to some dearly-loved friend or relative. "There is no good in stopping by the old barquey any longer, for we can't help her out of her trouble, and the boats may be stove in by the falling mainmast if they remain alongside much longer. Poor old s.h.i.+p! we've sailed many a mile together, she and I; and now, to think that, crippled by that gale and almost having completed her v'yage, she should be burnt like a log of firewood off Cape Horn!"

"Never mind, sir," said I, sympathisingly. "It has not happened through any fault of yours."

"No, my lad, I don't believe it has, for a cargo o' coal is a ticklish thing to take half round the world; as more vessels are lost in carrying it than folks suppose! However, this is the last we'll ever see of the old _Esmeralda_, so far as standing on her deck goes; still, I tell you what, Leigh, you may possibly live to be a much older man than I am, but you'll never come across a s.h.i.+p easier to handle in a gale, or one that would go better on a bowline!"

"No, sir, I don't think I shall," I replied to this panegyric on the doomed vessel, quite appreciating all the skipper's feelings of regret at her destruction; but just then the flames with a roar rushed up the main hatch, approaching towards the p.o.o.p every moment nearer and nearer.

This at once recalled Captain Billings from the past to the present.

"Have you got everything aboard the boats?" he sang out in his customary voice to Mr Macdougall, his tones as firm and clear as if he had not been a moment before almost on the point of crying. "Are all the provisions and water in?"