CHAPTER X.
THE COLOSSAL SAVAGE, THE STORM.
In the meantime the skipper had caught up his speaking-trumpet.
"Strike every sail, my lads; let go the sheets, man the down-hauls,lower ties and brails. Let us steer to the west, let us regain the highsea; head for the buoy, steer for the bell--there's an offing downthere. We've yet a chance."
"Try," said the doctor.
Let us remark here, by the way, that this ringing buoy, a kind of belltower on the deep, was removed in 1802. There are yet alive very oldmariners who remember hearing it. It forewarned, but rather too late.
The orders of the skipper were obeyed. The Languedocian made a thirdsailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with brailing up, they furled thesails, lashed the earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, andleech-lines, and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, whichthus might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They battened downthe ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method of walling up a ship. Theseevolutions, though executed in a lubberly fashion, were, nevertheless,thoroughly effective. The hooker was stripped to bare poles. But inproportion as the vessel, stowing every stitch of canvas, became morehelpless, the havoc of both winds and waves increased. The seas ranmountains high. The hurricane, like an executioner hastening to hisvictim, began to dismember the craft. There came, in the twinkling of aneye, a dreadful crash: the top-sails were blown from the bolt-ropes, thechess-trees were hewn asunder, the deck was swept clear, the shroudswere carried away, the mast went by the board, all the lumber of thewreck was flying in shivers. The main shrouds gave out although theywere turned in, and stoppered to four fathoms.
The magnetic currents common to snowstorms hastened the destruction ofthe rigging. It broke as much from the effect of effluvium as theviolence of the wind. Most of the chain gear, fouled in the blocks,ceased to work. Forward the bows, aft the quarters, quivered under theterrific shocks. One wave washed overboard the compass and its binnacle.A second carried away the boat, which, like a box slung under acarriage, had been, in accordance with the quaint Asturian custom,lashed to the bowsprit. A third breaker wrenched off the spritsail yard.A fourth swept away the figurehead and signal light. The rudder only wasleft.
To replace the ship's bow lantern they set fire to, and suspended at thestem, a large block of wood covered with oakum and tar.
The mast, broken in two, all bristling with quivering splinters, ropes,blocks, and yards, cumbered the deck. In falling it had stove in a plankof the starboard gunwale. The skipper, still firm at the helm,shouted,--
"While we can steer we have yet a chance. The lower planks hold good.Axes, axes! Overboard with the mast! Clear the decks!"
Both crew and passengers worked with the excitement of despair. A fewstrokes of the hatchets, and it was done. They pushed the mast over theside. The deck was cleared.
"Now," continued the skipper, "take a rope's end and lash me to thehelm." To the tiller they bound him.
While they were fastening him he laughed, and shouted,--
"Blow, old hurdy-gurdy, bellow. I've seen your equal off CapeMachichaco."
And when secured he clutched the helm with that strange hilarity whichdanger awakens.
"All goes well, my lads. Long live our Lady of Buglose! Let us steerwest."
An enormous wave came down abeam, and fell on the vessel's quarter.There is always in storms a tiger-like wave, a billow fierce anddecisive, which, attaining a certain height, creeps horizontally overthe surface of the waters for a time, then rises, roars, rages, andfalling on the distressed vessel tears it limb from limb.
A cloud of foam covered the entire poop of the _Matutina_.
There was heard above the confusion of darkness and waters a crash.
When the spray cleared off, when the stern again rose in view, theskipper and the helm had disappeared. Both had been swept away.
The helm and the man they had but just secured to it had passed with thewave into the hissing turmoil of the hurricane.
The chief of the band, gazing intently into the darkness, shouted,--
"_Te burlas de nosotros?_"
To this defiant exclamation there followed another cry,--
"Let go the anchor. Save the skipper."
They rushed to the capstan and let go the anchor.
Hookers carry but one. In this case the anchor reached the bottom, butonly to be lost. The bottom was of the hardest rock. The billows wereraging with resistless force. The cable snapped like a thread.
The anchor lay at the bottom of the sea. At the cutwater there remainedbut the cable end protruding from the hawse-hole.
From this moment the hooker became a wreck. The _Matutina_ wasirrevocably disabled. The vessel, just before in full sail, and almostformidable in her speed, was now helpless. All her evolutions wereuncertain and executed at random. She yielded passively and like a logto the capricious fury of the waves. That in a few minutes there shouldbe in place of an eagle a useless cripple, such a transformation is tobe witnessed only at sea.
The howling of the wind became more and more frightful. A hurricane hasterrible lungs; it makes unceasingly mournful additions to darkness,which cannot be intensified. The bell on the sea rang despairingly, asif tolled by a weird hand.
The _Matutina_ drifted like a cork at the mercy of the waves. She sailedno longer--she merely floated. Every moment she seemed about to turnover on her back, like a dead fish. The good condition and perfectlywater-tight state of the hull alone saved her from this disaster. Belowthe water-line not a plank had started. There was not a cranny, chink,nor crack; and she had not made a single drop of water in the hold. Thiswas lucky, as the pump, being out of order, was useless.
The hooker pitched and roared frightfully in the seething billows. Thevessel had throes as of sickness, and seemed to be trying to belch forththe unhappy crew.
Helpless they clung to the standing rigging, to the transoms, to theshank painters, to the gaskets, to the broken planks, the protrudingnails of which tore their hands, to the warped riders, and to all therugged projections of the stumps of the masts. From time to time theylistened. The toll of the bell came over the waters fainter and fainter;one would have thought that it also was in distress. Its ringing was nomore than an intermittent rattle. Then this rattle died away. Where werethey? At what distance from the buoy? The sound of the bell hadfrightened them; its silence terrified them. The north-wester drove themforward in perhaps a fatal course. They felt themselves wafted on bymaddened and ever-recurring gusts of wind. The wreck sped forward in thedarkness. There is nothing more fearful than being hurried forwardblindfold. They felt the abyss before them, over them, under them. Itwas no longer a run, it was a rush.
Suddenly, through the appalling density of the snowstorm, there loomed ared light.
"A lighthouse!" cried the crew.