Morgan Robertson

“ Deeply laden and weighted with ice, she now shipped every sea over the stern, and to escape them he went below, satisfied for the time that she was going somewhere at a fairly good rate. Had he been successful at the wheel, he would have cut away the drags to increase her speed, but he feared to. Could he put sail on her, and increase her speed with the drags still out? The sound of the drag ropes, straining on the bitts, gave him an idea of power that he could use—power beyond the strength of a hundred men. ”

“ He wandered to New York, and stood with a crowd watching the ascent of a large safe, which men were hoisting by means of a wagon-winch to the upper story of a high building. A man stood on the safe, guiding it. People passed underneath, indifferent to danger, and no one but our "tramp" noticed a slight movement of the rope, just above the wagon, followed by a quick untwisting, as a strand parted. ”

“ A man can lift a great weight with a worm-geared winch. Going aft, he proved his reasoning: she lay plumb in the trough of the sea.
He chopped the ice from two large, octagon-shaped boxes, abaft the stumps of the fore and main masts, and looked in. They contained heavy hawsers, tackles, etc. He noticed the heavy, cross-plank construction of the covers as he replaced them. A barrel was lashed to the fife-rail around the stump of the foremast. Chopping into it, he found salt, and remarked that where he spilled some on deck the ice crackled and melted to water, which did not freeze again. ”

“ He scrubbed decks, scoured paint-work, and helped trim sail as the shifts of wind demanded, while the steam-barge dragged herself and two tow-barges up the lake. He soon understood the proper angle that sails should bear to the wind and the resultant force exerted on the vessel. He helped the second mate splice a rope, and knew how before the job was half done. He had seen the rudder at the dock, and explained to his fellows the action of the slanting blade on the water. Scrubbing paint on the bridge, he heard the captain say to the mate: "Pull up the centre-board; she gripes;" ”

“ The main and mizzen masts had snapped at the deck, and everything pertaining to them was overboard except what he had saved of the running-rigging. Forward, from the bowsprit end, descended an immense icicle, the accretion of ice to the jib-stay, broken aloft and hanging down, while on the bowsprit lay the furled jib—an elongated cone of ice; a solid mass with the spar. He shrank from attempting to chop loose and set this sail to the stump of the mast, and considered the alternative: less pressure aft; he could rig a drag. ”

“ Instinct, mechanical and other, is inherited knowledge, and the fact that a correct estimate of the tensile strength of red-hot boiler iron in contact with cold water did not form a part of this man's genius was due, no doubt, to the antecedent fact that none of his ancestors had experimented in this line. Indeed, few who so experiment live long enough to transmit to descendants, in the form of instinct, this acquired knowledge. ”

“ But this man was not a sailor: he was a mechanic, heaven-born.
"She's driftin' 'bout as fast as a man kin walk," he mused. "If she'd point with the wind she'd move faster. How kin I make her? More pressure on one end or less on the other; a sail forrard ud do."
The fore-mast had broken about ten feet from the deck, and the boom and gaff, with the fore-sail furled to them, lay with the jaws in place on the stump and the after end frozen fast to the ice on deck. ”

“ HE had started life at sixteen on a small farm in Ohio, had won the heart of the farmer's wife by putting new life and ambition into the disabled old clock during her absence, but had incurred the wrath of the farmer himself by taking apart the threshing machine, which showed signs of wear and which he had sincere intentions of mending. ”

“ So, knotting the ends of both to his last hawser, he threw them overboard, and soon had both drags straining on one rope—a doubling of power, but an unseamanlike waste of good manila. He then led the falls, or hauling parts, of his tackles aft, and hitching the one he was to use first to the drag-line, slacked out until it tautened. But his mast must go up straight as a jack-knife blade from the handle; it must not swing; he needed side guys to steady it. ”

“ He knew by intuition things that successful civil and mechanical engineers would be glad to acquire after years of study, at the same time possessing none of the balance of mind that makes us respectable. ”

“ It was covered with six inches of solid ice. It would be too dangerous to climb out there and chop it loose. Besides, when set, it would show little surface, and would only help to keep her before the wind. He needed a mast and a larger sail. So he inventoried his material. The furled fore-sail was there, with a good boom and gaff; the boxes were filled with strong hawsers, and on top of the coils were tackles, small line, and deck tools. ”

“ But no sail appeared to cheer him. As he stood in the companion-way, sheltered from the furious blast, the memory of his fall from the steam-barge, his being swept under by the first tow-barge, and his painful climb up the bobstays of the other, came back to him. But he remembered nothing more.
"Somethin' orful's happened," he muttered. "S'pose every one got washed off—or, mebbe, they're in the boat; that's gone. Wonder what killed the man forrard? I've got t' do somethin'." ”