William Clark Russell

“ Alone on deck, with the heavy seas splashing and thundering, and precipitating their volumes of water over the ship's side,48 with the gale howling and roaring through the skies, I grew bitterly despondent. It seemed as if God Himself were against me, that I was the sport of some remorseless fate, whereby I was led from one peril to another, from one suffering to another, and no mercy to be shown me until death gave me rest. ”

“ I hear the hooting of the hurricane, the groaning of the over-loaded vessel, and over all the faint hurrah those brave spirits utter as the last rope is severed and the unwieldly wreck of spars and cordage falls overboard and glides away upon a running sea, and the ship comes to again under my hand, and braves, with her bows almost at them, the merciless onslaught of the huge green waves. ”

“ And believe me," she exclaimed earnestly, "that I do not think more of my own life than of that of my companions. Death is not so terrible but that we may meet it, if God wills, calmly. And I would rather die at once, Mr. Royle, than win a few short years of life on hard and bitter terms."
208 She looked at the steward as she spoke, and an expression of beautiful pity came into her face.
"Miss Robertson," I said, "in my heart I am pledged to save your life. If you die, we both die!—of that be sure." ”

“ Now that the vast surface of cloud was well forward of overhead, I observed that its front was an almost perfect semicircle,17 the extremities at either point of the horizon projecting like horns. There still remained, embraced by these horns, a clear expanse of steel-coloured sky. There the sea was light, but all to starboard it was black, and the terrible shadow was fast bearing down upon the ship.
Crack! the lightning whizzed, and turned the deck, spars, and rigging into a network of blue fire. ”

“ That throbbing sound, as Mary had accurately described it, closely resembling the rythmical running of a locomotive engine heard in the country on a silent night at a long distance, was now distinctly audible; but so smooth was the water, so breathless the night, that it was impossible to tell how far away the vessel might be; for so fine and delicate a vehicle of sound is the ocean in a calm, that, though the hull of a steamship might be below the horizon, yet the thumping of her engines would be heard. ”

“ When I quitted the cabin, supported by Mary, I found myself in a very spacious saloon, most handsomely furnished and decorated, and striking me the more by the contrast it offered to the plain and small interior of the Grosvenor's cabin.
271 The table was being prepared for lunch: smartly dressed stewards and under-stewards trotted to and fro; there were flowers on the table, vases of gold fish swinging from the deck, a rich thick carpet underfoot, comfortable and handsome sofas; a pianoforte stood against the mizzen-mast, which was covered with a mahogany skin and gilded ”

“ Few sailors can behold the ship in which they have sailed sinking before their eyes without the same emotion of distress and pity almost which the spectacle of a drowning man excites in them. She has grown a familiar name, a familiar object; thus far she has borne them in safety; she has been rudely beaten, and yet has done her duty; but the tempest has broken her down at last; all the beauty is shorn from her; she is weary with the long and dreadful struggle with the vast forces that Nature arrayed against her ”

“ Miss Robertson sobbed aloud, and the steward came down out of the rigging, and danced about the deck, exclaiming wildly and extending his arms towards the ship. Cornish retained his grasp of the wheel, but could not remove his eyes from the ship; the boatswain alone remained perfectly tranquil, and even angered me by his hard, unconcerned face.
"Good God!" I cried; "do you not value your life? Have you nothing to say? ”

“ So without further words I came away and got my sextant, and went on deck.
I found Cornish still at the wheel, and the boatswain leaning over the weather side of the ship about half-way down the poop, watching the hull of the vessel as she rolled and plunged. I might have saved myself the trouble of bringing the sextant with me, for there was not only no sign of the sun now, but no promise of its showing itself even for a minute. Three impenetrable strata of cloud obscured the heavens: the first, a universal mist or thickness, tolerably bright as it lay nearest the sun ”

“ Miss Robertson went over to him and took his hand.
"God," said she, "has told us that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. But who is good among us, Cornish? Be sure that as you repent so are you forgiven. My poor father lies dead in his cabin, and I wish you to pray with me for him, and to pray with us for our own poor lives. ”

“ I held the oar steady, and the boatswain ceased to dance the lantern. For the first few seconds I heard nothing, then my ear caught the throbbing sound.
"I see her!" cried the boatswain; and following his finger (my sight being keener than my hearing) I saw not only the shadow of a vessel down in the south-west, but the smoke from her funnel pouring along the stars.
"Mary," I cried, "fire again!" ”

“ The force of the wind was stupendous, and yet the brave main-topsail stood it; but not an hour had passed since the two men went below when a monster wave took the ship on the starboard bow and threw her up, rolling at the same time an immense body of water on to the decks; her stern, where I was crouching, sank in the hollow50 level with the sea, then as the leviathan wave rolled under her counter, the ship's bows fell into a prodigious trough with a sickening, whirling swoop. ”

“ Nevertheless, I got the boatswain to take the wheel, and sent Cornish forward to stand by the fore-topsail sheets, whilst I kept by the mizzen, for I was not at all sure that the terrific thunder-storm that had broken over us was not the precursor of a hurricane, to come down at any moment on the gale that was already blowing, and wreck the ship out of hand. ”

“ You reproach yourself for your weakness, but try to remember what you have gone through: how you had to baffle the mutineers—to take charge of the ship—to save our lives from their terrible designs. Remember, too, that for days together you scarcely closed your eyes in sleep, that you did the work of a whole crew during the storm—dearest, what you have gone through would254 have broken many a man's heart or driven him mad. It has left you your own true self for me to love and cherish whilst God shall spare us to each other. ”

“ I could not, indeed, hope that they would send a boat through such a sea; they would lie by us and send a boat when the sea moderated, which, to judge by the barometer and the high and beaming sky, we might expect to find that night or next morning;171 and then we should require our senses, not only to keep the pumps going, but to enter the boat calmly and in an orderly way, and help our rescuers to save our lives.
The boatswain leaned against the companion hatchway with his arms folded, contemplating the approaching ship with a wooden face. ”

“ I motioned to Cornish and the steward to carry the stretcher away, and waited for Miss Robertson to rise; but she remained for some minutes on her knees, and when she rose, the deck was clear.
She gave me her hand, and smiled softly, though with a heart-broken expression in her eyes, at the boatswain by way of thanking him for his sympathy, and I then conducted her below and left her at the door of the cabin, saying—
"I have no words to tell you how I feel for you. Pray God that those who are still living may be spared, and be sure that in His own good time He will comfort you." ”

“ Under this whirling gloomy sky the sea was tossing in mountains, and between sea and cloud the storm was sweeping with a stupendous voice, and with a power so great that no man on shore who could have experienced its fury there, would believe that anything afloat could encounter it and live. ”

“ A strong sea was rising, and the wind blew hard enough to keep one leaning against it. There was no break in the sky, and the horizon was thick, but the look-out was not worse than it had been half an hour before.
We were, however, snug enough aloft, if not very neat; the bunt of the mainsail,30 indeed, looked rather shaky, but the other sails lay very secure upon the yards; and this being so, and the gale remaining steady, I told the boatswain to keep the ship to her present course, and went below, yawning horribly and dead wearied. ”

“ What you have said—that I loved you as Mary Robertson—is true. I know in my own heart that my love cannot dishonour us—that it cannot gain nor lose by what the future may hold in store for me with you, dear one, as my wife. ”

“ I sprang below, hauled him up by the collar of his jacket, and drove him with both hands to his stern up to the wheel.
"Hold on to these spokes!" I roared. And then Cornish and I ran staggering along the poop.
"Get the end of the starboard main-brace to the capstan!" I cried to him. "Look alive! ship one of the bars ready!"
And then I scrambled as best I could down on the main-deck, and went floundering forward through the water that was now washing higher than my ankle to the fore-topsail halliards, which I let go.
Crack! whiz! away went the sail, strips of it flying into the sea like smoke. ”

“ Depend upon it, our wisest course is to make Bermuda. There, perhaps, we may pick up some hands. But if we head for England in this trim—a deep ship, with heavy gear to work, and but two seamen to depend upon, if the third has to take the wheel, trusting to chance to help29 us, I repeat that the odds against our bringing the ship home are one thousand to one. We shall be at the mercy of every gale that rises, and end in becoming a kind of phantom ship, chased about the ocean just as the wind happens to blow us."
"Well, sir," said he, "I dare say you're right, and I'll say no more about it. ”

“ For your own sake, keep up your courage a little longer. The first ship that passes when this gale abates will take us on board; and there are three of us still with you who will never yield an inch to any danger that may come whilst their life holds out and yours remains to be saved. ”

“ It was altogether a strange, impressive scene, one that in a picture would, I161 am sure, hold the eye for a long time; but in the reality create an ineffaceable memory.
The insecurity—the peril, I should prefer to say—of our situation, heightened my own feelings, and made me behold in the corpse we were about to commit to the deep a sad type and melancholy forerunner of our own end. The ship, with her broken masts, her streaming decks, her jib-boom gone, her one sail swollen by the hoarse gale, plunging and rolling amid the tumultuous seas that foamed around and over her ”

“ At a quarter-past eleven I had just gone into the cuddy, after having had an hour's spell at the pumps with the boatswain and the steward, when I heard Cornish's voice shouting down the companion, "A sail! a sail!" ”

“ Having braced up the yards and steadied the helm, we could do no more; and resolving to profit as much as possible from the interval of rest before us, I directed Cornish to take the wheel, and ordered the steward to go forward and light the galley fire and boil some coffee for breakfast.
"Bo'sun," said I, "you might as well drop below and have a look at those plugs of yours. Take a hammer with you and this light," handing him the binnacle lamp, "and drive the plugs in hard, for if the ship should labour heavily, she might strain them out." ”

“ The sun had risen behind the vast embankment of cloud, and its glorious rays, the orb itself being invisible, projected in a thousand lines of silver beyond the margin of the bank to the right and overhead, jutting out in visible threads, each as defined as a sunbeam in a dark room. ”

“ I say earnestly that this is not so; that a large and generous soul animates many sailors; that they love God, pray to Him, and in many ways too rough, maybe, to commend them to fastidious piety, but not surely the less honest for the roughness, strive to act up to a just standard of goodness; and that even among the bad—bad, I mean, through the looseness of their morals and the insanity of their language—there is often found a hidden instinctive religion and veneration and fear of God not to be discovered in the classes ashore to which you may parallel them. ”

“ The steward said "Yes, sir," and looked about him for a place to sit or kneel, but Cornish hung his head and glanced at the door shamefacedly.
"You need not stop unless you wish, Cornish," said I. "But why should you not join us? The way you have worked, the honest manner in which you have behaved, amply atone for the past. From no man can more than hearty repentance be expected, and we all stand in need of each other's prayers. ”

“ Of all the terrible, cruel disappointments that can afflict suffering people, none, none in all the hideous catalogue, is more deadly, more unendurable, more frightful to endure than that which it was our doom then to feel. ”

“ Seeing this, I cried out to Cornish to put the helm hard down, and keep the sail flat at the leech; but he had already anticipated this order, though it was a useless one; for the ship came to and fell off with every sea, though the helm was hard down, and before we could have got her to behave as we wished, we should have been obliged to clap some after sail upon her, which I did not dare do, as we had only choice of the mizzen and crossjack, and either of these sails (both being large) , would probably have slewed her round head into the sea, and thrown her dead and useless on our hands. ”