Spindrift

“ Where is Sennen, sir?"
"Close to Land's End," replied Mr. Graham, while in his heart he was giving thanks to Providence that the Spindrift and her crew were not lying fathoms deep off the pitiless rocks of Cornwall.
CHAPTER XIX The Fog
For the next two days the Spindrift remained at St. Ives, alternately rolling like a barrel or lying well over on the bottom of the harbour, according to the state of the tide. On the first of those two days it would have been sheer madness to attempt to put to sea: the yacht would have been dismasted or sunk before she came abreast of Pendeen. ”

“ As a rule it's quite safe to leave anything about in these Cornish ports. The people are quite different from those of certain Thames Estuary places, where you daren't leave the slightest thing of value and expect to find it in the morning. No; what I'm thinking of is that the Spindrift may lie over a bit when the tide leaves her, and things on deck may roll off."
Ten minutes later the crew of the Spindrift were exploring the crooked, narrow, and picturesque streets of old St. Ives, built on a narrow neck of rocky ground called, for some inexplicable reason, The Island. ”

“ To everyone's delight the Spindrift was still in the same position as when they last saw her, but the water was now within a foot of her load-line.
"It's quite safe to get aboard," said Mr. Graham. "Directly she feels lively we can ease off the throat-halliards, recover our kedge and lay it out in the stream. Let's hope there's no steamer coming in or out, or her wash will give the yacht a nasty hammering on the rocks."
All hands set to work with a will. ”

“ When the great lagoon was emptying or filling to the tide, the water at the pierheads went like a mill race; at slack water it lay gently flowing to the swell of the outside sea as now.
Floyd came from under the tent, glanced round him, stretched himself, and then crossed the reef to the outer beach, where the breakers were coming in—the eternal breakers of the Pacific, leisurely, monotonous, rhythmical, filling the air with their sound and spindrift, their ozone and life.
Nothing could be more extraordinary than the contrast between the inner beach and the outer beach of the island. ”

“ Nevertheless it was wildly exhilarating. The rapid pulsations of the powerful motor, the rhythmic lift of the long, lean hull to the waves, the hiss and the sting of the flying spindrift, and the unwonted sensation of speed—a sensation not experienced when flying at a height—all combined to give a new zest to life.
And to what purpose? At first sight it was a mere joy-ride, a pleasure-trip in an expensive motor-boat at the cost of the British taxpayer. ”

“ Always the same picture. Nothing but wild, raging sea. But it almost looked as if the troughs of the waves were deeper, the breakers fiercer, like the seas over a shallow bottom. Were we already?... No one dared to say it; only the constant use of the binoculars showed that every one shared the same thought. But neither rock, nor surf, nor birds were to be seen.
Twelve o'clock was already past. Soon, we must be there. 'No bottom!' comes, with monotonous iteration, the shouted report from aft, where, under the direction of the first-officer, the sounding machine is in constant use. ”

“ By six o'clock the visibility was down to three or four ship's lengths at most. The whole ship's company was on the look-out. No one thought of sleep; excitement kept us all alert. Gray and heavy lay the fog upon the water. Nothing was to be seen or heard. The uncanny stillness pressed like an incubus upon our excited nerves. Our binoculars were hardly ever away from our eyes. Every other moment we thought we heard or saw something abnormal. Meanwhile, the Aud was thrashing more and more heavily through the rising sea. ”

“ The Swan had an air of thorough discomfort, and in spite of it was steaming into the west at her best speed of nine knots an hour.
It is no wonder that Spink and Ward quarrelled; there was hardly a soul on board who was not in a bad temper. Nothing disturbs seamen as much as fog, and the fact that Spink refused to be disturbed by it made it all the worse for the others. Ward was distinctly nervous, and let the fog play on his nerves. He saw steamers ahead that had no existence, and heard fog-horns that were nothing but the sound of his own blood in his ears. ”

“ Down below, at the foot of the sand hill, he could hear the lap-lapping of waves; out from behind the fog the frightened voices of vessels; below the Spinet he could hear two large vessels talking to each other. Spinet, Dead Man's Bar, and the Gurnet Reef Hollow gave warning by horn and bell, and all the time the world was full of whispering, as though the voices of storm conversed together; this was broken only by the insistent lisping of the waves on the beach. The surface of the sea had begun to heave uneasily, and far off David could hear the whistling of the buoy on the shoals. ”

“ From the signal halliards of the Shatter fluttered the signal I knew so well in the old days, 'T.D.L.'—'Bon voyage.'
I rushed to the helm, tore the wheel round to port, and anxiously counted the seconds till the Aud began to answer the helm. Fortunately, the high speed at which we were going made the rudder effective—but only just in time. All our lives hung on the fraction of a second. In the very next second we shot past the English boat not a ship's length off. ”

“ Comes again beautiful with again that fresh breeze at E. S. E. We are both feeling effects of our hard preparatory work [Pg 5A] and strenuous days following, and so it is 10 o’clock before we are half down the river. Once out and away, we begin to bruise water in great shape. Finally hove to and rigged spinnaker in spite of quite a rolling sea. I hoisted it and with a cheer we broke it out to as fair and pretty a breeze as ever christened a new sail. And how we legged it then and when tide turned some more. For seven hours we never started sheets or halliards. ”

“ More than once the men were [Pg 71] caught by a sea and flung against the rail. I shouted to them to hang on, and gave the order for more oil to be poured from the bow. All orders had to be given, or rather yelled, through the megaphone. The wind seemed to bite off the words as they came out of one's mouth.
Then, just in the midst of a fierce squall came a wild shout from aft, 'Bottom! sixty-three fathoms.'
'Reduce speed!' 'Sharp look-out!'
Every one knew what was now at stake. Fifty fathoms!—fifty-six—sixty-two—seventy—twenty-eight.' Damnation! what is one to make of such a series? ”

“ Towards ten o'clock the wind jumped round to the south-west, and freshened. Light wisps of vapour began to drift down on our port bow, and sometimes from right ahead. Half an hour later the horizon was so dim that it was impossible to take an altitude.
'What about it?' asked Düsselmann, who was taking the watch, giving me, as he spoke, a keen, sidelong glance, his right hand already on the lever of the engine-room telegraph.
I thought a moment, then: 'Carry on,' I said. 'Half speed! Course, south-west!'
The telegraph rang. In engine-room and stokehold things got lively. ”

“ Spink is a remarkably strong man, whose tout ensemble is highly characteristic of a North-country fisherman. He usually dresses in a pé-jacket, cut after a particular fashion, and wears a large flat blue bonnet. A striking likeness of Spink, in his pilot-dress, with the badge or insignia on his left arm, which is characteristic of the boatmen in the service of the Northern Lights has been taken by Howe, and is in the writer’s possession.
Forrest’s Passage.—This gully or opening on the eastern side of the Rock, is sometimes taken as a track by boats in certain states of the sea and tide. ”

“ The only information about our double that reached me was a newspaper article some months later which stated that the Norwegian steamer Aud, from Bergen, had been torpedoed and sunk on the 2nd of October of the same year.
Favoured by wind and current, we were now steaming at a good speed into the Atlantic, slowly but surely turning away from the coast so as to raise no suspicion. Shall we succeed?... I would really have preferred to see the sky overcast and a good high [Pg 133] sea running. That would have been the best protection against the English patrol ships. ”

“ Frequently since then has the writer, having taken note of what he saw, managed to make up a considerable amount of time by having the courage to take in his spinnaker as soon as it refused to stand without the boom going well forward. If the balloon-foresail jib and jib-topsails sheets are ready belayed, so that the sails may take the weight of the wind as soon as the spinnaker is taken in, there will be no fear whatever of the yacht losing ground, but rather she will spring into life, and most likely leave her antagonists behind. ”

“ She must be going at reduced speed, for she keeps obstinately just abreast of us. The comedy is about to begin.
At the first alarm, the 'watch below'—who had all been keeping a look-out on deck—hurry away to their bunks, the suspicious objects are hidden; we on the bridge, with beating hearts but outwardly cool and collected, tramp up and down with our hands in our pockets, expectorating freely and smoking like chimneys. There is nothing to indicate that we are in the least [Pg 60] perturbed by the appearance of the cruiser. ”

“ With such perfect freedom of movement, the spindle at high speed could find its own center of revolution, and an indefinitely high speed and quadrupled efficiency were attained. The Draper Spindle is shown in Fig. 289 as one of the most modern and representative of spinning spindles. Considering the great speed of the modern spindle and the fact that a single workman attends a thousand or more of them, the record of progress in this art becomes impressive. In 1805 there were only 4,500 cotton spindles at work in the United States. ”

“ The steamer carried no lights, and was going slow. Probably, therefore, an auxiliary cruiser on patrol.
A quarter of an hour of anxious waiting followed. Suddenly the liner seemed to wake up. Inexplicably, she increased speed and steamed away. By that time the distance between us had decreased to half a mile. If every one on board, including the officers of the watch, had not been asleep, they must have seen us.
The British boasted of the watchfulness of their fleet; I cannot help thinking that at the time of our break-through it must have been hibernating. ”

“ Soon after that Van der Kemp opened the lid, or hatch, of the fore-hold, and Spinkie, jumping out with alacrity, took possession of his usual seat beside the mast, to which he clung with affectionate tenacity. Gradually the wind went down. Reef after reef of the two sails was shaken out, and for several hours thereafter our travellers sped merrily on, plunging into the troughs and cutting through the crests of the stormy sea.
Chapter Thirteen. Friends are met with, also Pirates, and a Life-or-Death Paddle ensues.
In physics, as in morals, a storm is frequently the precursor of a dead calm. ”

“ In spite of the fog it was not difficult to see that she was a fine new boat of about two thousand tons, built and fitted, as was pretty obvious from her derricks, for a fast freight boat. It was equally obvious that the whole crew had evacuated her in a panic, for Spink found the skipper's berth with the bed-clothes on the floor, along with a sad and derelict pair of trousers. The 'old man' had evidently been in his bunk instead of being on the bridge, and, so far as Spink could see, he had stayed to grab nothing but the ship's papers, without which there can be no maritime salvation. ”

“ We reckoned it out that at this speed we should reach Queenstown at ten o'clock next morning. There was nothing left for us but to follow the cruiser. Further resistance would have been useless. We therefore wallowed along at a 'speed' of five knots behind the Bluebell, which now took the lead, while the other ships spread out all round us. A magnificent escort for us twenty-two men! The wind shifted to NNW. and then died down, while the few clouds which were still in the sky disappeared. With them disappeared our last hope of escape. ”

“ As both Ward and Day admitted, he might be hard to get along with, but he had nerves which would have done credit to a bull. Most skippers in the Western Ocean get into the state of mind which sees disaster before it is in sight, and if they don't take to drink it is because they die of continued scares. Spink feared nothing under heaven, and though he sometimes drank more than was good for him, it was not because he wanted it, but because he liked it. ”

“ Ironsyde came to the works one morning to watch a new Twist Frame and a new operator. The single strand yarn for material from the spinners was coming to the Twist Frame to be turned into twines and fishing lines. Four full bobbins from the spinning machine went to each spindle of the Twist Frame, and from it emerged a strong 'four-ply.' It was a machine more complicated than the spinner; and, as only a good billiard player can appreciate the cleverness of a great player, so only a spinner might have admired the rare technical skill of the woman who controlled the Twist Frame. ”

“ The next day we cut some recent horse tracks, the first signs of prospectors we had seen since April 15th, and following them back, hoping for water, came to an empty rock-hole amongst some rough hills of black slate, and in places, blows of quartz. No colours of gold could be found, nor signs of water, to induce us to stay longer prospecting. On the 12th we crossed a narrow salt lake and bade adieu to the sand and spinifex. ”

“ I therefore ordered the crew on to the bridge and told them with heavy heart that, if unexpected help did not arrive, I should be compelled to blow up the Aud next morning, as the ship must, under no circumstances, fall into the hands of the enemy.
They listened to me seriously and in silence. Then they eased their hearts by raining a torrent of curses on the heads of the English, which proved to me that they were no less disappointed than myself at this unhappy ending. All our brave and splendid dreams had come to naught, and we now lay impotent in the claws of our deadly enemies. ”