Sunken ship

“ The fourth night of the gale was approaching when, as the captain was standing up supported by his crew to take a glance round the horizon as the boat rose to the summit of a sea, his eye fell on the dark sail of a ship seen under the sinking sun. She must, they knew, be approaching them; but might she not too probably pass by them in the dark? How their hearts beat with alternate hopes and fears. ”

“ It is the calm that brings ships mysteriously together; it is your wind that is the great separator.
The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white tallness breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size. The tall masts holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare for catching the invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from the water, sail after sail, yard after yard, growing big, till, under the towering structure of her machinery, you perceive the insignificant, tiny speck of her hull. ”

“ Wyse!" "'Bout ship!" "Down with the helm!" "Helm a-lee!" Up comes the schooner's head to the wind, the sails flapping with the noise of thunder—blocks rattling against the deck, as if they wanted to knock their brains out—ropes dancing about in galvanised coils, like mad serpents—and everything to an inexperienced eye in inextricable confusion; till gradually she pays off on the other tack—the sails stiffen into deal-boards—the staysail sheet is let go—and heeling over on the opposite side. Again she darts forward over the sea like an arrow from the bow. "Stand by to make sail!" ”

“ And, oh, what a joyous, exhilarating sensation it was to feel the ship alive once more, as it were, heeling steeply over to the shrill piping of the strong salt breeze, bounding from wave to wave, plunging her sharp stem deep into the heart of each oncoming surge, and cleaving its indigo crest asunder in a perfect storm of sparkling foam above which played a miniature rainbow, after being compelled for weeks to moderate our paces to those of the sluggish merchantmen! ”

“ The ship, now distant not more than half a mile, came surging on, with her broad expanse of canvas fully distended by the following gale, and straining at the stout spars and tough hemp rigging as though it would tear the very masts themselves out of the hull and come flying down to leeward like cobwebs before a summer breeze; or as though, when the ship rose upon the ridge of a sea, lifting her fore-foot and some forty feet of her keel clear out of the water, she would take flight, and, leaving the sea altogether, soar away upon her canvas pinions like a startled sea-fowl. ”

“ It is good just to sit in the sun and dream; to lean over the rail and watch the little rainbow that travels with us, the white lace that the ship makes in its majestic sweep, to wander back to the stern and follow the interminable wake of the screw as it stretches back beyond the horizon line. Then there is the sunset; it was wonderful to-night. The air was perfectly clear, the sun a red disk going down cleanly cut into the sea. Laura and I saw it from amidships, looking out across the high stern of the vessel that sank now below the horizon, then lifted into the sky. ”

“ Good God! the schooner, her deck and lower rigging black with human beings, lay broadside to, scarcely ten rods from before our bows. A cry of horror mingled with the rattling thunder and the howl of the storm. I felt my blood curdle in my veins, and an oppression like the nightmare obstructed my voice.
The schooner sunk in the trough, and, as the lightning paled, disappeared from sight. The next moment our huge ship, with a headlong pitch, was precipitated upon her. ”

“ The moon is pouring her broad light over the ocean, the shadows of the rigging on the deck lie in clear and definite lines, the sailors of the watch sit around upon the guns in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of snowy sail spread aloft, is stealing through the water with the noiseless motion of a swan. ”

“ It was on the 10th of May, so quickly did things move under the supervision of the bedridden captain, that the Raratonga, with Lestrange on board, cleared the Golden Gates, and made south, heeling to a ten-knot breeze.
There is no mode of travel to be compared to your sailing-ship. In a great ship, if you have ever made a voyage in one, the vast spaces of canvas, the sky-high spars, the finesse with which the wind is met and taken advantage of, will form a memory never to be blotted out.
A schooner is the queen of all rigs ”

“ But by this time the sail upon our lee-quarter had greatly grown, and the vigorous red radiance, rained by the sinking luminary in such searching storms of light as crimsoned the very nethermost east to the black water-line, clearly showed her to be a small but stout schooner, hugging the wind under a prodigious pile of canvas, and eating her way into the steady breeze with the ease and speed of a frigate-bird that slopes its black pinions for the windward flight. ”

“ Broad as the day was, abounding as the scene with the familiar and humanising glory of the blessed golden sunshine and the snow-topped peaks of shallow liquid sapphire ridges, yet the figures of those men, showing under the swelling and lifting foot of the foresail, peering under the sharp of their hands against their foreheads, silent in postures of phlegmatic observation, gave the whole picture of the ship a wild and dismal colour and appearance, and the black melancholy, the cold unholiness of it, stole biting as polar frost-smoke to the senses through the genial splendour of the noon-tide. ”

“ Often in the lonely watches of the night, under the glory of the southern skies, or in dark and stormy hours, when the bleak wind blustered aloft and bellied out the close-reefed topsails, when giant waves came thundering from windward to wash the deck and gorge the lee-scuppers, making the stout ship reel like a toy in the perilous trough of the sea, did the sailor boy's thoughts fly back to that peaceful grave and his farewell visit there. ”

“ On deck, like iced wine to my lips, I drink in the fresh sea breeze. It is dark. I cannot turn in, for I should not sleep, so I go into the fo’c’sle and watch the sailors playing cards, then return on deck and look over the ship’s side. Under the pendulous, curved moon—for it seems to sway to the roll of the rigging—the mate’s form moves to and fro as he tramps the bridge. The sailing ship that we sighted on the weather-side at sunset is now only a tiny travelling star low down on the ocean darkness far astern, where her mast head-light shines. ”

“ There was nothing to relieve this sulphurous reflection with flash or sparkle; the sunshine died in the green backs of the brass swivels, it lay lustreless upon the rusty iron cannons, it found no mirror in the dry and honeycombed masts, and it touched without vitalising the rounded canvas, whose breasts had nothing of that hearkening, seeking look which you find in the flowing swelling of a ship's sails yearning horizon-wards to the land beyond the sea. ”

“ There rose gigantic out of the mist upon our starboard bow a great ship as still and silent as the reef into which it was wedged. My men rushed with a wild cry to the bulwarks to fend off our yacht; but we grazed past her unhurt; and on her decks we saw the forms of English sailors stretched in sleep at least if not in death. The sight dispelled the creeping torpor from our minds. ”

“ The ship rolled at her moorings, blocks banging and clattering, cordage creaking; the brazen sunlight lapped ship and sea and shore in a blinding glare; the everlasting rumour of the breaking surf, unheeded in the ordinary course of occupation, began to wear upon the mind. All day long the shadows crept or receded upon the white beach, the rocks, piled or scattered, the lofty barrier of forest; all day long the far sea-line, joining the horns of the wide bay, lay vacant of the smallest blur; all day long the sea-birds screamed and dived about the ship, and rode on the heaving water. ”

“ Now the beautiful isle lies far behind us, fading into the blue distance, and we are fairly started on our far journey.
Small as is our ship, she is in every respect satisfactory, and as clean and cosy as a gentleman's yacht. I never saw so small a vessel carry so much sail,—truly our Paloma deserves her name, for she is now flying before the breeze like a swift white-winged carrier-pigeon, bearing many a letter. ”

“ But an instant before, the swelling canvas, the dusky spars, and the faint lines of the cordage, were only to be traced by the glimmering light of the stars; and now the whole hamper of the ship was the more conspicuous, from the obscure background against which it was drawn in distinct lines. The sight was fearfully beautiful;—beautiful, for it showed the symmetry and fine outlines of the vessel’s rig, resembling the effect of a group of statuary seen by torch-light,—and fearful, since the dark void beyond seemed to declare their isolated and helpless state. ”

“ The launch pitched and rolled in the seas, and steadily forced its way through the blackness.
Far astern twinkled the lights of the practice ship, seeming no larger than star points in the distance.
Overhead the darkness increased, the expanse of sea being banked in by gathering clouds. A breeze, cool and moist with a salty dampness, sprang up, giving a fleeting spray to the edge of the waves.
It was a strange experience to the young naval cadets, this tossing about in an open boat upon a heaving sea whose broad bosom sparkled and glowed with the sheen of phosphorescent lights. ”

“ Thus bound, but carefully looked after, inert and powerful, those emblems of hope make company for the look-out man in the night watches; and so the days glide by, with a long rest for those characteristically shaped pieces of iron, reposing forward, visible from almost every part of the ship’s deck, waiting for their work on the other side of the world somewhere, while the ship carries them on with a great rush and splutter of foam underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust their heavy limbs. ”

“ As the dark body advanced, its movement became more rapid, and at last, as if urged on by some irresistible impulse, it rushed forward in an impetuous charge, covering the whole sky with its overwhelming masses. The captain had been called on deck the moment the sky had assumed this threatening aspect, and he immediately ordered all the lighter sails to be handed, the courses to be brailed up, and the ship to be kept on the starboard tack, under her topsails. ”

“ The onward-rushing fabric that is impelled by engines demands incessant vigilance; she may be off her course even in the time that a man takes to lift his eyes to mark a flying meteor; there are no moments of rest. But in a sailing-ship you have the moonlit night and burnished swell heaving up in lines of ebony out of the visionary horizon, where the stars are wanly winking, until it rolls in billows of sparkling quicksilver under the wake of the bland and beautiful luminary ”

“ Figure the decks throbbing with men rushing with apparent aimlessness from one side to the other, from one end to the other—not a vestige of discipline among them—a drowning yell or two coming up from between the ships where some wretch that had fallen overboard was holding on—the sails shaking, the water washing beyond in a glaring white that gave a startling distinctness to the shape of the schooner as she rose softly to the level of our upper deck bulwarks upon the seething snow! ”

“ The great boxes and bales of cargo were only just discernible in the dim light that came through the opened hatchway above. There, he could see a few stars, appearing at odd moments, to vanish almost immediately behind the narrow, long-drawn clouds that streaked a wind-blown sky. He could hear the waves, one after the other, beating violently against the sides of the ship, the water washing over the decks and along the scuttles, the rigging creaking, and the long chain of the steam steering-gear jolting, from time to time, as the great strain of a heavy sea was brought to bear upon the rudder. ”

“ The New England shipyards began building them, almost to the exclusion of other types. Before their advance brigs, barks, and even the magnificent full-rigged ship itself gave way, until now a square-rigged ship is an unusual spectacle on the ocean. The vitality of the schooner is such that it bids fair to survive both of the crushing blows dealt to old-fashioned marine architecture—the substitution of metal for wood, and of steam for sails. ”

“ The foam round the prow, as the ship made way with all sail set before a fair wind, was the most lovely thing I ever saw. Purity, strength, glee, and wondrous beauty were in those showers of snowy spray that sprang up above the black' ship's sides, and [Pg 10] fell like a cataract of rubies under the red sunlight. We sat there till evening came down: the sea, from brilliant azure, grew black as unknown things, the wind freshened, and we left our cold stand to walk, or rather run, up and down the deck to warm ourselves. ”

“ The swell left by the gale was not gone, but it came with a steady rhythmic flowing of folds from the north-west that seemed to soothe rather [82] than to vex the ancient ship, and the heavings made the eastern sea-board a rich and dazzling spectacle, by catching the brilliant white sunshine on the polish of their rounded backs, and so carrying their burden of blinding radiance to the verge of the visible deep. ”

“ The ocean lay very black, there was no power in the moon to cast a wake, the breathings of [93] the wind rippled the water and caused a scintillation of the spangles of the phosphorus or sea-fire, the weight of the lower sails kept them hanging up and down, and what motion the ship had was from the swelling of the light canvas that rose very pale and ghostly into the gloom. ”