Wrecking

“ The love of wrecking is in his blood, and it fairly kills him to be idle with a fine, big ship on the Reef. Now that his plot to lose the Kenilworth is spoiled, why shouldn't he win a nice pot of money by helping save her? Then, again, maybe Captain Jim wants to heap coals on his head till he hollers for a fire-extinguisher. There is going to be something doing on the Reef, Dan. Better come along with us. You will be plenty strong enough if you have eaten up all that calf's-foot jelly I lugged up to you. ”

“ The wrecking master spied Dan and hurried to meet him in the narrow street. His manner was no longer hostile and sullen, and Dan was amazed to have a greeting hand stretched toward him and to hear a cordial voice:
"How's the boy? You and Bart as busy as ever? I went up the Gulf to buy a schooner or two, and I found a beauty. I need a mate for her, Dan. You are young, but you know more about salt water than most men. It means double the wages of a deck-hand on that sooty old tow-boat. ”

“ Many of the older class looked upon wrecking as legitimate a trade as fishing for herrings or pilchards; while perhaps nearly all from the force of habit and long-practised example, regarded a wreck as a booty sent them by the elements; the scattered contents of which it was no more crime to take than it would be to pick up any other thing cast by accident on the beach.
The sea was breaking over the needles with frightful violence when we reached Torhead—the spray dashing almost to the summit of the cliffs. We were now almost opposite the vessel, which appeared to be French built ”

“ A well-laden Indiaman, smashing up on the reef-yonder, would lend sunshine to your existence, and deepen your faith in a paternal Providence? Eh, Mr. Jones?”
“I don’t know nowt about no wrecks,” was the reply. “They’re no consarn o’ mine.”
“Ah, but I have heard you lament the good old times, when wrecking was a respectable occupation, and when there were no impertinent coastguards to interfere with respectable followers of the business. ”

“ The wrecking business in Key West is square and honest as far as I know, but ship captains have put their vessels on the Reef on purpose in the old days and the wreckers helped plan it beforehand. And I can't help wondering if Jerry Pringle came to Pensacola to fix up a deal with this captain of the Kenilworth to lose his ship on the next voyage out from London to Vera Cruz. There would be rich salvage and loot in a general cargo, wouldn't there? She's a mighty big steamer. ”

“ Wrecking, too, was an occasional variation of occupation for the smugglers, and several vessels are known in the first decade of the last century to have been lured to destruction by false lights shown on the cliffs. ”

“ The dipping of the bullets into tallow had made the cartridges absolutely airtight, and they were as good as new.
The usual cost of ammunition was about two cents per cartridge wholesale. Half a million rounds would make quite a fortune, or something in the neighbourhood of ten thousand dollars to divide between himself and the black mate. Yes, it had been worth while, after all. Wrecking was not such a bad thing, if there was anything worth wrecking, and he wondered how the salvors of the brig had overlooked such a valuable asset. ”

“ He must watch and wait through a long, long day, any hour of which might bring in sight the sails of a fleet of wrecking schooners. Dan reckoned that he had been penned below for about thirty hours and that this was the morning of the second day after the wreck. Captain Jim must have a tug on the way by this time. But, on the other hand, if Captain Bruce and his men had been picked up and carried to Key West, their tidings would send Jerry Pringle and his horde of wreckers flying seaward by steam and sail. ”

“ Pshaw, boy, Bill McKnight is a good chief engineer, but if his engines didn't get any more rest than that tongue of his, they would have been in the scrap-heap long ago. I suppose he has been filling you up with yarns of the wonderful things he has done with this boat on the Reef. Come to think of it, he was carrying some steam more than the law allowed when we tackled that Italian wreck for the last time, but we weren't there for our health. And wrecking isn't a business for children, Dan. You'll find that out if you stick by me long enough to get your mate's papers. ”

“ Dan followed Captain Bruce up the steamer's side and found Barton dangling his legs from a heap of hatch-covers.
"Why don't you get busy? I want you to know that I am the real wrecking master of this vessel," cried Dan as he thumped his friend on the back with a generous impulse to forgive and forget their recent misunderstanding. "I never saw a Pringle that was willing to loaf ten seconds on a wreck. Gracious, look at your father. You can't see him for dust."
[Pg 153]
Mr. Jeremiah Pringle was, indeed, making good his surprising contract with Captain Jim Wetherly. ”

“ But mayhap, as you are a new-comer, Master Trueman, you do not know the go at these seasons, so I will tell you. You must know that when a vessel strikes it is catch as catch can for her lading: one has as good a right as another, and he is the luckiest who can get most. We call it going a wrecking; and let me tell you it is no bad business. There is my neighbour Perkins, the pilot, got the Lord knows what by the smuggling cutter that was wrecked about three leagues from hence two months ago. ”

“ I'm so full of cinders inside that I rattle when I walk. But give me another week and the boat will be fit to hitch a hawser to this benighted island of Key West and tow it out to sea. Anything new ashore?"
Captain Jim sat down beside the engineer and made sure that they could not be overheard as he began:
"Dan has been watching Jerry Pringle's fleet of wrecking vessels for me. Those two schooners he bought in the Gulf have come into port, and it is mighty little sponging he intends to do with them at present, Bill. They look fast and they can stow lots of cargo. ”

“ It was 'Black Sam' Hurley—he lit the fuse, Uncle Jim—and I put it out—all alone down in the hold. You never saw such big rats—with sacks of powder tied to their tails—and eyes like sparks."
Captain Jim soothed Dan as best he could and whispered to his cousin:
"Did you get that? It's all true, I reckon. That's an old trick of the Bahama wrecking [Pg 125] gangs. Ask Mr. Prentice to come in. The underwriters ought to be interested in the boy."
Mr. Prentice, the Florida agent of the English marine insurance companies, was a sharp-featured, elderly gentleman of few words. ”

“ I mean you, too, Captain Bruce. I have been hoping that I could keep my mouth shut. I'd rather cut off my right hand than [Pg 68] drag certain other people into it. I know why you brought your boy along with you, Jerry Pringle. To put a stopper on my tongue, wasn't it? Hide behind women and children, eh? Well, I'm in charge of wrecking this steamer, understand? Get back to your tug. I've a good mind to——"
He felt a pull at his arm, and turned to look into Dan's imploring face as the boy whispered:
"Don't say any more, Uncle Jim. Wait till Bart is out of the way, please, oh please do." ”

“ The wreckers halted, huddled in confusion, and ran for the shelter of the nearest deck-house. "Black Sam" delayed to hurl an iron belaying-pin at Dan's head and paid dearly for the act. It was Bill McKnight who drove a bullet through his arm and made him fly for cover with blood trickling from his fingers. Then the clarion tones of the fat chief engineer sounded across the water as if he had taken full command of the expedition:
"Half a dozen of you men stay here to sweep the Kenilworth's bulwarks with your guns and give us a chance to climb over. The rest follow [Pg 120] me to board her. ”

“ It was not easy to be sure of what one saw in that brief time and amid that boiling foam and those lunging waves; but it seemed that two or three caught hold, and again and again it appeared that all were shaken off. They were so covered with water that one could not tell. Probably one was crushed, as it appeared when the spar bumped into the wreck.
We could distinctly hear men left in the rigging praying and one strong voice cursing.
The wreck was setting with that—no, this isn't a freak phrase—with that slow rapidity that comes over a ship, which, having struggled valiantly, gives up. ”

“ The first man who saw it gave warning to the wracking-master, who took command of the men ashore and the cargo in behalf of the insurance companies."
"Were there any signals then to rouse the coast in case of wreck?"
"Lord save you! no: every man warned his neighbor. There weren't but a few scattered folks along the coast then, but in time of a wrack you'd see them in the dead of night ready and waiting along the beach. No need of your signal-flags for them, I reckon. They knew there'd be dead men and plenty of wrack coming ashore before morning." ”

“ Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But, a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge. ”

“ Upon the return, from any beam or bulkhead, of a flat or doubtful sound, we must up axe and hew into the timber: a violent and—from the amount of dry rot in the wreck—a mortifying exercise. Every night saw a deeper inroad into the bones of the Flying Scud—more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside—and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled ”

“ For near a minute the suspected foremast gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beautiful fabric that enabled them to skim the seas, two ragged stumps remained.
In these vast and solitary waters, to be dismasted is perhaps the worst calamity. Let the ship turn turtle and go down, and at least the pang is over. ”

“ Each man of us, armed with a great knife, attacked the pile from his own quarter, slashed into the nearest mat, burrowed in it with his hands, and shed forth the rice upon the deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and was trodden down, poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the vents. About the wreck, thus transformed into an overflowing granary, the sea-fowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. ”

“ The sharp shot, the keen hook, the lacerating wire, the spear—everything which kills or wounds, comes in some manner or other from the arms, down to the stone or the primitive knob-kerrie. Consequently animals, birds, and fishes not only in our own, but in the wildest countries, have learned to watch and to dread man's arms. He raises his arms, and in an instant there shoots forth a bright flash of flame, and before the swift wings can beat the air again the partridge is dashed to the ground. ”

“ Crack, cracky crack, crack, crack, crack, half-a-dozen flashes and puffs of smoke came from over the ridge of the low earthwork in front, emptying four saddles, while one horse went down headlong, pierced from chest to haunch by a bullet, and the fleeing pair saw the rest of their pursuers open out right and left, to swing round and gallop away back, pursued by a crackling fire which brought down six more before they were out of range. ”

“ As the wreck of a man was flung like a limp bagful into the ascending convolutions of tawny dust, the watchful guards as one dashed in with their ropes whirling, hissing, but not till Waltzing Jupiter had swirled in midair and, infuriated, maddened, doped brute that he was, dived to make the kill. ”

“ From time to time we saved a wreck ourselves, a box or barrel, and set it on its end, and appropriated it with crossed sticks; and it will lie there perhaps, respected by brother wreckers, until some more violent storm shall take it, really lost to man until wrecked again. ”

“ In a quarrel among themselves, however, over the division of the spoils of a small schooner which had run ashore, one of the disgruntled wreckers had thrown the lantern overboard in deep water.
"I hadn't supposed there was anything of that sort going on now, sir," said Eric to one of the junior lieutenants, discussing the question of the wreckers' lights.
"Nor had I," was the rejoinder. "The business of being a wrecker has changed a good deal. There's plenty of it, still, but it has become a recognized profession. ”

“ The neighbourhood is sadly infested with wreckers. When the news of a wreck flies round the coast, thousands of people are instantly collected near the fatal spot; pick-axes, hatchets, crow-bars, and ropes are their usual implements for breaking up and carrying off whatever they can. The moment the vessel touches the shore she is considered fair plunder, and men, women, and children are working on her to break her up, night and day. ”

“ As the barrel was lowered again, the breech opened, slow curling tongues of flame licked round the muzzle. Behind each weapon were great stacks of shells. Hurrying men, two at a time, a tray supported on two short poles between them, carried more food to the iron monster, fed its fuming breech for yet another roar. ”

“ The crack of the heavy carter’s whip differs from that of the coachman’s lighter one. There is the single crack, the double or back and fore crack, and the multiple crack, this last being like the dancing noise produced by those alarming crackers placed by mischievous urchins on a Queen’s Birthday night under the garments of terrified young women. There is the encouraging crack, supposed to cheer the horse on his way ”

“ One wretch is represented attempting to climb a tree, his brains being picked out by a bird from above, and his feet being torn off by dogs from beneath; another is seated on the ground, while two men are sawing him in halves, right through the head downwards, the blood all the while flowing in gallons! ”