‘Bit of a blow coming up, lad,’ answered Ross, making all fast.
Li Han hastened by with an anxious expression on his face. Derrick felt uneasy. Soon the Wanderer showed no more than a scrap of canvas, a single jib; her decks were cleared as though she were going into action, and she had so nearly lost steering-way that the wheel was lifeless in his hands.
On the western horizon a strange cloudbank was forming rapidly. There was a heavy swell running, but no wind at all. In reply to a shouted order Derrick had put up the helm, and slowly the Wanderer came round to face the east. The long swell, which he had not noticed before, took her from behind, and her bare masts groaned as she worked heavily on the sea. Ross and Sullivan stood watching the growing patch of darkness on the sky.
‘I think we’ll just about get the full force of it,’ said Sullivan. ‘The glass is still falling.’
‘Aye,’ said Ross. ‘It won’t be long now. I’ll take the first trick at the wheel. We’ll run before it?’
‘Surely. The Wanderer can stand very nearly anything.’
Ross dived below, and reappeared in his oilskins and seaboots. The light of the day was fading with every minute, a menacing, unnatural fading of the light. The cloudbank was now a stretch of darkness covering a quarter of the sky. Suddenly Derrick realised what it was: there is nothing in the world like the coming of a typhoon.
‘You go below, Derrick,’ said his uncle. ‘And don’t come on deck without orders.’
The swell increased, and Derrick in the saloon had to hold on tight to prevent himself from bowling up and down as the Wanderer pitched. There was still no breath of wind to stir the sails, and the schooner seemed to have lost all her life and strength; she wallowed like a log.
Soon the light was obscured as if by a thick fog: a hot, oppressive darkness filled the air, and the send of the waves grew stronger. The Wanderer laboured in the huge, smooth seas, creaking and groaning. Suddenly, and for the first time in his life, Derrick felt sea-sick: he was cold and clammy one minute; much too hot the next. He was very anxious not to disgrace himself, but he knew that if the ship went on bucketing much longer there would be no help for it.
At last there came a little singing in the rigging; the single jib filled and drew, and life came back into the schooner. Then, after one minute of easy riding, the typhoon struck. In a split second the singing in the rigging mounted to a loud, high-pitched, angry shriek. The schooner leapt and quivered: for one moment she seemed to be staggered by the blow, but the next she was racing before it. Huge seas towered behind her, threatening to poop her at any second, but she fled before them unscathed.
Sullivan plunged head-first into the saloon, followed by a sheet of spray.
‘What’s it like on deck, Uncle?’ asked Derrick.
‘Pretty tough,’ gasped Sullivan. ‘Not what you would choose for a Sunday-school outing.’
‘Are we in the storm-centre?’
‘I think so. Not far from it, anyhow. You’re not worried, are you?’ he asked, with a kind smile.
‘No,’ said Derrick, going red.
‘Well, I wouldn’t blame you if you were. I was, in my first big blow. I went pea-green. But then I was in a Portuguese tramp.’ He had to shout to make himself heard. ‘That was a different kettle of fish: feel how this old crate rides, and look at the give in her.’
The Wanderer lifted to a monstrous sea, standing almost upright on her stern; she twisted and thrust like a living creature. ‘Look here,’ shouted Sullivan, pointing to the angle of the bulkhead. The joint between two thick timbers opened and closed an inch at a time. ‘Teak and ironwood,’ he said, ‘with oak backbone and knees. She was made to give so. She can whip anything made of metal.’ He patted the wood, wedged himself into a bunk, and in two minutes he was asleep.
Derrick, clinging precariously to his seat, watched him with astonishment. An enormous din pervaded the whole space; the ship was being hurled about like a chip in a mill-stream, but still Sullivan slept on, braced against the pitching and the corkscrew roll. Derrick had always wondered at his uncle’s ability to snatch a spell of sleep at odd moments, but never so much as now.
The time passed, lost in the prodigious hullabaloo: Derrick hardly noticed that the hands of the clock had crept on and on. He had been rather alarmed: the word typhoon has a very ugly ring in the China Seas, but the sight of his uncle sleeping there, even more than his reassuring words, was wonderfully comforting. Now Derrick could concentrate on gathering the various objects that had broken loose from their fastenings and stowing them away, rather than on the dozens of stories that he had heard of ships lost without a trace – and he could stop thinking about the tiger-shark under the Wanderer’s stern.
Suddenly, above the steady roar, there was a report like the firing of a gun. At once Sullivan was awake. ‘That would be the jib,’ he said, forcing his way through the wind-locked door. ‘Stay where you are.’
Derrick listening intently, fancied that he heard a change in the voice of the typhoon after some minutes; there seemed to be a shriller note in it, louder and more savage.
A solid mass of water shot into the saloon as Sullivan staggered in with Olaf over his shoulder. ‘Lash him into a bunk,’ he shouted, ‘and get into oilskins.’ He disappeared. Derrick lugged Olaf to the bunk, waited for the Wanderer to roll, and slid him into it. He took off the Swede’s dripping clothes, covered him with a rug and lashed him into the bunk with a dozen turns of a rope. Olaf was unconscious; his shoulder hung strangely, and there was a streaming gash on his forehead. Derrick did the best he could with the sleeve of a shirt by way of a bandage, and hurried into his oilskins and sea-boots. He was hardly ready before Sullivan came down again.
‘All fixed, Derrick?’ he asked, looking at Olaf. ‘Ready? Good. You’ll have to give me a hand on deck. Olaf will be all right – collar-bone, that’s all, and a bang on the head. Now listen, we’ve got to clear away the wreckage of the deck-house. There’s a lot of rigging loose, so watch your step. Hang on to the hand-line all the time, and watch for the green seas. Look out for yourself, and don’t let go the hand-line.’
Derrick nodded. His heart was beating violently. Sullivan handed him an axe, and they went on deck. The moment Derrick left the shelter of the companion-way the wind knocked him clean off his feet, but the hand-line brought him up. The shrieking air was full of flying water: he could hardly see or breathe. Following his uncle along the hand-line he made his way for’ard. They came to the wreckage: it had been stove in by a piece of drift-wood, and some of the timbers were pounding furiously. It was plain that they must be cleared at once, before they could spring the deck planking.
Derrick cleared some of the smaller debris: the moment it was free it shot away, carried by the wind. He came to a thick rope, a fallen shroud that held two heavy timbers threshing against the deck. He hacked and hacked at it, but it would not part: he could not hit it square. He let go of the hand-line, held the shroud with one hand and cut at it with the other. At the same moment a heavy sea broke over the stern, a wall of green water swept along the deck, caught Derrick as he cut through the rope and shot him along the deck. He found himself under a cloud of spray, with his back against the capstan. He was still holding the end of the severed shroud. The spray cleared: he saw that he was still alive, but immediately another surge of water buried him. He held tight, snatched a breath of air as the water poured over the Wanderer’s bows, and began to work his way aft. Then, as suddenly as he had been swept for’ard, he was swept back: the Wanderer was climbing the back of a huge wave, with her nose pointing at the sky, and the water on the fo’c’sle surged back and carried him with it. He was among the wreckage again almost before his going had been seen. He took a turn about the hand-line and went on cutting the loose wood free.
Again and again the great following seas smashed over the schooner’s stern, and each time she wallowed under a sheet of water and spray. But each time, after the spray had half drowned them, she would rise, the water shooting from her scuppers, lighten herself and speed