I had four hours before me when I went on deck, and I may perhaps have wished myself ashore in a quiet bed. The captain stood near the wheel. It was blowing very fresh indeed, the wind about east-southeast, with a strong following sea. The yards had been braced further aft, but no other alteration had been made since I had gone below. If I had thought that the vessel was carrying too much sail then, I certainly thought that she was carrying a great deal too much sail now. She could have very well dispensed with the main-royal and two top-gallant sails, and in my opinion would have made the same way with a single reef in the topsails. The press of canvas was burying her. Well aft as the wind was, the vessel lay over to starboard under it, and she was dragging her heavy channels sluicing and foaming through the water. The moon was weak, with a big ring round her, and the sky was obscured by the scud which fled swiftly away to the north-west. The horizon was thick, and the troubled sheen of the moon upon the jumping seas made the dark waters, with their ghastly lines of phosphorescent foam, a most wild and weird panorama.
I mustered the watch, and a couple of them went to relieve their mates on the forecastle. A night-glass lay on one of the skylights, and I swept the horizon with it, but nothing was to be seen. I walked aft to see how she was steering, for these heavy following seas lumping up against a ship's quarter play the deuce with some vessels, making the compass-card swing wildly and setting the square sails lifting; but found her steering very steadily, though the rush of some of the seas under her counter might have bewildered a two-thousand-ton ship. She rose, too, better than I thought she would, though she was sluggish enough, for some of the seas ran past her with their crests curling above her lee bulwarks, and she had received one souser near the galley; but her decks to windward were dry.
Coxon was smoking a big Dutch pipe, holding it with one hand and the rail with the other. He had a hair cap on with flaps over his ears, and sea-boots, and all that he was doing was first to blow a cloud and then look up at the sails, and then blow another cloud and then look up again. This would appear to have been going on since nine o'clock. I thought he must be pretty tired of his diversion by this time.
"She bears her canvas well, sir," said I.
"Yes," he answered gruffly, "I have lost twenty-four hours. I ought to have been clear of the Channel by this."
"She is a fast vessel, sir. We are doing good twelve, I should say."
He cast his eyes over the stern, then looked up aloft, but made no answer. I was moving away when he exclaimed—
"Go forward and tell the men to keep a bright look-out. And keep your weather-eye lifting yourself, sir."
I did as he bade me, and got upon the forecastle. I found the two men who were indistinguishable from the poop, wrapped in oilskins leaning against the forecastle rail. It blew harder here than it did aft, for a power of wind rushed slanting from the fore-topmast stay-sail and whirled up from under the foot of the foresail. The crashing sound of the vessel's bows, urged through the heavy water by the great power that was bellowing overhead, was wonderful to hear: an uproar of thunder was all around, mingled with wild shrieking cries and the strange groaning of straining timbers. The moon stood away to windward of the mizzen royal-mast head, and it was a sight to look up and see the grey canvas, full like balloons, soaring into the sky, and to hear the mighty rush of the wind among the rigging as the vessel rolled against it, making the moon whirl across her spars to and fro, to and fro.
I had been on deck three quarters of an hour when, feeling the wind very cold, I dived into my cabin for a shawl to wrap round my neck.
I had hardly left the cuddy door to return, when I heard a loud cry from the forecastle, and both hands roared out simultaneously, "A sail right ahead!"
Coxon walked quickly forward to the poop-rail to try to see the vessel to windward. Then he went over to the other side and peered under the mainsail; after which he said, "I see nothing. Where is she?"
I shouted through my hands, "On which bow is she?"
"Right ahead!" came the reply.
"There was a short pause, and then one of the men roared out, "Hard over! we're upon her! She's cutter rigged! she's a smack!"
"Hard a-port! hard a-port!" bawled Coxon.
I saw the spokes of the wheel fly round, but almost at the same moment, I felt a sudden shock—an odd kind of thud, the effect of which upon my senses was to produce the impression of a sudden lull in the wind.
"God Almighty!" bellowed a voice, "we've run her down!"
In a second I had bounded to the weather-side of the poop and looked over, and what I saw sliding rapidly past, was a mast and a dark-coloured sail, which in the daylight would probably be red, stretched flat upon the wilderness of foam which our ship was sweeping off her sides. Upon this ghastly white ground the sail and mast were distinctly outlined—for a brief moment only—they vanished even as I watched, swallowed up in the seething water. And then all overhead the sails of the ship began to thunder, and the rigging quivered and jerked as though it must snap.
"Hard over! hard over!" bellowed Coxon.
I saw him rush to the wheel, thrust away one of the men, and pull the spokes over with all his force. The vessel answered splendidly, swerved nobly round like a creature of instinct, and was again rushing headlong with full sail over the sea.
This was a close shave. At the speed at which she was travelling she had obeyed the rudder in the first instance so promptly as to come round close to the wind. A few moments more and she would have been taken aback; and this, taking into consideration the amount of canvas she was carrying, must infallibly have meant the loss of most, if not of all, her spars.
Horrified by the thoughts of living creatures drowning in our wake, I cried out to the skipper—
"Won't you make an effort to save them, sir?"
"Save them be hanged!" he answered fiercely. "Why the devil didn't they get out of our road?"
I was so much shocked by the coarse inhumanity of this reply, that I turned on my heel; but yet was constrained by an ugly fascination to turn again and cast shuddering glances at the spot where I pictured the drowning wretches battling with the waves.
Captain Coxon was too intent upon the compass to notice my manner; he was giving directions to the men in a low voice, with his eyes fixed on the card.
Presently he exclaimed, in his gruffest voice, "Call the carpenter to sound the well."
This was soon despatched, and I returned and reported a dry bottom.
"Heave the log, sir."
I called a couple of hands aft and went through the tiresome and tedious job of ascertaining the speed by the measured line and sand-glass. The reel rattled furiously in the hands of the man who held it: I thought the whole of the line would go away overboard before the fellow who was holding the glass cried, "Stop!"
"What do you make it?" demanded Coxon.
"Thirteen knots, sir."
He looked over the side as though to assure himself that the computation was correct, then called out—
"Clew