"Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea. Morgan Robertson

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СКАЧАТЬ proposition was discussed noisily in joint session on the poop, and finally accepted.

      "We put you in charge, Seldom, against the rule," said Bigpig Monahan, sternly, "'cause we think you've some good scheme in your head; but if you haven't—if you make a mess of things just to have a little fun bossin' us—you'll hear from us. Go ahead, now. You're captain."

      Seldom climbed to the top of the after-house, looked to windward, then to leeward at the rolling steamer, and called out:

      "I want more beef at the wheel. Bigpig, take it; and you, Turkey, stand by with him. Get away from there, Sinful. Give her the upper maintopsail, the rest of you. Poop-deck, you stand by the signal-halyards. Ask him if he's got a tow-line ready."

      Protesting angrily at the slight put upon him, Sinful Peck relinquished the wheel, and joined the rest on the main-deck, where they had hurried. Two men went aloft to loose the topsail, and the rest cleared away gear, while Poop-deck examined the signal-book.

      "K. S. G. says, 'Have a tow-line ready.' That ought to do, Seldom," he called.

      "Run it up," ordered the newly installed captain, "and watch his answer." Up went the signal, and as the men on the main-deck were manning the topsail-halyards, Poop-deck made out the answer: "V. K. C."

      "That means 'All right,' Seldom," he said, after inspecting the book.

      "Good enough; but we'll get our line ready, too. Get down and help 'em mast-head the yard first, then take 'em forrard and coil the tow-line abaft the windlass. Get all the heavin'-lines ready, too."

      Poop-deck obeyed; and while the main-topsail-yard slowly arose to place under the efforts of the rest, Seldom himself ran up the answering pennant, and then the repetition of the steamer's last message: "All right." This was the final signal displayed between the two craft. Both signal-flags were lowered, and for a half-hour Seldom waited, until the others had lifted a nine-inch hawser from the forepeak and coiled it down. Then came his next orders in a continuous roar:

      "Three hands aft to the spanker-sheet! Stand by to slack off and haul in! Man the braces for wearing ship, the rest o' you! Hard up the wheel! Check in port main and starboard cro'-jack braces! Shiver the topsail! Slack off that spanker!"

      Before he had finished the men had reached their posts. The orders were obeyed. The ship paid off, staggered a little in the trough under the right-angle pressure of the gale, swung still farther, and steadied down to a long, rolling motion, dead before the wind, heading for the steamer. Yards were squared in, the spanker hauled aft, staysail trimmed to port, and all hands waited while the ship charged down the two miles of intervening sea.

      "Handles like a yacht," muttered Seldom, as, with brow wrinkled and keen eye flashing above his hooked nose, he conned the steering from his place near the mizzenmast.

      Three men separated themselves from the rest and came aft. They were those who had walked the forward deck. One was tall, broad-shouldered, and smooth-shaven, with a palpable limp; another, short, broad, and hairy, showed a lamentable absence of front teeth; and the third, a blue-eyed man, slight and graceful of movement, carried his arm in splints and sling. This last was in the van as they climbed the poop steps.

      "I wish to protest," he said. "I am captain of this ship under the law. I protest against this insanity. No boat can live in this sea. No help can be given that steamer."

      "And I bear witness to the protest," said the tall man. The short, hairy man might have spoken also, but had no time.

      "Get off the poop," yelled Seldom. "Go forrard, where you belong." He stood close to the bucket-rack around the skylight. Seizing bucket after bucket, he launched them at his visitors, with the result that the big man was tumbled down the poop steps head first, while the other two followed, right side up, but hurriedly, and bearing some sore spots. Then the rest of the men set upon them, much as a pack of dogs would worry strange cats, and kicked and buffeted them forward.

      There was no time for much amusement of this sort. Yards were braced to port, for the ship was careering down toward the steamer at a ten-knot rate; and soon black dots on her rail resolved into passengers waving hats and handkerchiefs, and black dots on the boat deck resolved into sailors standing by the end of a hawser which led up from the bitts below on the fantail. And the ship came down, until it might have seemed that Seldom's intention was to ram her. But not so; when a scant two lengths separated the two craft, he called out: "Hard down! Light up the staysail-sheet and stand by the forebraces!"

      Around the ship came on the crest of a sea; she sank into the hollow behind, shipped a few dozen tons of water from the next comber, and then lay fairly steady, with her bow meeting the seas, and the huge steamer not a half-length away on the lee quarter. The fore-topmast-staysail was flattened, and Seldom closely scrutinized the drift and heave of the ship.

      "How's your wheel, Bigpig?" he asked.

      "Hard down."

      "Put it up a little; keep her in the trough."

      He noted the effect on the ship of this change; then, as though satisfied, roared out: "Let your forebraces hang, forrard there! Stand by heavin'-lines fore and aft! Stand by to go ahead with that steamer when we have your line!" The last injunction, delivered through his hands, went down the wind like a thunder-clap, and the officers on the steamer's bridge, vainly trying to make themselves heard against the gale in the same manner, started perceptibly at the impact of sound, and one went to the engine-room speaking-tube.

      Breast to breast the two vessels lifted and fell. At times it seemed that the ship was to be dropped bodily on the deck of the steamer; at others, her crew looked up a streaked slope of a hundred feet to where the other craft was poised at the crest. Then the steamer would drop, and the next sea would heave the ship toward her. But it was noticeable that every bound brought her nearer to the steamer, and also farther ahead, for her sails were doing their work.

      "Kick ahead on board the steamer!" thundered Seldom from his eminence. "Go ahead! Start the wagon, or say your prayers, you blasted idiots!"

      The engines were already turning; but it takes time to overcome three thousand tons of inertia, and before the steamer had forged ahead six feet the ship had lifted above her, and descended her black side with a grinding crash of wood against iron. Fore and main channels on the ship were carried away, leaving all lee rigging slack and useless; lower braces caught in the steamer's davit-cleats and snapped, but the sails, held by the weather braces, remained full, and the yards did not swing. The two craft separated with a roll and came together again with more scraping and snapping of rigging. Passengers left the rail, dived indoors, and took refuge on the opposite side, where falling blocks and small spars might not reach them. Another leap toward the steamer resulted in the ship's maintopgallantmast falling in a zigzag whirl, as the snapping gear aloft impeded it; and dropping athwart the steamer's funnel, it neatly sent the royal-yard with sail attached down the iron cylinder, where it soon blazed and helped the artificial draft in the stoke-hold. Next came the foretopgallantmast, which smashed a couple of boats. Then, as the round black stern of the steamer scraped the lee bow of the ship, jib-guys parted, and the jib-boom itself went, snapping at the bowsprit-cap, with the last bite the ship made at the steamer she was helping. But all through this riot of destruction—while passengers screamed and prayed, while officers on the steamer shouted and swore, and Seldom Helward, bellowing insanely, danced up and down on the ship's house, and the hail of wood and iron from aloft threatened their heads—men were passing the tow-line.

      It was a seven-inch steel hawser with a Manila tail, which they had taken to the foretopsail-sheet bitts before the jib-boom had gone. Panting from their exertions, СКАЧАТЬ