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Dark Frigate

<h2>CHAPTER VIII STORM</h2> The storm brewed long in gray banks of cloud that hung in the west and north. It drew around the Rose of Devon from north to east with a slow, immutable force, as yet perceived rather than felt, till she sailed in the midst of a circle of haze. At night the moon was ringed. The sun rose in a bank of flaming red and the small sea-birds that by their presence, mariners say, tell of coming gales, played over the wake. Captain Candle from the poop sniffed at the damp air: and studying the winds as they veered and rose in brisk flourishes and fell to the merest whisper of a breeze, he puckered his lips, which was his way when thoughts crowded upon him. Martin on the beakhead pursued his noisome task of cleaning it under the watchful eye of the swabber (who took unkind joy in exacting from him the utmost pains), and cast furtive glances at the gray swell that came shouldering up from the east. "Holla, boatswain," the captain cried. "Yea, yea!" "Our foresail is old and hath lost its goodness. Look to thy stores and see if there be not another. Have it ready, then, to bend in haste if there be need." "Yea, yea!" "And lay out thy cordage, boatswain, that if sheet or halyard or tackling shall part, we may be ready to bend another in its place." Descending thereupon into the forehold with his boatswain's mate to fetch and carry, Boatswain Marsham fell to work overhauling the bolts of sail-cloth and the hanks of cordage and the coils of rope, till he had found a new foresail and laid it under the hatch, and had placed great ropes and such cordage as headlines and marlines and sennets so that a man could lay hands on them in a time of haste and confusion. For the Rose of Devon was heavily pitching and the seas crashed on her three-inch planks with a noise like thunderclaps; and when she lifted on the swell, the water rumbled against her bilge and gurgled away past her run. Very faintly he heard a sailor's voice, "The pump is choked." There was shouting above for a time, then the cry arose, which brought reassurance to all, "Now she sucks," and again there was quiet. Climbing through the hatch and passing aft along the main deck, he heard for himself the suck-suck from the pump well, then the rattle of tiller and creak of pintle as the helmsmen eased her off and brought her on to meet a rising sea. "Holla, master!" "Holla, is all laid ready below?" "Yea! Ropes and cordage and sail are laid ready upon the main deck and secured against the storm." "And seemeth she staunch to one in the hold?" "Yea, master." "Then, boatswain, call up the men to prayer and breakfast, for we shall doubtless have need of both ere the day is done. Boy, fetch my cellar of bottles, for I would drink a health to all, fore and aft, and I would have the men served out each a little sack." By midday the veering winds had settled in the east and the overcast sky had still further darkened. The ship, labouring heavily, held her course; but as the wind blew up a fresh gale, the after sails took the wind from the sails forward, which began to beat and thresh. Swarming aloft, the younkers handed the fore-topsail-steering-sail, the fore and main topsails, and the main-topsail-staysail. But as they manned the foreyard, the ship yawed in such a manner that the full force of the wind struck the old foresail and split it under their fingers. Philip Marsham on the weather yardarm, with the grey seas breaking in foam beneath him at one minute and with the forecastle itself seeming to rise up at him the next minute, so heavily did the old ship roll, was reaching for the sail at the moment it tore to ribands; and a billow of grey canvas striking him in the face knocked him off the yard; but as he fell, he locked his legs round the spar and got finger hold on the earing, and crawled back to the mast as the sailors stood by the ropes to strike the yard and get in the threshing tatters of the sail. The mate, going aft, was caught in the waist when the ship gave a mighty lurch, and went tumbling to lee-ward where the scupper-holes were spouting like so many fountains all a-row. The fall might well have ended his days, had he not bumped into the capstan where he clung fast with both arms, and twice lucky he was to stay his fall thus, for a sea came roaring over the waist and drowned the fountains in the scuppers and in a trice the decks were a-wash from forecastle to poop. But the old ship shook her head and righted and Captain Francis Candle, leaning against the wind, his cloak flapping in the gale and his hat hauled hard down over his eyes, descended from the poop and braced himself in its lee. "The wind blows frisking," the mate cried, scrambling up the ladder and joining the master. "Yea, it is like to over-blow. She took a shrewd plunge but now. We shall further our voyage by striking every sail. Go thou, mate, and have them secure the spritsail-yard, then take thy station on the forecastle." For an hour or two the old Rose of Devon went plunging through the seas; and there was much loosing and lowering of sails. For a while, then, the wind scanted so that there was hope the storm had passed, and during the lull they bent and set the new foresail and must needs brace and veer and haul aft. But ere long the gale blew up amain, and in the late afternoon Captain Candle, sniffing the breeze, called upon all to stand by and once more to hand both foresail and mainsail. "Cast off the topsail sheets, clew garnets, leechlines and buntlines!" The order came thinly through the roar of the wind. "Yea, yea!" a shrill voice piped. "Stand by the sheet and brace—come lower the yard and furl the sail—see that your main halyards be clear and all the rest of your gear clear and cast off." "It is all clear." "Lower the main yard—haul down upon your down-haul." As the yard swayed down and the men belayed the halyards, one minute staggering to keep their feet, the next minute slipping and sliding across the decks, the captain's sharp voice, holding them at their work, cut through the gale, "Haul up the clew garnets, lifts, leechlines and buntlines! Come, furl the sail fast and secure the yard lest it traverse and gall!" "'Twas a fierce gust," an old sailor cried to Phil, who had reached for the rigging and saved himself from going down to the lee scuppers. "We best look the guns be all fast. I mind, in the Grace and Mary, my second Guinea voyage, a gun burst its breechings—" "Belay the fore down-haul!" the mate thundered, and leaving his tale untold, the old man went crawling forward. The men heard faintly the orders to the helmsman, "Hard a-weather!—Right your helm!—Now port, port hard! More hands! He cannot put up the helm!" Then out of the turmoil and confusion a great voice cried, "A sail! A sail!" "Where?" "Fair by us." "How stands she?" "To the north'ard." She lay close hauled by the wind and as the Rose of Devon, scudding before the sea, bore down the wind and upon her, she hove out signs to speak; but though Captain Candle passed under her lee as near as he dared venture and learned by lusty shouting that she was an English ship from the East Indies, which begged the Rose of Devon for God's sake to spare them some provisions, since they were eighty persons on board who were ready to perish for food and water, the seas ran so high that neither the one vessel nor the other dared hoist out a boat; and parting, the men of the Rose of Devon lost sight of her in the gathering dusk. Still more and more the storm increased. Darkness came, but there was no rest at sea that night. Thanks to the storm, and the labour and anxiety it brought all hands, Martin, the latter part of that day, escaped the duties of ship's liar, and glad was he of the chance to slip unobserved about the deck with no reminder of his late humiliation. But by night he was blue with the cold, and drenching wet and so hungry that he gnawed at a bit of biscuit when he needed both hands to haul on a rope. Finding Phil Marsham at his shoulder and still resenting bitterly the jest to which he had fallen victim, he shot at him an ill-tempered glance and in sullen silence turned his back. "Belay!" A line of struggling men tripped and stumbled as they secured the rope and went swaying and staggering across the deck when the ship rolled; for the weight of her towering superstructure and her cannon would set her wallowing fearfully in the merest seaway. One caught up the rope's end in loose coils; another, having fallen, got clumsily on his feet and staunched his bleeding nose; the rest shivered as the icy wind struck through their wet shirts. Martin again turned his back on the boatswain and hugged himself, but to little profit, although his fat arms covered a goodly area. Phil laughed softly at Martin's show of spleen and was about to warm the man's temper further by a thrust well calculated to stir him to fury, when the ship rose with a queer lurch and descended into a veritable gulf. They saw above them a sea looming like a black cloud. It mounted slowly up, hung over them, curled down a dark tongue of water and, before the Rose of Devon had righted from her plunge into the trough, broke upon the ship and overwhelmed her. The waist was flooded from the head of the forecastle to the break of the poop. Water, licking across the quarter-deck, rose in a great wave that drenched the captain to his thighs and poured into the steerage room, momentarily blinding the men at the helm,—for in those old ships they stood with their faces on a level with the quarter-deck,—and, following whipstaff and tiller, spilled into the main deck and hold. Philip Marsham, as the water washed him off his feet, made shift to lay hands on the shrouds, and though he had no footing and was washed far out over the side, his grasp was strong and he held himself against the rush of water as the ship rose like a dog shaking its head and coming up through a wave. In very truth she seemed to shake her head and struggle up to the black night above. But as Phil saved himself he saw Martin cowering by a gun and striving to reach the breeching; and as the ship rose, the lad half felt, half saw, some great body washed past him and over the side. There was no one beside the gun: Martin was gone. Though a man were a knave and liar, Phil Marsham had no stomach to see him drown thus; and though he held old Martin in contempt and bedevilled him night and day, yet he had a curious liking for the fellow. Overhead there hung from the maintop a loose rope. He faintly saw it swinging against the leaden-black sky. By a nimble leap there was a fair chance a man might reach it and if it did not part, an active man might by a stroke of fortune regain the ship. All this Phil saw in the falling of a single grain of sand, then the rope swung within reach of his hand and he seized it. Spared the hazard of leaping for it, he let go the shrouds and swung with all his strength out into the night. Swinging high over the sea he saw for an instant, while he was in mid-air, the Rose of Devon surging away from under him. The single great lanthorn was burning on her poop, and dim lights in forecastle and cabin showed that those parts of the ship, at least, had come up through the sea unflooded. He thought he saw a cloaked figure like a shadow on the quarter-deck. Then he slid down into darkness till the rope burned his hands, then he struck the water and went under, gasping at the shock, for the sea was as cold as a mountain stream. He caught a last glimpse of the great ship, now looming high above him, then clutching fast the rope with one hand and wildly kicking out, he felt with his knees what might be a man's body. With his free hand he reached for the body. He snatched at an arm and missed it, then felt hair brushing his fingers and tangled them in it and gripped it. He went down and down; then the drag of the water, for the ship was scudding fast, raised him to the surface. The ship rolled toward him and he again went under, overshadowed by the lofty poop which leaned out so far that notwithstanding the tumble home he thought the poop would come down and crush him. The ship then rolled away from him, and the rope brought up on his arm so hard that he feared the bones would pull from their sockets; but if he died in doing it he was bound he would hold the rope and keep his man. The ship rolled till he bumped against her side and was lifted half out of water. "Help!" he cried. "Help or we die!" He heard voices above and felt the rope move as if some one had seized it, then the looming bulk of the ship rolled back and drove him again down into the sea. He had no wind left for calling when he came up as once more the ship rolled, but the man he held had come to life and was clinging like a leech to the rope, which vastly lightened the strain, and some one above was hauling on it. For a moment the two swung in air with the sea beneath them, then the ship rolled farther and their weight rested on planks, and hands from within the ship reached down and lifted them on board. The man—and it was indeed Martin—coughed like one who is deathly sick, as well he might be, and went rolling down the deck with a boy to help him. But Phil, having kept his head and having swallowed no great quantity of salt water, was able after breathing deeply a few times to stand alone beside Will Canty whose hands had drawn him to safety, and to perceive that waist, boat, capstan, windlass and sheet anchor were washed away. He then heard a pounding and shouting aft. "What in the fiend's name hath befallen us?" he demanded. "'Tis even worse than doth appear," Will cried. "The sea hath a free passage into the hold between the timber heads. They are pumping with both pumps. The captain hath ordered the mizzenmast cut away, the better to keep us before the wind. Hear you not the sound of axes? And—" Out of the darkness burst the mate. "Come, my hearts! Below there! Cram blankets and hammocks into the leak, yea, the shirts from off your backs! And then to the pumps to take your turn. And pray Almighty God to give us sight of another day." There was running on the deck and shadows passed forward and aft. From the quarter-deck a clear voice, so sharp that it pierced the noise of the storm, was calling, "Port the helm! Ease her, ease her! Now up! Hard up! Ease her, ease her!" As the boatswain dropped through the hatch, he saw very dimly the captain crouching under the poop, his cloak drawn close about him. There was wild confusion below, for as the ship rolled to starboard the sea burst in through the great gap along the timber heads and pushed through the gap and into the ship the blankets and rugs that were stuffed in place. Though the men leaped after them and came scrambling back to force them again into place between the timbers, and though they tore down hammocks and jammed them in with the blankets to fill the great opening, yet as the ship again rolled and the sea once more came surging against the barrier, they again fled before it, and again the sea cleared the gap and came flooding in upon the deck. It was a sight to fill a brave man with despair. The more hands made faster work, and though the labour seemed spent in vain they stuffed the gap anew. But now when the ship again rolled to starboard an old seaman raised his hand and roared, "Every man to his place and hold against the sea! Stay! Hold fast your ground!—Come, bullies, hold hard!—Good fellows! See, we have won!" They had perceived his meaning and braced themselves and with their hands they had held the stuffing in the gap until the pressure ceased, which was more of a feat than a man might think, since despite their every effort the sea had found passage in great strong streams, yet they held to the last; and when the ship rolled back, Boatswain Marsham cried out:— "Now, Master Carpenter, quick! Bring great nails and hammer and a plank or two. Yare, yare!" "Yea, yea," the carpenter cried, and came running down the deck. The men held the planking and the carpenter drove home the nails and thus they made the plank fast along the timbers behind the gap, where it would serve to brace the stuffing. Between the plank and the stuffing they forced a great mass of other wadding, and though the ship rolled ever so deeply the plank held against the sea. They left it so; but all that night, which seemed as long as any night they had ever seen, no man slept in the Rose of Devon, for they still feared lest the sea should batter away the plank and work their undoing. All night long they kept the pumps going and all night long they feared their labour would be lost. But at four in the morning one of the pumps sucked, which gave them vast comfort, and at daybreak they gave thanks to God, who had kept them safe until dawn. The storm had passed and the sky was clear, and Phil and Martin met at sunrise. "Since thou hast haled me out of the sea by the hair of my head," quoth Martin, after the manner of one who swallows a grievance he can ill stomach, "I must e'en give thee good morrow." <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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