The Ghost Ship: A Mystery of the Sea. John C. Hutcheson

scene in a sort of menacing way; while, in lieu of the two or three odd sentinels that had previously peeped out from the firmament, all the galaxies of heaven were, at this moment, in their myriads above, spangling the empyrean from zenith to pole.

      But the gale!

      While running before the wind, the wind, although it had ballooned our sails out to bursting point, brushing us along at a wild, mad-cap rate, and buffeting the boisterous billows on either hand, scooping them up from the depths of the ocean and piling them in immense waves of angry water that rolled after us, striving to overwhelm us, we could hardly, even while taking advantage of it, appreciate its awful and tremendous force.

      On coming about, however, and facing it, the case was vastly different, the wind increasing tenfold in its intensity.

      Where it had sung through the rigging it now shrieked and howled, as if the air were peopled with demons, while the waves, lashed into fury, dashed against our bows like battering rams, rising almost to the level of our masthead where their towering crests met overhead.

      Round came the old barquey’s head slowly, and more slowly still as she staggered against the heavy sea, until, all at once, she stopped in stays, unable apparently, though struggling all she could, to face her remorseless foe.

      “Luff up, quartermaster!” roared the skipper to the top of his voice and dancing up and down the bridge in his excitement. “Luff, you beggar, luff!”

      “I can’t, sir,” yelled the man in desperation—a fresh hand who had come on duty to relieve Atkins at six bells. “The steam steering gear has broken-down, sir, and I can’t make her move.”

      “By Jingo, that’s a bad job,” cried the skipper, but he was not long at a nonplus. “Run aft, Haldane, and you too, Spokeshave. Loosen the bunt of the mizzen-trysail and haul at the clew. That’ll bring her up to the wind fast enough, if the sail only stands it!”

      To hear was to obey, and both Spokeshave and I scuttled down the bridge-ladder as quickly as we could and away along the waist of the ship aft, the urgency of our errand hastening our movements if we had needed any spur beyond the skipper’s sharp, imperative mandate.

      But, speedily as we had hurried, on mounting the poop-ladder and rushing towards the bitts at the foot of the mizzenmast to cast off the bunt-lines and clewlines of the trysail we found we had been already forestalled by an earlier arrival on the scene of action.

      This was Mr. O’Neil, the second officer, whom I had left below asleep in his cabin when I came up at two bells from the saloon, he having been on duty all the afternoon and his services not being required again until night, when he would have to go on the bridge to take the first watch from eight to midnight.

      Feeling the bucketing-about we were having in the trough of the sea when we came about, and probably awakened by the change of motion, just as a miller is supposed to be instantaneously roused by his mill stopping, though he may be able to sleep through all the noise of its grinding when at work, Garry O’Neil had at once shoved himself into his boots and monkey jacket and rushed up on the poop through the companion and booby-hatch that led up directly on deck from the saloon.

      Arrived here, he had evidently noted the vessel’s insecurity, and, seamanlike, had hit upon the very same way out of the difficulty that had suggested itself to the skipper, having, ere we reached his side, cast off the ropes confining the folds of the trysail and trying singlehanded to haul out the clew.

      “Begorrah, me bhoys, ye’ve come in the very nick o’ time!” he exclaimed on seeing us. “Here, Spoke, me darlint, hang on to the end of this sheet and you, Dick, step on to the tail of it, whilst I take a turn of the slack round that bollard! Faith, it’s blo’in’ like the dievle, and we’ll have our work cut out for us, me bhoys, to git a purchase on it anyhow. Now, all together, yo-heave-ho! Pull baker, pull dievle!”

      With that, bending our backs to it, we all hauled away at the sheet, succeeding by a great endeavour in stretching the clew of the sail to the end of the boom, which we then secured amidships as best we could, though the spar and sail combined jerked to such an extent that it seemed as if the mizzenmast would be wrenched out of the ship each instant, the heavy fold of the canvas that hung loosely under the jaws of the gaff shaking and banging about with a noise like thunder.

      Even the small amount of canvas exposed to the wind, however, was sufficient to supply the additional leverage required aft; and the engines working at half speed, with the headsails flattened, the ship’s bows were presently brought up to the wind, when we lay-to under easy steam.

      “Well done, my lads!” sang out the skipper from the bridge, when the ship’s head was round and the peril of her broaching-to in the heavy seaway been fortunately averted; the wind was blowing aft, of course, and bringing his voice to us as if he stood by, and shouting in our very ears, “Now look sharp and come here under the bridge; I want you to cast off the lashings of the big wheel amidships and see that the yolk lines run clear. We shall have to manhandle the helm and steer from below, as the steam gear up here in the wheel-house is hopelessly jammed and will take a month of Sundays to get right!”

      “Aye, aye, sir,” we made answer, under his nose, having been scurrying forwards while he was speaking, the Irish mate adding in his native vernacular, “Begorrah, we’ll rig up the whole, sir, in the twinkling of a bedpost, sure!”

      “Hullo!” exclaimed the skipper, “is that you, O’Neil?”

      “Faith, all that’s lift of me, sir!”

      “How’s that?—I was just going to send down to your cabin to rouse you out.”

      “Begorrah, its moighty little rousin’ I want, sor! The ould barquey’s that lively that she’d wake a man who’d been d’id for a wake, sure! I’ve been so rowled about in me burth and banged agin’ the bulkheads that my bones fell loike jelly and I’m blue-mouldy all over. But what d’ye want, cap’en? Sure, I’m helping the youngster with this whale here.”

      “By jingo!” cried the skipper, “you’re the right man in the right place!”

      “Faith, that’s what the gaolor s’id to the burghlor, sor, when he fixed him up noicely on the treadmill!”

      The skipper laughed.

      “Well, you fix up your job all right, and you’ll be as good as your friend the gaoler,” he said. “When we have the helm all alaunto again, we can bear up on our course and jog along comfortably. I think we are lucky to have got off so lightly, considering the wind and sea, with this steering gear breaking down at such an awkward moment!”

      “Ah, we ain’t seed the worse on it yet, and you’d better not holler till ye’re out o’ the wood!” muttered old Masters under his breath, in reply to this expression of opinion of the skipper, the boatswain having come to our assistance with all the hands he could muster, so as to get the wheel below the bridge in working order as soon as possible. “I knowed that this ghost-ship meant sumkin’ and we ain’t come to the end o’ the log yet!”

      Almost as he uttered the words, Mr. Fosset came up the engine-room hatchway and made his way hurriedly towards us.

      “By jingo, Fosset, here you are at last!” exclaimed the skipper on seeing him. “I thought you were never coming up again, finding it so jolly warm and comfortable below! Are things all right there now, and are the bilge-pumps working?”

      Captain Applegarth spoke jocosely enough, everything being pretty easy on deck and the ship breasting the gale like a duck, but Mr. Fosset’s face, I noticed, looked grave and he answered the other in a more serious fashion than his general wont, his mouth working nervously in the pale moonlight that lent him a more pallid air as the words dropped from his lips, making his countenance, indeed, almost like that of a corpse.

      “But what, man!” exclaimed the skipper impatiently, interrupting his slow speech before Mr. Fosset could get any further. “Anything wrong, eh?”

      “Yes, sir, I’m sorry to say something