All its tendency is to throw her stern off and her bow up to it. And if it ever happens, sir, if she ever gets away from the wheel for two seconds and broaches to . . . ""Then what?" I asked, or, rather, shouted; for all conversation had to be shouted close to ear in that blast of gale.
He shrugged his shoulders, and all of him was eloquent with the unuttered, unmistakable word-finish."At eight this morning Margaret and I struggled up to the poop. And there was that indomitable, iron old man. He had never left the deck all night. His eyes were bright, and he appeared in the pink of well-being. He rubbed his hands and chuckled greeting to us, and took up his reminiscences.
"In '51, on this same stretch, Miss West, the Flying Cloud, in twenty-four hours, logged three hundred and seventy-four miles under her topgallant-sails. That was sailing. She broke the record, that day, for sail an' steam.""And what are we averaging, Mr. Pike?" Margaret queried, while her eyes were fixed on the main deck, where continually one rail and then the other dipped under the ocean and filled across from rail to rail, only to spill out and take in on the next roll.
"Thirteen for a fair average since five o'clock yesterday afternoon,"he exulted. "In the squalls she makes all of sixteen, which is going some, for the Elsinore.""I'd take the crojack off if I had charge," Margaret criticised.
"So would I, so would I, Miss West," he replied; "if we hadn't been six weeks already off the Horn."She ran her eyes aloft, spar by spar, past the spars of hollow steel to the wooden royals, which bent in the gusts like bows in some invisible archer's hands.
"They're remarkably good sticks of timber," was her comment.
"Well may you say it, Miss West," he agreed. "I'd never a-believed they'd a-stood it myself. But just look at 'm! Just look at 'm!"There was no breakfast for the men. Three times the galley had been washed out, and the men, in the forecastle awash, contented themselves with hard tack and cold salt horse. Aft, with us, the steward scalded himself twice ere he succeeded in making coffee over a kerosene-burner.
At noon we picked up a ship ahead, a lime-juicer, travelling in the same direction, under lower-topsails and one upper-topsail. The only one of her courses set was the foresail.
The way that skipper's carryin' on is shocking," Mr. Pike sneered.
"He should be more cautious, and remember God, the owners, the underwriters, and the Board of Trade."Such was our speed that in almost no time we were up with the stranger vessel and passing her. Mr. Pike was like a boy just loosed from school. He altered our course so that we passed her a hundred yards away. She was a gallant sight, but, such was our speed, she appeared standing still. Mr. Pike jumped upon the rail and insulted those on her poop by extending a rope's end in invitation to take a tow.
Margaret shook her head privily to me as she gazed at our bending royal-yards, but was caught in the act by Mr. Pike, who cried out:
"What kites she won't carry she can drag!"An hour later I caught Tom Spink, just relieved from his shift at the wheel and weak from exhaustion.
"What do you think now of the carpenter and his bag of tricks?" Iqueried.
"Lord lumme, it should a-ben the mate, sir," was his reply.
By five in the afternoon we had logged 314 miles since five the previous day, which was two over an average of thirteen knots for twenty-four consecutive hours.
"Now take Captain Brown of the little Vampire," Mr. Pike grinned to me, for our sailing made him good-natured. "He never would take in until the kites an' stu'n'sails was about his ears. An' when she was blown' her worst an' we was half-fairly shortened down, he'd turn in for a snooze, an' say to us, 'Call me if she moderates.' Yes, and I'll never forget the night when I called him an' told him that everything on top the houses had gone adrift, an' that two of the boats had been swept aft and was kindling-wood against the break of the cabin. 'Very well, Mr. Pike,' he says, battin' his eyes and turnin' over to go to sleep again. 'Very well, Mr. Pike,' says he.
'Watch her. An' Mr. Pike . . .' 'Yes, sir,' says I. 'Give me a call, Mr. Pike, when the windlass shows signs of comin' aft.' That's what he said, his very words, an' the next moment, damme, he was snorin'."It is now midnight, and, cunningly wedged into my bunk, unable to sleep, I am writing these lines with flying dabs of pencil at my pad.
And no more shall I write, I swear, until this gale is blown out, or we are blown to Kingdom Come.
