Afloat and Ashore (26 page)

Our stay at Rio was short, and we left port with a favourable slant of
wind, running as far north as 50°, in a very short time. As we drew
near to the southern extremity of the American continent, however, we
met with heavy weather and foul winds. We were now in the month that
corresponds to November in the northern hemisphere, and had to double
The Horn at that unpropitious season of the year, going
westward. There is no part of the world of which navigators have given
accounts so conflicting, as of this celebrated passage. Each man
appears to have described it as he found it, himself, while no two
seem to have found it exactly alike. I do not remember to have ever
heard of calms off Cape Horn; but light winds are by no means
uncommon, though tempests are undoubtedly the predominant
characteristic. Our captain had already been round four times, and he
held the opinion that the season made no difference, and that it was
better to keep near the land. We shaped our course accordingly for
Staten Land, intending to pass through the Straits of Le Maire and hug
the Horn, as close as possible, in doubling it. We made the Falkland
Islands, or West Falkland rather, just as the sun rose, one morning,
bearing a little on our weather-quarter, with the wind blowing heavily
at the eastward. The weather was thick, and, what was still worse,
there was so little day, and no moon, that it was getting to be
ticklish work to be standing for a passage as narrow as that we aimed
at. Marble and I talked the matter over, between ourselves, and wished
the captain could be persuaded to haul up, and try to go to the
eastward of the island, as was still possible, with the wind where it
was. Still, neither of us dared propose it; I, on account of my youth,
and the chief-mate, as he said, on account of "the old fellow's
obstinacy." "He likes to be poking about in such places," Marble
added, "and is never so happy as when he is running round the ocean in
places where it is full of unknown islands, looking for sandal wood,
and bêche-la-mar! I'll warrant you, he'll give us a famous time of it,
if he ever get us up on the North-West Coast." Here the consultation
terminated, we mates believing it wiser to let things take their
course.

I confess to having seen the mountains on our weather-quarter
disappear, with melancholy forebodings. There was little hope of
getting any observation that day; and to render matters worse, about
noon, the wind began to haul more to the southward. As it hauled, it
increased in violence, until, at midnight, it blew a gale; the
commencement of such a tempest as I had never witnessed in any of my
previous passages at sea. As a matter of course, sail was reduced as
fast as it became necessary, until we had brought the ship down to a
close-reefed main-top-sail, the fore-top-mast staysail, the
fore-course, and the mizen-staysail. This was old fashioned Canvass;
the more recent spencer being then unknown.

Our situation was now far from pleasant. The tides and currents, in
that high latitude, run with great velocity; and, then, at a moment
when it was of the greatest importance to know precisely where the
ship was, we were left to the painful uncertainty of conjecture, and
theories that might be very wide of the truth. The captain had nerve
enough, notwithstanding, to keep on the larboard tack until daylight,
in the hope of getting in sight of the mountains of Terra del
Fuego. No one, now, expected we should be able to fetch through the
Straits; but it would be a great relief to obtain a sight of the land,
as it would enable us to get some tolerably accurate notions of our
position. Daylight came at length, but it brought no certainty. The
weather was so thick, between a drizzling rain, sea-mist and the
spray, that it was seldom we could see a league around us, and
frequently not half a mile. Fortunately, the general direction of the
eastern coast of Terra del Fuego, is from north-west to south-east,
always giving us room to ware off shore, provided we did not
unexpectedly get embarrassed in some one of the many deep indentations
of that wild and inhospitable shore.

Captain Williams showed great steadiness in the trying circumstances
in which we were placed. The ship was just far enough south to render
it probable she could weather Falkland Islands, on the other tack,
could we rely upon the currents; but it would be ticklish work to
undertake such a thing, in the long, intensely dark nights we had, and
thus run the risk of finding ourselves on a lee shore. He determined,
therefore, to hold on as long as possible, on the tack we were on,
expecting to get through another night, without coming upon the land,
every hour now giving us the hope that we were drawing near to the
termination of the gale. I presume he felt more emboldened to pursue
this course by the circumstance that the wind evidently inclined to
haul little by little, more to the southward, which was not only
increasing our chances of laying past the islands, but lessened the
danger from Terra del Fuego.

Marble was exceedingly uneasy during that second night. He remained
on deck with me the whole of the morning watch; not that he distrusted
my discretion in the least, but because he distrusted the wind and the
land. I never saw him in so much concern before, for it was his habit
to consider himself a timber of the ship, that was to sink or swim
with the craft.

"Miles," said he, "you and I know something of these 'bloody
currents,' and we know they take a ship one way, while she looks as
fiercely the other as a pig that is dragged aft by the tail. If we had
run down the 50th degree of longitude, now, we might have had plenty
of sea-room, and been laying past the Cape, with this very wind; but,
no, the old fellow would have had no islands in that case, and he
never could be happy without half-a-dozen islands to bother him."

"Had we run down the 50th degree of longitude," I answered, "we should
have had twenty degrees to make to get round the Horn; whereas, could
we only lay through the Straits of Le Maire, six or eight of those
very same degrees would carry us clear of everything."

"Only lay through the Straits of Le Maire, on the 10th November, or
what is the same thing in this quarter of the world, of May, and with
less than nine hours of day-light! And such day-light, too! Why, our
Newfoundland fogs, such stuff as I used to eat when a youngster and a
fisherman, are high noon to it! Soundings are out of the question
hereabouts; and, before one has hauled in the deep-sea, with all its
line out, his cut-water may be on a rock. This ship is so weatherly
and drags ahead so fast, that we shall see
terra firma
before
any one has a notion of it. The old man fancies, because the coast of
Fuego trends to the north-west, that the land will fall away from us,
as fast as we draw towards it. I hope he may live long enough to
persuade all hands that he is right!"

Marble and I were conversing on the forecastle at the time, our eyes
turned to the westward, for it was scarcely possible for him to look
in any other direction, when he interrupted himself, by shouting
out—"hard up with the helm—spring to the after-braces, my lads—man
mizen-staysail downhaul!" This set everybody in motion, and the
captain and third-mate were on deck in a minute. The ship fell off, as
soon as we got the mizen-staysail in, and the main-topsail
touching. Gathering way fast, as she got the wind more aft, her helm
threw her stern up, and away she went like a top. The fore-topmast
staysail-sheet was tended with care, and yet the cloth emitted a sound
like the report of a swivel, when the sail first filled on the other
tack. We got the starboard fore-tack forward, and the larboard sheet
aft, by two tremendously severe drags, the blocks and bolts seeming
fairly to quiver, as they felt the strains. Everything succeeded,
however, and the Crisis began to drag off from the coast of Terra del
Fuego, of a certainty; but to go whither, no one could precisely
tell. She headed up nearly east, the wind playing about between
south-and-by-east, and south-east-and-by-south. On that course, I own
I had now great doubt whether she could lay past the Falkland Islands,
though I felt persuaded we must be a long distance from them. There
was plenty of time before us to take the chances of a change.

As soon as the ship was round, and trimmed by the wind on the other
tack, Captain Williams had a grave conversation with the chief-mate,
on the subject of his reason for what he had done. Marble maintained
he had caught a glimpse of the land ahead—"Just as you know I did of
la Dame de Nantes, Captain Williams," he continued, "and seeing there
was no time to be lost, I ordered the helm hard up, to ware off
shore." I distrusted this account, even while it was in the very
process of coming out of the chief mate's mouth, and Marble afterwards
admitted to me, quite justly; but the captain either was satisfied, or
thought it prudent to seem so. By the best calculations I afterwards
made, I suppose we must have been from fifteen to twenty leagues from
the land when we wore ship; but, as Marble said, when he made his
private confessions, "Madagascar was quite enough for me, Miles,
without breaking our nose on this sea-gull coast; and there may be
'bloody currents' on this side of the Cape of Good Hope, as well as on
the other. We've got just so much of a gale and a foul wind to
weather, and the ship will do both quite as well with her head to the
eastward, as with her head to the westward."

All that day the Crisis stood on the starboard tack, dragging through
the raging waters as it might be by violence; and just as night shut
in again, she wore round, once more, with her head to the westward. So
far from abating, the wind increased, and towards evening we found it
necessary to furl our topsail and fore-course. Mere rag of a sail as
the former had been reduced to, with its four reefs in, it was a
delicate job to roll it up. Neb and I stood together in the bunt, and
never did I exert myself more than on that occasion. The foresail,
too, was a serious matter, but we got both sails in without losing
either. Just as the sun set, or as night came to increase the darkness
of that gloomy day, the fore-topmast-staysail went out of the
bolt-rope, with a report that was heard all over the ship;
disappearing in the mist, like a cloud driving in the heavens. A few
minutes later, the mizen-staysail was hauled down in order to prevent
it from travelling the same road. The jerks even this low canvass
occasionally gave the ship, made her tremble from her keel to her
trucks.

For the first time, I now witnessed a tempest at sea. Gales, and
pretty hard ones, I had often seen; but the force of the wind on this
occasion, as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the
force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. The seas
seemed crushed, the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as the
currents of the air went howling over the surface of the ocean, fairly
preventing them from rising; or, where a mound of water did appear, it
was scooped up and borne off in spray, as the axe dubs inequalities
from the log. In less than an hour after it began to blow the hardest,
there was no very apparent swell—the deep breathing of the ocean is
never entirely stilled—and the ship was as steady as if hove half
out, her lower yard-arms nearly touching the water, an inclination at
which they remained as steadily as if kept there by purchases. A few
of us were compelled to go as high as the futtock-shrouds to secure
the sails, but higher it was impossible to get. I observed that when I
thrust out a hand to clutch anything, it was necessary to make the
movement in such a direction as to allow for lee-way, precisely as a
boat quarters the stream in crossing against a current. In ascending
it was difficult to keep the feet on the ratlins, and in descending,
it required a strong effort to force the body down towards the centre
of gravity. I make no doubt, had I groped my way up to the
cross-trees, and leaped overboard my body would have struck the water,
thirty or forty yards from the ship. A marlin-spike falling from
either top, would have endangered no one on deck.

When the day returned, a species of lurid, sombre light was diffused
over the watery waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and
the ship. Even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the
caverns of the adjacent coast, none re-appearing with the dawn. The
air was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could
penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile. All hands
mustered on deck, as a matter of course, no one wishing to sleep at a
time like that. As for us officers, we collected on the forecastle,
the spot where danger would first make itself apparent, did it come
from the side of the land. It is not easy to make a landsman
understand the embarrassments of our situation. We had had no
observations for several days, and had been moving about by dead
reckoning, in a part of the ocean where the tides run like a
mill-tail, with the wind blowing a little hurricane. Even now, when
her bows were half submerged, and without a stitch of canvass exposed,
the Crisis drove ahead at the rate of three or four knots, luffing as
close to the wind as if she carried after-sail. It was Marble's
opinion that, in such smooth water, do all we could, the vessel would
drive towards the much-dreaded land again, between sun and sun of that
short day, a distance of from thirty to forty miles. "Nor is this all,
Miles," he added to me, in an aside, "I no more like this 'bloody
current,' than that we had over on the other side of the pond, when we
broke our back on the rocks of Madagascar. You never see as smooth
water as this, unless when the wind and current are travelling in the
same direction." I made no reply, but there all four of us, the
captain and his three mates, stood looking anxiously into the vacant
mist on our lee-bow, as if we expected every moment to behold our
homes. A silence of ten minutes succeeded, and I was still gazing in
the same direction, when by a sort of mystic rising of the curtain, I
fancied I saw a beach of long extent, with a dark-looking waste of low
bottom extending inland, for a considerable distance. The beach did
not appear to be distant half a knot, while the ship seemed to glide
along it, as compared with visible objects on shore, at a rate of six
or eight miles the hour. It extended, almost in a parallel line with
our course, too, as far as could be seen, both astern and ahead.