CHAPTER VIII
In Which It Seems That a Prophecy Will Be Fulfilled
We wallowed through the seas, but with comparatively fair winds, for two days. The Seamew would stand off on one tack, we on the other; and by and by we would lose her below the horizon; but, standing in, after some hours, we found her again and were glad to see that she had not pulled so very much ahead of us. But it made Captain Joe awful fidgety, and he certainly did keep the men hopping—reefing and letting go the topsails, and working every moment to gain a bit over his antagonist. Why, we might as well have been sailing a crack yacht for the America’s cup!
All this activity was very well during bad weather; but the men began to get pretty sore when the hard work continued throughout the hours of fair days too. The Gullwing was, as I have said, short-handed. The sea laws cover such cases as this; but there are so many excuses masters may give for going to sea without sufficient hands to properly manage the ship that it is almost impossible to get a conviction if the case is carried to court.
Besides, it is the law that, if a case is not proved against the master of a vessel, the men bringing the suit must pay all the costs. Jack Tar knows of something else to do with his small pay without giving it to “landsharks of lawyers.” That is why being a sailor and being a slave is an interchangeable term. Many legislators, having the welfare of seamen at heart, have tried to amend the laws so that the sailor will get at least an even break; but it seems impossible to give him as fair a deal as the journeyman tradesman in any other line of work obtains.
Old Captain Joe Bowditch, as decent a master as he really was, had a streak of “cheese-paring” in him that made him delight in saving on the running expenses of his ship. Besides, he probably knew his employers, Barney, Blakesley & Knight. Many a sea captain takes chances, and runs risks, and sails in a rotten ship with an insufficient crew, because he needs to save his job, and if he doesn’t please his employers, some other needy master will!
Although the Gullwing was so large a ship, there are larger sailing vessels afloat, notably some engaged in the Atlantic sea-board trade, and a fleet of Standard Oil ships that circumnavigate the world. These are both five and six masted vessels; but many of them are supplied with steam winches, steam capstans, and various other mechanical helps to the handling of the sails and anchors. The Gullwing had merely a donkey-engine amidships, by which the anchors could be raised, one at a time, or to which the pumps might be attached. The great sails on her lower masts had to be raised by sheer bull strength.
But in our watch old Tom Thornton was a famous chantey-man, and the way we hauled under the impetus of his rhythm, and the swing of the chants (“shanties,” the sailor-man calls them) would have surprised a landsman. I learned that “a strong pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether” would accomplish wonders.
We were now down in the regions where the tide follows the growing and waning of the moon exactly. Indeed, the great Antarctic Basin, south of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, is the only division of the seas where the tide follows the moon with absolute regularity. This is because the great sweep of water here is uninterrupted by land.
The enormous wave, raised by the moon’s attraction, courses around the world with nothing to break it. Here in our northern hemisphere immense masses of land interfere with the coursing of this tidal wave; and the shallow seas interfere, too. In the Mexican Gulf, for instance, the tide seldom rises more than two feet, while up along our north Atlantic shores it often rises six and eight feet, while everybody has heard of the awful tidal wave of the Bay of Fundy.
The depth of the water, therefore, has much to do with tidal irregularities. Out in the open ocean, where the tide is abyssmal—that is, about five thousand fathoms—the speed of the waves is amazing. Where the depth decreases to five fathoms the tide cannot travel more than fifteen miles an hour. In England, for example, which is surrounded by narrow land-broken seas, the result is that they get some of the most terrible and dangerous tidal races and currents to be found anywhere on the globe.
In the South Seas—particularly at Tahiti—the ebb and flow of the tide is perfectly adjusted. It is always full tide at noonday and at midnight, while at sunrise and sunset it is low water. The rise and fall seldom exceeds two feet; but once in six months a mighty sea comes rolling in and, sweeping over the corral reefs, nature’s breakwater, it bursts violently on the shore. Indeed, sometimes this tidal wave inundates entire islands.
In various parts of the world the tide creates various natural phenomena. There is the whirlpool between the islands of Jura and Scarba, on the west coast of Scotland, known as the “Cauldron of the Spotted Seas.” The Maelstrom upon the coast of Norway is another creation of the tide. The force of a heavy tidal current pushing up a wide-mouthed river, causes what is termed a “bore.” The most striking example of this tidal feature is seen at the mouth of the Amazon, where a moving wall of water, thirty feet high and from bank to bank, rushes inland from the ocean.
The waves raced by the Gullwing’s bulwarks with dizzy speed. We plowed on, gaining all we could in every reach, but noting likewise that the Seamew, when she was in sight, seemed to draw away from us. When we had beheld her in the mirage she must have been a long way behind.
I reckon Captain Bowditch prayed for foul weather. And he did not have to pray long in this latitude. We were in the district of the Boiling Seas. Fogs are frequent; gales sweep this section below the Horn almost continually—sometimes from one direction, sometimes from another. All the winds of heaven seem to meet here and gambol together.
“He’s runnin’ us into trouble, that’s what he ban doing,” croaked Stronson. “De old man, I mean. He iss not satisfied with the fair wedder; and who but a madt man vould crave for a gale down here under de Horn?”
But we younger fellows laughed at the old Swede. We were almost as much excited in the race between the two windjammers as were Captain Bowditch and Mr. Barney.
“Remember!” croaked Stronson. “The corpus lights wass not for nottings. Trouble iss coming.”
“But not necessarily trouble to the ship,” declared Tom Thornton. “Them St. Elmo’s fires foreruns death.”
“Dey ban mean bad luck, anyway,” growled Stronson.
Thank and I listened to all this croaking with a good deal of amusement. It surely never entered my head that the prophecy of the old men might be in anyway fulfilled.
And I certainly did not feel any foredoom of peril myself. The expected gale came down. We passed within sight of the islet named Cape Horn, with a terrific wind blowing and the waves running half mast high. The Seamew had then been dropped behind. Indeed, the last we saw of her, she was wallowing in our very wake.
“Gimme a breeze like this,” roared Captain Joe from his station, to Mr. Gates and Mr. Barney, “all the way to the time we take our tug, and we’ll be eating supper in Baltimore before that Seamew sights the Capes o’ Virginia.”
But this, of course, was only brag. The Seamew was not far behind us.
And then, that very night the prophecy of ill-luck was fulfilled, at least insofar as it affected me. Something broke loose and began to slat in the tops. Mr. Gates, roaring through the captain’s speaking trumpet, shouted for all hands. We had barely got to sleep below, and I reckon I was half way up the shrouds before I got both eyes open.
It was a black night, with the wind coming in strange, uneven puffs, and the deck all a-wash with loose water. The ship was rolling till the ends of her yardarms almost dipped in the leaping waves.
My foot slipped; futilely I clutched at the brace with the tips of my fingers. I knew I was lost, and the shriek I uttered was answered by Thank’s voice as I whirled downward:
I shot down, and down, and down—and then struck the sea and kept on descending. I thought of Mahomet’s coffin, hung between the heavens and the earth. I was hung between the ship’s keel and the bottom of the vast deep, swinging in that coffin which can never rot—the coffin of the ocean.