CHAPTER XXXII
RELATING HOW THE SILVER SWAN WAS HEARD FROM
AS the sun rose and lit up the sea more fully Brandon could plainly view the wreck which the steamer was now rapidly approaching.
It was not, he believed at first glance, the Silver Swan. It was the hull of a vessel, sunk a good deal at the stern; but one mast was standing, and a great tangle of cordage and torn sails was still attached to it.
“That’s never the Silver Swan, lad,” Caleb declared. “She was swept as clean as a whistle. This was a square rigged vessel, however.”
The steamer ran in very close to the wreck, and Brandon made out the words, “Porpoise, New Haven,” under the bows.
The derelict gave every appearance of being what Mr. Coffin called “an old stager,” and labored in the seas most heavily.
“That’s a mighty dangerous wreck,” Caleb declared reflectively, as the whaleback steamed slowly by. “It wouldn’t take long to sink her, although ’twould cost something. What d’ye say, Mr. Coffin—will you go aboard her, and if she isn’t worth towing in, drop enough dynamite into her hold to blow her up? You know how to run that battery Mr. Pepper had put aboard.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the first officer replied, and bustled away to order a boat launched at once.
By special request Brandon was allowed to accompany the expedition. The old hulk was found to be in ballast, and Mr. Coffin therefore placed a quantity of the powerful explosive in her hold, attached the wire, and they pulled back toward the steamer.
When the small boat was out of danger the officer touched the button and an instant later the still morning air was shattered by a terrific roar.
The wreck seemed almost to rise from the sea, a great volume of fire and smoke issued from her amidships, and she broke in two, the water rushing in and filling the interior with a sound like the echo of the explosion.
Slowly the derelict settled, her stern going first, until the very tip of the tottering mast disappeared below the surface. Only a few splintered deck timbers, which would soon follow the ship to the bottom, remained to show where the hulk had disappeared.
“Good job, that,” Caleb declared, when the boat had returned to the steamer, “though it cost us three hours’ time. That hulk had been floating for nearly a year, according to the pilot charts.”
The second day after the blowing up of the derelict Porpoise, a steamship was sighted by the whaleback. It was the City of Havana, of the James E. Ward line, and, by running in close, Caleb was able to hold converse with the ship’s captain.
To the satisfaction of the captain of Number Three, the City of Havana’s commander could, and did, give him some information about the derelict brig of which they were in search.
The steamship had sighted the Silver Swan in latitude 28, longitude 69:13, and reported the vessel in a remarkable state of preservation. The spring storms had not appeared to damage her much.
This news was hailed joyfully by Caleb and Brandon, and the course of the whaleback was changed a little more to the east.
The weather, however, which had been all that they could wish thus far since leaving Savannah, began to get nasty. The sea became short and choppy, though without apparently affecting the sailing of the whaleback, and the sky looked bad.
Finally, after a day or two of this, a dead calm occurred, and Caleb shook his head sagely.
“We’re goin’ to ketch it,” he declared, “an’ we’ll have a chance to find out how the steamer rides in a gale, whether we want to or not.”
And he was right. While the whaleback steamed slowly ahead, a heavy swell came on, although there was not a breath of air stirring. The sea heaved and rolled, seemingly in throes of agony.
At first the cause was entirely submarine. At length, however, there was a groaning, moaning sound, which gradually increased in volume, until, with a sudden roar, the hurricane swooped down upon them. The waves were tossed toward the wind driven, leaden clouds with awful fury, breaking like surf over the whaleback; but the steamer withstood the fearful shocks as easily as she had the choppy waves which preceded the gale.
She kept but little headway, however, and as the black night shut down about the craft, Brandon realized fully the terrible risks and hazardous chances taken by “those who go down to the sea in ships.”
For two days the gale continued, but with less fury than signaled its first appearance. Number Three might have put back into Bermuda, but she acted so well that Caleb decided to stay outside and thus lose no possible opportunity of sighting the Silver Swan.
Brandon had never contemplated what a storm at sea meant before and he was thankful indeed that he was not upon a sailing vessel.
During the first of the gale they had sighted several vessels, with close reefed sails, scudding before the wind, but all were riding the sea well.
Late in the afternoon of the second day, however, the lookout, who was lashed to the top of the wheelhouse, reported a wreck ahead.
At first Caleb and Brandon, who were both armed with glasses, could not make it out clearly enough to decide what it was.
Finally the old seaman declared with conviction.
“It’s the hull of a vessel an’ her masts have been carried away sure.”
“Do you think it is the brig, Caleb?” the young second mate asked eagerly.
“Ye got me there. It may be, and then ag’in it may not. We’ll run down an’ see.”
The storm was by no means abating and Caleb dared not run very close to the wreck.
As they approached it, however, the former mate of the Silver Swan became convinced that it was not the wreck they sought. He was familiar with every line of Captain Horace Tarr’s vessel and this, he declared, was not it.
Suddenly Swivel’s sharp eyes caught sight of something which the others had not seen.
“There’s something tied to that stump of a mast, sir,” he exclaimed, pointing toward the forward part of the wreck. “It’s a flag o’ some kind.”
“It’s a signal!” Mr. Coffin declared. “There’s some poor soul on the wreck. See—there he is.”
At the instant he spoke they all descried a moving figure on the derelict—some one, who, clinging with one hand to the cordage which still hung to the mast, with the other waved a signal frantically at the approaching steamer.
“Great Heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Coffin, strongly moved by the scene. “What shall we do? No mortal man can help him in this gale.”
“We must do something,” Caleb replied.
“A boat couldn’t live in this sea, sir,” said the first officer despairingly.
“We must try to throw him a line.”
But upon trial it was found that it would be exceedingly hazardous to run down near enough to the wreck for that. The hull was rolling so frightfully that it might turn completely over at any moment and carry the steamer to the bottom with it should they run in too near.