Beadle's Dime Library No. 230 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

as comb, and we had the stu’nsails down in no ‘The: Flying Dutehman eyesore ee eee ee ee | ““Sailed into the thick of it, you mean,” I | tains of water breaking over us over? omnt. time, sent down skysails and royals as fast as | couldn’t belp saying. ‘*Tuat ship was never | only sheltered from the terrible by the we could lower away, and kept at it like crazy men. We were too busy even to look at the cloud J | to leeward; but every now and then, while the | men were obeyi it, and saw that it was rising like a black wall, an order, I stole a glance at | shutting out the stars, while the flashes of light- _ ning that went flickering over the face of it showed all sorts of black cayes and mountains that no one could see till the lightning told them where to look. When. I first spied the cloud it rose no higher then the ship’s rail; but by the time we had got the vessel stripped to a couple of staysails, the lightning was enough to blind one, and the thander kept rolling and crashing in the cloud, without stopping so much as half a second to give a man a chance to be heard. The last pert of our work had to be done by signs, but there was plenty of light to see them by, for such a flashing and glimmering I never saw before, or hope to see again. And as the storm advanced, so the wind fell; till it grew a dead calm, hotter than before, with the sea rising all round usin great oily swells, the ship rolling and pitehing, with no sail to steady her, till I feared she would roll the masts out; and we had to hold on by the belaying-pins and anything we could get, to keep from being knocked about like ninepins. calm and the big sea were worse to my mind than the fury of a typhoon; or it seemed 90 to me then; for it’s a terrible thing to have to wait for a calamity you can do nothing to stop. I stood by the taffrail, holding on toa belay- ing-pin, and looking at the black clouds, with the ship swaying to and fro till her yard-arms dipped in the great black billows; while, under the cloud, I could see a line gleaming with the same pale, corpse-like fire, I’d seen on the rig- ging of the Flying Dutchman, not long before. And I saw something else too, under the cloud, pie gs to stagger the stoutest heart that ever faced a storm. In front of the storm came the wave, and Lord help the ship if that caught her before she awe way on ber.* it came, first about wo miles off, but moving like a race-horse; and the nearer it came, the taller it looked, till it seemed to tower as bigh as our cross-trees. And then came a puff of wind from the eloud iteelf, cold as if it came off an iceberg. We heard the cold wind how! through the rigging, saw the two staysails swell out with a bang. and the ship began to move before the wall struck us. | Not a moment too soon, for she had onl ganeted way fairly when the great wave too wind out of our sails, and we felt the Spin- drift beginning to rise. If we had been lying still or rolling that wave would have swept over us. As it was, we had just enough way on us to let the end of it slip under, and then away we went up in the air, till it seemed we were on the side of a great mountain of water, that carried a dead calm, going at thirty miles an hour, with a great g arch that always seemed ready to fall on us, but never did, as we drove on. On we drove in this way for a good half-hour, I should think, when I heard a voice in my ear, saying: . ‘Captain, can’t I do anything to help to- night!” " looked around, and there was Mungo John- ston, a long, lanky young fellow, with red hair and a face full of freckles, close to me, when I thought him below. I shook my head. you can do is to keep still, You'd bet- ter g° below, sir.” “T can’t,” be said, earnestly. ‘‘I’m not so much of a landsman as you think. It’s notin a time hke this a man can play passenger, when meu’s hands are needed, I'll work anywhere you like.” ‘“‘No one can work now,”I said. ‘' We can only hold on and trust to Providence, my lad,” I could see his homely face in the glare of the Hgten’ng, one he looked as calm as any old sailor used to danger, “*Twas a fearsome sight,” he said, in his Scotch way, ‘to see the strange ship; bat this ts worse; isn’t it, captain?’ “ Shut ap about your ships.” . said, crossly, for I conkin't help thinking about it myself, and folt ashamed of it. “ nas that to do with the OR Goly that. we might have escaped the storm Peng bo ig alin pha oa Ph angen gwered, quietly. ° hurricane wave its a well all so-called & wave, seventy to a hig emeepson Eee oe In the great hurricane of 1” Neary) te cl large part of the island horses, cattle and peeple,—E». s built by morval hands, Mr, Johnston, and we’d | more terrible waves. best not talk of her.” I knew we were in the wr thick of the ty- I saw him give me a queer look out of his lit- | phoon, by the way the wind blew the tops of tle greenish eyes, and heard him mutter to him- | the waves off, in all sorts of directions, as it. self in some foreign lingo; so 1 said sharply: | chopped about. “Talk English to me, Mr. Johnston, if you The lightning no longer flashed as much ae it want to talk. What were you saying?” had, and after each flash the night was so black This time be smiled as he answered: that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, ‘‘I beg your pardon; ’twas only a line of As for the ship’s company, there was no means Persius—' O curas hominum ! Quantum est in | of telling what had become of them, whether rebus inane /’—which is much the same as ‘ Oh | they were all killed or not. vanity of vanities! what fools there are in the Tleard the wrecks of maste and spars thun- world!’ No allusion to present company, cap- | dering about the deck, and didn’t dare to rise tain; but you don’t mean to say that you be- | andtry tocut them away. It was more than lieve all that stuff the sailors talk about | any man’s life was worth to let go for a single Phantom Ships?” instant, just then. I'll own that I like to be captain of my own Between the waves and the flashes, I managed ship, and don’t like to have a passenger make | to make out that old Ike Hackett was near me, fun of me even in the middle of a typhoon; but | still holding on to what was left of the wheel, I i my temper, and answered him: while Mungo Johnston had hold of a belaying- ‘‘T dare say you know a good deal, my lad; pin, on the starboard quarter. but when you’ve been to sea forty years, you’ll Forrard of the stump of the mizzen-mast, I know there are many things no one can find | couldn't see for the confusion of wreck. out, and this is one of them.” And there we lay and held on. “T disagree with you,” he said, quick as | I guess we must have lain in the trongh of wink. ‘‘ There’s nothing in the world that can’t | that sea for a long time, when I heard Johnston be found out, if a man tries hard enough.” screech out: “Very well, then,” I said, ‘since you know ‘* Courage, captain! 80 much, find out when this wave will break | last!” over us, And then I began to see things round me in He looked up at the wave as coolly as if he’d | the gray light, and found that the typhoon had been on land, and then ahead, where the stars | spent its worst fury, and had turned into a still gleamed out of the sky, beyond the black | furious gale, with a gray sky, over which the border of cloud, that had swept down by this k seud clouds drove like birds in full flight time, nearly to the horizon. while the sea seemed to be rising higher a 9 tain,” he said quietly, ‘‘ we've been fa- | higher every moment, vored by Providence, as you call it, so far, We e could do nothing but wait for the light, are being driven along before the vortex of a | and it came on, as it always does on sea or land; typhoon, and as long as we stay here we’re safe, | for the wildest storm can’t stop the sun from ut we shall not stay here long.” ‘‘ Why not?” I asked—not that I thought he knew anything of it. ‘‘ Because the storm-cloud is still advancing a little faster than we are. Air moves faster than water. When the last star is blotted out, this wave will break over us.” I couldn’t help feeling uneasy at his words, as I looked out at the stars beyondtheclouds, He was right. We were driving along before the storm; but SS sheshsennteesssestsshstsssessssnensesiesenee Here comes the day at ming. And when it came, such a sight as the poor old ge showed I never bope to seeaguin. It makes me cry to think of it now. Not a mast left. The bowsprit remained, or part of it, with the jib-boom broken sbort off and hanging by the bobstays, the sea tossing it to and fro, and dashing it up against the cut- water and forward bulwar till the whole front of the ship lay open to the sea, with the | rail smashed into kindling- wood. the storm was getting ahead of us, en as | It seemed a miracle to me we had not all foun- we looked, I saw the last stars vanishing. | dered, or that the spars hadn’t knocked a bole in the ship’s side, long before, me | whey re rt time had ire at last to do something, for there was a possibility of movin CHAPTER IV. ' about; so I turned to Mongo Johnston 4 THE WAVE BREAKS. yelled: AND just as.the further horizon still showed ‘‘ You said you’d work, Help metocutaway itself in a faint line with a single star blazingin that wreck!” the midst of it, I heard a loud crash of thunder He nodded and scrambled up, while we three over our heads, and down came a shower of —Hackett, Mungo and me—made a dash for the ray from the crest of the wave, followed by a axes at the foot of the mizzen mast. gust of wind that struck the ship like the blow | Thank Providence, they were all there yet, and we got at. them, and made our way to the | miszen-rigging, in the very place where Mamie Bruce’s hammock had been slung the night be- fore. I could see the remains of the flimsy thing en- tangled up in the cords of the dead eyes, and it made me sigh to think of what was to become of a hammer. I heard the sound of cracking sticks that told me something was going, and Johnston yelled out, as if he was giving orders: “ Here she comes, captain! Hold on all,” I didn’t heed that he was almost taking the we away from me, as I looked up; for the | t sight I saw made me forget everything but of that poor child in the trials I saw before us. death. | But we’d no time to think of anything but our The crest of the wave was broken by a rag- | work, as we hacked away at the lanyards cf the ged gap, bordered with fiery green spray, | mizzen-rigging, and got it all clear at last. and a It didn’t take us as Jong as we had feared it would, when once we got into a place where we could work, between seas, The tugging of the waves at the timbers helped us by stretching the lanyards taut, and once the first parted, the rest went very quickly. But all this time I was looking for the men, and couldn’t find bide nor bair of one of them, as we worked on, till we had got to the re- mains of the main rigging, when I saw some- thing crouched under the cover of the main hatch, and made it out at last to be two men lashed fast to ring-bolts, and seemingly stone dead, so still did they he, Waiting till we had cut the main rigging, the sea helped us in the rest of our and sent the rs thundering overboard with a crash; while the ship, relieved of the weight, lifted up her quarter, 5 Figg wl bows nearly under, and began to drift leeward of the mass of wreck, which was still held to us by the rigging on the port side of the ship. Ks tt did so, I saw the two men move, and one of them sat when I knew Lars Nelson, he big, Hane. with a friend of his, as big ar himself, called Erik Andersen, And what amazed me most, was to see Lars boki up a bot the amd yell out something in Danish to hit friend, which showed me thet he was drunk. thongh how he got his liquor I didn’t know. Andersen growled out a curse in Danish, and struggled up by his friend —_—s at the black sky behind them’ and the ship laboring in | bottle, and the next thing 1 knew, the two of the sea, a perfect wreck of masts | good-for-nothing brutes were buckin each , belpless as & log. other’s wrestling and roe & 6 tevo I saw that, I knew it was no use to | madmen, while the broken bottle ep all the sree Oey more. No human power could get eet I was glad to see) and robbed yond looked like a black gulf, while tons and tons of water were coming down on oa Spindrift, as if we were under Niagara lls.. I held on to the belaying-pin and flattened myself out on the deck; and then down it came. t followed I can’t tell for the life of me. It seemed as if the ship was swallowed up in a single second and we were carried along like a chip in a mill-race, choking for breath and hokding on, the belt we knew how, with the water tearing at us like a giant, trying to break our grip and carry us off. How | it lasted I don’t know. It couldn’t have been of course, for I was able to hold my breath; and I know that no man can do that, over a minute, except he’s had long prac tice for a living, keeping under water. I felts my head whirlin Seay wid chest heaving, like I was struggling, and I didn’t dare to take in my breath, when I knew the water would kill me dead. And then, all of a sudden, I felt the air again, and had time to take an- other gulp of it, before the sea’ swallowed us all up, the second time. But the second wave didn't last as long as the first, and I — with spray; 4 of the trough of the sea, without o stitch | them to How long they woukd maple | it’s bard te say, but a great sea came in the thick 3. z & s ay on the shi bufleted the moun- Eomicbooks -—s — _ com