第73章
What is that? Close on the lee bow: chose: the flash of a gun, another;another; another. A ship in distress firing minute-guns in their ears;yet no sound: human thunder silenced, as God's thunder was silenced, by the uproar of His greater creatures in their mad rage. The _Agra_ fired two minute-guns to let the other poor ship know she had a companion in her helplessness and her distress, and probably a companion in her fate.
Even this companionship added its mite of danger: for both ships were mere playthings of the elements; they might be tossed together; and then, what would be their fate? Two eggs clashed together in a great boiling caldron, and all the life spilt out.
Yet did each flash shoot a ray of humanity and sympathy into the thick black supernatural horror.
And now came calamity upon calamity. A tremendous sea broke the tiller at the rudder-head, and not only was the ship in danger of falling off and shipping the sea, but the rudder hammered her awfully, and bade fair to stave in her counter, which is another word for Destruction. Thus death came at them with two hands open at once.
These vessels always carry a spare tiller: they tried to ship it; but the difficulty was prodigious. No light but the miserable deck-lantern--one glowworm in Egypt supernaturally darkened--the _Agra_ never on an even keel, and heeling over like a seesaw more than a ship; and then every time they did place the tiller, and get the strain on with their luff tackles, the awful sea gave it a blow and knocked it away like a hair.
At last they hit it off, or thought they had, for the ponderous thumps of the rudder ceased entirely. However, the ship did not obey this new tiller like the old one: her head fell off in an unlucky moment when seven waves were rolling in one, and, on coming to the windward again, she shipped a sea. It came in over her bow transversely; broke as high as the mainstay, and hid and buried the whole ship before the mast; carried away the waist bulwarks on both sides, filled the launch, and drowned the live stock which were in it; swept four water-butts and three men away into the sea, like corks and straws; and sent tons of water down the forescuttle and main hatchway, which was partly opened, not to stifle the crew, and flooded the gun-deck ankle-deep.
Dodd, who was in his cabin, sent the whole crew to the pumps, except the men at the wheel, and prepared for the worst.
In men so brave as he was, when Hope dies Fear dies. His chief care now was to separate the fate of those he loved from his own. He took a bottle, inserted the fatal money in it with a few words of love to his wife, and of direction to any stranger that should fall in with it;secured the cork with melted sealing-wax, tied oilskin over it and melted wax on that; applied a preparation to the glass to close the pores; and to protect it against other accidents, and attract attention, fastened a black painted bladder to it by a stout tarred twine, and painted _"Agra_, lost at sea," in white on the bladder. He had logged each main incident of the storm with that curt business-like accuracy which reads so cold and small a record of these great and terrible tragedies. He now made a final entry a little more in character with the situation:
"About eight bells in the morning watch shipped a heavy sea forward. The rudder being now damaged, and the ship hardly manageable, brought the log and case on check, expecting to founder shortly. Sun and moon hidden this two days, and no observation possible; but by calculation of wind and current, we should be about fifty miles to the southward of the Mauritius. God's will be done."He got on deck with the bottle in his pocket and the bladder peeping out:
put the log and its case down on deck, and by means of the life-lines crawled along on his knees, and with great difficulty, to the wheel.
Finding the men could hardly hold on, and dreading another sea, Dodd, with his own hands, lashed them to the helm.