Chapter Eight.
Nor was this the worst, for hardly had we begun to draw breath again in the stifling vapour-bath-like atmosphere surrounding us, ere we could utter a cry, indeed, or exchange a word of speech with reference to what had just occurred, there arose a sudden and violent oscillation of the vessel, which pitched and rolled, and then heeled over suddenly to port, while an avalanche of water came thundering down the hatchway on top of our heads.
“Good Lord, we’re lost!” gulped out Mr Stokes as we all floundered together on the grating forming the floor of the engine-room, where fortunately the flood had washed us, instead of hustling us down the stoke-hold below, where all three of us would most inevitably have been killed by the fall. “A boiler’s burst and the ship broached-to!”
“Not quite so bad as that, sir,” sang out the voice of Grummet in the distance, the thick vapour lending it a far-away sound. “The vessel is recovering herself again, and the cylinder cover’s blown off, sir—that’s all!”
“All, indeed!” exclaimed the old chief in a despairing tone as he staggered to his feet, enabling Mr Fosset and myself to rise up too—an impossibility before, as he was right on top of us, and had served us out worse than the water had done. “Quite enough damage for me, and all of us, I think!”
“How’s your arm, Mr Stokes?” asked Mr Fosset as the atmosphere cleared a little and the engine-room lights glimmered through the misty darkness that now enveloped the place. “I hope it hasn’t been hurt by your tumble?”
“Oh, damn my arm!” cried the other impatiently, evidently more anxious about the machinery than his arm. “Have you shut off the steam?”
“Yes, sir,” replied his subordinate calmly. “I closed all the stop valves up here the moment I knew what had happened; and the men below in the stoke-hold have cut off the supply from the main pipe, while Mr Links has gone into the screw well to disconnect the propeller.”
“Very good, Grummet. So they be all right down below?”
“All right, sir.”
“Thank God for that! How about the fires?”
“Drowned out, sir, all but the one under the fire boiler on the starboard side.”
“You’d better look after that, to keep the bilge-pumps going, or else it’ll be all drowned out, with this lot of water coming down the hatchway every time the ship rolls! I do hope the skipper will lie-to and keep her head to sea until we can get the engines going again, though I’m afraid that’ll be a long job!”
Before Grummet could reply to this, Stoddart, the second officer, or rather engineer, came scrambling down from the saloon, where he had been assisting Garry O’Neil in making poor Jackson comfortable, the escape of the steam having evidently told its own tale to an expert like himself.
Although a younger man than Mr Stokes, his brains were considerably sharper and he was a better mechanic in every way; so now, when, after examining the damage done to the cylinder, he made light of the accident, instead of groaning over it like the old chief. Mr Fosset, I could see, and with him myself also, who shared his belief, saw that the injury was not irreparable and that it might certainly have been worse.
“Of course it can’t be done in a day!” Stoddart said; “still it can be patched up.”
“That’s all very well,” interposed Mr Stokes, holding to his despondent view of the situation. “But I’d like to know how you’re going to get that cracked cover off the cylinder with the vessel rolling like this!”
“Oh, I’ll manage that easy enough,” said the energetic fellow in his confident way. “I’ve done worse jobs than that in a heavy sea. Why, I’ll lash myself to the cylinder if it comes to the worse and unscrew the cover nut by nut, shifting my berth round till I have it off. Then if Grummet will see to getting the portable forge ready, and some old sheet iron or boiler plates for working and making into a patch, and if Links will turn out some new bolts and screws with the lathe, we’ll have everything in working order before we know where we are!”
“Bravo, my hearty!” cried Mr Fosset, lending Stoddart a hand to lash himself to the cylinder, while Grummet held a screw-wrench and other tools up to him. “You ought to be a sailor, you’re so smart!”
“I prefer my own billet,” retorted the other with an air of conscious power. “I am an engineer!”
Mr Fosset laughed.
“All right!” said he good-humouredly. “Every one to his trade!”
“Humph!” groaned Mr Stokes, who was leaning against the bulkhead, “looking very white about the gills,” as Grummet whispered to me. The steam gradually dispersing and the lights burning more brightly, enabled us to see his face better. “I suppose there’s nothing I can do?”
“No, nothing, sir,” answered Stoddart, busy at the moment with the first nut of the cylinder cover. “You can very safely leave matters to Grummet and me! And Mr O’Neil told me as I left the maindeck that you ought to go to your cabin and lie down, so as to rest your arm, or it might mortify, he says, when he would not answer for the consequences, you understand, sir?”
“Ah, that settles the matter; I won’t give our amateur sawbones a chance of lopping it off, as I daresay he’d like!” said poor Mr Stokes, with a feeble attempt at a joke. “Yes, I’d better go to my cabin, for I see I’m not wanted here; and, to tell the truth, I’ve an aching all over me, and feel rather tired and faint.”
“Then off you go to the doctor at once,” cried Mr Fosset, catching hold of him by his uninjured arm and leading him towards the hatchway again, the ship being pretty steady for the moment.
“You and I, too, Haldane, ought to be on deck helping the skipper and the rest, instead of stopping here, hindering these smart fellows at their work. Come along with me, my lad!”
Leaving Mr Stokes at the door of the saloon in charge of Weston, the steward, the first mate and I proceeded along the waist to the bridge, where we found Captain Applegarth pacing up and down in his customary jerky, impatient way, like the Polar bear in the Zoological Gardens, as I always thought.
“Well,” he said to Mr Fosset, bringing himself up short in front of the rail on our approach, “how are matters getting on below—badly, I’m afraid?”
The first mate explained. Spokeshave, who was at the other end of the bridge, coming up to listen, as usual, to the conversation.
“That’s good news, indeed!” said the skipper on hearing how Stoddart had set to work to repair the damage. “I thought the engines were completely broken-down. If it weren’t for poor Jackson, who, O’Neil told me just now, was in a bad way, I think we’d got out of the scrape pretty well, for the old barquey is comfortable enough now, and, though there’s a heavy sea running and it is still blowing stiff from the north’ard and the west’ard, the sky is clearer than it was, and I fancy we’ve seen the worst of the gale, eh?”
“I’m sure I hope so, sir,” replied Mr Fosset, not committing himself to any definite expression of opinion in the matter. “It has given us a rare good doing all round while it was about it, at an rate!”
“Aye, it has that,” said the skipper. “The old barquey, though, has come through it better than any one would have supposed, with all that deadweight amidships, considering that she broached-to awhile ago and got caught in the trough of the sea the very moment the machinery below gave out. By George, Fosset, we had a narrow squeak then, I can tell you!”
“I can quite believe that, sir,” said the other, looking round about and aloft, sailor-like, as he spoke. “For my part I feared the worst, I’m sure. However, all’s well that ends well, and the old barquey looks first rate, as you say, sir, in spite of all she’s gone through. She rides like a cork.”
She certainly was a capital seaboat and lay-to now as easily as if she were at anchor in the Mersey, though the wind was whistling through the rigging and the ocean far and wide white with foam, bowing and scraping to the big waves that rolled in after her like an old dowager duchess in a ball room, curtseying to her partner.
During the long time the first mate and I had been down below in the stoke-hold, the skipper had lowered the upper yards and housed her top-masts, getting her also under snugger canvas, the fore and mizzen topsails being set “scandalised,” as we call it aboard ship, that is, with the heads of the sails hauled up, and their sheets flattened taut as boards, so as to expose as little surface as possible to the wind, only just sufficient to keep the vessel with her head to sea, like a stag at bay.
Opportunity had also been taken, I noticed, to secure the broken engine-room skylight in a more substantial way than formerly, and so prevent any more green seas from flooding the hold, the opening having been planked over by the carpenter, and heavy bars of railroad iron, which formed part of our cargo, laid across, instead of the tarpaulin that was deemed good enough before and had given way when Mr Stokes—poor man—and the first mate and myself got washed down the hatchway by a wave that came over the side, crumpling the flimsy covering as if it were tissue paper.
Altogether, the outlook was more reassuring than when I had gone below; for although a fierce northerly gale was howling over the deep, making it heave and fret and lashing it up into wild mountainous billows, the heaven overhead was clear of all cloud, and the complaisant moon, which was at the full, but shining with a pale, peaceful light, while numerous stars were twinkling everywhere in the endless expanse of the firmament above, gazing down serenely at the riot of the elements below.
It was now close on midnight and Garry O’Neil came on deck to take the middle watch, it being his turn of duty.
“Well, doctor,” said the skipper, anxious to hear something about the invalids, “how’re your patients?”
“Both going on capitally; Jackson sleeping quietly, sir, though he can’t last out long, poor fellow!”
“And Mr Stokes?”
“Faith, he’s drivin’ his pigs to market in foine stoil; you should only hear him, cap’en!” answered the Irishman, looking out to windward. “Begorrah, ain’t it blowin’, though, sir! Sure, as we used to say at ould Trinity, de gustibus non est disputandum, which means, Mister Spokeshave, as yo’re cockin’ up your nose to hear what I’m after sayin’, it’s moighty gusty, an’ there’s no denyin’ it!”
The skipper laughed, as he generally did at Garry’s nonsensical, queer sayings.
“By George, O’Neil! I must go down and have a glass of grog to wash the taste of that awful pun out of my mouth!” he cried, turning to leave the bridge for the first time since he had come up there at sunset. “You can call me if anything happens or should it come to blow worse, but I shall be up and down all night to see how you’re getting on.”
“Och! the divvle dout ye!” muttered the Irishman in his quizzing way, as the skipper went down the ladder, giving a word to the boatswain and man at the wheel below as he passed them on his way up. “Ye niver give a chap the cridit of keeping a watch to himself!”
Soon after this I, too, left the deck and turned in, Garry O’Neil telling me he did not want me on the bridge and that I had better sleep while I could, a permission I readily availed myself of, tired out with all I had gone through and the various exciting episodes of the evening.
There was no change in the weather the following morning, the wind even blowing with greater force and the sea such as I had never seen it before, and such a sea as I hope never to experience again; so, in order that the ship might ride the more easily and those below in the engine-room better able to go on with the repair of the cylinder than they could with the old barquey pitching her bows under and then kicking up her heels sky high, varying her performances by rolling side to side violently, like a pendulum gone mad, the skipper had all our spare spars lashed together, and attaching a stout steel wire hawser to them, launched the lot overboard through a hole in the bulwarks, where one of the waves had made a convenient clean sweep, veering the hawser ahead with this “jetsam” to serve as a floating anchor for us, and moor the ship.
By this means we all had a more comfortable time of it, the old barquey no longer shipping water in any considerable quantity and there being less work below in the way of clearing it, all of the bilge-pumps, fortunately for us all, Stoddart and the engine-room staff were able to keep going; otherwise we must have foundered long since!
The gale continued without abatement all that day and the next, the second since our mishap, when, late in the afternoon the wind began to go down, veering from the north-west to the north, and so on, back to the eastern quadrant.
Soon after this, just before it got dark, an English man-of-war hove in sight, and, seeing our disabled condition, signalled to ask whether we required any assistance.
Through the clumsiness of Mr Spokeshave, who had charge of our signal department and showed his cleverness by hoisting the very numbers of the flags giving the skipper’s reply, that, though our engines were temporarily broken-down, they were fast being repaired, the captain of the man-of-war could not understand him; and so, fearing the worst, ranged up under our stern to see what help he could render in what he evidently considered, from Spokeshave’s “hoist,” to be a pressing emergency.
“Ship ahoy!” he shouted through a speaking trumpet from his quarter-deck aft, which was on a level with our bridge, the vessel, a splendid cruiser of the first-class, towering over the comparatively puny dimensions of the poor, broken-down Star of the North. “Shall I send a boat aboard with assistance?”
“No, thank you very much,” replied our skipper, taking off his cap and returning the greeting of the naval officer. “We’ve got over the worst of it now, sir, and will be soon under weigh again, as the weather is breaking.”
“Glad to hear it,” returned the other, who could read our name astern as she lay athwart us. “Where are you bound to?”
“New York, sir,” sang out the skipper. “Twelve days out from England. We’ve been disabled forty-eight hours.”
“Hope your engines will soon be in working order,” sang out the handsome officer from the deck of the man-of-war, giving some other order at the same minute, for I heard the shrill sound of a boatswain’s pipe and the rattle of feet along her deck. “Please report us when you reach your destination.”
“What name, sir?”
“Her Majesty’s ship Aurora, on passage from Bermuda to Halifax.”
With that he waved his hand, and her white ensign, whose blood-red cross of Saint George stood out in bold relief, dipped in parting salute to our vessel, which reciprocated the compliment as the man-of-war bore away on her course to the northward, a group of officers rollicking round their captain on her deck aft and gazing at us as she moved off rapidly under a full pressure of steam, evidently admiring our skipper’s wonderful sea anchor.
As the noble ship glided away through the still tempestuous sea against a strong headwind, a thing of beauty and of might—such a contrast to us lying there, almost at the mercy of the seas—I could not help thinking of the wondrous power of mind over matter displayed in our grand ocean steamers, and what a responsibility rests upon their engineers!
How little do the thousands of passengers who yearly go to and fro across the Atlantic know, or, indeed, care to know, that their comfort and the rate at which they travel through the water—they who talk so glibly of making the passage in such and such a time, be the sea smooth or rough, and the wind fine or contrary—that all this depends on the unceasing vigilance of the officers in charge of the vessel in which they voyage!
Do they even think, I wondered, that while they are sleeping, eating, enjoying themselves and doing what they please on board, even grumbling at some little petty defect or shortcoming which they think might be prevented, the engineers below, in an atmosphere in which they could not breathe, are incessantly watching the movements of the machinery and oiling each part at almost every instant of time, moving this slide and that, adjusting a valve here and tightening a nut there, ever cooling the bearings and raking at the furnaces and putting on fresh coal, this being done every hour of the day and night through the passage from land to land? Have any of them realised the fact that these same engineers and their able assistants, the firemen and oilmen and trimmers, the whole stoke-hold staff, so to speak, run a greater risk of their lives, in the event of an accident happening, than any one else in the ship, as, should a boiler or cylinder burst they may be scalded to death before the noise of the explosion could reach those above? Or again, should the vessel strike on a rock, the compartment below in which perforce they are compelled to work deep down in the vessel’s bowels will fill, from the very weight of the engines, quicker than any other part of the ship, most probably, when those confined below must necessarily be liable to be drowned, like rats in a hole, without the chances of escape possessed by the passengers and hands on board.
“No, I don’t suppose any one even thinks of such things,” said I to myself as I left the bridge and went towards the saloon to ask how poor Jackson was, uttering my thoughts unconsciously aloud as I reflected, and now that I considered their responsibility, thought how much poor old Mr Stokes, with his broken arm, and Stoddart and the others must have on their minds! “Hullo, who is that?”
It was Weston, the steward, who spoke.
“I wish you’d come and look at Jackson, sir,” he said. “The poor chap wore all right when Mr O’Neil comed down jist now, and a sleepin’ still as when you seed him awhile ago. But all of a suddink he starts up as he hears you a comin’ down the companion-way, sir, and is jabbering away like anythink!”
“Oh, but,” I exclaimed, “why did you leave him?”
“I wor afeard he’d jump overboard, or try to do somethink awful!”
“Nonsense! the very thing you are there for to prevent,” said I, going into the cabin, where I saw the poor fellow trying to get out of the cot. Turning angrily to Weston I repeated again, “You shouldn’t have left him for one moment in this state!”
“But, sir, I wanted to hail Mr O’Neil or somebody; I thought I oughter ’ave summun by to ’elp me, in case he becomed desperate-like, and I couldn’t make no one hear on deck, and that’s why I comed when I knowed you was a-passing along, sir.”
This was unanswerable logic, though Weston always had an answer for anything and everything.
Poor Jackson, though, did not look as if he would be “desperate” again in any shape or form.
That he was delirious I could see at a glance, for his eyes, great wild eyes, were wide open, staring at vacancy, fixed on the bulkhead that divided the cabin from the captain’s, which was just beyond; and he was very much excited, sitting up in the cot and, gesticulating violently with both his hands, and waving his arms about as he repeated some unintelligible gibberish over and over again, that I could not make out.
Presently he looked at me very straight as if he recognised me, and afterwards spoke a little more coherently.
“Ah, yes, sir, I recollect now,” he said at last. “You’re Mr Haldane, I know; but—where’s the little girl and the—the—dog?”
“Why, Jackson, old man,” I said, speaking soothingly to him, “what’s the matter with you? There’s no girl or dog, you know, here. Don’t you know where you are, my poor fellow?”
He got quite savage at this. There’s no reason in delirium!
“Of course I know where I am,” he screamed out, making a grab at Weston, as he writhed in torture from the internal and violent inflammation which must have set up. “I’m in—hell. I—can—feel—I—am—I am—burning—all over—inside me—here. And you? Oh, yes—I know you!”
This paroxysm left him again after a moment, and he lay back on his pillows, only to sit up the next minute again, however.
He now pointed his finger in the direction of the sea through the porthole, gazing earnestly as if he saw something there.
“The ship has come for me again—as—it did t’other night—you know—you know?” he said in agonised whispers. “There—there,—can’t you see it now? sailing—along—as—Mister—Haldane—said,—there with a—a—signal—of—distress—flying—the—flag—half-mast high! Why,—there it is,—now, as plain as—plain—can be; and, see—see they’re—lowering—a—boat,—look,—for me,—to take me aboard. Lend us a hand,—mate. I wants to halloo—to ’em and I—feels so bad—and—I can’t, I can’t—move myself. Hi,—there!—Ship ahoy! Wait—a—minute—can’t you? Ship ahoy!—I’m—coming—I’m—comi-ing. I’m—”
Then, raising his eyes to heaven, and drawing a long deep breath, something between a sob and a sigh, a breath that was his last, poor Jackson fell back on the pile of pillows behind him, stone dead!