Across the Spanish Main - Harry Collingwood (best novels for beginners TXT) 📗

red copper, and the western sky, instead of being clear as previously, was heavy with black clouds that were banking up and threatening to obscure the sun ere it set. Overhead, too, deep violet clouds made their appearance, tinged here and there to lurid red and orange by the rays of the fast-disappearing luminary. The air, moreover, felt dull and heavy, and carried a peculiar odour not unlike brimstone. This singular condition of the atmosphere was not without its effect on the men, who felt listless and disinclined to work. A sense of impending peril seemed to be hanging over all. The wind, too, was gradually dying away, and came fitfully and at intervals in hot, sulphurous puffs. The sea, which had been sparkling in thousands of tiny wavelets in the rays of the sun, began to assume a dark and oily appearance; and a long swell was beginning to make itself felt, causing the sails, as they drooped against the masts, to flap noisily with a sound like the crack of an arquebuse.

Gradually the sky grew blacker and more overcast, and the sea assumed the appearance of ink. The five ships of the squadron were all well within sight of one another, and lay motionless save for their uneasy heaving to the swell which was now fast-rising. Having lost steerage-way, they were “boxing the compass”, that is, were heading first in one direction and then in another, their bows slowly swinging until they pointed in various directions. Cavendish was on deck, looking anxiously at the sky, and presently he gave the order to all hands to shorten sail, and hailed the ship lying nearest to him to do the same.

The other vessels were lying too far away for a hail to carry, and there was no wind to lift the signal flags if hoisted; but the commodore was relieved to see the remainder of the fleet follow his example. In a few moments the canvas of the whole squadron was seen coming heavily down or being rolled up on the yards; and before very long all the ships were either under bare poles or being snugged down with everything secured ready for any emergency.

Cavendish, however, still remained very anxious: and he had cause enough for his anxiety. For his squadron had only recently come through a heavy action, and their timbers were strained; masts had been merely secured in a temporary manner, and the necessary stays and fore and aft preventers had not yet all been rigged; indeed, the process of bending new sails, ropes, etcetera, was still being gone on with although the ships had been got under way at the earliest possible moment. Shot-holes had been only roughly plugged, and in some of the vessels pumping was still being carried on day and night. The two prizes had been knocked about still more badly; in fact the whole squadron was in a very unfit state to encounter even a strong gale, and the coming storm threatened something very much worse than this. But everything was battened down and made as snug as possible, and all that Cavendish could now do was to trust in Providence and hope his ships would survive the tempest, since nothing had been left undone that mortal hands could possibly do.

A dull moaning sound at length began to make itself heard, and several hot sulphurous gusts of wind came down out of the north; the blocks overhead creaked, the cordage rattled, and in the heavy silence weird noises made themselves perceptible. Roger and Harry were standing on the poop, exchanging comments on the weather, and Cavendish and his chief officer, Richard Leigh, were in close conversation on the main-deck just below them, glancing anxiously from time to time toward the northward, where the sky had become black almost as midnight.

“Look there, Harry,” observed Roger, pointing to the main-topgallant yard; and, looking up, Harry perceived two lambent globes of greenish fire.

As he continued looking and wondering what they might be, other weird lights made their appearance on the yard-arms and on the very tops of the masts, presenting a beautiful, but at the same time a very eerie, spectacle. The same phenomenon was to be seen on the spars of every vessel in sight; and as it was by this time very nearly dark (there being scarcely any twilight in these latitudes), the whole squadron had the appearance of being illuminated.

“Whatever can it possibly be?” queried Harry; “I have never seen anything like it before.”

“I suspect,” returned Roger, “that it is in some way connected with the approaching storm. I have heard sailors speak of those lights as witch-lights, death-gleams, and corposants, and their appearance is said always to foretell disaster. I hope, however, that they do not forebode evil on this occasion, although things are looking decidedly unpleasant just now.”

Cavendish, hearing their conversation, looked up, and, observing the apprehension of the two, explained to them that the lights were termed, by the Portuguese navigators, “Lights of Saint Elmo”; and he assured the lads that the lights were not the cause of, but the harbingers of, storm.

“I fear, however,” added he, “that we are in for a bad time of it, and you youngsters had better beware lest you be swept overboard when the sea rises; for if anyone is washed over the side during what is coming he will have no chance of being picked up again. So take care, young men!”

Suddenly Roger perceived, far away to the north, a line of white, which looked like a thin streak of paint drawn across an ebony background, and the dull moaning noise in the air quickly grew in volume, at the same time becoming more shrill. Roger shouted down a warning to Leigh, who was standing near the wheel, and pointed away in the direction from which the line of white was approaching. Cavendish, who had just walked forward to make sure that all was as it should be, heard the warning, and shouted an order for all on deck to prepare for the outfly, and then, seizing his speaking-trumpet, rushed up on the poop beside the boys, and roared out a warning to the only ship within hail. Then, turning, he told the two lads to get down off the poop on to the main-deck, where they would be sheltered to a certain extent by the high bulwarks of the ship. In obedience to this command they hurried down the starboard accommodation ladder, whilst Cavendish made his way down the one on the port side, and all three reached the deck together.

Cavendish then shouted some order to Leigh at the wheel, but whatever it may have been, his words were drowned by the awful shriek and roar of the hurricane as it burst upon them.

To Harry and Roger, who had never experienced anything of the kind before, it seemed as though some mighty invisible hand had smitten the ship, throwing her over on to her beam-ends. She heeled down before the blast until it seemed as though she would capsize altogether, while the two boys were precipitated both together across the streaming decks into the lee scuppers, whence they found it impossible to escape owing to the excessive slant of the deck.

Leigh was hanging on to the wheel for his life, endeavouring to put the helm hard up, and so turn the ship’s stern to the wind to enable her to run before the gale—the only course possible under the circumstances.

Cavendish and a few men in the fore-part of the vessel were meanwhile striving manfully to hoist a staysail and get some way upon the ship, so as to help her to pay off before the sea, and so save her from being pooped by the waves, which were rising higher and higher every moment.

At length the stability of the ship prevailed, and she began to right. Then, Roger and Harry, rushing to Leigh’s assistance, helped him to put the helm up, and the ship paid off and began to scud before the wind, while Cavendish, encouraging his little body of men up in the eyes of the ship, managed to get the foresail set, after having had it nearly blown out of the bolt-ropes.

Looking astern, the boys saw the huge seas rushing after them, each one threatening to engulf the craft and send her to the bottom; and indeed that would speedily have been her fate had the men not been able to set the small rag of sail, and thus made it possible for her to keep ahead of the waves.

The foaming crests of the sea were ablaze with phosphorescence, and appeared to tower above the poop as high as the main-topsail-yard, and the sight of them sweeping along after the ship was positively appalling. The wind now began to increase in violence, literally tearing off the summits of the huge waves and sending them in spindrift hurtling across the deck like showers of shot that cut the face like the lash of a whip. The uproar was terrific, the shrieking and howling of the wind blending with the creaking and straining of the timbers of the labouring ship. Crash succeeded crash aloft, but they could distinguish nothing of what was happening because of the intense blackness. Yet the motion of the ship was becoming steadier, for the reason that the wind was so strong that it was actually beating down the sea.

Suddenly the two lads heard a rending and tearing sound, followed by a crash quite close to them, as something weighty smote the deck; and through the fearful din that raged round them there rang out the scream of a man in agony.

“Harry,” said Roger, “that is the mizzenmast come down, and it has injured some poor fellow! Let us endeavour to reach him if we can.”

And, still holding to each other, they began to feel their way carefully along the deck, which was now encumbered with wreckage.

Suddenly Harry cried out, and fell over something, which proved to be the wreck of the fallen mast.

“Are you hurt, Harry?” queried Roger.

“No, lad,” came the response, “and I think I have found the poor fellow whose scream we heard just now; he seems to have been crushed by the mast as it fell. If you will stoop down here, you will be able to feel his body. Had we but a lever of some kind we might perhaps be able to raise the mast sufficiently to drag him from underneath it.”

Roger climbed over the mast and, feeling for Harry, knelt down beside him, where he found the body that Harry had fallen upon when he tripped over the mast.

By touch he found that the poor seaman, whoever he was, was pinned down immovably to the deck, the mast lying right across the middle of his body.

Roger put his mouth to the ear of the man, and shouted: “Are you badly hurt; and can you move with assistance?”

He caught the reply: “Is that you, Master Trevose? I am pinned down by this spar, and I believe my leg is broken; but if you could manage to get the mast raised by ever so little, I believe I could scramble out from under it.”

“Can we find a lever anywhere?” shouted Roger.

“There are a couple of handspikes in the rack close to you; if you can find these, they will do,” replied the wounded seaman.

Roger worked his way to the rack indicated by the man, and fortunately found the handspikes at once. Taking them both, he quickly scrambled back again and handed one to Harry, retaining the other himself.

The two lads then prized the points under the mast, and threw all their weight on the shafts, using them as levers. They felt the mast quiver and move slightly.

“That’s the way, Master Trevose; one more lift like that and I’ll be out from under,” shouted the man.

Roger and Harry again exerted all their strength, the mast rose perceptibly, and they heard a cry of pain