“God help the boats! It’s no gale! It’s a typhoon!” the sailing-master shouted to Chris at eleven o’clock. “Too much canvas! Got to get two more reefs into that mainsail, and got to do it right away!” He glanced at the old captain, shivering in oilskins at the binnacle and holding on for dear life. “There’s only you and I, Chris – and the cook; but he’s next to worthless!”
In order to make the reef, it was necessary to lower the mainsail, and the removal of this after pressure was bound to make the schooner fall off before the wind and sea because of the forward pressure of the jib.
“Take the wheel!” the sailing-master directed. “And when I give the word, hard up with it! And when she’s square before it, steady her! And keep her there! We’ll heave to again as soon as I get the reefs in!”
Gripping the kicking spokes, Chris watched him and the reluctant cook go forward into the howling darkness. The Sophie Sutherland was plunging into the huge head-seas and wallowing tremendously, the tense steel stays and taut rigging humming like harp-strings to the wind. A buffeted cry came to his ears, and he felt the schooner’s bow paying off of its own accord. The mainsail was down!
He ran the wheel hard-over and kept anxious track of the changing direction of the wind on his face and of the heave of the vessel. This was the crucial moment. In performing the evolution she would have to pass broadside to the surge before she could get before it. The wind was blowing directly on his right cheek, when he felt the Sophie Sutherland lean over and begin to rise toward the sky-up-up-an infinite distance! Would she clear the crest of the gigantic wave?
Again by the feel of it, for he could see nothing, he knew that a wall of water was rearing and curving far above him along the whole weather side. There was an instant’s calm as the liquid wall intervened and shut off the wind. The schooner righted, and for that instant seemed at perfect rest. Then she rolled to meet the descending rush.
Chris shouted to the captain to hold tight, and prepared himself for the shock. But the man did not live who could face it. An ocean of water smote Chris’s back and his clutch on the spokes was loosened as if it were a baby’s. Stunned, powerless, like a straw on the face of a torrent, he was swept onward he knew not whither. Missing the corner of the cabin, he was dashed forward along the poop runway a hundred feet or more, striking violently against the foot of the foremast. A second wave, crushing inboard, hurled him back the way he had come, and left him half-drowned where the poop steps should have been.
Bruised and bleeding, dimly conscious, he felt for the rail and dragged himself to his feet. Unless something could be done, he knew the last moment had come. As he faced the poop, the wind drove into his mouth with suffocating force. This brought him back to his senses with a start. The wind was blowing from dead aft! The schooner was out of the trough and before it! But the send of the sea was bound to breach her to again. Crawling up the runway, he managed to get to the wheel just in time to prevent this. The binnacle light was still burning. They were safe!
That is, he and the schooner were safe. As to the welfare of his three companions he could not say. Nor did he dare leave the wheel in order to find out, for it took every second of his undivided attention to keep the vessel to her course. The least fraction of carelessness and the heave of the sea under the quarter was liable to thrust her into the trough. So, a boy of one hundred and forty pounds, he clung to his herculean task of guiding the two hundred straining tons of fabric amid the chaos of the great storm forces.
Half an hour later, groaning and sobbing, the captain crawled to Chris’s feet. All was lost, he whimpered. He was smitten unto death. The galley had gone by the board, the mainsail and running-gear, the cook, everything!
“Where’s the sailing-master?” Chris demanded when he had caught his breath after steadying a wild lurch of the schooner. It was no child’s play to steer a vessel under single-reefed jib before a typhoon.
“Clean up for’ard,” the old man replied. “Jammed under the fo’c’sle-head, but still breathing. Both his arms are broken, he says, and he doesn’t know how many ribs. He’s hurt bad.”
“Well, he’ll drown there the way she’s shipping water through the hawse-pipes. Go for’ard!” Chris commanded, taking charge of things as a matter of course. “Tell him not to worry; that I’m at the wheel. Help him as much as you can, and make him help” – he stopped and ran the spokes to starboard as a tremendous billow rose under the stern and yawed the schooner to port – “and make him help himself for the rest. Unship the fo’castle hatch and get him down into a bunk. Then ship the hatch again.”
The captain turned his aged face forward and wavered pitifully. The waist of the ship was full of water to the bulwarks. He had just come through it, and knew death lurked every inch of the way.
“Go!” Chris shouted, fiercely. And as the fear-stricken man started, “And take another look for the cook!”
Two hours later, almost dead from suffering, the captain returned. He had obeyed orders. The sailing-master was helpless, although safe in a bunk; the cook was gone. Chris sent the captain below to the cabin to change his clothes.
After interminable hours of toil, day broke cold and gray. Chris looked about him. The Sophie Sutherland was racing before the typhoon like a thing possessed. There was no rain, but the wind whipped the spray of the sea mast-high, obscuring everything except in the immediate neighborhood.
Two waves only could Chris see at a time – the one before and the one behind. So small and insignificant the schooner seemed on the long Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward and down into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself in the smother of foam at the bottom. Then the recovery, another mountain, another sickening upward rush, another poise, and the downward crash. Abreast of him, to starboard, like a ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing apace with the schooner. Evidently, when washed overboard, he had grasped and become entangled in a trailing halyard.
For three hours more, alone with this gruesome companion, Chris held the Sophie Sutherland before the wind and sea. He had long since forgotten his mangled fingers. The bandages had been torn away, and the cold, salt spray had eaten into the half-healed wounds until they were numb and no longer pained. But he was not cold. The terrific labor of steering forced the perspiration from every pore. Yet he was faint and weak with hunger and exhaustion, and hailed with delight the advent on deck of the captain, who fed him all of a pound of cake-chocolate. It strengthened him at once.
He ordered the captain to cut the halyard by which the cook’s body was towing, and also to go forward and cut loose the jib-halyard and sheet. When he had done so, the jib fluttered a couple of moments like a handkerchief, then tore out of the bolt-ropes and vanished. The Sophie Sutherland was running under bare poles.
By noon the storm had spent itself, and by six in the evening the waves had died down sufficiently to let Chris leave the helm. It was almost hopeless to dream of the small boats weathering the typhoon, but there is always the chance in saving human life, and Chris at once applied himself to going back over the course along which he had fled. He managed to get a reef in one of the inner jibs and two reefs in the spanker, and then, with the aid of the watch-tackle, to hoist them to the stiff breeze that yet blew. And all through the night, tacking back and forth on the back track, he shook out canvas as fast as the wind would permit.
The injured sailing-master had turned delirious and between tending him and lending a hand with the ship, Chris kept the captain busy. “Taught me more seamanship,” as he afterward said, “than I’d learned on the whole voyage.” But by daybreak the old man’s feeble frame succumbed, and he fell off into exhausted sleep on the weather poop.
Chris, who could now lash the wheel, covered the tired man with blankets from below, and went fishing in the lazaretto for something to eat. But by the day following he found himself forced to give in, drowsing fitfully by the wheel and waking ever and anon to take a look at things.
On the afternoon of the third day he picked up a schooner, dismasted and battered. As he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft, were aboard the Sophie Sutherland.
Having wandered so far from their own vessel, they had taken refuge on the strange schooner just before the storm broke. She was a Canadian sealer on her first voyage, and as was now apparent, her last.
The captain of the Sophie Sutherland had a story to tell, also, and he told it well – so well, in fact, that when all hands were gathered together on deck during the dog-watch, Emil Johansen strode over to Chris and gripped him by the hand.
“Chris,” he said, so loudly that all could hear, “Chris, I gif in. You vas yoost so good a sailorman as I. You vas a bully boy, und able seaman, und I pe proud for you!”
“Und Chris!” He turned as if he had forgotten something, and called back, “From dis time always you call me ‘Emil’ mitout der ‘Mister!’”
How they ran away
by Louisa May Alcott
Two little boys sat on the fence whittling arrows one fine day. Said one little boy to the other little boy, -
“Let’s do something jolly.”
“All right. What will we do?”
“Run off to the woods and be hunters.”
“What can we hunt?”
“Bears and foxes.”
“Mullin says there ain’t any round here.”
“Well, we can shoot squirrels and snare wood-chucks.”
“Haven’t got any guns and trap.”
“We’ve got our bows, and I found an old trap behind the barn.”
“What will we eat?”
“Here’s our lunch; and when that’s gone we can roast the squirrels and cook the fish on a stick. I know how.”
“Where will you get the fire?”
“Got matches in my pocket.”
“I’ve got a lot of things we could use. Let’s see.”
And as if satisfied at last, cautious Billy displayed his treasures, while bold Tommy did the same.
Besides the two knives there were strings, nails, matches, a piece of putty, fish-hooks, and two very dirty handkerchiefs.
“There, sir, that’s a first-rate fit-out for hunters; and with the jolly basket of lunch Mrs. Mullin gave us, we can get on tip-top for two or three days,” said Tommy, eager to be off.
“Where shall we sleep?” asked Billy, who liked to be comfortable both night and day.
“Oh, up in trees or on beds of leaves, like the fellows in our books. If you are afraid, stay at home; I’m going to have no end of a good time.” And Tommy crammed the things back into his pockets as if there were no time to lose.
“Pooh! I ain’t afraid. Come on!” And jumping down Billy caught up his rod, rather ashamed of his many questions.
No one was looking at them, and they might have walked quietly off; but that the “running away” might be all right, both raced down the road, tumbled over a wall, and dashed into the woods as if a whole tribe of wild Indians were after them.
“Do you know the way?” panted Billy, when at last they stopped for breath.
“Yes, it winds right up the mountain; but we’d better not keep to it, or some one will see us and take us back. We are going to be real hunters and have adventures; so we must get lost, and find our way by the sun and the stars,” answered Tommy, who had read so many Boys’ Books his little head was a jumble of Texan Rangers, African Explorers, and Buffalo Bills; and he burned to outdo them all.
“What will our mothers say if we really get lost?” asked Billy, always ready with a question.
“Mine won’t fuss. She lets me do what I like.”
That was true; for Tommy’s poor mamma was tired of trying to keep the lively little fellow in order, and had got used to seeing him come out of all his scrapes without much harm.
“Mine will be scared; she’s always afraid I’m going to get hurt, so I’m careful. But I guess I’ll risk it, and have some fun to tell about when we go home,” said Billy, trudging after Captain Tommy, who always took the lead.
These eleven-year-old boys were staying with their mothers at a farm-house up among the mountains; and having got tired of the tame bears, the big barn, the trout brook, the thirty colts at pasture, and the society of the few little girls and younger boys at the hotel near by, these fine fellows longed to break loose and “rough it in the bush,” as the hunters did in their favorite stories.
Away they went, deeper and deeper into the great forest that covered the side of the mountain. A pleasant place that August day; for it was cool and green, with many brooks splashing over the rocks, or lying in brown pools under the ferns. Squirrels chattered and raced in the tall pines; now and then a gray rabbit skipped out of sight among the brakes, or a strange bird flew by. Here and there blackberries grew in the open places, sassafras bushes were plentiful, and black-birch bark was ready for chewing.
“Don’t you call this nice?” asked Tommy, pausing at last in a little dell where a noisy brook came tumbling down the mountain side, and the pines sung overhead.
“Yes; but I’m awful hungry. Let’s rest and eat our lunch,” said Billy, sitting down on a cushion of moss.
“You always want to be stuffing and resting,” answered sturdy Tommy, who liked to be moving all the time.
He took the fishing-basket, which hung over his shoulder by a strap, and opened it carefully; for good Mrs. Mullin had packed a nice lunch of bread and butter, cake and peaches, with a bottle of milk, and two large pickles slipped in on the sly to please the boys.
Tommy’s face grew very sober as he looked in, for all he saw was a box of worms for bait and an old jacket.
“By George! we’ve got the wrong basket. This is Mullin’s, and he’s gone off with our prog. Won’t he be mad?”
“Not as mad as I am. Why didn’t you look? You are always in such a hurry to start. What shall we do now without anything to eat?” whined Billy; for losing his lunch was a dreadful blow to him.
“We shall have to catch some fish and eat blackberries. Which will you do, old cry-baby?” said Tommy, laughing at the other boy’s dismal face.
“I’ll fish; I’m so tired I can’t go scratching round after berries. I don’t love ‘em, either.” And Billy began to fix his line and bait his hook.
“Lucky we got the worms; you can eat ‘em if you can’t wait for fish,” said Tommy, bustling about to empty the basket and pile up their few possessions in a heap. “There’s a quiet pool below here, you go and fish there. I’ll pick the berries, and then show you how to get dinner in the woods. This is our camp; so fly round and do your best.”
Then Tommy ran off to a place near by where he had seen the berries, while Billy found a comfortable nook by the pool, and sat scowling at the water so crossly, it was a wonder any trout came to his hook. But the fat worms tempted several small ones, and he cheered up at the prospect of food. Tommy whistled while he picked, and in half an hour came back with two quarts of nice berries and an armful of dry sticks for the fire.
“We’ll have a jolly dinner, after all,” he said, as the flames went crackling up, and the dry leaves made a pleasant smell.
“Got four, but don’t see how we’ll ever cook ‘em; no frying-pan,” grumbled Billy, throwing down the four little trout, which he had half cleaned.