Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 1.Russell, William Clark
General
Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 1.
Russell, William Clark
English fiction -- 19th century; Sea stories
'"Go it, old bucket"--I forget what more,' said I.
'If it were not for Mr. Moore,' said she, looking at me with
affectionate eyes, 'I would stake all that my husband owns in this ship
that you ended in marrying a sailor.'
I quietly shook my head.
'Well, the sea has used you handsomely, anyway,' said she. 'I dare say
Sir Mortimer is at this minute wondering where you are. How he and Mr.
Moore will have pored over the map of the world, to be sure. But little
can they guess where you are this very day. This is the terrible Horn
your father was so afraid of for your sake. It's not so cold, is it?
And yet we are further south than it is customary for ships to venture.
What would Sir Mortimer think of such a sight as you saw to-day--that
great iceberg, I mean? Fancy such an object floating just opposite your
house. What a fortune for the boatmen!'
Just then I heard a shouting on deck; it came dulled through the
planks, yet I caught a sharp, fierce note of instant need in it. A
minute later the ship leaned down to an outfly of wind that seemed of
hurricane force. I heard the thunder of the storm, and saw the lee
cabin windows drowned in the green brine, whilst the weather ports
winked like blinded eyes with the sudden lashing of foam. My chair gave
way, and with a shock I fell with it and rolled down the deck, and for
some moments lay helpless, astonished, terrified to the last degree,
but unhurt.
Mrs. Burke clung to a stanchion, and I feared, whilst I watched her
stout form swinging off it, to see her let go, lest she should flash
down upon me and break my neck or maim me for life with her weight. I
could not imagine what was happening save that a sudden hurricane had
struck the ship and thrown her on her beam ends. She lay as though
capsized, with a horrible roaring, pounding thunderous noise of water
on the weather side of her, and frightful sounds in her hold, threaded
with dim notes of rending, as though sails were flogging in rags, or
masts going over the sides.
I managed to get on my knees, and in that posture remained a minute
like one on the roof of a house. Such was the slant of the deck
I could no more have crawled up it to where Mrs. Burke hung by a
stanchion than up a wall. This awful sensation of the ship being upset
was dreadfully increased and made a sickness of for the very soul
itself to faint under, by her motions in the vast hollow swell which
the hurricane was tearing into shreds. Whenever a pause of the beating
sea left a weather cabin window weeping, yet clear to that extent, I
could judge it was about black as midnight outside. The globe of the
lamp had swung hard against the deck, and rarely came from it even
with a windward roll. All in a moment the ship lurched over yet, till
you would have thought she was turning keel up, and this motion was
accompanied by such a thump of the sea, such a shattering inleaping
of tons of water, it was as though a huge gun or a whole broadside of
pieces had been fired on board of us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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