The Golden Ocean (16 page)

The third was that Keppel was still alive. He was low, very low, and he appeared to have shrunk to the size of a child; but he kept up his spirits amazingly, and Peter hoped that if only they could make Juan Fernandez within the week—for bitterly against their heart, though forced by sickness and by dwindling stores, they were to make for the next rendezvous in the morning—then they would save him, for everybody knew that Juan Fernandez abounded with scurvy-grass and a hundred such remedies. A week was a fair allowance for the distance between Socorro and the supposed position of Juan Fernandez: but then again there was that infernal question of longitude; their charts all differed, and the island was no more than a speck in the vast Pacific.

‘Look out for squalls,’ said Ransome, breaking in upon his meditation. Peter looked up. ‘Well, that’s the queer sky of the world,’ he said, looking at the strange massing of violet light in the west. ‘I thought we had seen everything; but we have not, I find.’ He looked quickly over his shoulder in the direction of the land, and there surely enough rose the infinitely remote white peaks of the Cordillera, far within the continent. The cruel black precipices of the coast were too far beneath the horizon to be seen, but they were there, and a great deal nearer than the mountains.

The crew were already at their stations: the order to hand the topsails came at the same time as a distant growl of thunder. Peter had time to notice a sinister trembling of the sea as he swung up the starboard foreshrouds, on the weather side: it was a trembling ripple of the surface over and above the heavy swell from the west and it travelled with an extraordinary rapidity, jarring the heavy vessel for a second as it passed.

The fore-topsail was half clewed-up. Peter was working between Sean and Sergeant Burroughs of the Marines: leaning
over to re-tie the soldier’s gasket he heard the flat air suck and sigh. He braced himself for the expected blow, but it came from the wrong direction. The false wind plucked him backwards like a straw; then in an instant the true wind smashed him against the yard with a greater force than he had ever known. The sail flew from its gaskets: momentarily he saw the half-flowed sheet like a bar below him and then it parted silently, the great crack lost in the all-pervading shriek of wind. The sail was a streaming mass, split in every seam, threshing with diabolical strength as it fouled the stays. Sean already had his knife at work, slicing through the earrings. Peter whipped out his own, and the canvas shot away, straight on the wind. He leant inwards to try to make the soldier understand what to do: but there was no soldier there.

In a breathing-space before the wind redoubled they reached the deck. It was a scene of shocking disorder: the gig was sprawled across the waist and the studdingsail booms lay in a criss-cross, brought somehow from the chains, while posed madly upon them all stood the top-lantern. But there was no second of time for gaping: they ran along the hand-line to the mainmast lifts, where a spray-drenched party was striking the yard to save the main-course, the only sail spread that was yet unsplit. Colonel Cracherode was on the rope in front of Peter, and his mouth opened and closed without a sound.

Mr Stapleton was by his side, pulling at his sleeve and pointing forward. Peter understood him to shout something about the bowsprit gammoning, but before the lieutenant could repeat it a green sea hurled him across the deck. Peter passed him a moment later; he was crawling on his hands and knees, reaching to lash himself to the bitts—he was very weak with scurvy, blotched and swollen. There was nothing to be done about the gammoning, nothing but the roughest makeshift: Peter took three men, cut a writhing length of stay and took what turns he could about the bowsprit and the figure-head, making all tight with capstan bars as tourniquets, lashed along the head rails. It took a long time, though it was little enough to stand the enormous strain that the bowsprit must
take from the forestays: yet the Centurion’s head, still with a lick of gold leaf on his helmet, was unusually solid—it might do something for the moment.

They had been somewhat under the fo’c’sle’s lee, and now when they came back to the full force of the storm it seemed to be less: Peter heard the surgeon shout as he passed, ‘There’s life in us yet.’

The light was fading, and the wind, though still tremendous, was declining with it: yet still squalls hurled out of the darkening sky, from different directions now, and often the high scream reached its intolerable topmost pitch for minutes at a time—blasts that would lift a crouching man into the air. And now the sea that the hurricane had raised caught up with the wind, an enormous hollow sea, racing, scooped into wild irregularities by the squalls, so that the labouring ships had no even motion but ran in mad, jarring lurches—ran straight for the land, a race-horse speed under bare poles and a lee-shore white with five miles’ breadth of murderous surf an unknown length of time away: half an hour, an hour perhaps; not more with this unrelenting wind.

He was by the fife-rails of the mainmast going aft when he saw it, and for a second he did not believe that what he saw racing towards him high over the starboard quarter could be a wave. It was impossible—at that height it was impossible. But his body believed it, and in the sickening moment of grace before the sea struck the ship his hands had clenched round two belaying-pins.

There was a blow, a shuddering blow like a broadside, and then he was holding on while the deep water poured over his head. She was right down on her beam ends; he could tell that, because he was clinging upwards to the ring round the mast, which was now almost flat. Would she ever get up, he wondered, or was this the end? He had time to find that he was not afraid—it did not matter very much.

With a great long roll the
Centurion
righted herself, water pouring from her in shining streams; righted herself, but not altogether, for her ballast and her stores had shifted, and she lay over a good two streaks to port.

‘Mr Palafox,’ said a voice close at hand, ‘report on the foreshrouds at once, if you please.’

‘Aye-aye, sir,’ said Peter, automatically hurrying forward.

‘Six parted, sir,’ he shouted, a few moments later, ‘one dead-eye broke, and two lanyards, to starboard: three shrouds broke to larboard.’

‘Very good,’ said the Commodore, ‘Mr Bailey?’

‘Five starboard shrouds gone, sir; only one to lee.’

‘Mr Ransome?’

‘All but one, sir, with their lanyards.’

‘You know what to do,’ said the Commodore, smiling at them.

They knew what to do. In this sea, with the ship rolling gunwale and gunwale, the masts could not live long, nor could any sail be set until the shrouds were stirruped and new lanyards rove. There was not a second to lose, and although they were driving furiously towards a desolate shore they flung themselves on the work, each with a party as strong as could be spared.

Peter forgot the lee-shore in five minutes: the work called for every last degree of concentration and power and skill. But as they hauled on the lanyards with the roll of the ship and the shrouds tightened steadily he felt the wind on his left side instead of his back, and looking aft he saw the mainsail rise ghostly and fill. The wind had backed into the south and they were standing clear of the land.

The next few hours saw a strange scene on the
Centurion
’s deck. The chaplain and the master stood to the wheel, while every man who could move knotted rigging and bent sails—soldiers, cooks, sailors, the surgeon, the stewards, the commander himself. By dawn she was far out to sea, sailing easily, though still with a considerable list, with a stiff south-easterly breeze.

‘Thank God for some sea-room,’ said Ransome. ‘It makes me nervous to feel the loom of the land.’

‘North-west and a half north it is,’ repeated the quartermaster at the wheel. They were heading for Juan Fernandez, patching, repairing, pumping, splicing and making good as well as
they might while the wind and the sea were kind. The hurricane, in its final turn, had blasted them northwards on their way, and they lived on the hope of seeing that green paradise rise out of the sea ahead.

They had little else to live on, except incessant toil, for the shifting in the hold had staved seven of the very few remaining casks of biscuit and the bilge had destroyed it: most of the water, green, thick, but just drinkable, had gone the same way.

‘Did he keep it down?’ asked Peter.

‘Yes. So far,’ said Ransome softly, looking over his shoulder. ‘It should do him a power of good: he shall have the rest in the night.’ He spoke softly, for it would not do to let it be known that there was fresh meat in the ship, although it was no more than cat. In the cavernous holds there was not a rat left alive, and they had not been drowned but hunted down by desperately hungry men, grown more cunning and fierce than the rats. The most spectacular scar on Peter’s face, the one the other side from the lightning burn, was caused by his running full tilt against a standard as he finally cornered a rat in the forepeak. And as for cats—the galley cat had gone, the various ship’s cats of the hold; the kittens that Ransome had indeed hidden abaft the well had been found long ago by some of the after-guard; and it had required all his uncommon ingenuity and knowledge of hungry crews to keep Agamemnon alive until this time.

‘You could do with some for yourself,’ said Peter, looking at Ransome’s swollen legs. Ransome grunted, but made no reply: The scurvy had begun on him at last: they knew it perfectly well in all its many forms, and there was no mistaking the swollen legs, the dull, ugly patches on Ransome’s arms and the reopening of the old cutless wound on his shoulder.

‘No, sir,’ said Peter, in a louder voice, ‘the line over the peck-brail, if you please; and then serve it.’ He moved over to guide Mr Walter’s hands through the intricacies of the repair.

‘That is better,’ said the Chaplain, picking up his prayerbook. ‘Now I am afraid I must leave you: but tell me quickly,
Peter, how are you?’ He looked anxiously into Peter’s face: it was a thin face, drawn and grey; no longer a boy’s. ‘Very well, sir,’ said Peter at once. ‘Capital, I thank you.’

‘Your gums? It always starts there.’

‘Sound as a bell. And yourself, sir?’

‘Well, I thank God. How I wish I could say as much for the men I must go to. Peter, I pray that we may see this island, or—’ He broke off and hurried below, clinging to any handhold as he went, though the sea was calm. Peter shook his head as he looked after him.

‘Peter, your honour,’ said Sean, just behind him. ‘Do you know with your learning where this island will be?’

‘Certainly, Sean,’ said Peter, ‘sure it’s no way ahead. We shall raise it tomorrow.’

‘We shall raise it tomorrow in the evening maybe,’ he said.

‘Tomorrow, Sean, you will see it green like a jewel in the sea,’ he said, trying to smile.

‘Listen, Peter a gradh, will you not lie out of kindness to me? They all do be saying we are too far to the west. Let me know the truth of it for all love, my dear.’

‘Wait just a little while longer, now Sean, will you then?’

‘There was himself in the masthead from two bells to six.’

‘I know.’ Peter had seen Mr Anson come down. ‘We will wait on his word, for sure he knows best.’

There was a conference of the officers going on in the stateroom at that moment, as Peter knew very well, and he knew very well what they were discussing. Their longitude was uncertain: the longitude of Juan Fernandez was uncertain. They were trying to hit on the meridian, but still they were borne westward, and by the majority of their reckonings they should have reached it before. There was a strong feeling among the officers that they had already run too far to the west, that Juan Fernandez lay behind them, and that every day’s sailing bore them away from their one hope of safety. The Commodore was of another opinion: he was almost sure that he had seen land still farther to the west, although every
officer maintained it was cloud: and now every hour counted.

The conference had broken up. With grave faces the officers came on the quarter-deck, the Commodore last.

‘Mast-head,’ hailed the Commodore.

‘Sir?’

‘What do you make out to leeward?’

A long pause. ‘Nothing, sir,’ came down the slow cry. ‘Open sea and no cloud.’

‘Mr Saumarez,’ said the Commodore, ‘you will make the course due east, if you please.’

His face was expressionless. Mr Saumarez betrayed a want of ease, and Peter thought he detected a hesitation as the first lieutenant repeated the order.

‘Tomorrow, Sean, at the latest. For you must understand that we are running on the parallel now, and the latitude is as sure as the sun. You will keep the men in good heart: I know you will.’

‘I will that, what there are of them; but the Dear knows they are dying like bees with no winter honey.’

‘Mr Palafox, relieve the mast-head. Take my glass,’ said Mr Norris, leaning heavily against the conning binnacle, drumming his weak fingers with an agitation that he tried to conceal. ‘You are all right aloft, are you not?’ he asked privately as Peter came for the glass.

‘Yes, sir. Aye-aye, sir,’ said Peter, the first to the question, the second to the order, as he ran up past the foretop. It was true that he felt perfectly well, apart from an enormous tiredness—they were never far from the edge of exhaustion—and a perpetual hunger that sometimes drove him nearly mad.

‘Nothing?’ he asked, settling in the crosstrees.

‘No,’ said Preston, sliding his leg over with an old man’s caution and grasping nervously for a double handhold. ‘I saw a whale blow. Nothing more.’

‘Here,’ said Peter, feeling in his pocket, ‘eat this in the top on your way down.’

‘You are a good chap, Palafox,’ said Preston, snatching the
biscuit. ‘Thank you very much. It’s a whole one,’ he said incredulously, with a corner already stuffed into his mouth.

Peter sighed and began to sweep the horizon with the telescope. It was not one he was used to, and it took him some minutes to focus and manage with ease. He stared and stared again. How could Preston possibly have missed it? A clear landfall straight ahead perhaps twelve leagues away. His hands trembled so that for a moment the objective was lost: but he steadied again: he must be trebly certain before he hailed the deck, and anxiously, with expectation hot in his throat, he scanned the far landfall. Two points it stretched on the starboard bow, two points on the larboard. No, three points, four points—it stretched north and south in one unbroken line, and that high brilliance was the snow of the mountains.