Wild Adventures round the Pole. Stables Gordon
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and look at that sky.”
There was certainly something most appalling in the appearance of both. The ocean was calm and unruffled as glass, with only a long low heave on it; not a ripple on it big enough to swamp a fly; but over it all a strange, glassy lustre that – so you would have thought – could have been skimmed off. The sky was one mass of dark purple-black clouds in masses. It seemed no distance overhead, and the horizon looked hardly a mile away on either side. Only in the north it was one unbroken bluish black, as dark seemingly as night, from the midst of which every now and then, and every here and there, would come quickly a little puff of cloud of a lightish grey colour, as if a gun had been fired. Only there was no sound.
There was something awe-inspiring in the strange, ominous look of sea and sky, and in the silence broken only by the grind and gride of screw and engine.
“No,” said McBain, “I don’t know what we are going to have. Perhaps a tornado. Anyhow, Mr Stevenson, let us be ready. Get down topgallant masts, it will be a bit of exercise for the men; let us have all the steam we can command, and – ”
“Batten down, sir?”
“Yes, Mr Stevenson, batten down, and lash the boats inboard.”
The good ship Arrandoon was at the time of which I write about fifty miles south of the Faroes, and a long way to the east. The weather had been dark and somewhat gloomy, from the very time they lost sight of the snow-clad hills around Oban, but it now seemed to culminate in a darkness that could be felt.
The men were well drilled on board this steam yacht. McBain delighted to have them smart, and it was with surprising celerity that the topgallant masts were lowered, the hatches battened down, and the good ship prepared for any emergency. None too soon; the darkness grew more intense, especially did the clouds look threatening ahead of them. And now here and there all round them the sea began to get ruffled with small whirlwinds, that sent the water wheeling round and round like miniature maelstroms, and raised it up into cones in the centre.
“How is the glass now, Mr Stevenson?” asked McBain.
“Stands very low, sir,” was the reply, “but keeps steadily down.”
“All right,” said McBain; “now get two guns loaded with ball cartridge; have no more hands on deck than we want. No idlers, d’ye hear?”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Send Magnus Bolt here.”
“Now, Magnus, old man,” continued McBain, “d’ye mind the time, some years ago in the Snowbird, when you rid us of that troublesome pirate?”
“Ay, that I do right well, sir,” said this little old weasened specimen of humanity, rubbing his hands with delight. “It were a fine shot that. He! he! he! Mercy on us, to see his masts and sails come toppling down, sir, – he! he! he!”
“Well, I want you again, Magnus; I’d rather trust to your old eye in an emergency than to any in the ship.”
“But where is the foe, sir?”
“Look ahead, Magnus.”
Magnus did as he was told; it was a strange, and to one who understood it, a dreadful sight. Apparently a thousand balloons were afloat in the blue, murky air, each one trailing its car in the sea, balloons of terrible size, flat as to their tops, which seemed to join or merge into one another, forming a black and ominous cloud. The cars that trailed on the sea were snowy white.
“Heaven help us?” said Magnus, clasping his hands for just a moment, while his cheeks assumed an ashen hue. “Heaven help us, sir; this is worse than the pirate.”
“They are all coming this way,” said McBain; “fire only at those that threaten us, and fire while they are still some distance ahead.”
Meanwhile Ralph had come on deck, and joined his companions. I do not think that through all the long terrible hour that followed, either of them spoke one word; although there was no sea on, and for the most part no motion, they clutched with one hand rigging or shroud, and gazed terror-struck at the awful scene ahead and around them.
They were soon in the very centre of what appeared an interminable forest of waterspouts. Few indeed have ever seen such a sight or encountered so pressing a danger and lived to tell it.
The balloon-shaped heads of these waterspouts looked dark as midnight; their shafts, I can call them nothing else, were immense pillars rising out of gigantic feet of seething foam. So close did they pass to some of these that the yardarms seemed almost to touch them. Our heroes noticed then, and they marvelled at it afterwards, the strange monotonous roaring sound they emitted, – a sound that drowned even the noise of the troubled waters around their shafts.
(Such a phenomenon as this has rarely been witnessed in the Northern Ocean. It is somewhat strange that on the self-same year this happened, an earthquake was felt in Ireland, and shocks even near Perth, in Scotland.)
Old Magnus made good use of his guns on those that threatened the good ship with destruction; one shot broke always one, and sometimes more, probably with the vibration; but the thundering sound of the falling waters, and the turmoil of the sea that followed, what pen can describe?
But, good shot as he is, Magnus is not infallible, else McBain would not now have to grasp his speaking-trumpet and shout, —
“Stand by, men, stand by.”
A waterspout had wholly, or partially at least, broken on board of them. It was as though the splendid ship had suddenly been blown to atoms by a terrible explosion, and every timber of her engulfed in the ocean!
For long moments thus, then her crew, half drowned, half dead, could once more look around. The Arrandoon was afloat, but her decks were swept. Hundreds of tons of water still filled her decks, and poured out into the sea in cataracts through her broken bulwarks; ay, and it poured below too, at the fore and main hatchways, which had been smashed open with the violence and force of the deluge. The main-yard had come down, and one whaler was smashed into matchwood. I wish I could say this was all, but two poor fellows lost for ever the number of their mess. One was seen floating about dead and unwounded on the deck ere the water got clear; the other, with sadly splintered brow, was still clutching in a death-grasp a rope that had bound a tarpaulin over a grating.
But away ahead appeared a long yellowish streak of clear sky, close to the horizon. The danger had passed.
All hands were now called to clear away the wreck and make good repairs. The pumps, too, had to be set to work, and as soon as the wind came down on them from the clear of the horizon, sail was set, for the fires had been drowned out.
The wind increased to a gale, and there was nothing for it but to lay to. And so they did all that night and all next day; then the weather moderated, and the wind coming more easterly they were able to show more canvas, and to resume their course with something akin to comfort.
The bodies of the two poor fellows who had met with so sad a fate were committed to the deep – the sailor’s grave.
“Earth to earth and dust to dust.”
There was more than one moist eye while those words were uttered, for the men had both been great favourites with their messmates.
Rory was sitting that evening with his elbows resting on the saloon table, his chin on his hands, and a book in front of him that he was not looking at, when McBain came below.
“You’re quieter than usual,” said McBain, placing a kindly hand on his shoulder.
Rory smiled, forced a laugh even, as one does who wants to shake off an incubus.
“I was thinking,” he said, “of that awful black forest of waterspouts. I’ll never get it out of my head.”
“Oh! yes you will, boy Rory,” said McBain; “it was a new sensation, that’s all.”
“New sensation!” said Allan, laughing in earnest; “well, captain, I must say that is a mild way of putting it. I don’t want any more such sensations. Steward, bring some nice hot coffee.”
“Ay!”