PART III
A Northeast gale off Hatteras: immense gray
combers, five to the mile, charging shoreward, occasionally breaking, again
lifting their heads too high in the effort, truncated as by a knife, and the
liquid apex shattered to spray; an expanse of leaden sky showing between the
rain-squalls, across which heavy background rushed the darker scud and
storm-clouds; a passenger-steamer rolling helplessly in the trough, and a
square-rigged vessel, hove to on the port tack, two miles to windward of the
steamer, and drifting south toward the storm-center. This is the picture that
the sea-birds saw at daybreak on a September morning, and could the sea-birds
have spoken they might have told that the square-rigged craft carried a
navigator who had learned that a whirling fury of storm-center was less to be
feared than the deadly Diamond Shoals—the outlying guard of Cape Hatteras
toward which that steamer was drifting, broadside on.
Clad in yellow oilskins and sou'wester, he stood
by the after-companionway, intently examining through a pair of glasses the
wallowing steamer to leeward, barely distinguishable in the half-light and
driving spindrift. On the main-deck a half-dozen men paced up and down,
sheltered by the weather rail; forward, two others walked the deck by the side
of the forward house, but never allowed their march to extend past the
after-corner; and at the wheel stood a little man who sheltered a cheerful face
under the lee of a big coat-collar, and occasionally peeped out at the
navigator.
"Poop-deck," he shouted above the noise
of the wind, "take the wheel till I fire up."
"Thought I was exempt from steering,"
growled the other, good-humoredly, as he placed the glasses inside the
companionway.
"You're getting too fat and sassy; steer a
little."
Poop-deck relieved the little man, who descended
the cabin stairs, and returned in a few moments, smoking a short pipe. He took
the wheel, and Poop-deck again examined the steamer with the glasses.
"There goes his ensign, union down," he
exclaimed; "he's in trouble. We'll show ours."
From a flag-locker inside the companionway he drew
out the Stars and Stripes, which he ran up to the monkey-gaff. Then he looked
again.
"Down goes his ensign; up goes the code
pennant. He wants to signal. Come up here, boys," called Poop-deck;
"give me a hand."
As the six men climbed the steps, he pulled out
the corresponding code signal from the locker, and ran it up on the other part
of the halyards as the ensign fluttered down. "Go down, one of you,"
he said, "and get the signal-book and shipping-list. He'll show his number
next. Get ours ready—R. L. F. T."
While a man sprang below for the books named, the
others hooked together the signal-flags forming the ship's number, and
Poop-deck resumed the glasses.
"Q. T. F. N.," he exclaimed. "Look
it up."
The books had arrived, and while one lowered and
hoisted again the code signal, which was also the answering pennant, the others
pored over the shipping-list.
"Steamer Aldebaran of New York," they
said.
The pennant came down, and the ship's number went
up to the gaff.
"H. V.," called Poop-deck, as he scanned
two flags now flying from the steamer's truck. "What does that say?"
"Damaged rudder—cannot steer," they
answered.
"Pull down the number and show the answering
pennant again," said Poop-deck; "and let me see that
signal-book." He turned the leaves, studied a page for a moment, then
said: "Run up H. V. R. That says, 'What do you want?' and that's the
nearest thing to it."
These flags took the place of the answering
pennant at the gaff-end, and again Poop-deck watched through the glasses,
noting first the showing of the steamer's answering pennant, then the letters
K. R. N.
"What does K. R. N. say?" he asked.
They turned the leaves, and answered: "I can
tow you."
"Tow us? We're all right; we don't want a
tow. He's crazy. How can he tow us when he can't steer?" exclaimed three
or four together.
"He wants to tow us so that he can steer, you
blasted fools," said Poop-deck. "He can keep head to sea and go where
he likes with a big drag on his stern."
"That's so. Where's he bound—'you that has
knowledge and eddication'?"
"Didn't say; but he's bound for the Diamond
Shoals, and he'll fetch up in three hours, if we can't help him. He's close
in."
"Tow-line's down the forepeak," said a
man. "Couldn't get it up in an hour," said another. "Yes, we
can," said a third. Then, all speaking at once, and each raising his voice
to its limit, they argued excitedly: "Can't be done." "Coil it
on the forecastle." "Yes, we can." "Too much sea."
"Run down to wind'ard." "Line 'ud part, anyhow." "Float
a barrel." "Shut up." "I tell you, we can." "Call
the watch." "Seldom, yer daft." "Needn't get a boat
over." "Hell ye can." "Call the boys." "All hands
with heavin'-lines." "Can't back a topsail in this." "Go
lay down." "Soak yer head, Seldom." "Hush." "Shut
up." "Nothing you can't do." "Go to the devil."
"I tell you, we can; do as I say, and we'll get a line to him, or get
his."
The affirmative speaker, who had also uttered the
last declaration, was Seldom Helward. "Put me in command," he yelled
excitedly, "and do what I tell you, and we'll make fast to him."
"No captains here," growled one, while
the rest eyed Seldom reprovingly.
"Well, there ought to be; you're all rattled,
and don't know any more than to let thousands o' dollars slip past you. There's
salvage down to looward."
"Salvage?"
"Yes, salvage. Big boat—full o' passengers
and valuable cargo—shoals to looward of him—can't steer. You poor fools, what
ails you?"
"Foller Seldom," vociferated the little
man at the wheel; "foller Seldom, and ye'll wear stripes."
"Dry up, Sinful. Call the watch. It's near
seven bells, anyhow. Let's hear what the rest say. Strike the bell."
The uproarious howl with which sailors call the
watch below was delivered down the cabin stairs, and soon eight other men came
up, rubbing their eyes and grumbling at the premature wakening, while another
man came out of the forecastle and joined the two pacing the forward deck.
Seldom Helward's proposition was discussed noisily in joint session on the
poop, and finally accepted.
"We put you in charge, Seldom, against the
rule," said Bigpig Monahan, sternly, "'cause we think you've some
good scheme in your head; but if you haven't,—if you make a mess of things just
to have a little fun bossin' us,—you'll hear from us. Go ahead, now. You're
captain."
Seldom climbed to the top of the after-house,
looked to windward, then to leeward at the rolling steamer, and called out:
"I want more beef at the wheel. Bigpig, take
it; and you, Turkey, stand by with him. Get away from there, Sinful. Give her
the upper maintopsail, the rest of you. Poop-deck, you stand by the
signal-halyards. Ask him if he's got a tow-line ready."
Protesting angrily at the slight put upon him,
Sinful Peck relinquished the wheel, and joined the rest on the main-deck, where
they had hurried. Two men went aloft to loose the topsail, and the rest cleared
away gear, while Poop-deck examined the signal-book.
"K. S. G. says, 'Have a tow-line ready.' That
ought to do, Seldom," he called.
"Run it up," ordered the newly installed
captain, "and watch his answer." Up went the signal, and as the men
on the main-deck were manning the topsail-halyards, Poop-deck made out the
answer: "V. K. C."
"That means 'All right,' Seldom," he
said, after inspecting the book.
"Good enough; but we'll get our line ready,
too. Get down and help 'em mast-head the yard first, then take 'em forrard and
coil the tow-line abaft the windlass. Get all the heavin'-lines ready,
too."
Poop-deck obeyed; and while the maintopsail-yard
slowly arose to place under the efforts of the rest, Seldom himself ran up the
answering pennant, and then the repetition of the steamer's last message:
"All right." This was the final signal displayed between the two
craft. Both signal-flags were lowered, and for a half-hour Seldom waited, until
the others had lifted a nine-inch hawser from the forepeak and coiled it down.
Then came his next orders in a continuous roar:
"Three hands aft to the spanker-sheet! Stand
by to slack off and haul in! Man the braces for wearing ship, the rest o' you!
Hard up the wheel! Check in port main and starboard cro'-jack braces! Shiver
the topsail! Slack off that spanker!"
Before he had finished the men had reached their
posts. The orders were obeyed. The ship paid off, staggered a little in the
trough under the right-angle pressure of the gale, swung still farther, and
steadied down to a long, rolling motion, dead before the wind, heading for the
steamer. Yards were squared in, the spanker hauled aft, staysail trimmed to
port, and all hands waited while the ship charged down the two miles of intervening
sea.
"Handles like a yacht," muttered Seldom,
as, with brow wrinkled and keen eye flashing above his hooked nose, he conned
the steering from his place near the mizzenmast.
Three men separated themselves from the rest and
came aft. They were those who had walked the forward deck. One was tall,
broad-shouldered, and smooth-shaven, with a palpable limp; another, short,
broad, and hairy, showed a lamentable absence of front teeth; and the third, a
blue-eyed man, slight and graceful of movement, carried his arm in splints and
sling. This last was in the van as they climbed the poop steps.
"I wish to protest," he said. "I am
captain of this ship under the law. I protest against this insanity. No boat
can live in this sea. No help can be given that steamer."
"And I bear witness to the protest,"
said the tall man. The short, hairy man might have spoken also, but had no
time.
"Get off the poop," yelled Seldom.
"Go forrard, where you belong." He stood close to the bucket-rack
around the skylight. Seizing bucket after bucket, he launched them at his
visitors, with the result that the big man was tumbled down the poop steps head
first, while the other two followed, right side up, but hurriedly, and bearing
some sore spots. Then the rest of the men set upon them, much as a pack of dogs
would worry strange cats, and kicked and buffeted them forward.
There was no time for much amusement of this sort.
Yards were braced to port, for the ship was careering down toward the steamer
at a ten-knot rate; and soon black dots on her rail resolved into passengers
waving hats and handkerchiefs, and black dots on the boat deck resolved into
sailors standing by the end of a hawser which led up from the bitts below on
the fantail. And the ship came down, until it might have seemed that Seldom's
intention was to ram her. But not so; when a scant two lengths separated the
two craft, he called out: "Hard down! Light up the staysail-sheet and
stand by the forebraces!"
Around the ship came on the crest of a sea; she
sank into the hollow behind, shipped a few dozen tons of water from the next
comber, and then lay fairly steady, with her bow meeting the seas, and the huge
steamer not a half-length away on the lee quarter. The fore-topmast-staysail
was flattened, and Seldom closely scrutinized the drift and heave of the ship.
"How's your wheel, Bigpig?" he asked.
"Hard down."
"Put it up a little; keep her in the
trough."
He noted the effect on the ship of this change; then,
as though satisfied, roared out: "Let your forebraces hang, forrard there!
Stand by heavin'-lines fore and aft! Stand by to go ahead with that steamer
when we have your line!" The last injunction, delivered through his hands,
went down the wind like a thunder-clap, and the officers on the steamer's
bridge, vainly trying to make themselves heard against the gale in the same
manner, started perceptibly at the impact of sound, and one went to the
engine-room speaking-tube.
Breast to breast the two vessels lifted and fell.
At times it seemed that the ship was to be dropped bodily on the deck of the
steamer; at others, her crew looked up a streaked slope of a hundred feet to
where the other craft was poised at the crest. Then the steamer would drop, and
the next sea would heave the ship toward her. But it was noticeable that every
bound brought her nearer to the steamer, and also farther ahead, for her sails
were doing their work.
"Kick ahead on board the steamer!"
thundered Seldom from his eminence. "Go ahead! Start the wagon, or say
your prayers, you blasted idiots!"
The engines were already turning; but it takes
time to overcome three thousand tons of inertia, and before the steamer had
forged ahead six feet the ship had lifted above her, and descended her black
side with a grinding crash of wood against iron. Fore and main channels on the
ship were carried away, leaving all lee rigging slack and useless; lower braces
caught in the steamer's davit-cleats and snapped, but the sails, held by the
weather braces, remained full, and the yards did not swing. The two craft
separated with a roll and came together again with more scraping and snapping
of rigging. Passengers left the rail, dived indoors, and took refuge on the
opposite side, where falling blocks and small spars might not reach them.
Another leap toward the steamer resulted in the ship's maintopgallantmast
falling in a zigzag whirl, as the snapping gear aloft impeded it; and dropping
athwart the steamer's funnel, it neatly sent the royal-yard with sail attached
down the iron cylinder, where it soon blazed and helped the artificial draft in
the stoke-hold. Next came the foretopgallantmast, which smashed a couple of
boats. Then, as the round black stern of the steamer scraped the lee bow of the
ship, jib-guys parted, and the jib-boom itself went, snapping at the
bowsprit-cap, with the last bite the ship made at the steamer she was helping.
But all through this riot of destruction—while passengers screamed and prayed,
while officers on the steamer shouted and swore, and Seldom Helward, bellowing
insanely, danced up and down on the ship's house, and the hail of wood and iron
from aloft threatened their heads—men were passing the tow-line.
It was a seven-inch steel hawser with a Manila
tail, which they had taken to the foretopsail-sheet bitts before the jib-boom
had gone. Panting from their exertions, they watched it lift from the water as
the steamer ahead paid out with a taut strain; then, though the crippled spars
were in danger of falling and really needed their first attention, they ignored
the fact and hurried aft, as one man, to attend to Seldom.
Encouraged by the objurgations of Bigpig and his
assistant, who were steering now after the steamer, they called their late
commander down from the house and deposed him in a concert of profane ridicule
and abuse, to which he replied in kind. He was struck in the face by the small
fist of Sinful Peck, and immediately knocked the little man down. Then he was
knocked down himself by a larger fist, and, fighting bravely and viciously,
became the object of fist-blows and kicks, until, in one of his whirling
staggers along the deck, he passed close to the short, broad, hairy man, who
yielded to the excitement of the moment and added a blow to Seldom's
punishment. It was an unfortunate mistake; for he took Seldom's place, and the
rain of fists and boots descended on him until he fell unconscious. Mr. Helward
himself delivered the last quieting blow, and then stood over him with a lurid
grin on his bleeding face.
"Got to put down mutiny though the heavens
fall," he said painfully.
"Right you are, Seldom," answered one.
"Here, Jackson, Benson—drag him forrard; and, Seldom," he added,
reprovingly, "don't you ever try it again. Want to be captain, hey? You
can't; you don't know enough. You couldn't command my wheelbarrow. Here's three
days' work to clear up the muss you've made."
But in this they spoke more, and less, than the
truth. The steamer, going slowly, and steering with a bridle from the tow-line
to each quarter, kept the ship's canvas full until her crew had steadied the
yards and furled it. They would then have rigged preventer-stays and shrouds on
their shaky spars, had there been time; but there was not. An uncanny
appearance of the sea to leeward indicated too close proximity to the shoals,
while a blackening of the sky to windward told of probable increase of wind and
sea. And the steamer waited no longer. With a preliminary blast of her whistle,
she hung the weight of the ship on the starboard bridle, gave power to her
engines, and rounded to, very slowly, head to sea, while the men on the ship,
who had been carrying the end of the coiled hawser up the foretopmast rigging,
dropped it and came down hurriedly.
Released from the wind-pressure on her strong
side, which had somewhat steadied her, the ship now rolled more than she had
done in the trough, and with every starboard roll were ominous creakings and
grindings aloft. At last came a heavier lurch, and both crippled topmasts fell,
taking with them the mizzentopgallantmast. Luckily, no one was hurt, and they
disgustedly cut the wreck adrift, stayed the fore- and mainmasts with the
hawser, and resigning themselves to a large subtraction from their salvage,
went to a late breakfast—a savory meal of smoking fried ham and potatoes, hot
cakes and coffee served to sixteen in the cabin, and an unsavory meal of
"hardtack-hash," with an infusion of burnt bread-crust, pease, beans,
and leather, handed, but not served, to three in the forecastle.
Three days later, with Sandy Hook lighthouse
showing through the haze ahead, and nothing left of the gale but a rolling
ground-swell, the steamer slowed down so that a pilot-boat's dinghy could put a
man aboard each craft. And the one who climbed the ship's side was the pilot that
had taken her to sea, outward bound, and sympathized with her crew. They
surrounded him on the poop and asked for news, while the three men forward
looked aft hungrily, as though they would have joined the meeting, but dared
not. Instead of giving news, the pilot asked questions, which they answered.
"I knew you'd taken charge, boys," he
said at length. "The whole world knows it, and every man-of-war on the
Pacific stations has been looking for you. But they're only looking out there.
What brings you round here, dismasted, towing into New York?"
"That's where the ship's bound—New York. We
took her out; we bring her home. We don't want her—don't belong to us. We're
law-abidin' men."
"Law-abiding men?" asked the amazed
pilot.
"You bet. We're goin' to prosecute those dogs
of ours forrard there to the last limit o' the law. We'll show 'em they can't
starve and hammer and shoot free-born Americans just 'cause they've got guns in
their pockets."
The pilot looked forward, nodded to one of the
three, who beckoned to him, and asked:
"Who'd you elect captain?"
"Nobody," they roared. "We had
enough o' captains. This ship's an unlimited democracy—everybody just as good
as the next man; that is, all but the dogs. They sleep on the bunk-boards, do
as they're told, and eat salt mule and dunderfunk—same as we did goin'
out."
"Did they navigate for you? Did no one have
charge of things?"
"Poop-deck picked up navigation, and we let
him off steerin' and standin' lookout. Then Seldom, here, he wanted to be
captain just once, and we let him—well, look at our spars."
"Poop-deck? Which is Poop-deck? Do you mean
to say," asked the pilot when the navigator had been indicated to him,
"that you brought this ship home on picked-up navigation?"
"Didn't know anything about it when we left
Callao," answered the sailor, modestly. "The steward knew enough to
wind the chronometer until I learned how. We made an offing and steered due
south, while I studied the books and charts. It didn't take me long to learn
how to take the sun. Then we blundered round the Horn somehow, and before long
I could take chronometer sights for the longitude. Of course I know we went out
in four months and used up five to get back; but a man can't learn the whole
thing in one passage. We lost some time, too, chasing other ships and buying
stores; the cabin grub gave out."
"You bought, I suppose, with Captain Benson's
money."
"S'pose it was his. We found it in his desk.
But we've kept account of every cent expended, and bought no grub too good for
a white man to eat."
"What dismasted you?"
They explained the meeting with the steamer and
Seldom's misdoing; then requested information about the salvage laws.
"Boys," said the pilot, "I'm sorry
for you. I saw the start of this voyage, and you appear to be decent men.
You'll get no salvage; you'll get no wages. You are mutineers and pirates, with
no standing in court. Any salvage which the Almena has earned will be paid to
her owners and to the three men whom you deprived of command. What you can
get—the maximum, though I can't say how hard the judge will lay it on—is ten
years in state's prison, and a fine of two thousand dollars each. We'll have to
stop at quarantine. Take my advice: if you get a chance, lower the boats and
skip."
They laughed at the advice. They were American
citizens who respected the law. They had killed no one, robbed no one; their
wages and salvage, independently of insurance liabilities, would pay for the
stores bought, and the loss of the spars. They had no fear of any court of justice
in the land; for they had only asserted their manhood and repressed inhuman
brutality.
The pilot went forward, talked awhile with the
three, and left them with joyous faces. An hour later he pointed out the
Almena's number flying from the masthead of the steamer.
"He's telling on you, boys," he said.
"He knew you when you helped him, and used you, of course. Your
reputation's pretty bad on the high seas. See that signal-station ashore there?
Well, they're telegraphing now that the pirate Almena is coming in. You'll see
a police boat at quarantine."
He was but partly right. Not only a police boat,
but an outward-bound man-of-war and an incoming revenue cutter escorted the
ship to quarantine, where the tow-line was cast off, and an anchor dropped.
Then, in the persons of a scandalized health-officer, a naval captain, a
revenue-marine lieutenant, and a purple-faced sergeant of the steamboat squad,
the power of the law was rehabilitated on the Almena's quarter-deck, and the
strong hand of the law closed down on her unruly crew. With blank faces, they
discarded—to shirts, trousers, and boots—the slop-chest clothing which belonged
to the triumphant Captain Benson, and descended the side to the police boat,
which immediately steamed away. Then a chuckling trio entered the ship's cabin,
and ordered the steward to bring them something to eat.
Now, there is no record either in the reports for
that year of the police department, or from any official babbling, or from
later yarns spun by the sixteen prisoners, of what really occurred on the deck
of that steamer while she was going up the bay. Newspapers of the time gave
generous space to speculations written up on the facts discovered by reporters;
but nothing was ever proved. The facts were few. A tug met the steamer in the
Narrows about a quarter to twelve that morning, and her captain, on being
questioned, declared that all seemed well with her. The prisoners were grouped
forward, guarded by eight officers and a sergeant. A little after twelve
o'clock a Battery boatman observed her coming, and hied him around to the
police dock to have a look at the murderous pirates he had heard about, only to
see her heading up the North River, past the Battery. A watchman on the
elevator docks at Sixty-third Street observed her charging up the river a
little later in the afternoon, wondered why, and spoke of it. The captain of
the Mary Powell, bound up, reported catching her abreast of Yonkers. He had
whistled as he passed, and though no one was in sight, the salute was politely answered.
At some time during the night, residents of Sing Sing were wakened by a sound
of steam blowing off somewhere on the river; and in the morning a couple of
fishermen, going out to their pond-nets in the early dawn, found the police
boat grounded on the shoals. On boarding her they had released a pinioned,
gagged, and hungry captain in the pilot-house, and an engineer, fireman, and
two deck-hands, similarly limited, in the lamp-room. Hearing noises from below,
they pried open the nailed doors of the dining-room staircase, and liberated a
purple-faced sergeant and eight furious officers, who chased their deliverers
into their skiff, and spoke sternly to the working-force.
Among the theories advanced was one, by the editor
of a paper in a small Lake Ontario town, to the effect that it made little
difference to an Oswego sailor whether he shipped as captain, mate, engineer,
sailor, or fireman, and that the officers of the New York Harbor Patrol had
only under-estimated the caliber of the men in their charge, leaving them
unguarded while they went to dinner. But his paper and town were small and far
away, he could not possibly know anything of the subject, and his opinion
obtained little credence.
Years later, however, he attended, as guest, a
meeting and dinner of the Shipmasters' and Pilots' Association of Cleveland,
Ohio, when a resolution was adopted to petition the city for a harbor police
service. Captain Monahan, Captain Helward, Captain Peck, and Captain Cahill,
having spoken and voted in the negative, left their seats on the adoption of
the proposition, reached a clear spot on the floor, shook hands silently, and
then, forming a ring, danced around in a circle (the tails of their coats
standing out in horizontal rigidity) until reproved by the chair.
And the editor knew why.
