Part 2 (2/2)

The captain stood upon the p.o.o.p in his thick overcoat and drenched fur cap, with his trumpet under his arm, looking anxiously through the night-gla.s.s from time to time, and his voice sounded unusually stern.

There lay before him in the dark, bl.u.s.tering, winter night a veritable David's choice. The strong southerly current, aided by the gale, was fast carrying him in under the Norwegian coast; while on the other hand, if he tried to beat to windward, he risked coming into collision with the ice-floes. Added to that, he was not very clear as to his position; and as the gale increased, he began to pace restlessly backwards and forwards, addressing, every now and then, a word down to one of the helmsmen, whose forms could be seen by the gleam from the binnacle.

”How's her head, Jens?”

”Sou'-west, sir; she'll lay no higher.”

”H'm! more and more on land!” he muttered, the perspiration coming out upon his forehead under his fur cap, which, in spite of the rain, he had to push back to get air. Both life and s.h.i.+p would soon be at stake.

”What says the look-out-man, mate?” he asked of the latter, who came up the steps at this moment from taking a turn forward.

”Black as pitch. If we stuck a lantern out on the flying jib-boom, we should see that far at any rate. But the lead gives deep water.”

”Does it?” was the rather scornful rejoinder.

”The blockhead doesn't seem to know yet,” growled the captain, as the other turned away, ”that the lead will give you deep water here until your vessel has her nose upon the cliff.”

There was no chance of a pilot on such a night as this promised to be; but still, in the hope that the wind might carry the sound in under land, a few shots were fired from the signal-gun.

At last there was no longer any choice left. If they were not to end upon the rocks that night, they must crowd on more sail, and try at all hazards to haul off the coast.

The order was accordingly given to shake a reef out, followed by ”Haul in the topsail bow-lines--clap on the topsail halyards, and hoist away!”

and in the darkness might be heard occasionally ”halimen-oh!-oh hoi!” as the sailors worked at the tough and heavy sail, with the cordage all stiff and swollen with ice and slippery with the rain, the spray driving in their faces, and the vessel rolling so that sometimes they were hanging on by the ropes only, when the deck went from under their feet.

Under the fresh weight of sail the vessel careened over, and shot foaming forward with new life for a moment. The next, the topsail had burst away from the bolt-ropes with a report as of a cannon-shot, and she had fallen away into the trough of the sea. The mainstay-sail sheet parted at the same time, and a deluge of water carried overboard, with part of the bulwarks, a large portion of the deck cargo, which consisted of heavy timber, leaving the remainder tossed about in the wildest confusion, and much of it standing on end against the railings and capstan.

It was some time before she could be brought up in the wind again, and the old Juno had then to go through a trial such as her joints even in her younger days had never been equal to. She was like many another vessel that is a good sailor enough, a little broken-backed from the weight of the cargo amids.h.i.+ps; and as she gave to the strain, the ladder that stood in the hold began to saw up and down in the coaming forward, while the water came oozing in through the staring bow timbers, and the pumps had to be kept continually going. The hatches were all battened down, and many of the crew had lashed themselves to the lower rigging as preferable now to the deck.

”Ready about!--tacks and sheets!” &c.; ”luff now, and keep her close to the wind!”--the same monotonous words of command all through the night every time they lay over upon a new tack, while at the same time they would generally s.h.i.+p a heavy sea, and the vessel would shake through all her frame.

Day broke and pa.s.sed in a fog, that left them in much the same uncertainty as before about their position. For one moment it had lifted, and they fancied they had seen ”Homborgsund's Fald,” a high landmark up the country above Arendal, and from its lowness and dimness on the horizon, they had been encouraged to hope that they had appreciably increased their distance from the coast. About noon they pa.s.sed an English brig that had been through the same struggle as the Juno was now engaged upon, whose signals of distress they had already occasionally heard faintly upon the wind, and which now seemed on the point of foundering. The crew had climbed into the after-rigging, which was all that now remained standing, and they made despairing signs for help; but it was impossible to render any. They had enough to do to keep themselves afloat.

The gale showed no signs of moderating, and that night, as Salve Kristiansen and another were taking their turn at the wheel, there gleamed suddenly out of the pitchy darkness to leeward of the fore-rigging the white crest of a tremendous eddy wave, which a moment after came cras.h.i.+ng down upon the deck, carrying clean away the round-house, binnacle, and long-boat, damaging the wheel, and leaving many of the drenched and half--suffocated sailors deposited in the most unexpected places, and only glad to find that they still had the deck under them.

”Ugly sea on the lee-bow!” was heard again from forward, and all in that direction seemed suddenly to have become a ma.s.s of white.

”Ready about!--hard a-lee!” and with a great lurch the old craft went about once more, the renewed shrieking in every kind of pitch in the rigging, and the blinding dash of spray, showing to what a hurricane the gale had risen.

Salve had been too much occupied with the damaged wheel at first to have a thought to spare for anything else; but it recurred to him very soon that when that first dark sea had broken over them so unexpectedly from leeward, he had seen for a moment the glimmer of two lights on its crest, and a world of a.s.sociations was at once aroused in his mind: it seemed to the lad's romantic fancy that he was keeping an appointment with Elizabeth Raklev. As he glanced hurriedly back, the two light-dots again appeared. He had seen them too often before to be mistaken, and he shouted over his shoulder to the captain, who noticed them now for the first time, ”Those lights behind to leeward are from old Jacob's hearth on Torungen!”

”Are you sure of that?” muttered Beck, coming nearer to him at the same time over the sloping deck with the help of a rope. ”If they are, it will not be long before we are dashed to atoms on the rocks.”

A conversation ensued between them, in which Salve declared that he had known the water under Torungen from childhood as well as he did his father's garden; and the upshot was that Beck, pale and hesitating, determined to go in under land with him as pilot.

”It is much that is being intrusted this night to two young shoulders,”

said he; ”and see you think twice, young man, both for your own life's sake and ours.”

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