Part 31 (2/2)
'Evening red and morning grey Are the sure signs of a fine day.'”
Dodd looked, and shook his head. The sun was red, but the wrong red: an angry red: and, as he dipped into the wave, discharged a lurid coppery hue that rushed in a moment like an embodied menace over the entire heavens. The wind ceased altogether: and in the middle of an unnatural and suspicious calm the gla.s.s went down, down, down.
The moon rose, and instantly all eyes were bent on her with suspicion; for in this lat.i.tude the hurricanes generally come at the full moon. She was tolerably clear, however; but a light scud sailing across her disc showed there was wind in the upper regions.
Dodd trusted to science; barred the lee-ports, and had the dead lights put into the stem cabin and secured: then turned in for an hour's sleep.
Science proved a prophet. Just at seven bells, in one moment like a thunderbolt from the sky, a heavy squall struck the s.h.i.+p. Under a less careful captain her lee-ports would have been open, and she might have gone to the bottom like a bullet.
”Let go the main sheet!” roared Sharpe hastily to a hand he had placed there on purpose. He let go, and there was the sail flapping like thunder, and the sheet las.h.i.+ng everything in the most dangerous way.
Dodd was on deck in a moment ”Helm hard up! Hands shorten sail!”
(Pipe.) ”All hands furl sail, ahoy!”
Up tumbled the crew, went cheerily to work, and by three bells in the middle watch had hauled up what was left of the s.h.i.+vered mainsail, and hove the s.h.i.+p to under close-reefed main topsail and storm stay-sails; and so the voyage was suspended.
A heavy sea got up under a scourging wind, that rose and rose, till the _Agra_, under the pressure of that single sail treble reefed, heeled over so as to dip her lee channels. This went on till the waves rolled so high, and the squalls were so bitter, that sheets of water were actually torn off their crests and launched incessantly on deck, not only drenching Dodd and his officers, which they did not mind, but threatening to flood the s.h.i.+p.
Dodd battened down the hatches and stopped that game.
Then came a danger no skill could avert: the s.h.i.+p lurched so violently now, as not merely to clip, but bury, her lower deck port-pendents: and so a good deal of water found ingress through the windage. Then Dodd set a gang to the pumps: for, he said, ”We can hardly hope to weather this out without s.h.i.+pping a sea: and I won't have water coming in upon water.”
And now the wind, raging and roaring like discharges of artillery, and not like wind as known in our seas, seemed to have put out all the lights of heaven. The sky was inky black, and quite close to their heads: and the wind still increasing, the vessel came down to her extreme bearings, and it was plain she would soon be on her beam ends.
Sharpe and Dodd met, and holding on by the life-lines, applied their speaking trumpets tight to each other's ears; and even then they had to bawl.
”She can't carry a rag much longer.”
”No, sir; not half an hour.”
”Can we furl that main taupsle?”
Sharpe shook his head. ”The first moment we start a sheet, the sail will whip the mast out of her.”
”You are right Well, then, I'll cut it away.”
”Volunteers, sir?”
”Ay, twelve: no more. Send them to my cabin.”
Sharpe's difficulty was to keep the men back, so eager were the fine fellows to risk their lives. However, he brought twelve to the cabin, headed by Mr. Grey, who had a right, as captain of the watch, to go with them; on which right he insisted, in spite of Dodd's earnest request that he would forego it. When Dodd saw his resolution, he dropped the friend and resumed the captain; and spoke to them through a trumpet; the first time he had ever used one in a cabin, or seen one used.
”Mr. Grey and men, going aloft to save the mainmast by cutting the sail away.”
”Ay, ay, sir!”
”Service of danger, great danger!”
”Hurrah!”
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