The Beach of Dreams | Page 3

of man than the sight of those leviathan spars and vast sail spaces rising dizzily from main and foresail in pyramids to where the truck works like a pencil point writing on the sky. Nothing more arresting than the power of the steersman. A turn of the wheel in the hands of Raft would set all that canvas shuddering or thundering, spilling the wind as the water is spilled from a reservoir, a moment's indecision or slackness might lose the ship a mile on her course. But Raft steered as he breathed, automatically, almost unconsciously, almost without effort. He, who ashore was hopelessly adrift and without guidance, at the helm was all wisdom, direction and intuition.
The wake of the Albatross lay as if drawn with a ruler.
His trick was nearly up, and when he was relieved he went forward; pausing at the fo'c'sle head to light a pipe he fell in talk with some of the hands, leaning with his back against the bulwarks and blown upon by the spill of the wind from the head sails.
An old shell-back by name of Ponting was holding the floor.
"We're comin' up to Kerguelen," he was saying. "Should think I did know it. Put in there in a sealer out of New Bedford in '82. I wasn't more'n a boy then. The Yanks used to use that place a lot in those days. The blackest blastedest hole I ever struck. Christmas Island was where we lay mostly, for two months, the chaps huntin' the wal'uses and killin' more than they could carry. The blastedest hole I ever struck."
"I was there in a Dane once," began another of the crew. "It was time of year the sea cows was matin' and you could hear the roarin' of them ten mile off."
"Dane," said Ponting, "what made you ship a'board a Dane--I've heard tell of Danes. Knew a chap signed on in one of them Leith boots out of Copenhagen runnin' north, one of them old North Sea cattle trucks turned into a passenger tramp, passengers and ponies with a hundred ton of hay stowed forward and the passengers lyin' on their backs on it smokin' their pipes, and the bridge crawled over with passengers, girls and children, and the chap at the wheel havin' to push 'em out of the way, kept hittin' reefs all the run from Leith to God knows where, and the Old Man playin' the fiddle most of the time."
"That chap said the Danes was a d----d lot too sociable for him."
Raft listened without entirely comprehending. He had always been a fore-mast hand. He knew practically nothing of steam and he would just as soon have fancied himself a railway porter as a hand on a passenger ship. He was one of the old school of merchant seamen and the idea of a cargo of girls and children and general passengers, not to speak of ponies, was beyond him.
The girls he had mostly known were of the wharf-side. He finished his pipe and went down below--and turned in.
He was rousted out by the voice of the Bo'sw'n calling for all hands on deck and slipping into his oilskins he came up, receiving a smack of sea in his face as he emerged from the fo'c'sle hatch. The wind had shifted and a black squall coming up from astern had hit the ship. More was coming and through the sheeting rain and spindrift the voice of the Bo'sw'n was roaring to let go the fore top-gallant halyards.
Next moment Raft was in the rigging followed by others. The sail had to be stowed. The wind tried to tear him loose and the sheeting rain to drown him, but he went on clinging to the top-gallant mast-stays and looking down he could see the faces of the others following him, faces sheeted over with rain and working blindly upwards.
Ponting was the man immediately below him, and taking breath for a moment and against the wind, Ponting was now yelling out that they had their work cut out for them.
They had.
The top-gallant sail had taken charge of itself, and Raft and Ponting as they lay out on the yard seemed battling with a thing alive, intelligent, and desperately wicked.
The sail snored and trembled and sang, standing out in great hoods and folds, hard as steel; now it would yield, owing to a slackening of the wind, and then, like a brute that had only been waiting to take them by surprise, it would burst out again, releasing itself, whilst the yard buckled and sprang, almost casting them from it.
Then began a battle fought without a sound or cry except the bubbling and snoring of the great sail struggling for its wicked liberty, it shrank and they flung themselves on it, it bellied and flung them