The Hawaiian Archipelago | Page 4

saloon and state rooms,
keeping four stewards employed with buckets and swabs, and
compelling us to dine in waterproofs and rubber shoes.
In this dilapidated condition, when two days out from Auckland, we
encountered a revolving South Sea hurricane, succinctly entered in the
log of the day as "Encountered a very severe hurricane with a very

heavy sea." It began at eight in the morning, and never spent its fury till
nine at night, and the wind changed its direction eleven times. The
Nevada left Auckland two feet deeper in the water than she ought to
have been, and laboured heavily. Seas struck her under the guards with
a heavy, explosive thud, and she groaned and strained as if she would
part asunder. It was a long weird day. We held no communication with
each other, or with those who could form any rational estimate of the
probabilities of our destiny; no officials appeared; the ordinary
invariable routine of the steward department was suspended without
notice; the sounds were tremendous, and a hot lurid obscurity filled the
atmosphere. Soon after four the clamour increased, and the shock of a
sea blowing up a part of the fore-guards made the groaning fabric reel
and shiver throughout her whole huge bulk. At that time, by common
consent, we assembled in the deck-house, which had windows looking
in all directions, and sat there for five hours. Very few words were
spoken, and very little fear was felt. We understood by intuition that if
our crazy engines failed at any moment to keep the ship's head to the
sea, her destruction would not occupy half-an-hour. It was all palpable.
There was nothing which the most experienced seaman could explain
to the merest novice. We hoped for the best, and there was no use in
speaking about the worst. Nor, indeed, was speech possible, unless a
human voice could have outshrieked the hurricane.
In this deck-house the strainings, sunderings, and groanings were
hardly audible, or rather were overpowered by a sound which, in
thirteen months' experience of the sea in all weathers, I have never
heard, and hope never to hear again, unless in a staunch ship, one loud,
awful, undying shriek, mingled with a prolonged relentless hiss. No
gathering strength, no languid fainting into momentary lulls, but one
protracted gigantic scream. And this was not the whistle of wind
through cordage, but the actual sound of air travelling with tremendous
velocity, carrying with it minute particles of water. Nor was the sea
running mountains high, for the hurricane kept it down. Indeed during
those fierce hours no sea was visible, for the whole surface was caught
up and carried furiously into the air, like snow-drift on the prairies,
sibilant, relentless. There was profound quiet on deck, the little life
which existed being concentrated near the bow, where the captain was
either lashed to the foremast, or in shelter in the pilot-house. Never a

soul appeared on deck, the force of the hurricane being such that for
four hours any man would have been carried off his feet. Through the
swift strange evening our hopes rested on the engine, and amidst the
uproar and din, and drifting spray, and shocks of pitiless seas, there was
a sublime repose in the spectacle of the huge walking beams,
alternately rising and falling, slowly, calmly, regularly, as if the Nevada
were on a holiday trip within the Golden Gate. At eight in the evening
we could hear each other speak, and a little later, through the great
masses of hissing drift we discerned black water. At nine Captain
Blethen appeared, smoking a cigar with nonchalance, and told us that
the hurricane had nearly boxed the compass, and had been the most
severe he had known for seventeen years. This grand old man, nearly
the oldest captain in the Pacific, won our respect and confidence from
the first, and his quiet and masterly handling of this dilapidated old ship
is beyond all praise.
When the strain of apprehension was mitigated, we became aware that
we had not had anything to eat since breakfast, a clean sweep having
been made, not only of the lunch, but of all the glass in the racks above
it; but all requests to the stewards were insufficient to procure even
biscuits, and at eleven we retired supperless to bed, amidst a confusion
of awful sounds, and were deprived of lights as well as food. When we
asked for food or light, and made weak appeals on the ground of
faintness, the one steward who seemed to dawdle about for the sole
purpose of making himself disagreeable, always replied, "You can't get
anything, the stewards are on duty." We were not accustomed to
recognize that stewards had any other duty than that of feeding the
passengers, but