02 South Sea Adventure (6 page)

It had no life in it. It nauseated you - it made you feel as if you would like to be rid of your breakfast.

And the sky, instead of being blue, was a sort of white-black.

Now, nothing can be white and black at the same time, yet that was the way of it. A sort of pallid darkness was filling the firmament and pressing down upon the ship and upon the spirits of those aboard her. The hour was twelve noon but you would have supposed it to be early dawn or late twilight.

Hal stood near the binnacle, sextant in hand, trying to get a noon reading. Then with the Nautical Almanac he could compute the ship’s position.

Hal had been studying navigation with a will. Not only was it a useful thing for anybody to know: it was especially important for him - if he was to carry out the secret instructions of Professor Richard Stuyvesant.

A dozen times a day the figures he had never written down drummed in his mind - North Latitude 11° 34’, East Longitude 158° 12’ - the position of Pearl Lagoon.

There was a puzzle he had not yet solved. How was he to reach the island without disclosing the secret of its position? If the captain and Crab and Omo went along, all

three would learn the location of the pearl atoll.

He thought he could trust Omo. He was not so sure of the captain and Crab. Could they be in with the gang that had threatened the professor and ransacked his files? Some remarks they had dropped made him suspicious.

Anyhow, he would feel safer if they did not accompany him and Roger to Pearl Lagoon. But he could never reach the island without the help of someone who understood navigation.

The answer was plain - he must understand it himself. He must learn to steer a vessel by sun, stars, and chronometer so he could bring it to that pinpoint in the sea, North Latitude 11° 34’, East Longitude 158° 12’.

How he would get rid of the captain and Crab was a problem he had yet to figure out.

Captain Ike broke in on his thoughts.

‘Having trouble?’

‘Can’t get the sun sharp,’ complained Hal.

Captain Ike looked up. A whitish glow had taken the place of the usually clear-cut sun. In the increasing darkness, the sky looked like the face of a ghost.

Captain Ike looked at the barometer. It usually stood well above thirty. Now it had dropped close to twenty-nine.

‘Looks like we’re in for a blow,’ said Captain Ike.

It seemed an odd statement to Hal because the wind, instead of getting stronger, was growing weaker. Now it came only in fitful puffs. The sails sagged and slatted. The booms swung idly. The wind had failed altogether.

‘What’s the matter with everything?’ inquired Roger emerging from below where he had been resting from his bout with the octopus the day before. His body was covered with ring-shaped welts left by the beast’s vacuum cups. ‘I can’t seem to breathe.’

It was as if a great blanket had been pressed down upon the ship and its occupants, smothering them under its folds.

‘Hurricane!’ declared Captain Ike. Never was there anything less like a hurricane than this breathless calm. ‘Omo, make everything tight! Crab, sails down!’ Crab stepped sluggishly towards the mainsail halyards. ‘Step lively!’ cried the captain. ‘There’s not a minute to lose.’ He with Hal and Roger tackled the jib and staysails. The halyard of the upper staysail jammed in the block. ‘Got to get up there and free it,’ panted the captain. He looked around for his crew. Omo and Crab were busy. He himself was a bit old and bulky to attempt the climb to the masthead. Roger was wobbly after yesterday’s tussle.

Hal jumped to the ratlines and began to climb. Up past the lower crosstrees, past the crow’s-nest, to the peak. He loosed the halyard and the staysail came rattling down.

Meanwhile things were happening on deck. Omo lashed down the hatches and the dinghy, braced the octopus’s, barrel with two-by-fours so that it would not roll, and saw to it that the lids of all tanks were made secure. Crab, who could be fast enough when he wished but took delight in being as slow as molasses when he was asked to be quick, reefed the mainsail and jib and took the staysail below. There he stopped in the storeroom to take a swig of his favourite liquor.

The captain started the engine. He began to bring the ship about to face whatever danger was coming. The thing to do was to heave-to with the ship’s nose to the storm until it blew over.

The Lively Lady was lively with sails but took her time to respond to an engine. She was only halfway about when the thing came.

Hal at the masthead saw it coming. He could not get down before it would arrive. He managed to drop into the crow’s-nest and there he crouched to meet it.

It was a wave that towered far above him, high though he was. A single gigantic wave with not a ripple to announce its coming and no billows to be seen in its train. Hal gazed up and into it. Its top was like an overhanging cliff. The green over-curl was edged with white foam. Untold tons of water hung between sea and sky ready to crash down upon the Lively Lady.

The ship, broadside on, began to climb the mountain. She listed to starboard until her masts were horizontal and Hal looked down from his perch not upon the deck but into the glassy sea.

Should he jump clear now? Nothing afloat could stand this. The schooner was bound to roll bottom-side up. Then he might be tangled in the rigging and never get to the surface.

But something made him trust the Lively Lady and hang on. He flinched as the overhang descended upon him. He was struck a crushing, stunning blow. He could never have hung on in the face of it but he did not need to, for he was so jammed against the mast and the rail of the crow’s-nest that he could not escape if he wanted to.

The falling sea knocked the wind out of his body. He breathed stinging salt water into his lungs. He felt his strength going. And yet the whole thing seemed unreal. How could he be drowned forty feet above deck?

Where was Roger? Had he been washed overboard? So this was a hurricane! He had never thought it would be like this. Would they ever come out of this wave?

Then the water slipped away from him with a dragging pull on his body. The mast seemed to be upright once more. He looked down to where the deck should be. There was nothing but a swirling surge of sea.

Then it washed away and the deck leaped into view. His eyes searched for Roger. There he was. His smart kid brother had lashed himself to the foremast. He looked more dead than alive, but he was still with the ship. The captain had flattened himself out on the floor of the cockpit. Omo had come through the deluge like a seal and was already busy trying to repair a damaged rudder.

Crab was nowhere to be seen.

Crab had never known a drink to take effect so fast. He had no sooner swallowed it than he was struck a terrific crack on the skull, hurled against the bulkhead, pelted with boxes, bales, crates, and cans and covered with flour from a burst bag. Half-buried by supplies, he lay on the wall, with his head on the ceiling. Then there was a roll and the ship’s stores left him, only to come flying back the next instant, pummelling him black and blue.

He struggled through the welter of flying things to the door which had slammed shut. He could not open it. It was not locked. It was never locked. Yet with all his strength he couldn’t budge it. There was a terrific roaring outside.

For the wind had come at last. It had sealed the door as securely as if it had been nailed. The room again lay on its side. Crab stood on the wall and battled with the door.

But things had stopped flying about. He was a fool to try to get out, Crab thought. He could rest here and let the others work. After all, they couldn’t blame him for it wasn’t his fault that the door was jammed. He stretched himself out on the wall.

During the interval between the great wave and the wind Hal had slipped to the deck. The ship lying broadside to the wind was on her beam ends. Her deck was steeper than the roof of a house. She did not roll. She seemed held there by a mighty hand. The water had been as smooth after the wave as before it, but it was beginning to kick up now under the gale.

The plucky little engine laboured to bring her about. As it gradually succeeded the deck levelled out. The great wave rolled away to leeward like a moving skyscraper.

As the ship put her nose into the storm those on deck got the full force of the wind. It moved in on you like a solid wall. When Hal tried to face it it blew his eyes shut and crowded into his lungs until he thought he would burst with the pressure. He would have been swept away like a leaf if he had not taken the precaution of lashing himself to the mast. Now he squirmed around to get on the lee side of it.

He could believe the captain when he told him later that the force of the hurricane was twelve on the Beaufort scale. This was twice the force of the average strong gale which rarely registered above six.

A strange elation tingled through his veins. He had always wondered what a hurricane was like. Of course he had read about it - how it got its name from the devil Hurakan, the thunder-and-lightning god of the Indians of Central America; how the same thing was called a typhoon in the western Pacific after the Chinese word taifung, meaning great wind; how it went elsewhere by such names as chubasco, ciclon, huracan, torbellino, tormenta, tropical. But whatever you chose to call it, it was something to remember for a lifetime.

Behind the mast it was as hard to get air as it had been to avoid getting too much before the mast. The wind slid by in two currents, one on each side, with such speed that between them a vacuum was created. Water splashed up on the forecastle was at once atomized and blown aft as spray.

It was dangerous spray as Hal found when he experimentally put out his hand. The hand was flung back at him with terrific force. The fingers were bleeding where they had been stabbed by the shafts of spray. The arm felt as numb as if a bolt of electricity had gone through it. Hal estimated that the wind must be travelling at a good hundred and fifty miles an hour.

It did not take such a wind long to end the momentary calm after the passing of the big wave. The sea came alive with leaping hills of water. The ship, which had been on an even keel for a few moments, began to pitch wildly. It climbed the slopes with its nose in the air and plunged head first into the troughs.

Hal was glad of the mast and the lashings that held him to it. Roger was lashed to the other mast. Omo continued to skip about the dipping deck like a monkey, but Captain Ike lay wedged in the cockpit. His hand gripped the lower spokes of the wheel. There was still no sign of Crab. He ought to be on deck helping his crew-mate battle with flying gear and rigging.

In the meantime, all was not well with Crab. His dream of a quiet siesta while the storm raged was not working out. He had a few moments of peace to gloat over the jammed door that locked him away from his labours.

Then the sudden pitching of the ship in the wind-whipped sea began to play football with him. He was flung from the floor to the wall and from the wall to the floor. There was a bunk at one side of the room and he got into it It threw him out. He got in again and was again tossed out amid a shower of cans. Everything loose seemed to come alive and to take delight in pelting him. It was like being inside the crazy house in an amusement park.

In a frenzy of fear he attacked the door. It was as solid as a bulkhead. He backed off and ran, crashing it with his shoulder. Nothing happened except to his shoulder.

He tried to shield his head from the flying missiles. He beat upon the door with his fists and yelled blue murder -well knowing he could not be heard. He flung a heavy box against the door. But on the other side was the heavier hand of the wind. He was a prisoner in a torture chamber. He began to repent of his sins. If he got out of this place alive he would never drink again, he would never try to get out of work, he would be a model of sweetness and light.

As if an angel had been waiting for just such resolutions the door against which he was leaning suddenly opened in a lull of the wind and he fell head over heels into the corridor. The door slammed shut again, leaving him in peace.

He promptly forgot his fine promises, braced himself between the bulkheads in a curled-up position and took a nap.

The wind had grown fitful. It came in gusts and gasps, then stopped altogether. The roar had been so great that Hal was deafened by the silence. The clouds of flying spray disappeared and the blue sky broke out.

‘We’re through it!’ shouted Roger.

Hal was not so sure.

‘That’s only half of it,’ growled Captain Ike.

The wind of a hurricane goes around in a circle. It may move at a rate of anywhere from a hundred to two hundred miles an hour. But the entire revolving mass does not move forward much faster than twelve miles an hour.

At the centre of this merry-go-round is the ‘eye’ of the hurricane, a quiet spot with little or no wind.

‘We’re in the centre,’ Captain Ike said. ‘Half an hour perhaps - then we’ll catch it on the other side.’

Hal and Roger unlashed themselves to go to Omo’s assistance. The canvas had torn out of the gaskets. The running gear was a tangle of lines knotted by the wind. The dinghy was about to pull away.

The men gasped as they worked. The air was suffocatingly thin and hot.

It was hard to understand at first why the ship should roll and pitch worse than ever. The waves were much higher than in the path of the wind. Here they had no pressure of wind to keep them under control. They shot up in great spouts fifty, sixty feet high. It seemed as if mines or torpedoes must be exploding under the surface to send up such geysers.

Huge pointed lumps of water as big as houses raced about madly in all directions, crashed into each other, sent up fountains of spray, fell away in a hundred waterfalls. , The confusion was due to the fact that from every point of the compass winds were blowing in» towards this centre of calm. And so the waves popped up helter-skelter and went wildly north, south, east, west, anywhere. It was anarchy, it was chaos.

But the lively Lady took it. In such a sea a passenger ship or cargo steamer would have gone to Davy Jones’s locker. But a small craft can often weather such treatment better than a large one.