In Hazard (5 page)

At nine o'clock therefore, as the barometer still fell, and the steady direction of the wind showed that they were in the direct track of the storm, Captain Edwardes headed her round north-east and north, with her nose splitting the gale, to ride it out.

[1]
The earth is a ball, turning about an axis: so a point on its surface near the Equator is moving faster than a point further from the Equator. The border of a system of air, therefore, which is nearest the Equator, will show a tendency to lag behind the border which is over a slower-moving part of the Earth's surface: and, if the system is limited, will give it a twist.

Dick Watchett was busy, and excited. This was his first hurricane; and he looked forward to it. Moreover the Captain—since captains are school-masters as well as everything else—made him in imagination commander of the ship; required him to repeat, from barometer and wind-direction, the same calculations that he had made himself, and say what should be done. It was interesting, but an ordeal (because the Captain's report on him at the end of the voyage would depend on the answers he made).

Once that was over, he was like a schoolboy out of school. He hoped that the hurricane would do something spectacular; that the wind would bend solid iron rails with its weight, something tangibly to express its force: something vivid, for letters home. But one could hardly hope for anything really spectacular on so large and well-found a ship as the “Archimedes.” No dismasting. No frozen helmsman lashed to the wheel, with salt spray glittering in his beard. No: for the strong wheel-house was up in the centre of the bridge, far above any waves, and thick panes of glass protected you completely from the weather. Nor was it a viking figure that stood at the wheel: it was a little old Chinese quartermaster, with a face like a wrinkled yellow apple, standing on a little old mat.

At eight, when Mr. Buxton had gone his rounds, he had taken Dick with him. Going about the deck, against this wind, was exactly like going up hill: the same effort, and the same slant of one's body towards the ground. The ship might just as well have been standing up on its stern, as facing the wind, when you tried to go forward: and coming aft was like falling downstairs.

The loud rustling shriek of the gale was giving place to a deafening roaring. The water sloshing about on the fo'c'sle head was atomised by the wind, and blew aft as mist. The water on the rails was blown off in little glittering fans. Even oil from the winches was carried by the spray to the upper deck.

And over the side one saw, not the familiar sea, but rather whole countrysides of water. The wind picked the skin off the waves, leaving little white pock-marks. Waves broke, and then swallowed their own foam: you could see it far below the surface, engulfed. Suddenly a squall of rain dashed across. The rain-drops bounced on the water, making a surface like the dewy gossamer on a lawn: like wool. It was as if the naked sea were growing hair.

Instantly it was a great pleasure to Dick that Sukie was not there. Wind was better than women. A ship-load of men, none of them—at any rate for the respite of the storm—in love with anyone: all purely bent on the impending battle with the air. That was best.

The thought of Sukie brought the taste of corn-whiskey into his mind; and his mind repelled it with vigour. He felt a sudden conviction that he would never again touch alcohol: it was revolting stuff. Not so much as a glass of beer. Nor smoke. It surprised him a little; for he had always taken a normal pleasure in these things. It was like conversion—a physical conversion, not a spiritual one, for there was no morality nor resolution in it. It was just a sudden reversal of his physical appetites, so strong that he could not believe they would ever change again. A loathing of girls, drink, tobacco; and all wrought by the wind.

Then the exultation which the storm had raised in him whirled up in his head giddily, and he was sea-sick.

At nine o'clock, when the ship was hove-to, the wind-force had been only seven (on the Beaufort scale): and the barometer stood at 29.58. By noon the barometer had dropped to 29.38; and the wind-force was ten. That is a great wind: we don't often get it as strong as that in England, even when the weather seems to be blowing itself inside out: but it still continued to increase.

Plainly the storm was neither of the mildness, nor in the position, predicted. It was lucky that they had had all loose gear and so on secured in plenty of time. It would have been difficult now. It was difficult even to get about.

The seas, huge lumps of water with a point on top, ran about in all directions in a purposeful way at immense speeds. They were as big as houses, and moved as fast as trains. Sometimes they ran into each other, hard, and threw themselves jointly into the air. At others they banged suddenly against the ship, and burst out into a rapid plumage of spray that for a moment hid everything. The windows of the bridge, high up as they were, were completely obscured by spray: it was only through the little “clear-vision screen” (a fast-spinning wheel of glass which water cannot stick to) that it was possible to see at all. For if you stepped out on to the ends of the bridge, where there was no glass, the wind blew your eyes shut immediately.

Directly beneath the bridge were the deck-officers' quarters, a little room for each: and directly beneath that again, grouped just aft of the common dining-saloon, were the engineers' quarters. On each side there was a short corridor; and the steering-rods from the bridge above ran along it. On to the starboard corridor Mr. MacDonald's room opened: on the port corridor the doctor lived.

This Dr. Frangcon was an elderly man, who never talked about his past. But a ship's doctor's is hardly a life for the professionally ambitious, and few elderly men are to be found in it. The only clue to his past (if it can be called a clue) was a package of medals which he kept hidden in a drawer among his underclothing. No one ever had got a good view of them: and while some said they were Boer War medals, others held that they were foreign decorations: but the steward maintained that they had been had for swimming. And Dr. Frangcon collected antique musical instruments—lutes, serpents, recorders and so on. These he brought to sea with him, sealed in glass cases to protect them against the changes of climate. He spent the morning anxiously wadding these glass cases apart with lint and surgical dressings, as the motion of the ship threatened to clap them together.

At two o'clock Mr. MacDonald, being rather old, went to his room for a rest: and Dick Watchett also went to his room, to see he had left nothing breakable in a place where it could break. The fourth engineer was left in charge of the hissing engine-room. Captain Edwardes and Mr. Buxton were both on the bridge, and intended to remain there. The wind was still increasing. The roaring so hammered on the ears as to tend to frighten the brain within. The atmosphere was almost all spray now: you could not see through it. Except for occasional momentary lulls, you could not see the sea, or the deck even. It was only by the wincing of the ship you knew what huge waves were hitting her: by that, and the thunderous banging. You could not
see
anything. Standing in the damp chartroom, you could descry, through the glass between, the little Chinaman, on his mat, at the wheel; but nothing outside: and it was only by shouting close into each other's ears that they could hear, either.

However, the fiercer a hurricane is, the smaller the area (as a rule) which it covers: and so the sooner it should be over. By that evening, with luck. That was, if nothing untoward happened.

But at two o'clock, there happened something very untoward indeed. For at two o'clock the engines, at half-speed, began to appear to be inadequate to keep her nose into the wind. So Captain Edwardes telegraphed for full speed ahead. Yet that seemed to make no difference: the propeller, unable any more to hold her, only roared in the helpless milk under her stern.

She was turning. The seas were battering more on the starboard side. The wind was on the starboard bow.

The quartermaster was making frantic signs, through the window, that something had gone wrong with the steering. So that was it! However, there was nothing to be done but watch the compass-needle creep round in the compass. For by the time anyone could get the emergency wheel on the poop in action, she would be broadside; and then no power on earth could straighten her again till the wind eased. It took about five minutes, altogether; and then she was lying broadside on to the wind, heeled over steeply, vulnerable; and Mr. Buxton, noting the time, entered it in the log.

He also noted, with satisfaction, that her motion was a short, sharp rolling. This might be uncomfortable, but from the point of view of stability it was satisfactory. But she was heeled over so far that walls and floor seemed to have almost equal claims to represent the horizontal.

In the wheelhouse the little Chinese quartermaster clung to the useless wheel, like a cold monkey to the neck of its master. A sudden lurch tore him off. The mat on which he stood skiddered down the steep slope of the bridge: a snapshot (from the chartroom) of the Chinaman shooting by, with a concentrated expression, on his inadequate toboggan: then he fetched up against the rails at the far end with such a terrific impact as to bend them, and send the shield of the navigating light spinning into the sea. There he stopped, inert, on the brink: till Buxton and the Captain together managed to drag him back. Was he dead or alive? One does not bend iron rails with one's body for nothing. Yet, oddly enough, he was alive.

Gaston, the fourth engineer, a young dark Channel-islander, in temporary charge of the engine-room, telephoned for help. The engine-room sky-light had blown off, deluging the engine-room with spray, and fusing the lights; and with the ship heeled right over like that the engines would anyhow have been difficult to work. The second and third engineers came, but not Mr. MacDonald. For, leaving his room, he saw that the coir matting in the corridor had got jammed in the steering rods; and he was down on hands and knees, tearing at it with his finger-nails.

These steering-rods were his: and though the matting was Mr. Buxton's he knew he ought to have vetoed its presence in that passage, near his rods. But he had not noticed it: and now it had jammed the steering.

As soon as he felt the ship turn, Dick Watchett tried to leave his room. But he could not. The wind had fixed the door shut. It would have held it against an elephant. He was a prisoner there. He would have to stay there till a lull came and let him out.

Captain Edwardes telegraphed to the engine-room to reduce speed to dead slow: if full speed ahead could not hold her, it was better to save the engines.

The force of the wind continued to increase. Through its solid roar nothing—not even the impact of the seas—could now be heard. Captain Edwardes had been through several hurricanes; but never anything like this. He tried to assess its velocity: but he had nothing to go by. There is no figure on the Beaufort Scale to express such a wind-force as this was. No anemometer is made that would register so great a ferocity of air. Any anemometer yet made would be smashed by it. He thrust his hand out, for a moment, into the force of the spray, then drew it back bleeding at the finger-tips, and numbed as if by an electric shock. For the wind was blowing now with a velocity of about two hundred miles an hour. It begins to be called a hurricane when it reaches seventy-five; and the pressure at two hundred would be seven times greater. To be exposed to a wind like this was of the order of having to cling to the bare wings of an aeroplane racing.

When a hurricane blows the roof off a house, it does not as a rule get inside the house and burst it from within. The flow of the wind over the roof makes a vacuum on the lee side of the roof, and so sucks it off. When the “Archimedes” heeled over away from the weather, her deck made an angle very similar to the lee side of a roof: therefore the suction this wind exerted on it must have been terrific. But decks, of course, are enormously strong. Hatches, on the other hand, are not. They are the most vulnerable part of a ship: and just as vulnerable on a big ship as a little one, because on almost every ship that ever sailed, from a liner to a coasting smack, they are made exactly the same. They are a set of oblong sections of wood, of standard size (each one no larger than can be conveniently shifted by two men), laid loosely upon beams, the whole secured by a covering of tarpaulin stretched tight and fastened round with wedges.

This system can resist immense forces applied from above; it can stand up to the pounding of hundreds of tons of sea. But pressure from below is a different matter—it is not designed for that. You do not expect there to be a vacuum created on deck.

Shortly after three o'clock, the wind, though it maintained its full force, and in gusts increased it, became more unsteady: thus there were rifts in the spray, through which an occasional view of the sea could be had. It was through one of these rifts Captain Edwardes saw some wreckage float by.

“Someone else is in trouble beside us,” he said.

“They aren't,” said Mr. Buxton, who was familiar with every inch of the ship. “Those are
our
Number 2 hatches.”

The spray had cut the tarpaulins, as with a knife: and the wind had sucked the hatches out like drawing a cork from a bottle. Though no heavy seas were coming on board, the spray was so nearly solid water that hundreds of tons would find their way below in a very short time.

It was then Mr. Buxton recollected with foreboding how he had stowed the cargo. All those newspapers and that tobacco in the 'tween-decks—high up. All that water going below: it was bad enough if it cascaded to the ship's bottom, gradually filling her: but even if that happened, it would take a long time, and could be pumped out fast enough with the steam-pumps, and at least it would not affect her stability. But newspapers, and tobacco, are absorbent. Soaked with water, they would be many times their usual weight: and such a weight, high up, might conceivably turn her right over. He looked at the clinometer: her list was increasing, she was heeled at 35° and rolling to 40.° Those hatches ought to be covered again, somehow, at whatever risk; at least till the water could find its way right down.