In performing the evolution she would have to pass broadside to the surge before
she could get before it. The wind was blowing directly on his right cheek, when
he felt the Sophie Sutherland lean over and begin to rise toward the sky—up—
up—an infinite distance! Would she clear the crest of the gigantic wave?
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
37
Again by the feel of it, he could see nothing, he knew that a wall of water was
rearing and curving far above him along the whole weather side. There was an
instant’s calm as the liquid wall intervened and shut off the wind. The schooner
righted, and for that instant seemed at perfect rest. Then she rolled to meet the
descending rush.
Chris shouted to the captain to hold tight, and prepared himself for the shock. But
the man did not live who could face it. An ocean of water smote Chris’s back and
his clutch on the spokes was loosened as if it were a baby’s. Stunned, powerless,
like a straw on the face of a torrent, he was swept onward he knew not whither.
Missing the corner of the cabin, he was dashed forward along the poop runway a
hundred feet or more, striking violently against the foot of the foremast. A second
wave, crushing inboard, hurled him back the way he had come, and left him half-
drowned where the poop steps should have been.
Bruised and bleeding, dimly conscious, he felt for the rail and dragged himself to
his feet. Unless something could be done, he knew the last moment had come. As
he faced the poop, the wind drove into his mouth with suffocating force. This
brought him back to his senses with a start. The wind was blowing from dead aft!
The schooner was out of the trough and before it! But the send of the sea was
bound to breach her to again. Crawling up the runway, he managed to get to the
wheel just in time to prevent this. The binnacle light was still burning. They were
safe!
That is, he and the schooner were safe. As to the welfare of his three companions
he could not say. Nor did he dare leave the wheel in order to find out, for it took
every second of his undivided attention to keep the vessel to her course. The least
fraction of carelessness and the heave of the sea under the quarter was liable to
thrust her into the trough. So, a boy of one hundred and forty pounds, he clung to
his herculean task of guiding the two hundred straining tons of fabric amid the
chaos of the great storm forces.
Half an hour later, groaning and sobbing, the captain crawled to Chris’s feet. All
was lost, he whimpered. He was smitten unto death. The galley had gone by the
board, the mainsail and running-gear, the cook, everything!
“Where’s the sailing-master?” Chris demanded when he had caught his breath
after steadying a wild lurch of the schooner. It was no child’s play to steer a vessel
under single-reefed jib before a typhoon.
“Clean up for’ard,” the old man replied. “Jammed under the fo’c’slehead, but still
breathing. Both his arms are broken, he says, and he doesn’t know how many ribs.
He’s hurt bad.”
“Well, he’ll drown there the way she’s shipping water through the hawse- pipes.
Go for’ard!” Chris commanded, taking charge of things as a matter of course.
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
38
“Tell him not to worry; that I’m at the wheel. Help him as much as you can, and
make him help”—he stopped and ran the spokes to starboard as a tremendous
billow rose under the stern and yawed the schooner to port—”and make him help
himself for the rest. Unship the fo’castle hatch and get him down into a bunk.
Then ship the hatch again.”
The captain turned his aged face forward and wavered pitifully. The waist of the
ship was full of water to the bulwarks. He had just come through it, and knew
death lurked every inch of the way.
“Go!” Chris shouted, fiercely. And as the fear-stricken man started, “And take
another look for the cook!”
Two hours later, almost dead from suffering, the captain returned. He had obeyed
orders. The sailing-master was helpless, although safe in a bunk; the cook was
gone. Chris sent the captain below to the cabin to change his clothes.
After interminable hours of toil, day broke cold and gray. Chris looked about him.
The Sophie Sutherland was racing before the typhoon like a thing possessed.
There was no rain, but the wind whipped the spray of the sea mast-high,
obscuring everything except in the immediate neighborhood.
Two waves only could Chris see at a time—the one before and the one behind. So
small and insignificant the schooner seemed on the long Pacific roll! Rushing up a
maddening mountain, she would poise like a cockle-shell on the giddy summit,
breathless and rolling, leap outward and down into the yawning chasm beneath,
and bury herself in the smother of foam at the bottom. Then the recovery, another
mountain, another sickening upward rush, another poise, and the downward crash.
Abreast of him, to starboard, like a ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing
apace with the schooner. Evidently, when washed overboard, he had grasped and
become entangled in a trailing halyard.
For three hours more, along with this gruesome companion, Chris held the Sophie
Sutherland before the wind and sea. He had long since forgotten his mangled
fingers. The bandages had been torn away, and the cold, salt spray had eaten into
the half-healed wounds until they were numb and no longer pained. But he was
not cold. The terrific labor of steering forced the perspiration from every pore.
Yet he was faint and weak with hunger and exhaustion, and hailed with delight
the advent on deck of the captain, who fed him all of a pound of cake-chocolate. It
strengthened him at once.
He ordered the captain to cut the halyard by which the cook’s body was towing,
and also to go forward and cut loose the jib-halyard and sheet. When he had done
so, the jib fluttered a couple of moments like a handkerchief, then tore out of the
bolt-ropes and vanished. The Sophie Sutherland was running under bare poles.
DUTCH COURAGE AND OTHER STORIES
39
By noon the storm had spent itself, and by six in the evening the waves had died
down sufficiently to let Chris leave the helm. It was almost hopeless to dream of
the small boats weathering the typhoon, but there is always the chance in saving
human life, and Chris at once applied himself to going back over the course along
which he had fled. He managed to get a reef in one of the inner jibs and two reefs
in the spanker, and then, with the aid of the watch-tackle, to hoist them to the stiff
breeze that yet blew. And all through the night, tacking back and forth on the back
track, he shook out canvas as fast as the wind would permit.
The injured sailing-master had turned delirious and between tending him and
lending a hand with the ship, Chris kept the captain busy.
“Taught me more seamanship,” as he afterward said, “than I’d learned on the
whole voyage.” But by daybreak the old man’s feeble frame succumbed, and he
fell off into exhausted sleep on the weather poop.
Chris, who could now lash the wheel, covered the tired man with blankets from
below, and went fishing in the lazaretto for something to eat. But by the day
following he found himself forced to give in, drowsing fitfully by the wheel and
waking ever and anon to take a look at things.
On the afternoon of the third day he picked up a schooner, dismasted and battered.
As he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks crowded by an
unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out among others the faces of
his missing comrades. And he was just in the nick of time, for they were fighting
a losing fight at the pumps. An hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft,
were aboard the Sophie Sutherland.
Having wandered so far from their own vessel, they had taken refuge on the
strange schooner just before the storm broke. She was a Canadian sealer on her
first voyage, and as was now apparent, her last.
The captain of the Sophie Sutherland had a story to tell, also, and he told it well—
so well, in fact, that when all hands were gathered together on deck during the
dog-watch, Emil Johansen strode over to Chris and gripped him by the hand.
“Chris,” he said, so loudly that all could hear, “Chris, I gif in. You vas yoost so
good a sailorman as I. You vas a bully boy and able seaman, and I pe proud for