A thousand deaths by Jack London

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?

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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.

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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.

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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