The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance
- -
- 100%
- +
"Yes. Just as she swims. We'd take our personal baggage ashore, and sell all the rest."
"She's worth thirty pounds a ton builder's measurement, although, if she was a merchant ship, she would now be off the letter. Thirty pounds a ton, if she's worth a sovereign."
"Then I tell you, Drew, we three have been shipmates many years now, and you shall have the old Seabird as she stands; and if you don't want to better yourself-you are too young a man to retire-you shall get us a new and a better boat, and be our captain still."
"Your grace, I shall be glad to command your new yacht. I am very proud to think you have still confidence in me, notwithstanding my oversight of the rudder-"
"The fullest confidence, Drew. As you say, there was that seat in the way."
"But, your grace, I could scarcely bring myself to take a present of the Seabird-"
"But you shall take a present of it. Neither I nor my son want her any more."
"Well, if your grace insists, I have no choice."
"You have no choice. She's beginning to heel over already; she's beginning to feel this nor'-easter already, and so am I. My pains grow bad; I feel it in my shoulder now. You may go now. Drew, and lie down, or take a watch on deck, as you consider best. Anyway, have just another look at that rudder-head before you turn in, and come and tell me what you think; we will then finally decide as to our course."
When the captain regained the deck, he found the wind had freshened. There was as much wind now as she could bear with all fore-and-aft canvas set. It was not yet necessary to think of taking in sail, but it would be if the breeze got any stronger. She was now quite comfortable, with flying-jib and gaff-topsails. The covering-boards on the port-side were under; but Captain Drew would rather keep her going than insure a dry deck. The dead-lights were all closed, and everything snug except the rudder-head. It was worrying to think he should not have found out about that rudder-head until he was a hundred and fifty miles from Silver Bay, and upwards of a hundred and thirty from any port. But the wedging was sure to hold; in fact, it couldn't help holding, unless the wood was ten times worse than it looked.
Captain Drew went aft. The carpenter and first and second mates were still at the rudder-head. The broken-up seat had been carried away. Pritchard was still at the wheel.
"Well, Mr. Mate, what do you think of the cap now?"
"Taut as a drum now, sir."
"How does she behave? How does she feel, Pritchard?"
"Answers as good as new, sir. Look!"
He put up the wheel a little to port, and then a little to starboard; at each side, before he got the wheel two spokes over, there was a check, and plainly the jump of the rudder.
The captain rubbed his hands. He really thought now she would fetch forty pounds a ton, and tomorrow she would be his.
"Have you looked at the cap-iron, Mr. Carpenter?"
"Yes, sir; most careful."
"How is that?"
"Sound as a bell."
The captain rubbed his hands again. What a fortunate thing for him, after all, was this fault in the rudder-head. Only for it the Duke might not think, for goodness knew how long, of parting with the Seabird, and, of course, until he did think of parting with her, he could not think of making her a present to him, Captain Drew. Wonderful how things fall out!
As far as the rudder went, all now being in a satisfactory condition, and the watch sufficiently strong to deal with the duty of taking in sail, the captain told the first mate to turn in and the carpenter to go forward to his own duties, having ordered him to leave the lantern behind him. To the second mate he said:
"I'll take charge, Mr. Starclay. You can turn in, if you like."
"Thank you, sir," said the second mate; and he, too, went forward. The captain and Pritchard were now the only men on the quarter-deck. The former went below, told the Duke, and came back to the deck.
Captain Drew was too full of thought for sleep. His pay was very good, more than very good. He was perfectly content to remain as he was. The Duke and the Marquis had always treated him well. He had nothing to complain of, and he had never complained. When he was afloat he lived like a prince. When he was ashore he had a comfortable home, and a wife and children, who were dearer to him than all the rest of the world. But, notwithstanding the liberal pay of the Duke, and that he had been many years in his grace's employment, he had, owing to no extravagance on his part, but to the way in which he had kept his home and brought up his family, been able to lay nothing aside for a rainy day. Now he was between forty and fifty; all his children were still upon his hands, and his pay was no more than kept them and his wife comfortably. He had of late felt some anxiety as to what he should do with his boys and girls. He knew that if anything happened to himself, the Duke would pension his widow. But the children were now old enough to have their careers indicated at least, and he lacked the means of starting them.
Now all had been changed. This yacht would become his property the moment they reached Silver Bay, and she would fetch from five to six thousand pounds! What a blessing! She was as good as his own already. They all thought the rudder-head would hold. For anything else he cared nothing. She was a good sea-boat. She was stiff. He knew her from stem to stem. If the rudder-cap held, he feared nothing wind or wave could do. This gift had made his fortune, and from the Seabird's deck he would not go until she had dropped anchor safe inside the reef-protected Silver Bay.
He told the steward to bring him a cup of coffee, and having put on his pea-jacket, and lighted a pipe, he shook himself, and began pacing the quarterdeck at the windward side.
As his feet fell upon the planks, he thought, "My own! My own! The craft I've sailed these many years, the best years of my life, now is all mine, to do with as I please! And what shall I do with her? Sell her! Sell her, and put my little ones fair before the wind?"
"How does she answer now, Pritchard?" he asked the man at the wheel.
"Fast as a racer, sir," replied the man.
"That's right! That's right!" said the captain, rubbing his hands, and drawing his pipe heartily.
It was the rule of the yacht that the officer in charge, be he captain or mate, should not smoke. This was the captain's first infringement of the rule, but there were excuses for him. There was no likelihood that either the Duke or the Marquis would come on deck again that night; and in less than four-and-twenty hours the craft he commanded would be his own. He was now in the zenith of his fortune. All his worldly future was fairly provided for, and he was mapping it out with a loving hand.
He paused in his walk, and caught the bulwark, tried to shake it, that he might enjoy the consciousness of the vessel's-his vessel's-strength. He laid his hand on the mainboom, as one pats the head of a favourite child. He looked down the skylight, and saw the satin-wood panels, the silver fittings, the rich velvet curtains and upholstery.
Then he took up the lantern and directed the light from the bull's-eye on to the unshapely ragged rudder-head. The carpenter had not been able to drive all the wedges fully home, nor had he cut them off level with the rudder-cap. The clean newly-cut wedges, standing up in the rude oval formed by the line inside the cap-iron, looked like a double set of irregular teeth laid flat and open or dislocated. The upper surface of the rudder appeared lozenge-shaped, but only the outline of the iron was lozenge-shaped. The wood and the inner side formed an octagon, the sides of which were arcs of large circles, the plain being longer by one-third than broad. The irons, when they reached what may be termed the base or after-line of the octagon, increased greatly in thickness, and at the line of the base were pierced by an iron bolt which was riveted over a pair of washers, and this bolt formed the base-line of the ironwork aft. The iron sides of the octagon were continued aft, and brought together at a gentle angle, until they met the iron helm, to which they were firmly welded; the strength of this joint being enormously increased by a stout exterior ring clasping all three together, and welded to all three; following the helm-iron forward, between those two side bands over the bolt, through the rudder-head, it was finally riveted over a washer in the foremost iron side of the band.
The workmanship was excellent, and the whole looked as firm as human hands could make it.
The interior of the iron was an irregular octagon, the exterior was rounded and lozenge-shaped. The captain now, for the first time, noticed two things: namely, that the lozenge-shape, which looked so well, had been obtained at the expense of strength; and, that the helm-iron must be broken off short at the point where it entered the rudder-head. The exterior oval had been produced by thinning away the iron at points exterior to the interior angles. Unless the helm-iron had been broken, the cap-iron could not have worked so freely a while ago.
These two discoveries filled him with uneasiness. He knelt down on the deck and turned the full glare of the bull's eye on the jagged rudder-head and the symmetrical mass of ironwork.
This closer examination somewhat allayed his fears. If, as he knelt, he could have seen what was slowly, surely, creeping upwards towards him in the darkness, he would have sprung to his feet in despair.
CHAPTER XV.
AN INVISIBLE FOE
The wind increased. It now became obvious that the captain's predictions would be verified, and that it would blow a whole gale before morning. It was midnight, and gradually Captain Drew had been taking off canvas. The sea had begun to rise. The yacht was now close-reefed, but it had not been necessary to turn up the whole crew. The wind had come on so gradually that the watch had been able to make the necessary reductions. Captain Drew was a considerate man, and never gave any unnecessary hardship to his men.
In the dim light of a moonless June night the sea looked dreary and forlorn. Although the wind was high, and round the rigging and the spars it seemed secret and furtive, it appeared to cling closely to the water, to leave the hollows between the waves stealthily, and to leave them only when goaded forward by something behind. Then it leaped the crests of the waves swiftly, and flung itself in the hollows once more.
The water looked cold and pallid. From the heavy swash at the bows, to the almost human murmur of the back-water under the counter, there ran all along the side a gamut of depressing sounds, into which every now and then ran the swirl of spray, mounting from the bow and falling with a groan on the deck, to run aft in whispered hisses, until it found its way to scupper-holes, whence it fell with a weary drone into the sea to leeward.
Captain Drew was not, for a sailor, a very superstitious man. But in the atmosphere of this night there was something which daunted him. The mere fact that a flaw should have been found in a vital part of the yacht, and that this flaw had never been discovered until it was, under existing circumstances, past effectual cure, was depressing. But then again there was the sustaining fact that this yacht, which he had sailed for years, was now practically his own property. He was now, in effect, five to six thousand pounds a richer man than when that day had broken.
How was he to regard that rudder-head? As a friend or an enemy? If it had not been for the defect in the rudder, the Duke would, in all probability, not have thought of getting rid of the Seabird; and if he had not thought of getting rid of her, it would never have occurred to him to give her to his captain. If the rudder-head held until they got back to Silver Bay, it would undoubtedly be the best friend, after the Duke, he had ever had in all his life. But if the rudder-head gave, what then? No one could tell. They might be driven ashore and all lost, or they might be able to live through the gale, and be picked up by some steamer or sailing-vessel, which would stand by them until a tug or some other kind of succour could reach them. Of course, if the rudder gave, they could do something with a few spars towed behind them, but not much. It was better to keep on hoping the rudder-head would hold.
It was now more than four hours since the Duke and the Marquis had gone below, and these four hours had settled one thing. There was no longer any chance of their putting in anywhere. Silver Bay was now the nearest harbour. The watch had been changed, and a second new hand was now at the wheel.
"Does she answer well, Jefferson?" asked the captain.
"As well as ever, sir," answered the man at the wheel.
By this time every man aboard knew what had happened, and the means which had been taken to meet the emergency.
The captain had slung the lantern on a belaying-pin on the weather side, abreast the companion. He unslung the lantern, and once more went aft and turned the bull's eye full on the rudder head.
He could notice no alteration. The iron looked taut, the wedges looked unchanged, the helmsman found the wheel worked as well as ever. And yet all this time there was creeping up at an infinitesimal rate, from the inner side of the rudder-iron, that which would be sufficient to dash all Captain Drew's hopes to the ground.
As he gazed at the rudder he thought:
"If the Duke does give her to me when we get into the bay, I'll let her swing there at anchor until I get a new rudder into her. She shall have the best rudder they can make for her at Izleworth. It will cost fifteen-ay, maybe twenty-pounds. It ought not to cost more than twenty pounds. But cost what it may, she shall have the best. Whatever the ship-carpenter asks he shall have. I will not cheapen him a penny. If he says five-and-twenty pounds, he shall have five-and-twenty pounds. You must not look a gift horse in the mouth, and I won't haggle over a few pounds to make the craft I sailed so long, and that now is going to bring me a fortune, shipshape and seaworthy. She doesn't want anything else. We never knew anything she wanted that she didn't get. Not likely, with such an owner as the Duke, God bless him!
"Ay, it's a fortune, and a large fortune, too, for a man like me. The most I ever had any reason to hope for was a few hundreds in the will of the Duke; and here now it has come to thousands all at once, and with the Duke alive and friendly to me yet, and promising me a new ship, and giving me the old one."
He bent forward and felt round the rudder-head carefully, tenderly, as though it were sensitive. Then he rose, hung up the lantern on the belaying-pin, and resumed his walk. His thoughts went on:
"I will run no risk with her. A plank or beam or stanchion may get dozed any time. It is likely everything else in the Seabird is as sound as a bell. But this matter of the rudder-head is a warning. I'll never take her to sea again at my own risk. I'll sell her in the bay, and will take good care I have the money in my pocket before she goes to sea again. How do I know but that the mainmast may be gone, or the sternpost? No, no. It won't do to throw away a chance like this. Not twice in a lifetime does a man in my position meet with a chance like this. It will not do to throw away a chance like this."
He filled and lit another pipe, and continued his walk.
It was now grey dawn, and the wind continued still to increase. Captain Drew was in no way uneasy about the wind or the sea. She was equal to it all, and much more, if the rudder-head only held. Although the wind had now double the force it had when he ordered in the flying-jib and ordered down the gaff-topsails, so skilfully had sail been reduced, and so free from anything like squall had been the gale, that she had never been more than a plank or two under to leeward. Water was now coming over the weather-side in bucketfals; and now and then the schooner plunged her nose under a big sea, and washed her decks fore and aft.
It was a dismal daybreak. The sky was all overcast with low-flying grey clouds, the sea a tangled maze of irregular billows. As day advanced there was no encouraging element in the scene. No land, no vessel, was in sight. All looked void and purposeless. The water and the air were given up to the tempest, and the schooner seemed an impertinence the presence of which air and water resented with deadly hatred.
Still, dreary as the dawn. Captain Drew preferred it to the night. He kept the deck. He was resolved to carry out his determination of not going below until the Seabird was safely at anchor in Silver Bay. It was now between two and three, and, if all went well, and all had been going well, he might, in reason, hope to be in smooth water in less than a dozen hours.
Every half hour, as morning grew into day, he paused and examined that rudder-head. It held admirably to all appearances. He could discover no sign of any weakness, of any working, of any giving out. He rubbed his hands once more in satisfaction. He now felt assured the rudder would last until they had reached security. Of course there was no great strain on the steering-gear. It was not as if they had been tacking up a narrow river, where they had to come about every few minutes. A couple of spokes to port now, a couple of spokes to starboard at another moment, sufficed to keep her on her course. He should not have to put any strain on the tiller until they ported to enter the bay; that was, of course, provided they did not encounter very much worse weather or the danger of a collision. As soon as he saw anything he would be able to tell better how they were, but he calculated that they would fetch Silver Bay on this reach without changing the course a point; and he ought to know if anyone did, for it was not the first nor the fiftieth northeast wind he had run away on in this same yacht Seabird.
When he was getting that new rudder made, there was one thing he would be certain not to have like the old one: there should be no sacrifice of strength to appearance. If there were to be interior angles, there should be exterior angles also.
All this while the silent invisible foe was slowly, but surely, working its way upwards.
At eight o'clock the Marquis came on deck, and was informed of the way in which the night had gone over, and that Captain Drew hoped to let go anchor in Silver Bay at about two o'clock that afternoon, if the wind kept steadily as it now was, and the sea did not get very much worse. The Duke did not come on deck. He feared to face the bitter air.
As the day grew the wind and sea rose considerably, until the gale became a storm, and the Seabird had not a single dry inch of deck. The rudder held bravely, although it now had to contend against hardships which the captain had not foreseen for it a couple of hours ago.
At noon they made out land under the port-bow; and by what Captain Drew could see he knew he was right in his calculation, and that the yacht would, on her present course, sail almost into the bay.
For miles and miles there was no other place of refuge but that bay. In such a storm it was a serious thing to have such a lee-shore, for at this part of the coast the land tends north-west, making a lee-shore for a north-east wind. Captain Drew would have felt no anxiety if no accident had happened; but in the face of a damaged rudder on a lee-shore such as this, and in such a storm, he felt very uneasy. If anything went at the rudder there would be no hope for the yacht, and little or none for any man aboard her.
The schooner was now able to show only a storm-jib and close-reefed scandalised mainsail to the storm.
At half-past one the foe, which had been so long invisible, came into sight, the Seabird being then about three miles to the south-west of the entrance to Silver Bay.
At a quarter to two the carpenter, who had been ordered to watch the rudder-head, saw the foe, which had so long been working in darkness, and reported to the captain. The carpenter said to the captain:
"In the starboard side of the rudder-cap iron-"
"Yes."
"There's a crack."
"Good God! a crack? If that goes, we are all lost!"
"I think it's going fast, sir."
While the carpenter was telling this terrible news to the captain, on shore Cheyne was standing among a knot of fishermen watching the approaching yacht.
CHAPTER XVI.
ON THE ROCKS
Gradually the group on the ledge of land hard by the cottages increased as the yacht drew nearer. A few women joined the men, and the talk about the yacht and its owner became general. Cheyne stood a little apart, within hearing, to leeward. The yacht was still half a league from the shore, heading for the bay.
"She has got as much as she wants now," said one of the men.
"Ay, and a trifle more."
"As fine a sea-boat as ever swam!"
"Ay, ay; but this is near as big a gale as ever blew."
"Oh! There's her keel from the bow to the foremast!"
"And there it is from the rudder to the main chains!"
"She'll pick up her moorings in a quarter of an hour."
"And I don't think anyone aboard will be sorry when she's in smooth water."
"Especially the Duke. For my part, I don't like even looking on, and I'd like it still less, but I know she's fit for it, and only plays with it. Fancy how an old collier would behave in a gale like that! It's very well the sea is no worse, or it might poop her."
"Poop her with that way on! You are a freshwater sailor, you are!"
"But suppose she made a stem board?"
"Or flew over the moon!"
"But if she carried away her mainsail she'd pay off, and then she might be pooped."
"If the sky fell, we'd catch larks. Get along with you, for a mud-pilot!"
"I daresay they're all on deck."
"Every soul of them. Why, who could stay below in a gale like that? Everything in her is jumping about like dice in a dice-box."
"They haven't a plate or a cup or a saucer left whole, I'll warrant."
"What odds about the cups and saucers, so long as the Duke-God bless him! – is safe."
"And the men."
"And the men too-and the men too!"
By this time the Seabird was within a few cables' length of the southern or cliff side of Silver Bay. She was now keeping a little more to windward than she absolutely wanted, and, according to a landsman's eye, it might seem Captain Drew meant to run his ship ashore about the middle of the reef. But when you have your vessel well in hand, and know all about her, being a little to windward of where you want to fetch is like having a fine unencumbered estate and a large balance at your banker's, after paying the last penny you can be called upon for.
"Time for him to port now," said one of the men on shore.
"Nice of a mud-pilot like you to teach Captain Drew how to bring the Seabird into Silver Bay! Why, if you were an admiral you'd teach the ships how to graze on the side of mountains, and the marines how to furl a t'gallant sail, you would!"
"Port!" cried Captain Drew. He was standing by the weather-bulwark, abreast of the companion. "Hard a port!" he added.
"Port!" cried Pritchard, who was again at the wheel, as being the best helmsman aboard. The wheel flew round. "Hard a port it is!" called out Pritchard mechanically. The wheel had gone round, and it ought to have ported the helm; but he knew very well it had not. It had spun round as though nothing had been attached to it. When the first few spokes had been put down, the wheel had suddenly run away in the direction he had been forcing it. He looked instantly behind him, sprang forward to where the captain stood, and whispered in a choked hoarse voice:
"She won't answer, sir. The cap-iron's gone!"
"All hands aft! Cut away mainsail!" sang out the captain.
One man sprang into the main-rigging, and went up upon the lee side hand-over-hand; one man sprang on the peak of the gaff, and scrambled up; two men got out on the boom; and in less than three minutes the mainsail had been cut adrift, and was rolled far away down to leeward.
"Your Grace," said the captain, "the rudder-head iron is gone, and I have ordered them to cut away the mainsail."
"Good God!" exclaimed the Duke, who had heard the order, and guessed that something had gone terribly wrong with the rudder head; "then we are lost!"