Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

At three bells, a sailor rushed up from below to shout in the captain’s ear. Someone else took up the cry, the words straining over the roar of the wind. “Water’s reached the lower deck.”

Captain Maxwell kept his eyes on the yards. “Keep to your stations,” he shouted, but his words were muffled by the gale.

The Minerva veered. Lashed though he was, Swift had to hook his hand around a wooden cleat to steady his footing. Looking toward the main mast, he saw to his horror that the reefed sail had come loose. One of the knots had been poorly tied—perhaps the dead sailor’s, perhaps Swift’s own—and now they might die for it.

The Minerva lurched as the loose sail caught the wind. Captain Maxwell, to his credit, did not hesitate. “Stand by to cut away the main mast!”

The sailor closest to the axe stood stupefied, his gaze transfixed by the terrible swell of the sail. Holdfast Muhammad undid his rope-anchor and slid his way over to the axe. Balancing like a man on a tightrope, he carried it over the tilting deck to the tallest mast on the ship. Some of the landsmen moved to join him, machetes in hand. The sharp crashes of their blows were muted by the deafening wind.

Swift could not help but turn to watch the mainmast shudder. After an age the mast sagged sideways, and with agonizing slowness tilted into the ocean. Such was the wind-sound that he could not hear it fall, but he saw the mast drop, and saw also the terrifying snarl of rope and timbers that moved with it.

“No,” Swift said. They had not cut away the rigging properly. He ducked as the stays tore loose. Wood splintered. Heavy wooden blocks careened across the deck.

The captain shouted orders into the wind, but no one could hear him. Horrified, Swift watched the ocean rise up behind the larboard gunwale. Distracted, the helmsman had let the ship broach to. Now, broadside to the wind, the Minerva ’s deck tilted into a wall of water.

The wave smashed across the deck. Swift grabbed hold of a cleat, struggling to keep his footing as warm seawater drenched him. The ship’s bell clanged faintly, desperately. Abandon ship.

A Malay woman staggered out of a hatchway. Swift stretched a hand to her, grabbing her by the wrist.

“Help me,” he shouted to his fellow sailors. He could not hear his own words above the wind-roar, but Decurrs, clinging to the gunwale, nodded. Together they managed to pull the confused woman, her heavy skirts darkening with water, back to the quarterdeck. Swift looked for a stray sheet with which to lash her to the standing rigging, but the water on the deck seemed to be washing ever higher.

Swift pulled the woman to the windward side of the mizzen shrouds and showed her how to grasp the thick black ropes from the sides. “Keep a vertical rope between your legs,” he yelled in her ear, and stepped onto the horizontal ratlines.

Together, he, the woman and Decurrs climbed up, away from the ocean. He could hear faint screams from below. The lower decks were almost fully submerged—one or two of the passengers must be searching for air against the ceiling. It would not last long.

Captain Maxwell clung to the standing rigging above their heads. He nodded upwards, gesturing that the woman should enter the crow’s nest. They passed her silently through the lubber’s hole, then followed themselves. A collection of passengers clung to each other on the firmer footing of the crow’s nest, limbs slipping and flailing as the ship rolled. Swift kept his arm locked around a shroud, as did Decurrs.

After a time, the wind died. Cries and prayers drifted up from the rigging, calls to God and to Allah. The relentless wash of waves surrounded them.

“How many do you think are clinging to this mast?” Decurrs said in his ear. “Look down.” Swift did and saw a muddle of bodies. Thirty, maybe forty souls clung to the mizzen, dangling above the seethe. If the mast collapsed, they would all perish.

Swift followed Decurrs down, climbing recklessly, hand over hand. Pulling out his belt-knife, he sawed at the sling-ropes that bound the mizzen yard to the mast. Beside him Decurrs did the same. The yard arm sagged, then dropped away, releasing its weight with a flurry of sail. Below them, someone screamed.

They rested in the rigging, swaying back and forth in the glowering night. It seemed the Minerva would not sink; this sometimes happened when water had covered the initial leak, and the ship carried a wood cargo. But she could not sail, either. The Minerva was not a ship anymore, and not yet a wreck. Something in-between.

Dawn cracked the sky, but brought no hope with it. The sea ran mountains high, raising and plummeting the remains of the Minerva into the troughs of its waves. Men and women clung to wet rigging, while the spray of wind-driven foam whirled about them. Most held to the mizzen mast rigging; a few sailors near the front of the ship had managed to scramble up the foremast. The stump of the main mast had offered no purchase to anyone. Somehow, through all this, the ship stayed afloat, though its upper deck was going to pieces, a strew of boards and ropes. The Minerva seemed to have found her level. She might float like this for many days, Swift realized.

Swift climbed up to the crow’s nest to check on the passengers. A European woman on the mizzen-top was shivering; she was clad only in a shift and straw petticoat. Swift offered her his jacket.

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “My name is Mrs. Newman. I am much obliged.”

Captain Maxwell, his collar turned up, stared at the waves. Looking down at the swamped ship, Swift racked his brains, searching for something that could save them. The jollyboat was gone, dragged beneath the waves. Perhaps they could fashion a raft? The quarterdeck beneath the mizzen was bare when the waves receded, but the violence of the sea was such that nobody dared climb down to her, for fear of being carried away.

“Someone will find us, surely,” said Mrs. Newman.

“Oh aye,” Captain Maxwell said. “They surely will.” He did not sound convinced. The man kept staring at the ocean, his face set. Swift did not like his look.

“I will go below,” Swift said, “and see if there is anything useful in the wash.” He said it as much to the passengers as to the captain; they should know that things were being done. But as he climbed down the rigging he felt despair roll over him. They were clinging to the remains of two masts above the remains of a ship that could no longer sail. They were at the mercy of wind and current now, in the Bay of Bengal, in monsoon season.

He climbed around the shivering sailors and landsmen until the rigging grew too crowded to pass. Embracing the shrouds, he watched the flotsam that swept to and fro across the quarterdeck, hoping to spy something useful, knowing that even if he did, the waves were too high to fetch it.

Resigned, Swift climbed back to the upper rigging. He rested beside the Gunner, who had taken up position below the crow’s nest.

“Do you think it a sin to eat a man?” the Gunner said.

The question made Swift’s scalp crawl. Swift had had little to do with the officer during the voyage. It was pirates and Indian Ocean slavers the Gunner watched for. And mutiny, of course.

“By God, sir,” Swift said. “It will not come to that.”

“I’ve been wrecked before,” the Gunner replied. “It will come.” He rested his chin on a ratline and closed his eyes.

The wind died. The sun stood overhead, vertical and bloody. Still the Minerva did not sink.