Richard Woodman: In Distant Waters

But the leeward roll saved Patrician's deck from the worst of the breaking sea, though there was not a man upon it who was not instantly soaked to the skin. The ship toppled as the wave passed beyond her tipping-centre and she plunged downwards, into the welter of lesser waves that scarred the back of the great sea.

'Foretopmast's sprung above the lower cap, Mr Q… up helm! Get the ship before the wind and we'll take that tops'l off her!'

'Aye, aye, sir!' Quilhampton dashed the water from his face with his one good hand, and swung round, staggering as Patrician lurched; but the huge sea had been the culmination of many, an ocean-bred monster in whose trail, for a while at least, midgets would follow. 'Up helm, there!'

The ship's bow paid off to the southward and then to the east of south. Drinkwater anxiously stared aloft, trying to gauge the extent of the damage in the growing daylight and irritated at losing distance to windward. He had brought the frigate well south of Cape Horn, in a great tack to the south and west in order to double the tip of America as speedily as possible in an area where days of low scud made obtaining meridian altitudes difficult and only a fool would feel confident of his latitude.

'Stand by to take in the foretopsail!'

Quilhampton was bawling at his watch. Their response was slow, they seemed dazed, as if the great wave had some strange effect on them. But that was impossible, a figment of Drinkwater's fevered imagination. He held his peace for a moment longer.

'Man the clewlines and buntlines!'

The men were mustered about the pinrails and Drinkwater was reminded of something he had tried hard to forget; the dilatory action they had fought with a Danish privateer, caught off Duncansby Head, and which had escaped by superior sailing through the rocks off the Orkneys. By superior sailing … how that phrase haunted him, that sudden failure in performance that had endangered the ship now as it had done before. His patience snapped.

'Call all hands, damn it! All hands, d'you hear there!'

The squealing pipes made little impact on the gale, but the thin noise roused the ship as Quilhampton continued to shout at his men.

'Clewlines and buntlines! Haul taut!'

Drinkwater caught sight of the rise and fall of starters, of a scuffle forward of the boats and a man thrust out of the huddle round the mast.

'Leggo top bowline, there! Lively there! Leggo halliards! Clew down! Clew down, God damn you, clew down!'

'I think we have trouble forrard, Mr Q…'

'Aye, sir… no, there goes the yard… lay aloft and furl… aloft and furl!'

Men from the watches below were coming on deck and filling the waist with a worse confusion as another crack from aloft met the violence of a heavy leeward roll. Above the shouting and the orders, the wind screamed with renewed venom and the heeling deck bucked and canted beneath their slithering feet. Green water poured aboard and sluiced aft, streaming over the men at the pin-rails and knocking several off their feet.

'Aloft and furl! Mr Comley, damn you, forrard, sir, and hustle the men!'

Perhaps it was the disgruntled look which the boatswain Comley threw at Quilhampton, perhaps the passing of an ague-fit which stimulated Drinkwater to intervene, but he could stand chaos no better than inefficiency and such chaos and inefficiency threatened them all in that wild sea. He began to move forward, along the starboard gangway towards the forechains.

What he found forward of the boats appalled him. The sharp perceptions of a feverish brain, the madness of the morning and the lingering suspicions and doubts about his crew coalesced into an instant comprehension. The few men who had begun to climb into the weather shrouds were half-hearted in their efforts and though no one actively prevented them, there were shouted discouragements thick in the howling air.

'Don't risk yer life for the bastards, Jimmy…'

'Let the fucking mast go by the board… we'll be home the sooner…'

'Oi'll fockin' kill you if you so much as lay that rope on me again, so I will…'

A man rolled against Drinkwater, one of the boatswain's mates, his face pale in the cruel, horizontal light of dawn, his eye already dark with bruising.

'Aloft and furl, damn you all!' Drinkwater roared and hoisted himself up into the starboard foremast shrouds. He caught sight of the small, white face of Midshipman Belchambers. 'Take my hat and cloak…' The wind tore the heavy cloak from his grasp and thrust it at the boy, who escaped thankfully aft.

'God's bones, d'you want to rot in hell, you damned lubbers? Aloft and furl!' He was aware of sullen faces, the spray stinging them as they looked up at him. The wind tore at his own body and already the cold had found his hands. There was no time to delay. Above them the foretopsail flogged and the mast shook and groaned while something was working loose, its destructive oscillations increasing with every roll of the ship.

He began to climb.

The force of the wind tore at him. Patrician was running before it now, throwing away the hard-won windward yards, rolling with an unrestrained ferocity that threatened to tear loose the sprung topmast and send the resulting wrack down on deck. For the preservation of the ship, speed was essential. He did not look down, but the vibration of the thick hemp shrouds told him that men were following him aloft. He fought his way upwards, the thin ratlines twisting beneath his feet and the wind tearing at the bulk of his body, so that his clothing bellied and pulled him forward to where the sea hissed and roared alongside the running frigate. Some active topman drew alongside him.

'That's it, my lad, up you go, up you go!'

He caught a glimpse of a sheepish grin that was instantly lost as more men caught him up, swinging outwards into the futtock shrouds with the agility of monkeys. Captains aloft were such a rare event that even the most discontented topman would be put on his mettle to outdo the intrusion.

Midshipman Frey struggled up.

'Good morning, Mr Frey' Frey's eyes widened and Drinkwater nodded upwards. 'Have the goodness to pass ahead of me.'

The boy gulped and swung himself outboard, his back hanging downwards as Patrician's hull rolled them out over the sea, then his kicking heels disappeared and Drinkwater took advantage of the return roll and followed him into the top.

Pausing for breath, Drinkwater took stock of the situation. The foretopsail yard, loosed by its halliards, lay roughly over the top of the foreyard, the huge flapping bunt of sail thundered in wild billows only partially restrained by the weight of the yard and the buntlines and clewlines. Drinkwater waved the topmen aloft and out along the yard. He could see Frey already at the extremity of the windward yardarm, his pea-jacket blown over his back and his sparse shirt-tail flapping madly.

'Come on, lads, lay out and furl that tops'l!'

He clung to the topgallantmast heel-rope downhaul and looked aloft. The fore-topgallantmast had been struck, sent down and lashed parallel to its corresponding topmast to reduce the windage of unneeded tophamper. Now, as he stared upwards, his eyes watering and the wind tugging at him, he saw that the housed topgallantmast was acting like a splint to the fractured mast. The latter had sprung badly, the split starting from a shake in the timber. Drinkwater cursed and wondered how long that spar had been pickling in the mast-pond at Chatham. The topmast was almost split in two; whatever he decided to do, it would have to be quick, before both spars were lost. He peered on deck. Morning had broken now, though the sun had risen into a cloud bank and daylight was dimmed. Its arrival somehow surprised him, such had been his preoccupation.