Hell Around the Horn

11. In the Lee of Staten Island

The world had become quiet and still. In the lee of Staten Island, the endless howl of the wind and the roar of breaking seas were gone. The deck no longer rose and twisted beneath Mary Barker's feet. For the first time in a month, she prepared to venture out from the damp and gloomy cabin that had been both her refuge and prison for so many days and nights. She still felt shaken by the massive wave that had nearly drowned her and the children. The skylight had suddenly burst in a wall of dark water, flying glass and splintered wood. It was boarded over now, making the cabin all that much darker, even with the lanterns lit.

She paused for a moment in front of the mirror. She looked such a mess. She put her hand on her hairbrush and almost laughed. Had they not sailed far beyond the world where such things mattered?

Her hand drew away and then, in an instant of resolve, she grabbed the handle and roughly brushed her hair. A few strokes forced it back into a semblance of order, and perhaps that was enough. Even in this godforsaken watery waste, she would maintain certain standards.

She wrapped a blanket about her shoulders, climbed the stairs to the deck and slowly opened the door. There was no wind. Just a gentle breeze, cold but bracing. She stepped tentatively out on the deck, closing the door behind her.

The sky was overcast but she still squinted, even in the cloud-shrouded daylight. The ship was in a shallow cove. The island stretched out on both sides of them, disappearing in the mists on either hand. It was mountainous, with dark green trees clinging to the darker slopes, rising up to snow-capped peaks that seemed not unlike the scudding clouds moving above them, except that the peaks were still—frozen, literally and figuratively, in space and time.

She wondered if the wave that had so nearly sunk them looked like this island. She had heard the steward call the wave a mountain. High and dark with a foaming crest towering over them, even as the white-crested island peaks towered over them now.

She had only heard the wave, waking a few seconds before it struck. She had cried out involuntarily at the deafening roar and the freezing flood of water that exploded through the shattered skylight. It was all so impossibly loud that she couldn't even hear her own scream.

Now, she could hear the breeze softly humming through the upper rigging, and forward, the gruff voice of the mate urging the men to greater exertion. Now, even the shades of blue, gray and green on the island seemed impossibly vivid. She breathed in the cold but clean dark smell of the shore. She could see, smell and hear again—senses she was not even aware that she had relinquished within the confines of the cabin until now that they had returned to her.

James came up the poop deck ladder. His pace quickened when he saw her.

“Mary, dear. How are you? Are you well?”

“James, I am quite well. Thank you. It feels good to get out of the cabin. I feel as if I have spent a lifetime strapped into that bed. Aren't the mountains beautiful?”

He turned his head and nodded his agreement, and then looked back at her.

“And the children?”

“Sound asleep. First quiet time they have had to sleep in days.”

James smiled.

“I see that repairs are under way.”

“Yes, a few more days and we will be back at it.”

Mary's brow furrowed. "Not back to Port Stanley?”

“No," he replied, more vehemently than he intended. "Where did you get such an idea?”

“I heard Mr. Rand speaking to the steward. He said that he expected us to put into the Falklands for repairs.”

“That bastard. He lacks the courage to stand up to me, but is still trying to turn the crew against me. If he wasn't a good seaman I would have had him in irons by now.”

For an instant Mary felt a crushing weight on her shoulders. Without admitting it to herself, she held out the faintest hope that she and the children might leave the ship in Port Stanley. But that was not to be. She was as trapped on this ship as all the rest of the officers and crew, bound for Chile, come what may.

“So it is back out into the gales once again?”

He smiled at her. "Don't worry, my dear. All we need is a favorable slant of wind. That is all and we will slip in the Pacific, into warm water and warm weather. The winds can't stand against us forever.”

She smiled back at him, not necessarily convinced by his words but admiring his determination. She would pray that he was right.

“If I have learned only one thing in all my years at sea, dear, it is that only way to prosper is to keep to the sea. And so we shall. As long as we are able we shall sail on to Chile. To that I am committed.”

“Captain?" She heard her brother's voice. He stood at the edge of the poop.

“Yes, Mr. Atkinson. Be with you presently." Barker surprised his wife by leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. "I must get back to my duties.”

She watched him walk away, and realized that that was the longest conversation they had had since arriving in the Southern Ocean. This wasn't what she had imagined her life to be, after her brother introduced her to the dashing young ship's captain at the social after Sunday services years before. There was a certain status to being a captain's wife and she dreamed of joyous homecomings and a comfortable house with flowers by the walk. If someone had suggested that one day she would find herself trapped on a ship and nearly drowned by a monstrous wave or nearly burned to death by a stove adrift, what would she have thought? Would she have called that person crazy? And if so, what did that make her now?

She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and gazed up again at the mountains before going below to check on the children. She and James each had their duties to perform.

The pump suction had to be cleared so they could use the pump to start emptying the ship of the hundreds of tons of water dumped aboard by the giant wave. Will understood as much. What he wasn't convinced of was who should do the clearing.

“Why does it have to be me?" Will demanded.

“Cause you're the smallest, Willie. Now stop complaining." Paul Nelson glared at him.

“George is almost as small as me.”

“He's a good sight bigger'n you—and besides, the mate said you, so down you go. Orders are orders.”

Will had a rope tied around his waist just in case he needed to be hauled out, and a small shovel with a short handle. "But…" He could see that it was no use so he clenched his jaw and climbed down the ladder into the access trunk. It was cold and black and the light from the deck seemed to grow dimmer with each step down the ladder. Finally he reached the water. He pulled the shovel from under his arm and tried to reach down to the pump suction. Nothing. He reached as far as he could, hanging on the rungs with one hand and dragging the shovel through the water with the other. Still nothing.

He stepped lower on the ladder. He could feel the icy water seeping into his boots. He reached down again but still couldn't reach it. He reached farther and his fingers slipped from the rung. He let out a yell as he fell into the black water.

His head slipped under the icy blackness and he fought to grab the ladder to pull himself up. Shivering and gasping, he found that he could stand but that the water was up to his armpits. The water burned and numbed him at the same time. It was impossibly cold. He was sure that he would die that instant. But he didn't. He only shivered. He had dropped the shovel but, reaching down, he felt it. With fingers he could barely control, he scraped and dug at the bottom of the pipe that was the pump suction. The coal dust felt like concrete as he jabbed at it. Finally, the shovel blade hit only the iron of the pipe.

He tried to climb back up the ladder but his legs wouldn't work. He yelled, "Pull me up," but nothing happened. He yelled again, with still no response. It occurred to him that if someone didn't haul him out soon, his lifeless body would be clogging the pump suction next.

“Help! Help! Somebody! Help!" He screamed for all that he was worth and saw a shadow across the distant beam of light from the trunk access on deck.

“You say something, Willie?" the shadow yelled down.

“Help! Help! Haul me up!”

He felt the rope around his waist tighten and he was lifted slowly through the darkness back to the deck. Paul Nelson and Jack dragged him out and lay him shivering and close to insensible on the deck.

“We should get him some rum," Jack suggested.

Second Mate Atkinson gave Jack a kick. "Get him blankets and a pannikin of hot tea. That'll warm him up better'n rum. Take him to the fo'c'sle and prop him up next to the bogie stove. Get some hot tea or coffee in him and he'll be fine.”

He turned to Paul. "Grab that shovel. We're going to fire up the boiler and use the steam engine to drive the pump.”

Fred followed Gronberg up the ratlines. The carpenter moved quickly for a man of his age, Fred thought, without quite knowing what that age might be. Tom, Donnie and Hans clambered up right behind Fred and the carpenter. While the main and topmasts were steel, the t'gallantmast was pine, and was now cracked with a noticeable cant to starboard. Gronberg climbed into the crosstrees while the rest split on either side, balancing on the ratlines.

It took several hours to downrig the sails, t'gallant yards, halyards, bunts and clews. Once the mast was bare, the carpenter rigged snatch blocks at the topmast head and secured a line beneath the foot of the cracked t'gallantmast. The sailors each took a strain on the line, lifting the spar as Gronberg knocked out the pin from the mast jaws with a mallet. "Easy, meine kinder, easy," the carpenter said softly.

The pin moved freely but the mast jammed. Gronberg hauled back and started pounding furiously at the foot of the mast, shouting, "Wertlos ficken syphilitische Hure—bewegen!" The mast squeaked, shifted slightly, and then started smoothly rising. Gronberg grinned. "See, alvays the gentle touch." Clear of the jaws, Gronberg threw a rolling hitch on a gantline around the mast and the sailors started lowering the cracked mast to the deck.

Once the spar was down, Fred glanced over and saw smoke rising from near the fo'c'sle.

“What the…?”

Tom laughed. "The Old Man finally decided to use the steam winch. Trying to pump out the hold is my guess.”

“I wish him luck. Wish us all luck," Fred replied.

The galley was dry now and Jeremiah was no longer cooking up to his knees in icy water. Most of the damage done by the wave to the galley stove had been put right, but the cook's mood was still dark. It didn't help that he had to open his coal bin to let the mate start up the steam winch. The cook took a proprietary interest in the coal he used to fire his stove and they had no business raiding his bin, which he freely told them, not that they ever listened. Worse than that, no one listened to him about the devil's wave.

Harry and Fred had been collecting their mess's serving of salt pork and peas.

“Ye know, that wave, that wave from the debil. That wave come to pull his own down ta hell. Long as we got that Jonah onboard, the debil will be reaching up to catch us. Sure, that's the truth.”

Harry looked over with a sneer and said, "You be quiet, ya black bastard. Any more talk about the devil and Jonahs and I'll throw you over side to the devil hisself. Sure we could get one of the 'prentices up here, cook better than you." He sniffed at the pork and peas and made a face, and then turned and walked back to the fo'c'sle.

Fred did all he could not to laugh out loud.

Jeremiah was seething and mumbling to himself. He looked up at Fred and said, "That man, he don't know. I speak God's truth. Going against God's truth jus' bring trouble. You'll all see.”

It took the better part of two days to rig the new stays to the foremast, but when it was done even Mr. Rand declared it a good job, so long as they didn't crowd on the canvas forward. Captain Barker sent Rand and his watch to work on the gammoning on the jib-boom.

Gronberg and the second mate's watch were kept busy shoring up the damaged bulkhead on the starboard fo'c'sle house with timber. The mate's watch had shifted to spare bunks in the portside house but could now move back, even though the outboard bulkhead was still bowed inward.

Most important of all, the hatches were tight and the steam winch had been pumping for a good ten hours between breaks to refill the boiler feed water.

Captain Barker paced the poop deck, watching the high clouds tumbling over the mountain peaks of Staten Island. Every few minutes he dropped down into the chart room to check the barometer. It was rising. It was definitely rising. Captain Barker could feel it. The wind would be shifting. They were getting a slant. A favorable slant of wind that would carry them west.

Second Mate Atkinson called to him from the deck just forward of the poop.

“Sir, the pump suction locked again.”

“How much water is left in the hold?”

Atkinson pulled out his notebook from his back pocket. "Still almost two and half feet, sir. Should I send someone down to clear it again? ”

“No." The captain shook his head. "Secure the boiler. I think that we will be seeing a wind shift soon and we will be getting under way.”

“Yes, sir," Atkinson replied with an energetic nod.

The easterly wind filled in and the Lady Rebecca slipped south around St. John's Point and squared up on a westerly course across a confused sea. Captain Barker took his place on the poop deck, looking unashamedly pleased. By the afternoon watch, Mary and the children, wrapped in blankets, joined him on the deck, to marvel at the favorable breeze and watch the pale sunlight shining on the dancing waters.

The easterly wind died by midnight, leaving the Lady Rebecca becalmed. By the next dawn, the westerlies were back, blowing a full gale. A weary crew struck and furled sails, and the Lady Rebecca slogged along under reefed topsails, slowly working southward against the relentless westerly wind.