The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-12-15
WRECKED.

You who sympathize with undeserved
misfortune an1 can feel commiseration
for men who, unofending, have explored
the utmost extremes Of pain and sorrow
to which the sensitive human mind is
open listen to brief story in which the
ludicrous and the terrible go hand in
hand, and the methods Of that good
providence above, in whom none believes
more completely than those who get a
living out of the depth of Gods great
solitudes are as unintelligible as the
feebleness Of man below-attend to a
story which even to recall in plenty and
rontentment all these years after fills the
narrator with a vague, horrible hunger
Of body and mind.
was second mate on large trading
schooner that, with full cargo and half
dozen passengers, among whom were
some women and children, had come out
CT the port Of Matanzas, in Cuba, with
copper ore for Sweden, where it was to
be worked up by the smelters of coun-
try always famous in this art. We were
exceptionally well provisioned, the cap
tain was a jolly, light hearted old fellow,
who let us fiddle and dance and scrape
to our hearts content. 1t was soft
green and lavender weather as we rolled
out of the Bahamas, with the milk
warm Mexican breezes ripping behind,
and then it was blue and golden weather
across the long undulations of the Sara
gossa sea, and those little ones aboard of
els frolicked and rolled about the ship
and filled her ancient rigging for she was
nearly the Oldest ship afoat) with their
merry prattle, and the good stalwart
loefers forward smoothed down their
ruggedness to the level of their sunny
haired playmates. It was as pleasant a
voyage as one could wish for, right out
Of the Caribbean into the great cold
northern ocean, and as the old Golden
Verify splashed heavily northward and
her masts cleaned like molten metal
each evening in the last rays of the sun
before he sank into the black and gold
fields of the westward waters, the voices
Of the children rose with the rising stars
up to the round of sky in joy to think we
were ''a days sail nearer home"
We had reached latitude 10 dogs. or
II degs. and longitude somewhere nigh
60 degs.-the Orkneys should have been
forward, and the F@roe weed was rid
ing in long, loose strands on the waves
about US, when the weather changed all
on sudden, as it will in the early north
ern summer. As lay asleep in my bunk
in the deckhouse that Monday morning
and dozed in the chilly gray of the twi-
light ] was presently aware that the
wind had shifted, and started up upon
my elbow in that little dusky cabin and
listened, with all the sailor instinct alive
within me.
It was scarcely 2 o'clock. Not sound
was stirring save the heavy lap of the
water against the vessels side as we
rolled, and the chafe and thud of the
foresal block swinging monotonously to
and fro on its iron in the calm. There
was sodden, heavy feel in the air, and
/ sprang up, and struggling into my
clothes went out to the clammy, wet
decks. Near and far everything was as
silent and deserted as though the ship
were sailing ownerless over the solitudes
of an ownerless sea. Overhead the damp
gray sails hung wan and sallow in the
white shine Of the opening east, and the
yards, unsteadied by an air, creaked dis
mally as the lift of the water tilted them
to right and to left. All on one hand Of
US the waves were sickly silver, right
away from our low sides to where the
pale sun was rising, yellow and feeble,
through the sea vapors.
North and west last night, still spec
killed. with its stars, sat unspent upon the
uneasy heave of the ocean, and, lastly,
southward-it sharpened my pulse to
look at 1.-THE sky was sullen purple
overhead, the sea livid below, and be-
tween taem the spume and spray Of a
tearing storm stretched out in ghostly
crescent line from side to side. T stared
at that dreadful sky with the strangest
misgivings in my heart, and as stared
could smell the war in the air, and
hear-dim and low and dreadful-the
thunder of it's approach, and catch now
and again, behind the hanging pail of
cloud and spume, the white whirlwind
churning the water into milk, and OBJ
literating and destroying everything as
it raced after us.
An hour later it was upon the ship,
and the Golden Verify was staggering
and plunging through twilight hell of
waters, with the wind bowling in her
cordage overhead, her bluff old bows
une moment pointing to the sky and the
next all down in the gloom of the white
foam beds in front, and endless ranks Of
black sea mountains laundering on be-
hind her. All day we staggered blindly
on through that internal tumult, and
just at nightfall the word was passed
that there were four feet Of water in the
holdl We took to the pump, and by
midnight that four had grown to six
and the Golden Verify was sinking!
We fought the water with the courage
of despair foot by foot and inch by inch,
with the howl of the night overhead and
the dreadful madness of the sea below, |
and it must have been near another |
dawn. The black water was spinning |
and bubbling up through the cracks in |