Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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Just a little while for recovery, and then round swung the wind again. The dismal curtains of the sky were drawn, and the melancholy monotone of the advancing storm wailed through our scanty rigging. Right across the path of the great stream it blew, catching the waves in their stately march, and tearing their crests furiously backward. Fiercer and louder howled the gale, while the bewildered sea, irresistibly borne north-eastward by the current and scourged southward by the ever-increasing storm, rose in pyramidal heaps which fell all ways, only their blinding spray flying steadfastly to leeward. In that welter of conflicting elements, whence even the birds had fled, we were tossed like any other bubble of the myriads bursting around. Sail was useless to steady her, for the towering billows becalmed it; neither dared we risk our only canvas blowing away. So when it appeared that there was a little more truth in the trend of the sea, we moored the cable to the trunk of our tree and cast it overboard. And to that strangely transformed plant we rode as to a floating anchor, held up head to sea, save when the persistent swell rose astern in a knoll of advancing water and hurled us three hundred fathoms forward in a breath. Nine weary watches of four hours each did I stand by the useless wheel, breathlessly eyeing the tigerish leap of each monstrous wave until it swept by leaving us still alive. Yet while the skipper stood his watch I slept, serenely oblivious of the fearful strife without. So bravely, loyally did the little Daisy behave that hope rose steadily, until just as the parting clouds permitted a ray of moonlight to irradiate the tormented sea, there was a sudden change in her motion. As if worn out by the unequal strife, she fell off into the sea-trough, a mountain of black water towered above her, and in one unbearable uproar she disappeared. Blinded and battered out of all sense, I knew no more until I found myself clinging to the wheel with a grip that left indented bruises all over my arms. She had survived, and, as if in admiration for her valiant fight, the sea fell and left her safe. The tree-trunk had been sawn right through, but its work was done.