第26章 THE HEATHEN(2)

I called Captain Oudouse's attention to it, only to be informed that he had watched it going down for several hours.There was little to do, but that little he did very well, considering the circumstances.He took off the light sails, shortened right down to storm canvas, spread life lines, and waited for the wind.His mistake lay in what he did after the wind came.He hove to on the port tack, which was the right thing to do south of the Equator, if--and there was the rub--IF one were NOT in the direct path of the hurricane.

We were in the direct path.I could see that by the steady increase of the wind and the equally steady fall of the barometer.I wanted him to turn and run with the wind on the port quarter until the barometer ceased falling, and then to heave to.We argued till he was reduced to hysteria, butbudge he would not.The worst of it was that I could not get the rest of the pearl buyers to back me up.Who was I, anyway, to know more about the sea and its ways than a properly qualified captain? was what was in their minds, I knew.

Of course, the sea rose with the wind frightfully; and I shall never forget the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped.She had fallen off, as vessels do at times when hove to, and the first sea made a clean breach.The life lines were only for the strong and well, and little good were they even for them when the women and children, the bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs and trade boxes, the sick and the dying, were swept along in a solid, screeching, groaning mass.

The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne'S decks flush with the rails; and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft.It was a human torrent.They came head first, feet first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing, and crumpling up.Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodies behind tore such grips loose.

One man I noticed fetch up, head on and square on, with the starboard bitt.His head cracked like an egg.I saw what was coming, sprang on top of the cabin, and from there into the mainsail itself.Ah Choon and one of the Americans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them.The American was swept away and over the stern like a piece of chaff.Ah Choon caught a spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it.But a strapping Raratonga vahine (woman)--she must have weighed two hundred and fifty--brought up against him, and got an arm around his neck.He clutched the kanaka steersman with his other hand; and just at that moment the schooner flung down to starboard.

The rush of bodies and sea that was coming along the port runway between the cabin and the rail turned abruptly and poured to starboard.Away they went--vahine, Ah Choon, and steersman; and I swear I saw Ah Choon grin at me with philosophic resignation as he cleared the rail and went under.

The third sea--the biggest of the three--did not do so much damage.Bythe time it arrived nearly everybody was in the rigging.On deck perhaps a dozen gasping, half-drowned, and half-stunned wretches were rolling about or attempting to crawl into safety.They went by the board, as did the wreckage of the two remaining boats.The other pearl buyers and myself, between seas, managed to get about fifteen women and children into the cabin, and battened down.Little good it did the poor creatures in the end.

Wind? Out of all my experience I could not have believed it possible for the wind to blow as it did.There is no describing it.How can one describe a nightmare? It was the same way with that wind.It tore the clothes off our bodies.I say TORE THEM OFF, and I mean it.I am not asking you to believe it.I am merely telling something that I saw and felt.There are times when I do not believe it myself.I went through it, and that is enough.One could not face that wind and live.It was a monstrous thing, and the most monstrous thing about it was that it increased and continued to increase.

Imagine countless millions and billions of tons of sand.Imagine this sand tearing along at ninety, a hundred, a hundred and twenty, or any other number of miles per hour.Imagine, further, this sand to be invisible, impalpable, yet to retain all the weight and density of sand.Do all this, and you may get a vague inkling of what that wind was like.

Perhaps sand is not the right comparison.Consider it mud, invisible, impalpable, but heavy as mud.Nay, it goes beyond that.Consider every molecule of air to be a mudbank in itself.Then try to imagine the multitudinous impact of mudbanks.No; it is beyond me.Language may be adequate to express the ordinary conditions of life, but it cannot possibly express any of the conditions of so enormous a blast of wind.It would have been better had I stuck by my original intention of not attempting a description.

I will say this much: The sea, which had risen at first, was beaten down by that wind.'more: it seemed as if the whole ocean had been sucked up in the maw of the hurricane, and hurled on through that portion of space which previously had been occupied by the air.

Of course, our canvas had gone long before.But Captain Oudouse hadon the Petite Jeanne something I had never before seen on a South Sea schooner--a sea anchor.It was a conical canvas bag, the mouth of which was kept open by a huge loop of iron.The sea anchor was bridled something like a kite, so that it bit into the water as a kite bites into the air, but with a difference.The sea anchor remained just under the surface of the ocean in a perpendicular position.A long line, in turn, connected it with the schooner.As a result, the Petite Jeanne rode bow on to the wind and to what sea there was.