Listen! Can you hear anything?" and the captain bent his ear to leeward.
Yes, Mr Meldrum could hear something. They all could hear something above the shrieking of the wind, and the roar of the waves, and the crash of the cakes and bergs of ice tumbling against each other. It was something that sounded like the death-knell of the _Nancy Bell_, and made their faces blanch with fear. It was the noise of breakers, distant yet, but still as plainly distinguishable as if quite near-- breakers breaking on a lee-shore, the most terrible sound of all sounds to a sailor's ear!
"Stand by to wear ship!" shouted Captain Dinks, and he himself took hold of the spokes of the wheel as he uttered the words, easing it round, while the mate rushed forwards, calling the hands.
"Tumble up, men, tumble up!" cried Mr McCarthy; "don't stop for your clothes. All hands wear ship."
Frank Harness and Mr Adams had already darted towards the braces; and, the men soon joining them, the yards were braced round, the mizzen and mainsail being again dropped and sheeted home to enable her to pay off from the shore, which the vessel soon did on the other tack, although the canvas made her bury her bows in the sea and almost heel over till the mainyard dipped.
"Let her carry on, she'll bear it," said the captain. "We cannot do too much to get away from those confounded breakers; I'd sooner hear anything than them!"
"So would I," responded Mr Meldrum, still looking pale, for the _Nancy Bell_ had had a narrow squeak of going to the bottom when wearing; "but we are rushing into almost as terrible a danger as the lee-shore. If we come in contact with one of these icebergs, going at the speed we now do, the shock will sink us to a certainty."
"Well," said the captain, "of the two dangers that is the least. By keeping a good look-out we may avoid the ice, which we could never do with the lee-shore, save by getting away from it, as we are doing now.
By Jove, isn't she walking along--the beauty, crippled as she is--just as if she knew the peril she was in!"
"Better not holler till yer out of the wood," observed Mr McCarthy; "as for myself, I wish it was mornin' agin, sure!"
He'd no sooner uttered the words, however, than the look-out man forward suddenly gave vent to a frightened exclamation, drawn from him by the sight of something unexpected and terrible.
"Ice on the lee bow!" shouted he. "Port your helm hard!"
But the warning came too late.
Almost at the same instant as the cry reached the ears of those aft, the _Nancy Bell_ struck full butt against a dark object that loomed up out of the fog right ahead of the ship, and which had been unperceived a moment before.
There was a grinding rending crash and sound of breaking timbers, the vessel quivering from stem to stern; and then, the main and mizzen masts, with all their yards and the sails which had so lately been urging the ship on to her destruction toppled over the sides, whilst a wave, washing back from the base of the iceberg and coming in over the bows, swept the decks fore and aft.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
MAKING THE BEST OF IT.
All hands were on deck at the time of the collision; and, with one concentrated cry of alarm which was more a yell than anything else, the men rushed in a body amidships to where the long-boat was stowed.
Captain Dinks, however hesitating and undecided as he had shown himself frequently of late in the navigation of the ship, now all at once brought out in this emergency that courage and capacity for command which he had really at bottom but which had been before dormant.
"Back for your lives, men, to your stations!" he shouted. "Although the bows are stove in, the bulkhead forward will prevent the water from flooding us beyond the fore compartment and give us time to run the ship ashore, when we can all escape. No boat could live in the sea that's now on; and if it did, it would run a worse chance of being stove in by the ice than our poor vessel had!"
His words made the men hang back, all save Bill Moody and a couple of others, who began casting off the lashings of the longboat; but Mr McCarthy rushing down on the main deck and seizing a capstan bar with which he threatened to brain the first man who resisted the captain's authority, the unruly ones desisted for the time, slinking forwards grumblingly.
"Carpenter," called out Captain Dinks, "sound the well and see what damage has been done; and, Mr Adams, send the port watch aft to clear away this top hamper. It is thumping away alongside and may make another breach in our timbers!"
The captain's apparent calmness, combined with the sense of duty paramount on ship-board, made the men set to work with a will; besides which, they well knew that by acting together in harmony they had a better chance of escape than by any mere individual effort. Mr McCarthy, too, and Adams showed themselves equally as capable as Captain Dinks in lending a hand and encouraging the crew--Frank Harness being not one whit behindhand either; so that, within a very few minutes after the consternation which the catastrophe had caused on its first happening had passed away, all, recovering that equanimity habitual to sailors in almost any predicament or calamity, were engaged in carrying out the orders given them, as coolly as if the _Nancy Bell_ were snug at anchor in some safe harbour. But, in what a sadly different position was she now!
Battered as she had been by the storm in the Bay of Biscay and crippled by the terrible cyclone off the Cape, which had left her tossing rudderless and almost dismasted on the deep, her then condition was favourable in comparison with her present state--that of a complete wreck, with her bows stove in, her masts all carried by the board, and her decks swept fore and aft of everything!
Fortunately, as the mainmast had fallen over the side, it had jammed against the iceberg with which they had collided, so fending off the vessel's head that she had sheered to starboard and thus passed by the floating mountain; otherwise, probably, the poor _Nancy Bell_ would have been ground down by the pressure of the ice below the surface of the sea. Ben Boltrope, too, returning from forward after a survey of the damage, in accordance with the captain's command, reported another piece of good news. The bows had been stove in, it was true, and the bulkhead smashed, filling the fore compartment and bringing the ship's head so much down that it would be almost impossible to sail her even in a smooth sea; but the jury-mast, which had been rigged forward in place of the lost foremast, had gone over on the port bow, instead of falling to the starboard side of the ship like the other masts, and the fore staysail attached to it, dragging overboard, had got sucked into the hole which the iceberg had made, thus stopping the inrun of water to any appreciable extent Ben said that he believed they would be able so to patch up the damaged place in the bows after a time, thanks to this circumstance, that they might hope to make a shift of rigging up a sail again to run the ship ashore with.
"Bravo!" said Captain Dinks on hearing this. "Take what men you like and commence the repairs at once, for there's no time to be lost Mr Meldrum, what say you to this?"
But, Mr Meldrum had gone below to his daughters, well imagining the state of alarm they would be in and rather surprised that Kate had not already made her appearance on deck. When he reached the cuddy, the reason of her absence was explained.
Poor Florry had met with an accident, the concussion when the ship had struck the iceberg having thrown her out of her berth, cutting her head against the cabin door; and Kate, assisted by Mr Lathrope, was binding up the wound and comforting the sufferer.
"I guess, mister," said the American, looking up as Mr Meldrum entered the main saloon, "I've had to act the good Samaritan, same as your gal did to me when I got jammed together t'other day in my innards agin the wash-stand! We're fixin' up the little miss finely. 'Tain't much of an injoory, I kalkerlate, missy, though thar be a sight of blood, and it'll soon git closed up agin!"
"Thanks for your kind services," said Mr Meldrum. "I would have been down before, but was too busy on deck."
"I know," replied the other, nodding his head--"helping the captain out of the muss, eh? That wer an allfired smash, though! Done much hurt?"
"Yes," said Mr Meldrum guardedly, with a glance at the girls; "but the mischief's over now for the present, though."
"I see, I see," whispered Mr Lathrope; "I don't need nary nother explanation, mister. I hev shed my eye-teeth, I hev, and thar's no use in skearin' folks. That madam the Meejur, now, has been going on tree- men-jus, an' it has ben as much as your gal could kinder dew to get her to quiet down. Jee-rusalem! but she wer goin' to have the cap'en up on court-martial, an' the steward tarred and feathered, an' the Lord knows what! Then, too, ther wer that b'y of hern, squalling like a frog in a fit, the durned young imp, I'd lief have skinned him! If it hadn't been for your gal, they'd have raised thunder aboard, they would: you oughter be kinder proud, mister, to hev sich a sensible young woman fur yer darter! She warn't a bit skeart when the shock came; but braced herself up as cool as a cowcumber, and thar she's ben, keeping them noisy folks quiet, and tendin' her little siss like a Christian!"
"Indeed I am proud of her," said Mr Meldrum, gazing at Kate fondly; "but you say nothing about yourself. You've been making yourself of use too."
"Snakes and alligators, mister, I ain't worth a corn-chuck alongside of your gal! In course, I wer a bit flabbergasted when we collided just now--with one of them hammocks of ice, I guess, hey!"
"Yes," said Mr Meldrum, "we ran against an iceberg, and a pretty big one too."
"I thought so," continued the other. "But you knows me by this time. I never gets upsot by no matter what happens, so I jest fixes on one of them life-belts I always has handy whenever I travels on them high- pressure steamboats we hev on the Mississippi--whar you run the chance of getting busted up regular every trip--and thar I turned out of my cabin slick for anything, so I wer able to help miss, har, in shaking down that dreadful old screech-owl yander, and plaster up little missy arterwards."
"How's your arm now?" asked Mr Meldrum kindly.
"Oh, the durned thing's all right, only a bit stiff. Madam gave it a squoze jist now when I histed her off the floor, whar she got throwed down and wer bellowin' like a mad bull in fly time. That made the pain grip me agin; but I dessay it's all right now for a scrimmage if needs be."
"And where's Mrs Negus, eh?"
"Thar she is, with that young imp clasped in her arms, sobbin' her heart out in her cabin; and if you go fur to comfort her, as I did just now, why, she bites your nose off like a crocodile, she dew! She sez we'll all go to the bottom; and that the cap'en and everybody else have runned the ship ashore just to spite her--she knows, she sez, it's ben only done fur that!"
And the American laughed with a keen relish of the joke, which no sense of his own peril could subdue.
"She isn't far out in thinking the ship going down," said Mr Meldrum gravely. "The vessel has a hole knocked in her bows, through which you might drive an omnibus, and her fore compartment is full of water.
We'll soon have to abandon her, although, I've no doubt, she'll keep afloat for some hours yet. I advise you, Mr Lathrope, to put on the warmest suit of clothes you've got, and get together any few little things that may be of use in a boat, as I'm going to do. Kate, my dear," he added, addressing his daughter, who had been listening attentively while he had been talking to the American, at the same time that she hushed and soothed Florry, who was moaning with pain from her injured head, "you'd better do likewise; and see also to poor Mrs Negus, who appears utterly helpless and unable to look after herself.
Where are the steward and stewardess?"
"The stewardess went on deck some time ago, papa, to try and get a cup of tea for Mrs Negus from the galley, and she has not yet returned,"
answered Kate; "I think the steward is asleep in his pantry."
"I thought him too big a coward to keep so quiet when the ship was in any danger," said her father. "However, he'll have to rouse up now, whether he likes it or not."
"Hi, Llewellyn!" shouted he, going up to the door of the pantry, which was closed, and rapping outside with his fist loudly several times.
But there was no answer; so, turning the handle of the lock unceremoniously, he looked within and saw to his astonishment the object of his quest coiled up in a corner of a locker that ran across one side of the pantry, with a heap of blankets drawn tightly over his head.
Mr Meldrum entered and proceeded to shake the human bundle, calling the man again by name; when, after a little while, he disinterred his terrified face from amidst the folds of his coverings, looking as pale as a Niobe in marble.