Hawaii - James Michener [125]
"That I can, sir!" And the creaking Thetis bit more directly into the storm.
"If we hold this tack, will we clear the rocks, Mister Collins?"
"Yes, sir. If we hold this tack."
The two men stood tensely, trying to detect any notice of the brig's slipping in the great troughs, but she held firm. A minute passed, then two, then three, and finally Captain Janders shouted to all topside, "We'll run for the rocks. Stand ready to cut yourselves loose and tend the ropes."
Rarely did a group of men sailing a ship face a more clear-cut problem. If the winds held, and the keel maintained its cut into the waves, this long tack would throw the Thetis just outside the Four Evangelists, and the penetration would have been accomplished, for on the southward tack the little ship could sail all night it necessary, until the last turbulence was cleared.
"Now's the time to pray, Reverend Hale," Janders shouted above the wind, and Abner, lashed to the mainmast at both the armpits and waist, prayed only that the present relationship of ship and ocean and wind be maintained.
Then came Mister Collins' calm warning: "She's slipping, sir."
"I feel her slipping, Mister Collins," Captain Janders replied, his stem face hiding his fear.
"Shall we raise the topsail a little more into the wind?"
"Raise her all the way, Mister Collins." "She may carry away, sir, in this wind."
Captain Janders hesitated, studied the way in which his brig was losing purchase, and cried, "We've got to have that sail! If it holds, we'll make it. If it carries away, no matter. We were lost anyway." And he whipped around toward where his men were lashed, shouting directions that sent them hauling ropes which started the after topsail higher into the wind, where it could counteract the sideward set of the ocean. But as the men hauled, their lines caught in the top block, and the triangular topsail whipped dangerously in the wind, and the Thetis appeared doomed.
"You and you, clear the top block!” Janders shouted. And from the stormy deck, where they had been lashed to save themselves, Cridland and the old whaler cut themselves loose and grabbed for the ropes leading to the top of the mainmast.
They climbed like monkeys, four secure hands, four certain feet clinging to the ropes as the mast whipped back and forth in the freezing storm. Higher and higher they went, as their ship drifted toward the rocks. "May God protect them," Abner prayed, as they dangled far above his head.
The Thetis now entered a segment of the sea where the waves were of special violence, for they were rebounding from the Evangelists off to starboard, and as the little brig rolled from one beam end to the other, torn this way and that, the top of the mainmast, where the two sailors worked, slashed swiftly in great arcs of more than a hundred degrees. At the extremity of each swing the tall mast whipped sharply, whistling in the wind, as if determined to dislodge the men that annoyed its ropes. On one such desperate passage Cridland lost his cap, and in grabbing for it with his right hand, he seemed, as viewed from below, to have been swept away, and Abner screamed, "God save his soul!" But it was only his hat that was gone.
"Try the ropes again!" Captain Janders shouted. "They don't pull clear yet," the second mate yelled above the storm.
"Are we drifting toward the rocks, Mister Collins?" "We are, sir."
"Shall we send more men aloft?" "Nothing any more can do," Collins replied. So the two mariners stared ahead in the late afternoon storm, feeling the ship, praying. "Try the ropes again!" Janders cried, but again they failed to respond. Clasping his hands behind him, Janders took several deep breaths and said with resignation, "We've about eight more minutes, Mister Collins. This was a sane try."
At this point Abner forgot the navigators near him and focused only on the two sailors, who continued to fly through great sickening arcs of heaven. Freezing rain and howling winds were upon them; the violence of the pitching ship seemed concentrated at the point where they labored;