The next wave was visible now, an avalanche of water rolling down on them in the dark. They have turned half a circle and were broadside to the sea again, starboard side now, and again they were in danger of being rolled over.
"Turn, you motherless whore, turn," Biddlecomb muttered to the ship beneath his feet.
A motion caught his eye. He looked aloft and saw the topsail yards swinging around, bracing up on the larboard tack. The canvas shook and then boomed out as the wind caught its after side. Biddlecomb felt the ship leap forward, turning faster into the wind. "Mr Fry, all of your sins are forgiven," Biddlecomb shouted, though he could barely hear himself.
And then the Adams stopped turning. Her broad, flat side lay exposed to the oncoming sea and she hung motionless, despite the drive from her topsails. Why? Biddlecomb had perhaps thirty seconds to think before the wave would roll them over. He turned to Rumstick.
"Is your helm still hard a-larboard?"
"Aye, hard over! She won't come around!"
And then Biddlecomb remembered the fore staysail. As the Adams wore around that sail must have come aback. Set on the bowsprit as it was, it would exert enough leverage to hold the bow down, to prevent the ship from turning. He had not remembered it.
He felt the deck rising again below his feet, felt the Adams heeling farther, now to starboard, and knew that the wave was on them and starting to push them down. He turned and raced forward, passing himself hand over hand along the lifeline to keep from falling on the steeply angled deck. He reached the break of the quarterdeck and leapt down, but his leather shoes would not grip the wet and slanting deck. He landed in a heap, slid down to the leeward side, and came to a rough stop against the bulwark. His head slammed the planking and his eyes lost focus, but he shook it off and pulled himself to his feet.
Through the dark and the spray and the flashes of lightning he could see men at the pinrails, standing with braces in hand and clinging to rigging and lifelines. Biddlecomb grabbed the lifeline himself and hurried forward.
The Adams rolled farther as the huge sea overwhelmed her. Biddlecomb could see the water boiling over the starboard bulwark, boiling around his feet, as the ship rolled her rail under. They had already rolled past forty-five degrees and were still going over, heading for a knockdown. Biddlecomb wondered when the cargo would shift and end it all.
He pushed past the frighted men at the forward pinrail. Why did not they see the staysail? Biddlecomb wondered. How could the staysail have held together this long?
And finally he was at the bow. The staysail sheet ran diagonally across the deck, straight and hard as an iron bar. The staysail was aback, a solid and unyielding thing holding the bow down, holding the William B. Adams broadside to the sea. Biddlecomb felt the ship roll again. Water poured over the bulwark and the starboard side of the deck was lost from view. They had seconds now before they rolled completely over.
Biddlecomb clawed his way up to the fife rail, more like climbing a ladder than walking a deck, grabbing fistful of rigging and hauling himself up until he could reach the staysail sheet.
He jerked the knife from his sheath and slashed down at the line. The blade touched it and the straining rope dissolved into its component yarns and parted with a sound like a musket, loud even over the howling wind. The staysail flew off to leeward, flogged twice, and was gone, torn into ribbons of cloth and blown off into the night.
Biddlecomb felt the Adams slew vilently around as the bow, relieved of the pressure of the staysail, flew up into the wind, the ship coming upright as she turned. He prayed that Rumstick and Larson would meet her, check the swing, and not let her fly up into the wind. If the topsails came aback, the Adams would be a mastless hulk in seconds.
Biddlecomb hung on to the rigging, suddenly aware of the awful cramps in his hands. He loosened his grip as the ship came more upright. Up and up into the wind she came, the bow pointing higher and higher as the wave rolled under them. He felt the gale on his face, felt the changing angle of the wind as the ship turned.
Too far! They had turned too far! They were going aback! Biddlecomb thought, and there was nothing he could do.
And then the bow plunged down as the crest of the wave moved under the ship and the Adams paid off, turning away from the wind once again. Rumstick had not let her come aback.
Biddlecomb released his breath. They were safe, he thought. At least as safe as they could be.
Though the ship still heaved and bucked like an insane thing, she was no longer pressed down at that sickening angle, and it was not difficult for Biddlecomb to fight his way to the weather side and grab hold of the lifeline. He wrapped his arm around the reassuring rope and staggered aft again.
He made his way up to the quarterdeck and aft toward the wheel. Fry was back, standing on the leeward side, well out of the Rumstick's reach, seeming to be greatly absorbed in the working of the ship.
"Biddlecomb! Come here at once!" he shouted, never taking his eyes of the rig. Biddlecomb stepped over to the leeward side.
"Biddlecomb, I am prepared to forgive your... act... and not bring you up on charges of mutiny, or Rumstick or Haliburton, if you will recognize that I am the captain of this vessel. I am the captain! And so help me, if you turn the men against me, I'll have you arrested and..."
Fry was working himself into a frenzy. He stamped his foot and stared into Biddlecomb's eyes with a pouting look so like a spoiled and petulant child's that Biddlecomb could not help but laugh. Fry stopped yelling and frowned.
"Aye, you're in command. Godspeed, Captain Fry."
Fry's expression brightened. "Good. Good. You go forward and see to any repairs that must be made." He turned his eyes aloft once more, a signal to Biddlecomb that he was dismissed.
For two days the William B. Adams struggled along under the merest scraps of canvas, bashing her bows into the Gulf Stream rollers and tossing so violently that it was a great effort just to move about the ship. Every man aboard was exhausted from the effort, exhausted from the prolonged watches when all hands were needed to fend off one disaster or another, and exhausted from the fitful sleep they found in sodden clothes and bedding and the forecastle flying up and down with the seas.
During that forty-eight hours the ship drove east by south while the wind pushed her north by west and the Gulf Stream carried her north and east. The end result of this conflicting forces was that the Adams did not move significantly beyond the point where Biddlecomb had won her around.
Biddlecomb guessed that this was the case, based solely on his deduced reckoning, but he did not offer his opinion to Fry, and Fry most certainly did not ask for them. Indeed, Fry was hardly to be seen during the two days that the Adams fought with the storm, being wholly occupied with moving Captain Peabody's effects out of the master's cabin and moving his own property in.
On the morning of the third day, the larboard watch, of which Biddlecomb was a member, tumbled out on deck to find a clear blue sky, dotted here and there with budding white clouds, and a steady fifteen knots of wind from the northeast. It was the high pressure system that often rewarded those who lived through a storm, and the watch on deck was already shaking the reefs out of the fore topsail. All that was left to remind the men of the storm was the lumpy, big sea, the tangled wreckage on the bowsprit, and the absence of Captain Peabody's steading presence aft.