But Captain Lowrie could not answer that question, for he did not know himself. Where had she gone indeed? Captain Lowrie had seen her gaunt black stem go off the starboard, the windows high in the transom all soundlessly shattered. He had seen the gaping gash in her combing and bowline, where the Mary Watson had eaten into the plunking.
But when the three-master was definitely a-starboard, she seemed to bum with a pale, mysterious moonlight; and in a few moments she was gone again, completely, gracefully, the seas slowly merging into every part of her, until there was nothing left but sea, all around where she had been.
From the wingtip where he stood, Captain Lowrie could fancy that he had seen that great Dutchman at the helm give one last lusty wave before the night swallowed him alive.
‘We sank her!’ Bruno cried.
‘We sank nothing,’ Captain Lowrie replied. ‘Is Mr McNulty standing by?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Keep him standing by. Prepare to heave to for the night. I’ll not let another inch of ocean fly past my barnacles until I can see by the light of day just where Pm going.’
‘We’ve got to stand by anyway, sir,’ Bruno said. ‘She’s gone down. There’ll be survivors, perhaps.’
‘There’ll be no survivors.’
‘If we could only have gotten her name,’ Bruno faltered. ‘We could have radioed Cape Town.’
‘Radio no one, mind you. Radio no one, Mr Bruno. No word of this to get about until we see what’s what.’
Dawn was long delayed; but it had a sun when it did come up. In that first cold light of dawn - and there is no colder light than the first sunless break of day upon a sea - Bruno went forward with some of the crew to inspect the damage to the bow. When he returned, his face was a picture of complete stupefaction.
‘What was the damage?’ Captain Lowrie asked.
Bruno’s mouth worked. ‘Not a sign of damage, sir. Not a scratch on her paint. Nothing, sir.’
Captain Lowrie stared. Ahead of him, the sun broke from the rim of the horizon, yellow and glaring. ‘Aye;’ he muttered, as if to himself. ‘First he drove us to the north, off our eastern course. Then he cut across our bow to make us stop our way.
‘He had a purpose, the Dutchman did. One good turn deserves another. Me, speaking offhand on a dark and stormy night, offering him a tow, wherever he might be. And him to reciprocate, out of a black dark sea, and maybe save my command.’
Bruno looked perplexed. ‘I don’t understand, sir,’ he said. ‘There are some things beyond understanding,’ Captain Lowrie said. ‘Send a look out aloft and tell him to keep a weather eye peeled, and signal Mr McNulty to proceed at dead slow until he gets further orders.’
The lookout went aloft, squatting in the crow’s nest high above the bridge. Slowly and stubbornly, the Mary Watson ploughed along.
They did not have to wait long. By the time the sun had detached itself from the rim of the sea, painting their faces, the lookout reported. From the crow’s nest, in the windless quiet of the morning, his excited cry dropped down on Bruno, who stood beneath him on the boat-deck.
‘Whale, ho!’ the lookout bellowed.
‘Where away?’ Mr Bruno replied.
‘Dead ahead,’ said the lookout. ‘Just rolling there. I can hardly see him. It’s the rim of his spine above water, and nothing more!’
Bruno instantly relayed this news to the bridge. The Mary Watson paused in her stride and then stopped. Captain Lowrie, peering through his binoculars, found the hump in the ocean. He stared at it for a long time. ‘Whale, my eye!’ he grunted. ‘Have a look, Mr Bruno. ’
Bruno accepted the glasses eagerly. He peered through them for a long time, too. Finally he said, in a hollow voice. ‘You’re right, sir. That’s no whale. It’s a hulk, a floating derelict, and from what I see of her upturned keel she’s a big one.’
Captain Lowrie nodded. ‘Two hundred feet of her, at least,* he said reflectively. ‘And all her wood probably water-logged. Nice to have struck upon her. You might just as well have put dynamite in our bow, for the hole she would have torn there. ’
‘An old clipper ship, sir,’ Franklin hazarded.
‘Maybe so, mister,’ Captain Lowrie said. ‘I ain’t seen a keel like that in a long, long time.’
Bruno’s face held an odd expression. He ruminated slowly, ‘The storm must have driven her northward. That would have put her more to the south a few hours back. If we had continued in our eastbound track, we might have struck her.
‘Then we turned north. But the wind and waves were blowing her north, too. Good Lord, sir, it gives me the creeps to think of what might have happened if we had not hove to until daybreak. ’
‘Thanks to the Dutchman, and a ready tow for him,' said Captain Lowrie soberly. ‘Whether he be in the seas of Heaven, or in the oceans of Hell.’
‘It’s a strange thing,’ Bruno said, his eyes smoky with thought. ‘A very strange thing. And not the sort of thing a man can tell his wife in Boston when he sees home again.’
Captain Lowrie nodded. ‘Right, mister. And you only to be ridiculed and laughed at for the telling of such a tale. And if your hair were a mite gray, the younger blades might be calling you an old fool, too.’
'It could have been a mirage,’ Bruno said, as if he didn’t believe it himself.
‘It could have been,’ Captain Lowrie agreed. ‘But mirage or no, it did its work, and all of us should be grateful for it. Helmsman, point her head off that wreck. Mr Bruno, you may telegraph Mr McNulty to proceed at half speed.
‘Mr Franklin, will you kindly stop by at the radio shack and tell Sparks to wireless Cape Town, a warning to all shipping in the vicinity of Good Hope. Give the location of the wreck and our present position. That will do. As for myself, I’m going below. If I’m needed, you’ve only to call me up again.’
Bruno stared through the weatherbreak as the freighter gained way again. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘look off there! Porpoises. A whole island of them!’
At the door, Captain Lowrie paused. There was a faint smile on his face. ‘And what does that mean, mister?’
‘It means, sir,’ replied Bruno quietly, ‘that we shall have a good passage from here to Zanzibar.’
‘Aye,’ Captain Lowrie nodded, and he went out. But as he went, you could see by the expression on his face that he was very well pleased with his first officer.
Jack London
MAKE WESTING
Cape Horn is one of the most famous stretches of water in the world, and features in the following story by a writer regarded by many as one of the best maritime novelists, Jack London (1876-1916). This romantic, revolutionary figure whose wild, drunken, adventurous life has helped preserve his fame as well as giving added appeal to his books, loved the sea with a passionate intensity which is mirrored in much that he wrote.
During his life, London sailed almost from one end of the globe to the other. At one period of time he was an ‘oyster pirate' in Oakland Bay, at another a seal hunter out of San Francisco. He even tried to circumnavigate the world in a ketch long before such round-the-globe voyages were even thought of, let alone popular pursuits; and for a year end more was a tramp sailor in the South Seas. It made little difference to him where he was as long as he had a deck beneath his feet and cracking canvas above his head.
Jack London's nautical books are classics of their kind: The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902), The Sea Wolf (1904), Tales of the Fish Patrol (1905), and The Mutiny of the ‘Elsinore’ (1914) all draw on his incredible adventures. This next short story was written by him in 1911 and is full of the elemental power of the sea and the strange effects it can have on those who challenge it.