‘Down - down below, Katerina! this is no place for you,’ cried M‘Clise, as he stood at the helm of tlje vessel. ‘Down, dearest, down or you will be washed overboard. Every sea threatens to pour onto our decks; already have we lost two men. Down, Katerina! down, I tell you.’
‘I fear not; let me remain with you.’
‘I tell you, down!’ cried M‘Clise, in wrath, and Katerina cast upon him a reproachful look, and obeyed.
The storm was at its height; the sun had set, black and monstrous billows chased each other, and the dismasted vessel was hurried on towards the land. The wind fowled, and whistled sharply at each chink in the bulwarks of the vessel. For three days had they fought the gale, but in vain. Now, if it continued, all chance was over; for the shore was on their lee, distant not many miles. Nothing could save them but gaining the mouth of the Frith of Tay, and then they could bear up for Dundee. And there was a boiling surge, and a dark night, and roaring seas, and their masts were floating far away; and M‘Clise stood at the helm, keeping her broadside to the sea: his heart was full of bitterness, and his guilty conscience bore him down, and he looked for death, and he dreaded it; for was he not a sacrilegious murderer, and was there not an avenging God above?
Once more Katerina appeared on deck, clinging for support to Andrew.
‘I cannot stay below. Tell me, will it soon be over?’
‘Yes,’ replied M‘Clise, gloomily; ‘it will soon be over with all of us.’
‘How mean you? You told me there was no danger.’
‘I told you falsely; there is death soon, and damnation afterwards; for you I have lost my soul!’
‘Oh! say not so.’
‘I say it. Leave me, leave me, woman, or I curse thee.’
‘Curse me, Andrew? Oh, no! Kiss me, Andrew; and if we are to perish, let us expire in each other’s arms.’
‘Tis as well; you have dragged me to perdition. Leave me, I say, for you have my bitter curse.’
Thus was his guilty love turned to hate, now that death was staring him in the face.
Katerina made no reply. She threw herself on the deck, and abandoned herself to her feeling of bitter anguish. And as she lay there, and M‘Clise stood at the helm, the wind abated; the vessel was no longer borne down as before, although the waves were still mountains high. The seamen on board rallied; some fragments of sail were set on the remnants of the masts, and there was a chance of safety. M‘Clise spoke not, but watched the helm. The wind shifted in their favour; and hope rose in every heart. The Frith of Tay was now open, and they were saved! Light was the heart of M‘Clise when he kept away the vessel, and gave the helm up to the mate. He hastened to Katerina, who still remained on the deck, raised her up, whispered comfort and returning love: but she heard not - she could not forget - and she wept bitterly.
‘We are saved, dear Katerina!’
‘Better that we had been lost!’ replied she, mournfully.
‘No, no! say not so, with your own Andrew pressing you to his bosom.’
‘Your bitter curse!’
‘’Twas madness - nothing - I knew not what I said.’
But the iron had entered into her soul. Her heart was broken. ‘You had better give orders for them to look out for the Bell Rock,’ observed the man at the helm to M‘Clise.
The Bell Rock! M‘Clise shuddered, and made no reply. Onward went the vessel, impelled by the sea and wind: one moment raised aloft, and towering over the surge; at another, deep in the hollow trough, and walled in by the convulsed element. M'Clise still held his Katerina in his arms, who responded not to his endearments, when a sudden shock threw them on the deck. The crashing of the timbers, the pouring of the waves over the stern, the heeling and settling of the vessel, were but the work of a few seconds. One more furious shock -she separates, falls on her beam ends, and the raging seas swept over her.
M'Clise threw from him her whom he had so madly loved, and plunged into the wave. Katerina shrieked, as she dashed after him, and all was over.
When the storm rises, and the screaming sea-gull seeks the land, and the fisherman hastens his bark towards the beach, there is to be seen, descending from the dark clouds with the rapidity of lightning, the form of Andrew M‘Clise, the heavy bell to which he is attached by the neck, bearing him down to his doom.
And when all is smooth and calm, when at the ebbing tide the wave but gently kisses the rock, then by the light of the silver moon the occupants of the vessels which sail from the Frith of Tay have often beheld the form of the beautiful Katerina, waving her white scarf as a signal that they should approach, and take her off from the rock on which she is seated. At times, she offers a letter for her father, Vandermaclin; and she mourns and weeps as the wary mariners, with their eyes fixed on her, and with folded arms, pursue their course in silence and in dread.
Herman Melville
HOOD’S ISLE AND THE HERMIT OBERLUS
Captain Marryat has the distinction of being the ‘Father of the Sea Story', but Herman Melville (1819-1891) is surely the most famous sea story writer, and his book, Moby Dick (1851), the greatest maritime novel as well as being one of the masterpieces of world literature.
Melville‘s life was almost as exciting as his stories. Born in New York, he first became a bank clerk, but tiring of the drudgery of the job, he joined a whaling ship and sailed for the South Seas. In the Marquesas he deserted ship and for a time lived with a tribe of savages. Next, he joined an Australian whaling ship, but on reaching Tahiti he was flung into jail for having taken part in a mutiny. Managing to escape, he lived precariously for a while on the island before going to sea once more on a man-o'-war which ultimately returned him to New York.
Having packed more adventures into a few years than most men experience in a lifetime, Melville decided to turn them into novels. Typee (1846), Omoo (1847) and White Jacket (1849) made his name, but it was Moby Dick which assured him of immortality. This story of the whaling industry and one man's obsessive quest for the great white whale is told with such extraordinary detail and colour, and contains such remarkable philosophical reflections on the nature of evil, that it has earned a place among the classics.
Like Captain Marryat, Herman Melville wrote very few short stories, yet a collection of sea stories without a contribution from him would be, quite simply, incomplete. I have been fortunate, therefore, to unearth the following short tale which is one of a series he wrote based on the time he spent in the Galapagos Islands in 1841. He found the islands very strange, and collected a number of stories and legends from the whaling seamen he met there. The strangest of all these tales concerned an Irishman named Patrick Watkins, who had been shipwrecked on Hood's Island. From the bare bones of the legend he wove the adventure of the Hermit Oberlus which was published in Putnam’s Magazine of May 1854 and now makes what I think will be greeted as a welcome reappearance.