Though long past dawn, the sky was still dark. A heavy rain, flung wildly by wind that screamed and moaned like an army in mortal agony, beat upon the deck in rhythms only a mad drummer could concoct. The sea hurled towering wall upon towering wall of foaming fury over us. One such tossed me like some drop of dew across the deck where I—fortunately—crashed against a wall. As I lay stunned and bruised, gasping for breath, I caught sight of Mr. Hollybrass and Captain Jaggery in the midst of a furious dispute.
“. . .no profit to be found at the bottom of the sea!” I heard the first mate cry above the storm.
“Mr. Hollybrass, we sail through!” the captain re turned, breaking away to shout, “All hands aloft! All hands aloft!”
I could hardly believe my ears. To go up into the rigging in this! But when I looked skyward I could see the reason why. Under the brutal force of the wind, many of the sails had pulled free from their running ropes and were now tearing and snapping out of control, pulling themselves into wild whips.
“All hands aloft! All hands aloft!” came the cry again. It was pleading, desperate.
I could see the men—bent far over to buck wind and rain—struggling toward the shrouds. I pulled myself to my feet, only to be knocked down by still another wave. Again I staggered up, grasping a rope, managing to hold on with the strength of my two hands. Now I was able to stand—but just barely. Slowly I made my way toward the forward mast. When I reached it—it seemed to take forever—Captain Jaggery was already there, trying frantically to lash down ropes and rigging.
“What shall I do?” I shouted to his back. Shouting was the only way I could make myself heard.
“Cut away the foreyard before it pulls the mast down!” he yelled back. I’m not certain he realized it was me. “Do you have a knife?” he called.
“No!”
Even as he reached into a back pocket, he turned. When he saw it was me, he hesitated.
“A knife!” I cried.
He handed one to me.
“Where?” I called.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he cried, gesticulating wildly. “Cut that sail away!”
I looked up. I could not see far into the sheets of rain. The Seahawk’s wild pitching had set the mast to shaking as if it had the palsy. Only the foreyard was visible, and the sail was blowing from it almost into the shape of a balloon. Suddenly the sail collapsed into itself, then filled again. It would burst soon or fly off with the mast.
“Up, damn you! Up! Hurry!” Captain Jaggery screamed.
I reached into the rigging but stopped, realizing I couldn’t climb and hold the knife. With the blade between my teeth I again grasped the rigging, and using both hands I began to climb.
Though I was in fact climbing into the air, I felt as though I were swimming against a rising river tide. But more than rain or waves it was the screaming wind that tore at me. I could hardly make out where I was going. To make matters worse my wet and heavy hair, like a horse’s tail, kept whipping across my face. I might have been blindfolded.
Desperate, I wrapped my legs and one arm about the ropes. With my one free arm I pulled my hair around, grasped it with the hand entwined in the ropes, and pulled it taut. I took the knife and hacked. With a shake of my head my thirteen year’s growth of hair fell away. Feeling much lighter, I bit down onto the blade again and once more began to climb.
Every upward inch was a struggle, as though I were forcing myself between the fingers of God’s angry fist. And it was not just the elements that attacked.
Below me—when I dared to look—the deck blurred into a confusing mass of water, foam, decking, and now and again a struggling man. I was certain the Seahawk would flounder, that we were doomed to drown. I told myself not to look, to concentrate on what I had to do.
Up I went. The rain hissed. Thunder boomed. Lightning cracked. Human cries came too, shouts that rose up through the maelstrom, words I couldn’t catch. But what they betokened was terror.
As I crept further up the mast the sail billowed out and away from me. The next moment the wind shifted and the great canvas collapsed, smashing its full wet weight against me, as though with a conscious mind to knock me from the rigging. Desperately, I clung to the ropes with legs and arms. Then out the sail snapped. The ensuing vacuum all but sucked me off. God knows how, but I held on and continued up.
I heard, threaded through the wailing wind, a ghastly, shrieking sound, then a tremendous splintering of wood. Could it, I wondered, be my mast? Was I about to be hurled into the waves? I dared not stop and think. But the mast held.
Hand over hand, foot after foot, I struggled upward. I was certain we were all about to die, whether above the waves or beneath them, it hardly seemed to matter. All I wanted was to reach that sail, as if by doing so I could rise above the chaos. To cut that sail free was my only purpose. I would not, could not, think of anything else. Sometimes I paused just to hang on, to gasp for breath, to remind myself I lived. But then, once again, I continued up. It felt like hours. It probably took minutes. At last I reached my goal.
The foreyard is one of the biggest sails, one of a sailing ship’s true engines. But even though it worked hard for the ship under normal circumstances, in this storm it strained against her as if trying to uproot the mast from the deck. Despite the roaring wind that beat about me, I could hear the creaking of the mast, could see it bend like a great bow. What I needed to do—had to do—was cut that sail free and release the terrible strain upon the mast.
Fearful of wasting any time I simply straddled the spar to which the sail’s top edge was lashed and backed out toward its end, hacking away at each piece of rope as I came upon it. Fortunately, the lines were so taut, and the blade so sharp, I hardly had to cut. The moment I touched a rope with the knife’s edge, strands flew apart as if exploding.
With each rope I cut the sail blew out more freely, flapping in such frenzy it began to shred into tiny strands that I could no longer distinguish from the streaking rain.
Bit by bit I moved along, cutting as I went, until I reached the spar’s furthest end. There I had to make another decision: should I cut the lines that held the spar itself? What would happen if I did so? If I did not? I looked about in the vain hope that another of the crew might be near. To my surprise I did see the shadowy form of someone above, but who he was I couldn’t tell. In any case, he was climbing further up the mast than I!
I decided not to cut more lines. Someone else could do so if that’s what needed to be done. My job was to cut away the rest of the sail, which meant going back the way I’d come and proceeding out along the spar toward the opposite end.
The spar, however—with its lopsided weight, and me at one end—was swinging and lurching about so wildly I feared it might break free and drop with me on it. I had to get back to the mast. But the foot ropes were gone; in my wild hacking I’d cut them free too. I would have to drag myself along. With the knife again clamped between my teeth, arms tightly locked around the spar, I flung myself down and tried to slide forward. But at the next lurch of the spar, my legs slipped away. The knife fell from my mouth. In a small part of a second I was now dangling, legs down, facing away from the mast, about to drop into the wildest scene imaginable.
I had no choice. I now had to clamber—hand over hand and backward—toward the mast. But as much as I tried for speed I could move only in tiny increments. The wind and rain—as well as the tossing motion of the ship—kept impeding me. I was dangling in the hurricane winds, twisting.
Over my shoulder I could see that the mast was not far out of reach. But then my arms began to cramp.