Under ordinary circumstances, or given the time, he would have done it, but conditions were dead against him. She had started to come up, and had been carrying the helm nearly hard up all the time, in consequence of the terrific pressure of sail aft. So that by the time she checked coming up, and started to pay off a bit, it seemed too late. She had just gone off so far that she was back on her original course, heading straight for the land, and the decision then had to be made, was it or was it not too late, to continue the manњuvre? Jock decided it was too late, (and certainly his decision was right) but he had had to make the hardest possible decision the Captain of a ship is ever called on to make. Continue to try and save his ship and thus risk everyone's life, by the ship being driven on broadside? Or, to put his ship straight at it, and deliberately throw her away.
When I got on deck, the land was towering right up above us. It was just then that old Jock made his irrepealable decision, and I heard him give the heart-breaking order, "Steady the Helm. Put her straight at it. Steady as she goes. Belay everything."
I had only stayed in the half deck long enough to get into my shirt, pants, and shoes. Even then, it was a sight to make me feel as though I had missed my breakfast. Gigantic seas were tossing her high in the air, to let her drop next moment like a stone into an almost bottomless trough, whilst the unrelenting rocks loomed nearer and nearer.
Scared, yes scared stiff, but I don't think I was rattled, in fact I don't think anyone was rattled, Jock least of all. You certainly would not have thought so to hear him say to the Mate in a casual sort of way, "Well she is in the breakers now. She won't be long before she bumps."
Yet his heart must have been breaking. I know mine was sinking lower and lower, as she tore at those forbidding black cliffs.
Only sixteen and every prospect of my bright young life coming to the end of the chapters within the next few minutes. A queer, hardly describable sensation of semi-suspended animation. Everyone waiting without movement or word for the crash that must almost immediately be followed by the short sharp struggle. Then . . . what? I don't advise anyone to try it as an experiment. Take it from one who knows. It's unpleasant, mighty unpleasant.
Jock's one last word of advice was to, "Stand aft under the break of the poop clear of the falling gear."
We expected all four masts to come down like a row of ninepins. A moment later we heard, "Every man for himself!" freeing everyone to follow their own devices — only, there were none to follow. There was nothing anyone could do, but just wait, wait, wait, whilst the gale still roared and the ship laboured in the gigantic seas, racing on to her impending doom. One could almost describe it as a relief from the racking suspense when at last she struck. With a shuddering crash she hit an outlying rock. The shock of that terribly alien feeling when a ship strikes the ground went through everyone like a knife. This was instantly followed by another terrific bump, then the sickening, rending crash, as she tore up the rocks, ripping the bottom right out of herself.
Up to that moment we had thought she was going to sail right up to the cliff, hit it like a wall, close up like a telescope, and go down with all hands. However, she didn't , though we discovered later, had she been a couple of hundred yards to the northward, this is exactly what would have happened. On the other hand, had she been the same distance to the southward, she would have struck outlying rocks half a mile or more out to sea. In either case it would have meant a swift and sure exit for all of us. As it was, she struck a gradual rise, right on the top of high water, up which she went till her bowsprit was almost over the dry land. Then, as though to make doubly sure, a gigantic sea came rolling up, lifted her bows up, and dropped them between two huge pinnacles of rock, staving them both in, but holding her in a vice-like grip and preventing any possibility of slipping back into deep water.
So there she was, with every stitch of canvas set, a slight list to port, sidelights burning, ropes coiled down, and everything in shipshape order. The sea at the moment we struck was right aft, so all the power it had was to smash in the stern, which it promptly did.
I recollect a lot of gear coming through the saloon; also an infernal cackling from a crate of hens, that had been on the after hatch — then blank, until I picked myself up forward. I suppose I got a crack over the head with some piece of wreckage that came through the gutted saloon and State rooms. I had not earned the soubriquet of "Woodenhead" (through my ability to sleep soundly) for nothing. I felt no ill effects anyway, so I clambered up on the foc's'le head where, by this time, the crew had got the flying jib downhaul hitched to the end of the bowsprit, and were sliding down on to the rocks. As almost everybody was on the starb'd side of the boom, I nipped along to the port side. Caught hold of the rope with one hand and let go. With the result, that, I came a terrific cropper on the rocks below. I can only assume it was the rubber in one's limbs at that age, and that alone, which prevented both legs being broken.
As I landed on the rocks, a huge sea came over my head. I knew quite well that it was in the backwash the danger lay, so I quickly took a turn round one wrist, and round one leg, jamming it with the other, and held on like grim death. When the backwash came, I could feel that rope dragging through my hands, inch by inch. If it were possible to squeeze the heart out of a rope, I should think I did. So great was the drag of the water that it sucked my shoes off.
However, the backwash expended itself at last, and, half drowned, I swung over the rocks again, and let go sharp, for I could feel the rope vibrating, which indicated that somebody else was coming down to try their luck. He also landed with a pretty good bump, and together we scrambled up the rocks, to get out of the way of the next breaker. It was black dark, blowing, raining, and bitterly cold, though it wasn't until later on that we noticed the cold.
Our scramble brought us up against the face of a wet, perpendicular, and particularly slimy rock. The sides we could not see; the top we could only reach. Leonard, the chap with me, had his wits about him, and barked,
"Give me your foot. Up you go, youngster."
No sooner said than done. I landed on the top, then turned to reach for him.
"I'm all right," he called out of the darkness.
Evidently he had found a way round and at this moment, as I got to my feet, along came a breaker, roaring up the rocks, and just deep enough, to lift me off my feet and carry me bodily forward. A few moments, then again the backwash, and I was swimming for dear life, at odd times trying to dig my fingers into the slimy, slippery stone, knowing that I was going backwards and backwards, towards the edge of that big rock up which I had just climbed. Over that edge, and it would be all up for me. I put every ounce of swimming into it that I ever knew, and ended with my legs, from the knees downward, dangling over the edge. But I was safe, and the next sea did not catch me, for I was high and dry.
We lost only one man, and that was Mr. Williams, the Mate, a great favourite with us boys, partly because he was so good natured, — altough a strict disciplinarian — and partly because he was such a fine wrestler. At one tme he had, I believe, wrestled for the championship of Cornwall.
The flying jib downhaul down which we slid to the rocks was a new rope, half manilla and half jute, and when that grade of rope gets wet, it oozes oil for the first week or so. All I can think is that the Mate came down by the run, as I did, and probably broke his legs at the bottom. Or else he was not as lucky as the rest of us in dodging the backwash. However, we never saw him again. It was a marvel that half of us ever saw daylight again.