LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2249, 13 May 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

AN ATLANTIC EES CUE. From time to time stories of acts of heroism performed at sea by sailors find their way into the corners of the newspapers. Some of these acts are very splendid illustrations of bravery. As we read them, we speculate perforce upon the reason why the modem British sailor is declared to be, in professional, moral, and physical respects, inferior to bis predecessors. Some people tell ns that, what with steam, mixed crews, and new-fangled ways, the British mariner is no longer a real sailor, and that the race of hold and kind-hearted British tars has vanished, never to reappear. But Jack, as all the world knows, has always had an easy way with him ; and his method of dealing with the current notions concerning bis character —which, to be sure, nobody caa satisfactorily account for, and to the accuracy of which nobody can be got to swear —is both original and modest. He does not write long letters to the papers. He does not try to look like a man who can dance a hornpipe. But from time to time, as often, indeed, as he gets the chance, he performs an action of which the nobleness and the heroism are not at all to be measured by the quality and extent of the paragraphs in which the deed is related. The pity Is that so very little of what he does on the high seas ever reaches the public eye. The soldier has his newspaper correspondent ; but Jack gets no better glorification than the dry, unsentimental abstract from the logbook. Some of these days, perhaps, Jack may be able to keep a reporter of his own ; until then he must be satisfied to continue bravely working and nobly acting in obscurity. very little known, and when known decidedly misunderstood, the victim of traditions utterly irrational among a maritime people like ourselves, very rarely chronicled, and when chronicled, always briefly.

Quite recently a very touching and inspiriting drama has been enacted upon the high seas. The official report of it was, no donbt, printed in the shipping papers, but those organs are read almost exclusively by skippers, to whom snob professional records are a familiar study, that excites no other emotion than undemonstrative approval of the conduct of sailors who do their duty, and hearty disgust at sailors who don’t. The majority of our readers will probably, therefore, hear of this maritime incident for the first time to-day. The narrative is, however, quite a typical one, and its best merit, perhaps, lies in its exemplification of Jack’s ordinary behaviour when afloat. On a certain Saturday, the well known Cnnard steamship Parthla was between four and five hundred miles distant from the west coast of Ireland, having sailed f.om the port of Boston on the previous Saturday. For some hours a low barometer had given warning of a coming gale. The breeze was fresh on the port quarter, with a long following sea, over which, under the impulse of propeller and canvas, the beautifully moulded hull of the great steamship rushed like a locomotive, raising a roar of thunder at her bows, and carving out the green, glass-clear water with her stem into two oil-smooth combers, which broke just abaft the forerigging and rushed with a swirl and bril lianoe of foam to join the long, glittering snow-line of the wake astern. There was a piebald sky, the blue in it tarnished and faint, and under it, like a scattering of brown smoke, the scud went floating swiftly. In the south and west the aspect of the heavens was portentions enough, with a leaden deadness of color and a line of horizon as sharply marked as a ruling in ink. The gale was evidently to come from this quarter; apd, sure-enough, before eight bells in the afternoon watch, it was blowing a hurricane from the S.S.W. The fury of the wind raised a tremendous sea. The Farthia ran for a time ; but running is not the remedy prescribed to captains who are caught in a circular stormy and, shortly after four o’clock, the helm of the steamer was put down and her head pointed to the seas. To understand the meaning of “meeting the full force of the gale,” one should be hove-te in a cyclone in the Atlantic. An Atlantic sea cannot be compared for stupen dona ness with a Pacific sea such a sea, for instance, as a heavy westerly gale will raise off Cape Horn or Cape Leawin. But there are few sailors acquainted with both oceans who would not rather encounter a gale in the South Pacific than a gale in the -North Atlantic. The blow of an Atlantic wave seems full of a force and spiteful fury peculiar to itself. The Intervals between the surges appear to bear no proportion to the height and velocity of the seas. In the Pacific a ship hove-to rises and falls with the regularity of a pendulum. In the Atlantic she dances a wild and delightful dance. Whilst the bow is under water the foam is blowing over the starboard quarter from the crest of a sea that threatens the wheel; and when you can touch the water over the taffrail, and the bowsprit forks up perpendicularly from the skyward flying head, the vessel is beamended by a tremendous blow upon the port broadside-in short, you never know where an Atlantic sea is going to strike you next. The Parthia’s passengers were below, considerately battened down by order of Cap ■ tain M’Kaye, the commander of the vessel, so that they should not be war bed overboard or drowned in the cabins, for now that the steamer’s bow was pointed at the sea she was just one smother of froth from the eyes to the rudder-head. Her curtseying might have looked graceful at a distance, but it was a tremendous experience to those who had to keep time to her dance. Every now and again she would “ dish ” a whole green sea forward—taking it in jnst as you would dip a pail into water —a sea that immediately turned the decks into a small raging ocean as high as a man’s waist. As she rolled she shattered the furious tide against her bulwarks, where it broke into smoke and was swept away in clouds, like volumes of steam, for a whole cable-length astern. The grinding and straining of the hull, the hollow, muffled, vibratory note of the engines, the booming of the mighty surges against the resonant fabric, the screaming of the wind through the iron-stiff standing-rigging, and the enduring thunder of the tempest hurtling

[through the sky, completed to the oar the tremendous scene of warfare submitted to the eye in the picture of black heavens and white waters, and struggling, smothered' goaded ship. The Partbialay hove-to for six hours. At ten o’clock at night the gale broke, the sea sensibly moderated, the steamer was brought to her course, and went rolling heavily over the immense and powerful ocean swell which the cyclone had left behind It. Tho night passed ; Sunday morning came with a benediction in the shape of a warm, bright sun. But the swell was still exceedingly heavy. Indeed, old Neptune could not forget his furious tussle, and the fierce, indignant heaving of his bosom promised to last for a good spell yet. It was shortly after two bells (nine o’clock), when the look-out man reported a vessel away on the lee bow, apparently hull down. Some of the passengers were on deck ; but sighting a vessel at sea is no longer the interesting incident it formerly was, and the distant ship excited very little attention. A s she was gradually hove up, however, by the approach of the Parthia, tho e who had sailor’s eyes in their heads perceived that she was a vessel in distress, and that if any human beings were aboard ot her, their plight would be one of the most miserable In the whole long catalogue of nautical miseries She was water” logged, and so low in the water that she buried her bulwarks with every roll. She had all three masts standing ; but her yarda were boxed about anyhow, her running In bights, with ends of it trailing overboard her canvas was rudely furled, but she had a fragment of her fore-topmast staysail hoisted, as well as a small storm staysail, and she looked to be hove-to. Her aspect, had she been encountered as a derelict, was mournful enough to have set a sailor musing for an hour ; but when it was discovered that there were living people on her, she took an extraordinary and tragical significance. No colors were hoisted to express her condition ; bat then no colors were needfuL Her story wanted no better telling than waa found in the suggestion of the small crowd of hnman heads on her dock watching the Parthia, in the dull and deadly lifting of the dark volumes of water against her sides, in the gushing of clear cascades from the scupper-holes as she leaned wearily over to of the tall swell that threatened to overwhelm her, and in the sluggish waving of her naked spars under the sky. Twentytwo people coaid be ooanted aboard of her. All these had to be saved, but it was very well understood by every man belonging to the Parthia that they could only be saved at the risk of the lives of the boat’s crew that should put off for them j for the swell was still violent to an extent beyond anything that can be conveyed in words. As the Parthia, with her propeller languidly revolving. sank into a hollow, a wall of water stood between her and the barque, and the ill-fated vessel became invisible ; then in another moment house-high, the people on board the steamer oould look down from their poised deck upon the half-drowned hull and the soaked, clinging, and pale-faced crew, as yon look upon a house-top in a valley from the side of a bilL The serious danger lay in lowering a boat. But Jack is not of a deliberate turn of mind when something that ought to be done waits for him to do it. Volunteers were forthcoming. The order was given. Eight hands sprang aft and seated themselves in the lifeboat, and the third officer, Mr William Williams, took his place in the atem-sheeta. It was one of those moments when the bravest men in the world will hold his breath. There swong this boat’s crew at the davits ; the ends of the falls in the bands of men waiting for the right second to lower away. One dark green fo&mless swell, in whole, huge mountains of water, rose and sank below ; too much hurry, the least delay, any lack of coolness, of judgment, of perception of the exactly right thing to do, and it was a hundred to one if the next minute did not see the boat dashed into staves and her craw helplessly drowning among the fragments. The due command was coolly given; the sheaves of the fall-blocks rattled on tbelr pins, and the boat sank down to the water’s edge. A vast swell hove her high, almost to the level of the spot where she had been hanging, and, qnick as mortal hands can move, the blocks were unhooked—but only just in time. Then a strong shove drove her clear, and in a moment she was heading for the wreak—now vanishing as though she had been wholly swallowed up by the tall, green, sparkling ridge that rose between her and the steamer, then tossed like a oork upon a mountainous pinnacle, with half her keel out of water. She had been well stocked with lines and lifebuoys, for it was clearly seen that the pouring water wonld never permit her to come within a pistol-shot of the barqne, and the suspense among the passengers amounted to an agony as they wondered within themselves how those sailors would rescue the poor helpless creatures who watched them from the foamy decks of the almost snbmerged wreck. They followed tho boat vanishing and reappearing, the very pulsation of their hearts almost arrested at moments when tho little craft made a headlong, giddy swoop into a prodigious hollow and was lost to view, until presently they perceived that tho men had ceased to row. It was then seen that the third mate waa hailing the crew of the barque. Presently they saw one of the shipwrecked sailors heave a coil of line towards the boat; It was caught, a life-buoy b>,nt on to it, and hauled aboard tho wreck. To this life-bnoy waa attached a second line, the end of which was retained by tho people in the host. One of the men on the wreck put the life buoy over his shoulders, and in an instant flung himself into the sea and was dragged smartly but carefully into the boat. The Patthia’s passengers now understood how the men were to be saved. One by one the shipwrecked seamen leaped Into the water, until eleven of them had been dragged into the Farthia’s boat. This nnznber made a load, and with a cheery call to those who were to be left behind for a short while, Mr Williams beaded for the steamer. The deep boat approached the Parthia slowly; but meanwhile Captain MoKaye’s foresight had provided for the perilous and difficult job of getting the rescued men on board the steamer. A whip was rove at the foreyardarm, under which the rising and falling boat was stationed by means of her oars ; one end of the whip, knotted Into a bowline, was overhauled Into the boat and slipped over the shoulders of a man, and at a signal a dozen or more of the Parthla’s crew ran him up and swayed him in. In this way tho eleven men were safely landed on the dock of the steamer. The boat then returned to the wreck, the rest of the crew were dragged from her by means of the buoys and lifelines, and hoisted, along with six of tho Parthla’s men, out ot the boat by the yardarm whip. But not yet was this perilous and nobly executed mission completed. There was still the boat to ran up to the davits. All the old fears recurred as she waa brought alongside, with Mr Williams and two men in her. But Jack has a marvellously quick hand and steady pulse ; the blocks were swiftly hooked into the boat, and soon she soared like a bird to the davits under the strong running pull of a number of men before the swell that followed her oould rise to the height of the chain plates. To appreciate the pathos and pluck of an advoutnreof thlskind,aman must have served as a spectator or actor in some such a scene. Words have but little virtue when deeds are to be told whose moving powers and onnobling inspirations lie in performance that may as fitly be described in one as in a hundred lines. Such as remember tho faces of those shipwrecked Englishmen and Canadians, the aspect of them as they wore hoisted one by one over tho Purthia’s side ; tho bewildered rolling of their eyes Incredulous of their miraculous preservation ; their expression of suffering slowly yielding to perception of the new lease of life mercifully accorded them, graciously and nobly earned for them ; their streaming garments, their hair clotted like seaweed upon their pale foreheads; tho passionate pressing forward of the crew and passengers of tho Parthia to rejoice with the poor fellows over their salvation from one of the most lamentable dooms to which the sea can sentence, will wonder at the insufficiency of this record of as brilliant and hearty though simple a deed (as any which makes up the stirring annals of the maritime life. But told, even as it is here told, the public may think it a story worth tho tolling, if only that should serve to make mercantile Jack better known and more respected. The son is the noblest theatre we have, and of tho dramas enacted upon it Englishmen, at least, should not sit unmoved spectators. Nor would they if only novelists and dramatists would do him justice, and, looking no longer to the fictions of landsmen for tho ideas of the British sailor, study him dn his forecastle and follow him upon the high seas,