there are, i think, few more terrible and majestic spectacles to be witnessed than a collision at sea between two large ships, and especially between two large sailing-ships. the moment before the shock the immense cobweb-like entanglement of masts, yards, sails and rigging is towering skyward in all its graceful beauty and scientific arrangement, making the uninstructed beholder marvel, not merely how it can support the tremendous stress put upon it by the vast sail area acted upon by the wind, but how it is held in its place at all against the incessant pitching and rolling of the hull upon which it is reared.

but when two vessels like that come crashing into one another with an impact of several thousands of tons, and the mighty top-hamper comes hurtling down in ghastly entanglement of ruin, the scene is even more terrifying than that of some gigantic forest-tree with wide-spreading branches being struck by lightning and falling in an avalanche of riven fragments of timber. it is, however, a sight that is seldom seen by an outsider, and as, moreover, it usually occurs at night, few indeed are the people who have even had the[332] momentary glimpse of its terrors caught by the crew of either vessel in their agony.

in the impact of the thurifer upon the stranger, not one of the usual horrors was wanting. in the first place the thurifer appeared to rebound as if aghast at the deed she had done, but her impetus carried her on again, rending and tearing her gigantic way through the hull of her victim, which was literally cut in twain, and heeling away from her, settled down as the thurifer passed through her.

amid all the horror of the scene, two figures in fluttering white were noticed on the top of the forward house of the doomed ship as it came abreast of the main rigging of the thurifer.

some instinct, i suppose, prompted mr. wilson to leap with a rope from the thurifer’s rail on the house of the other ship, shouting as he did so, “come on, frank—women!”

frank was close behind him at the time, and in a very tempest of energy the two succeeded in saving the two unfortunates, who were indeed the wife and daughter of the captain of the sinking vessel. and as they were hauled into the rigging of the thurifer they sent up shriek after shriek for “husband” and “father” in italian, and had to be forcibly restrained from leaping back into the whirling blackness of sea and wreck through which the thurifer was relentlessly ploughing her way. at last, that is after two or three minutes of eternity, the thurifer dragged clear, her upper gear a mass of entanglement, ropes, sails, and masts carried away and dangling most dangerously[333] overhead, while beneath her keel the mass of ruin which had so recently been a splendid ship settled quietly down to a final resting-place on the sea-bed.

now here was a case where the most superb seamanship was absolutely of no avail for any attempt to save life. the ship could not be handled, for her braces and running gear generally were in an apparently inextricable confusion, no one knew the extent of the damage done to the hull, although the carpenter, true to the instinct of that most valuable class of seafarer, regardless of the falling and dangling gear overhead, ran and sounded the well, finding that she was as yet making no water. the boats were mostly destroyed, and in any case the falling wreckage had made it an impossibility to get at them even had they remained intact. so captain sharpe did the only thing possible, called all hands aft to see if any were injured or lost, and found to his delight that every man answered to his name.

but mr. carter was missing! is missing still. whether in horror at the deed he had done he had jumped overboard, or whether he had been knocked overboard by a falling spar, no one will ever know; he was gone, and, if the truth must be told, no one could regret him very much. the unanimous opinion was, “well, poor chap, if he made a mistake, and there isn’t much doubt that he did, he’s paid for it with all that man has to give, and may god have mercy upon his soul.”

now, while captain sharpe was outlining his[334] plan of work to the men, who were all recovered from their fright and confident in the safety of the ship, one of the boys came up to him with the startling news that two men had just crept into their house looking like lunatics, as indeed they were temporarily. how they got there they could not explain, but the supposition is that when the thurifer passed through their ship, they, feeling only the blind desire to save themselves, had sprung at the black side of their destroyer, had caught some gear hanging outboard, or perhaps the chain plates, as the iron bars to which the standing rigging is secured and which are bolted on the outside of the ship are called, and had climbed on board, hiding in some corner until their paroxysm of fear had passed away, when they had emerged and entered the first open door they saw, which happened to be that of the boys’ house. but they completed the tale of the rescued, four in all, the other two being the late captain’s wife and daughter, whom the steward was vainly trying to comfort in the captain’s cabin.

daylight was now beginning to struggle through the mist on the horizon, and the wind was falling fast. so that after giving a few general orders as to the clearing away of the gear aloft in order to enable the ship to be handled, and men to move about the decks without the imminent danger to life and limb of spars falling upon their heads, the captain and carpenter went forward to survey the damage done to the bows. in truth it was a grim spectacle. the ministering priest, torn from his beautiful attitude of blessing, hung dolefully head[335] downward, battered out of all recognition and only held by a few wrenched and twisted bolts whose tenacity would not be denied, and the thurible, that emblem of beatific aspersion, was gone.

the huge bar of iron which held down the bowsprit, the bobstay, was still in place though bent and curiously twisted, and so was the sturdy steel bowsprit itself. the jibboom with its great complication of stays, guys, foot-ropes, sails, and downhaul was like a scene i witnessed once, where a man fishing from the end of a pier caught a conger-eel which he flung into the midst of his line by mistake and then attacked with his umbrella. it was just hideously hopeless, the sort of thing you want to cut off and let drift away as beyond the wit or skill of man to get disentangled.

the anchors, snugly stowed and firmly lashed to their respective bolts by the cat-tails, were all right but useless, for the hawse-pipes through which the cables should have led to secure the ship to them while they bit into the ground were torn and twisted beyond locating or use. and the stem, that splendid curvilinear girder of steel which had cleft the waves so proudly, it reminded now only of the battered, inhuman visage of an old prize-fighter, so curiously bent and broken did it appear. lastly, and most serious of all, the two sides of the bows were stove in, two huge rents appeared there, into either of which you might have driven a cart, and into which the unresisted sea flowed gaily, resurging discoloured with coal-dust and laden with curious fragments, for the fore-peak, as that part of a ship is called, was now getting such a[336] scouring out as it had never received since she was built.

but it will be asked, why did this fine ship not sink with such a tremendous wound in her most vulnerable part? only because of that invaluable invention, the water-tight bulkhead. at a distance of some twenty feet from the stem or cutwater there is built into all such ships a barrier of steel plates at right angles to the line of the ship’s keel, or right across the ship. and the general practice was to build them without any door, so that neglect could not vitiate the safety they promised. they were built quite perpendicular and flat, which i have always thought a mistake, a slight curve or angle from each side pointing forward would have made them so much safer when resisting the inrush of the water when the ship was head-reaching with a hole in her bows.

now with the exception of any possible damage done to the bottom plates of the ship by the wreck as she bumped over it, the extent of the structural damage to the ship was fairly well defined, and as the bulkhead which kept the water out of the main hold was well shored up behind by the well-packed cargo of jute, and consequently there was little or no danger of its giving way under pressure of the head sea, captain sharpe’s mind as far as the ship’s safety was concerned was quite easy.

what, however, he could not rid himself of was the fear which all shipmasters must have when any accident to the vessel under their command occurs—would he be brought in as being to blame? it is here that so much injustice is done to the men[337] of the sea. no allowance is made for possible accidents over which a man has no control; could have none, in the nature of the case, be he as careful and vigilant as a man may be, there being no discharge in this war. and if he be brought in to blame, in most cases he falls, like lucifer, never to rise again. too old for service as a junior officer in a tramp, he may get a precarious position in a line whose directors, trading upon their fellow-creatures’ misfortunes, get skippers upon whom disgrace has come to command their vessels at a miserably inadequate salary, and keep them in terror of instant dismissal, making an immense merit of employing them at all. pah! the whole business is vile, it should stink in the nostrils of all honest men.

however, captain sharpe was not the man to allow his work to be hindered by any premonition of coming disaster to himself, so he proceeded as vigorously as he possibly could, aided to the utmost by his good crew, in the work of getting his ship so far repaired aloft as to be manageable. this enormous task was made somewhat easier by the wind falling away to an almost perfect calm, during which many an anxious glance was cast around in the hope of espying some sign of life upon the floating wreckage. but never a glimpse did they see, and consequently the work being unhindered by the arduous job of getting boats out, by nightfall they had her again well under control.

true, she looked ragged and unkempt aloft, a sad, strange contrast to the beautifully-rigged and[338] splendidly-kept ship she was before the collision, but the great thing, getting her dirigible again, was accomplished by sunset. in this work the two rescued men took active part, albeit they had to be spoken to in sign language almost exclusively. but all sailors know that at sea this disability is no bar to the employment of foreigners, it being no uncommon thing for an officer to find himself commanding a whole crew, none of the members of which can speak more than two or three words of english, and some no word at all.

when at last the thurifer was moving through the water again to a light south-westerly breeze, captain sharpe went below, and calling the steward inquired after the well-being of his two unhappy and unwilling passengers. he was informed that they were now quite calm, and had taken a little food. so the good man went to their state-room and introduced himself to them, finding that the young woman spoke sufficient english to make herself understood. from her he learned that the sunken ship was the due fratelli of genoa, bound from peru to london with nitrate of soda, and that she had been one hundred and thirty days out when the calamity occurred.

more than that he could not ascertain, partly because the poor ladies were so overcome at the thought of all their woes and the anticipation of destitution in the future that they speedily became inarticulate with lamentation and sobbing, and such poor consolation as the captain was able to offer them was entirely unheeded. moreover, he somehow could not help feeling that in a great[339] measure they looked upon him as the author, or at least the proximate cause, of all their suffering. so after assuring them that every possible care should be taken of them, and that they should be landed as soon as possible, he left them to each other’s sad company.

the vessel was now headed for falmouth, and going at a fairly good rate, remembering her crippled condition, before the fresh breeze which had now sprung up. but the captain’s mind was full of anxiety, knowing as he did that the bulkhead, which alone stood between them and foundering, was quite weak in itself; indeed, but for the backing of the close-packed jute it would not have been possible to sail the ship at all, for the sea rushing through those two enormous holes in the bows would have soon crushed it in. and nothing could be done to block those holes in any way, because of the great area of open, ragged ironwork they presented to the incoming sea. however, the distance being small, only some forty miles, and the wind as yet light, he hoped for the best, and carried all the available sail, which drove her heavily along at about four knots. meanwhile every precaution was taken, in case of a sudden bursting-in of the saving bulkhead, to have the boats ready to get out at a minute’s notice, and all the equipment they required or could carry put into them. and so that long, anxious night wore through, during which every man who slept did so ready to jump for his life at the call.

fortunately the weather held good throughout[340] the night, and at the first premonition of dawn the captain, sending frank up on the main-topsail yard to have a keen look around, was intensely relieved to hear him shout, “land right ahead, sir!” a shout that brought all hands on deck with a rush to realise the good news. shortly afterwards they were spoken by a tailor’s boat, the skipper of which, hearing the news, piled on all canvas he could carry for falmouth, in order to warn a tug-boat of the job that awaited them. the day strengthened into beauty, and the great sun came out in all its autumn glory, flooding the heavens with gold, as the once splendid thurifer, like some gallant warrior wounded, his armour dented and broken, his proud plumes drooping and bedabbled with blood, dragging himself wearily homeward from a stricken field, crept heavily towards the lovely entrance to falmouth harbour.

the wind died away to a calm, the exquisite beauty of the shores, in all the splendour of their autumn tints, lay basking in the sun, under a cloudless sky; but most glorious sight of all to those hardly bestead ones was a grimy, fussy, gasping tug heading straight for them. so she came panting up alongside, full of importance, and lowering a boat put the pilot on board. there was no bargain, only a warning word from captain sharpe that his ship was in no danger, and that this towage was quite ordinary, having nothing in the nature of salvage about it.

then the tug’s hawser was passed, and the thurifer began to move gently in towards the beautiful harbour of falmouth. the sails were[341] all furled as neatly as possible under the circumstances, and presently, under the eyes of the crews of the great crowd of shipping in the harbour (for falmouth in those days had an immense vogue as a port for orders), the crippled but gallant thurifer was towed to a berth alongside the wharf, where her arrival was greeted with thunderous cheers by the great crowd which had assembled to greet her on her triumphant emergence from one of the most terrible dangers of the sea. then as soon as the shore warps were properly fast and the decks cleared up, the very welcome word was given, “that will do, men,” and everybody retired to their respective portions of the ship’s accommodation to rest and think over their wonderful escape.

frank especially felt the need to be alone. he, of course, could not help recalling vividly his last home-coming, as wonderful in many ways as this, but certainly not fraught with such tremendous danger. and then he thought with a thankful heart of the splendid change wrought in his life during the homeward passage as compared with the sad time going out, and a feeling of conscious and entirely justifiable pride swelled his heart as he remembered that he had endured not unmanfully, and had been fully rewarded. it made his eyes moist and his face hot, and to ease his pent-up feelings he was fain to sit down and unburden his mind in a long letter home, such a letter as his parents had never received from him before.

but he had not been writing for more than an hour when he was called on deck to bid farewell[342] to the two poor ladies, whose consul had come down with a closed carriage to convey them to an hotel. and as frank, blushing and sheepish, came up to them, the younger, a girl of about his own age, flung her arms around his neck, and with her face flooded with tears kissed him passionately, uttering a very torrent of terms of endearment and thanks in choice italian. poor frank was in a desperate plight, knowing not what to say or do, for he had not seen them since that awful night when he and wilson had rescued them from going down with the ship. then the elder lady kissed him gravely and sadly, murmuring blessings upon him in her beautiful language.

the young lady, however, controlling her feelings with difficulty at last, said in her pretty broken english, “my mater and myzelf pray god give you tousan, tousan blessing; we never forget you brave engleesman save our life, an’ also this good man here,” turning to wilson, who stood by almost as sheepish as frank himself.

then the consul came forward and made a most heartfelt and gracious speech, assuring the captain that apart from the calamity the bravery of his officers and his own kindness would certainly be warmly recognised by the king of italy, adding at the same time his condolences upon the sad loss of the chief mate. then the ladies were hastily conveyed to the carriage and driven away.

captain sharpe turned to his two young officers with a sad shake of his head and said: “those two poor creatures are in evil case, for in addition[343] to losing husband and father, i have reason to believe from what the consul tells me that they have lost everything in the world, as that was the skipper’s first voyage in the ship, and he had spent all his savings before he got her, having been long out of a billet. i do hope the country will do something for them, but i’m afraid there is a black look-out ahead for them. and now about ourselves. i have wired the owner full particulars, and must await instructions. i think if the ship’s bottom should be found intact that it is possible she may be patched up temporarily and towed round to dundee, or even sail round, in which case there will be great saving. but we shall know in the morning some time. mr. wilson, will you call the crew aft, i want to say a few words to them.”

aft they came, looking full of eager expectation. “men,” said captain sharpe, “i have only praise for the splendid way in which you have done your duty under the most trying circumstances, and i wouldn’t wish to have a better crew. now the voyage as far as you are concerned is virtually over, and if you choose to take your discharge you must have it. but i hope that we may all be together for a little while yet, and that you will help me to take the bully old ship round to dundee with the cargo. anyhow, will you stay on until we know definitely what is going to be done? i will let you have what money you require on account of your wages, and of course you can go ashore at any time out of[344] working hours, while the food shall be as good as i can get. what do you say?”

the men shuffled uneasily, as sailors under such conditions always do, from one foot to another, and looked helplessly at one another, until one of the britons cleared his throat and said, “p’rhaps we’d better go forrard, sir, and talk it over, an’ let you know in a few minutes.”

“that’s right,” heartily responded the skipper, “do so.” and away they all went.

they came back within five minutes, having decided to stay if the ship wanted them, and wisely, since but few hands are required in falmouth. the captain was very pleased with their amenity to reason, and giving them each a sovereign on account, dismissed them to go ashore if they felt so inclined and taste the delights of falmouth, although, to be exact, there was much more fun and profit to be found on board the ship, which was thronged with visitors all day long, most of whom were very generously minded towards men who had been through what even they could see were tremendous dangers.

in due time the owner arrived and also a representative of the underwriters, and after long consultation it was decided that as the ship had sustained no injury to her bottom she might be patched up as regards the bows, refitted aloft, and sailed for her original destination, dundee. which was immensely to the satisfaction of all hands, and especially frank and the bo’sun, both enthusiasts in the “sailorising” side of their profession,[345] because of the big job of rigging work they were now called upon to perform, all work of the most interesting character, and highly educational for most of the men as well. few people ashore realise how a sailor enjoys a job of rigging work, if the conditions under which it is performed are at all bearable.

the repairs progressed apace, and frank and wilson both felt as thoroughly happy as ever they had been in their lives, especially as neither had received anything but good news from home. the only uneasy feeling they had was concerning their well-beloved skipper. he had yet to face the ordeal of the board of trade inquiry, an ordeal which is proverbially uncertain in its results, sometimes resulting in the grossest injustice being perpetrated upon a good man, sometimes allowing the worthless to escape scot free, but always, i believe, conducted with the most earnest desire to arrive at the truth. unfortunately for the skipper, his suspense was prolonged by the fact that the government department moved slowly, while his work went on very rapidly, so that the thurifer was ready for sea before the inquiry could be held.

in three weeks from the time she entered falmouth harbour she was towing out of it again completely fitted aloft, but temporarily patched as to her bows, and spreading her huge white wings, bore away grandly up channel before a strong westerly breeze, a channel pilot being on board, and all hands, including the two rescued italian seamen, who had by this time[346] learned enough english to swear by, highly pleased with themselves. of course these latter were needed to give evidence about the running down of their ship, although it was evident that they could know nothing about it, they being by their own admission asleep at the time.

now, by the perfectly marvellous combination of circumstances, remembering the time of the year, the thurifer made a passage from falmouth to dundee without once having to shorten sail on account of wind. it was accomplished, too, in the remarkably short space of time of six days; and so persistently favourable was the weather that it was frequently remarked, both forrard and aft, that the ill-luck seemed to have expended itself upon the collision, for ever since then fortune had smiled upon them.

they were met by a tug outside the tay, towed right in and docked at once, and frank’s first voyage as an officer was over. never surely was there a heartier or kindlier paying-off than that. no one had any grudges to work off, no ill-feeling to suppress, and yet no one had done anything more than his duty. they could not separate, however, as the inquiry was yet to be held; but it came off within a few days, the unanimous verdict being, that in the absence through death of the officer of the watch, and the consensus of evidence as to the care and skill of captain sharpe, they could only bring the disaster in as the result of accident from some cause or causes unknown, adding many compliments, as a rider, to captain sharpe for[347] his skilful handling of his ship after the collision.

and this closes my record of frank’s career as an apprentice. his next voyage ended with him in the position of second mate, but with that i have here nothing to do. if the fates are propitious i should like to go on and picture him as certificated officer and master, or skipper, in a subsequent volume; but at present i must leave him with you as having passed from boyhood to manhood with credit, and as having also, after a hard and trying apprenticeship, still retained his early love and enthusiasm for the sea.