Chapter 17 - The hurricane!
Evening fell, the ocean was very calm. The cloud the pearl fisherman had seen was not gone.
The pirogue moved slowly, but there was an almost sudden calm and they left a phosphorescent trail behind. From the depths of the ocean, bright spots rose to the surface like streamers. They were the Rizos, splendid jellyfish, sprinkled with brown spots and the large Actinias, with numerous tentacles that looked like large blue flowers.
In the distance, two phosphorescent spots slipped silently in the wake left by the rudder: they were the two sharks. Blake watched them anxiously.
Jody and the Kaj, seated in the middle, watched the splendid Actinias that rose and let themselves be lulled by the waves.
«Kaj» Blake asked suddenly. «Take the reefs on the two sails. Soon we won't need so much canvas».
«Yes the wind is very weak, Mr. Blake»
«He's gathering his strength. He will soon be heard».
«Does the cloud always rise?»
«Faster than before».
«Won't we have a quiet time tonight?» Jody asked.
«I'm afraid not. This night reminds me of the one in which I committed the crime».
«That was an officer, they told me, is it true, Mr. Blake?» Jody asked.
«Yes. He was the tyrant of the Golden Hind, a brutal man who rejoiced in tormenting the weakest of the crew, who made sailors and shipmen beat to heart for nothing and who wanted to make me lose the rank, painstakingly earned in twelve years of navigation on all seas of the globe».
«And you killed him on the flagpole?» Kaj asked «Yes. It was a night like this, with the storm on the horizon and they had sent me to the yard and I saw him appear. Of course he came to spy on me, hoping to inflict some other punishment on me».
«What happened?» Jody asked.
«I told him to let me finish my work and he tried to push me into the sea. I lost my reason. I had the knife and in the fight I thrust it down his throat. The body fell into the sea and was devoured by the two sharks».
A thunderclap thundered over the sea, a long roll interrupted him. The clouds had covered most of the stars.
«The hurricane!»
There was no sound. Even the waves seemed to have changed direction. The pirogue was almost motionless, swaying slightly between the sea anemones and the Medusas, putting the Isitus, beautiful long fishes, which at night throw flashes of greenish light to flight.
The three convicts looked anxiously at the sky and the ocean in terror. That pirogue was fragile and they were far from the earth.
After ten minutes, a series of deafening thunder, followed by the first gusts rolled over the ocean as the lifeboat glided quickly.
Blake was at the bar, Jody and Kaj at the sails. The sea, under the first blows of the wind, began to grumble, with frightening bellowing.
«Hold on tight.» Blake warned «If a wave takes you out, you will fall into the sharks' mouths!".
«They are no longer seen, Mr. Blake!» Jody observed.
«They follow us underwater to be ready to grab prey».
A dazzling flash illuminated everything, immediately after a hideous roar of thunder. The ocean, swept and tormented relentlessly by the gusts that increased in violence, was always increasing.
Huge waves rolled over the dugout, lifted it and threw it into deep abysses. Soon a flood rain poured down, adding to the horror of the night. The three convicts wondered if the pirogue would eventually fail.
The noise was so intense that they could no longer hear each other. The pirogue, overwhelmed by gusts and waves, always fled very quickly.
Blake, with his hands around the bar, tried to avoid the waves that were too big.
Suddenly a cry escaped him:
«Damn!»
«What's happened?» the others asked.
«Sail down or we're lost!» The rudder is gone and I can no longer steer».
«We have oars!» Kaj said.
«Down, down the sail immediately and let's throw oil.»
The ocean was frightening, every moment mountains were toppling over the pirogue. «The oil, Kaj!» Blake yelled.
Kaj grabbed the jar and poured half a liter to both sides of the pirogue. Then an extraordinary thing was immediately seen. As if by magic, the waves smoothed out around the boat, as if the oil, which spread over the waters, took away their strength.
«It's prodigious!» exclaimed Jody, who couldn't believe his eyes.
«Thanks Kaj for the wonderful idea.»
«Could it last until the hurricane ends?»
«That's what scares me.» Blake replied.
The waves were no longer furious, but Blake forced Kaj to always pour new oil and the supply was gone. After four hours the hurricane had not abated when Kaj announced that the jar was nearly empty.
Almost at the same moment Jody was heard shouting at the top of his voice:
«A rock! A rock! Mr. Blake, divert the pirogue!».
«Empty the whole jar!» the other shouted to Kaj. A brief calm happened around the pirogue. Grabbed an oar and, using it as a rudder, tried to move the lifeboat off course.
«Did you dream, Jody?»
«I tell you that I saw, in the light of a flash, a huge object».
Two or three mountains of water died on the edges of the oily layer, and past those Blake thought he saw a mass swaying in the foam.
«Could it be the corpse of a whale?» he asked, «On the marine charts there are no rocks in this stretch of sea, however we try to avoid it».
Finding the pirogue in a calm sea area, he did not find it difficult with the help of an oar. Unfortunately, the layer of oil gradually disintegrated and the lifeboat was soon caught in a wave and thrown violently forward.
Three screams were heard, immediately drowned out by a thunderclap.
Blake, who had not abandoned the oar, disappeared into a chasm, then felt himself being thrown at a mass strewn with algae, to which he clung.
«Jody! Kaj!» scream.
Amid the roar of the waves, he thought he heard the voice of the pearl fisherman, but he could not see it. He climbed higher, above that mass, to escape the onslaught of the waves.
He continued to climb, until he found himself astride a peak.
«This is the keel of a ship! The bottom of some overturned sailing ship that the waves carry across the ocean».
A short distance away he heard a voice shout:
«Courage ... hold on, friend ... we must not let go like that, we have the sharks behind us ... Auff ... we have ... clung ...».
In the light of a bolt of lightning Blake saw two human forms lifted by a wave being thrown onto that floating mass.
«Jody! Kaj!»
«Ah! You are there ... Mr Blake, what luck ... help me sir ... Jody is out of breath».
«Hold on, I'm coming.»
Holding on to the seaweed, he went down to where Kaj was. Jody, let himself be held by the robust pearl fisherman. He must never have been a strong swimmer and had drunk heavily to faint.
«Just rub it vigorously and move your arms back and forth. Help me, Kaj».
«Leave it to me, Mr. Blake. We pearl fishermen almost always come back to the surface like this and we know how to get our lungs back in operation».
Blake had hoisted himself to the top of the mass.
«We hit a capsized ship.»
When Blake returned to Kaj, the driver had already opened his eyes and was breathing freely.
«Ah! Mr. Blake! I almost went to sleep at the bottom of the ocean».
«And more likely to serve the sharks as a dinner!» Kaj said «The moment I grabbed you, I saw their mouths sparkle a few steps away from me».
«So I owe you my life, my good Kaj».
«And I freedom to you; therefore we are even».
«Where are we, Mr. Blake? »
«On the bottom of a sailing ship, my dear Jody».
«Then we are in danger of sinking at any moment," Jody shouted in terror.
«If this hull has kept afloat, I don't see why it should dive right now. Who knows how many weeks it has been floating, judging by the seaweed that covers it».
«Our problem is dying of thirst.»
«And hunger above all, Mr. Blake.» Jody said.
«All our supplies have gone with the pirogue.» Kaj observed.
«Maybe we will find something, crustaceans will not be missing among these algae. Let's wait for the storm to stop, then we'll see what to do. It seems to me that the clouds are beginning to break and that the wind drops in violence».
«Hurricanes break out very violently in these regions and always have a short duration.» Kaj said.
«Will it be long before dawn, Mr. Blake?» Jody asked.
«Three or four hours at the most. Hold firm to the keel and wait».
The hurricane in fact began to calm down and the clouds opened, letting the moonlight filter through. The waves, on the other hand, remained always violent, shaking the hull that rose and fell with a thousand creaks.
When a pale eastern light turned pink, a cry from Blake pulled them from their stillness.
«The wreckage of the pirogue!»
«Where, sir?» asked the pearl fisherman.
«Against the side of the ship. Kaj, let's get off! Maybe some coconuts are still there».
«Will these algae withstand our weight?»
«Let's see.»
«They will not yield, they clung tenaciously to the hull, indeed I hope to find our breakfast among these algae».
Clinging carefully, they went down to the water. There were oars, pieces of hull and even a crate, that of the machinist.
What made the castaways happier, however, was the discovery of half a dozen coconuts among the wreckage. They were the first they took, entrusting them to Jody, then also a crate and a pair of oars.
«Pay particular attention to the nuts. These will prevent us, at least for a few days, from dying of thirst. Jody, what have you put in your chest?»
«My uniform of convict and ... Stupid! I forgot!»
«What is that?»
«The gun, Mr. Blake, I wanted to keep, as a keepsake from the penitentiary!»
«With ammunition?»
«About forty cartridges that will certainly not be dry.»
«The sun will take care of it my friends; we're even too lucky.»
«I would have preferred a good line with a couple of hooks.» Kaj said.
«You'll be able to tell me later: now let's find our breakfast.»
«And where?»
«Among the algae. It will not be very abundant, but for the moment it will be enough. Let's rummage on our prairie and be careful not to fall in the middle of a wave the tail of one of those damned sharks».