As long as the trade-wind lasted I managed to run the ship well enough with Brown’s help, for there was seldom much to do in the way of handling canvas, but as we neared the zone of variables things took a different turn. The third mate was not enough of a sailor to take advantage of the slants, and the heavy weather of the pampero was approaching. It made it necessary for me to be on deck most of the time, and even then I could not save some of the lighter canvas which was caught in a squall. The strain was hard, but Benson, who kept strict watch with his mate, Johnson, called me at any sudden change and spared me not at all.

One morning it fell dead calm. The sun shone through a sort of haze and the day was cool. We had made thirty-three{221} degrees of southing and were about four hundred miles off the Plate. The swell ran smoothly, but even through its oily surface one could see the swirls of the current from the great river. They formed tide rips which ridged the ocean for a space and then disappeared only to form again when a mass of water would force its way to the surface. The sea had lost its blue colour and it was dull. About eleven o’clock in the morning the sun broke through the haze and shone strongly. There was absolutely no wind and we lay drifting all around the compass. Suddenly, from a great distance, came the deep roll of thunder. The sky was now absolutely cloudless and the rolling crashes following each other at close intervals made an uncanny sound. Not a tip of cloud bank rose above the horizon, and the men about the deck gazed in some astonishment at the noise.

I knew it well, and knew it was the pampero from the River Plate. We would get a touch of it during the night and then{222} things would be somewhat mixed aboard the Arrow.

It started to breeze up gently from the westward about sundown, but not a cloud rose above the horizon. By nine o’clock that night it grew very dark. The blackness was most impenetrable. The wind came sighing over the smooth sea, and I began to strip the ship for the fracas.

We carried no running lights, as Benson didn’t care to be seen at night, although, for that matter, he would have been much safer than in the daytime. His ideas upon nautical subjects were at a variance with my own, but I made no comment. We carried a light in the binnacle in order to steer. Besides this single lamp there was never a light allowed aboard the ship except in the captain’s cabin.

I was very tired that evening, but stayed upon the poop watching the west on the lookout for the first signs of a squall. About ten o’clock there was sharp lightning to starboard. We were heading almost due south and our yards were sharp on the{223} starboard tack. Suddenly the blackness grew denser to windward. A deep murmuring came over the inky sea. Then a puff of wind smote sharply.

“Hard up, hard up that wheel,” I bawled, as the thrashing of the weather leech of the maintopsail warned me. Brown sprang to the wheel and with the man already there rolled it hard up. Then with a rush and droning roar through the rigging the pampero struck us.

Luckily, we had steering-way, for if she had not answered her helm on the instant, the Arrow would have been taken flat aback and dismasted, which would have meant a terrible ending for the desperate rascals. A dismasted ship in mid-ocean is usually a lost ship. The horrors of a boat cruise in overloaded small craft in that latitude meant the worst that could happen to the seafarer.

With a heel to leeward that brought the water well up on her deck, the Arrow paid off before the gale and tore her way through a sea which now shone ghastly and white{224} with the phosphorescent foam. I looked aloft and saw that every yard-arm and truck held a ball of fire. The bellying lower topsails of the heaviest double nought canvas strained away like the wings of some giant bird in the night overhead. The roar of the wind rushing through the standing rigging and pouring out under the foot of the canvas made the cries of the men sound faint and distant, those on the yard-arms rolling up the lighter canvas bawling to those on deck in strained and frantic tones. None of the convicts had seen such weather before and the flare of the St. Elmo fires lent a ghastliness to the scene that might have ma............