Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/434
sometimes eight men were not enough to hold the whipstaffe in the steerage and the tiller below in the Gunner-room. . . . It could not be said to rain: the waters like whole Rivers did flood in the ayre. And this I did still observe, that whereas upon the Land, when a storm hath poured itself forth once in drifts of rain, the wind, as beaten down and vanquished therewith, not long after endureth—here the glut of water (as if throatling the wind erewhile) was no sooner a little emptied and qualified, but instantly the winds (as having gotten their mouths now free and at spake more loud and grew more tumultuous and malignant.’
They sprang “a mighty leak”: the seams almost “spewed out their Okam”; there were five feet of water in the hold before they knew where they were, and “there might be seen master, master’s mate, boatswain, &c., and who went about with candles in their hand, creeping a'ong the ribs, viewing the sides, and listening in every place if they could hear the water run.” They stopped many a “weeping leak” with pieces of beef and anything that came to hand; but the water still flowed up from the bread-room, till the pumps were choked with saturated biscuit. The heavens at noon were black as night; and after dark, spectral lights flitting about the yards and shrouds threw a ghastly glare upon the scene of confusion, and excited the superstitious fears of the seamen. For four days, flinging goods and ordnance overboard, staving in the butts of beer and the hogs-heads of wine and oil, they managed to keep the ship afloat, drifting before the wind. The fires in the cook-room were drowned: they were living on raw victuals, and they calculated that they had pumped or baled two thousand tuns of water. On the fourth morning the most sanguine felt inclined to throw up the sponge. “It wanted little but that there had been a general determination to have shut up hatches, and commending our sinful souls to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the sea. But see the goodness and sweet introduction of better hope by our merciful God given unto us! Sir George Summers, when no man dreamed of such happiness, had discovered and cried ‘Land!’” In fact, all the more well-to-do among the first settlers, whether they sought Virginia and Maryland, or the more inclement Northern States, whether Churchmen, Presbyterians, or Independents, were grave-minded and God-fearing folk, with profound conviction that all things were ordered for the best, and a most firm faith in an overruling Providence.
The storm in which Mr Strachey so nearly came to grief was a short though sharp experience. Colonel Norwood, a man of birth and education, and a kinsman of Sir William Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, relates at greater length his dangers and privations in his tedious and “dolorous voyage” to that colony. He begins his suggestive story at the beginning. He saw seductive posters on the Royal Exchange, advertising the sailing of a leviathan craft of no less than 300 tons, and carrying 30 guns. He struck a bargain with the master of The Virginia Merchant, and the terms sound extremely reasonable. He, his friends, and his servants were to be transported to the James River for £6 per head. They took post for the Downs, and awaited the vessel at Deal till their money was wellnigh spent. There were 330 souls on board. Though they cleared the Channel with favouring breezes, long before they