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The Water Devil
by
“Well, as I said, the wind blew strong and steady behind us, the sails were full, and the spray dashed up at our bow in a way calculated to tickle the soul of any one anxious to get to the end of his voyage; and I was one of that sort, I can tell you.
“In the afternoon of the second day after our engine stopped, I was standing at the bow, and looking over, when suddenly I noticed that there wasn’t any spray dashing up in front of the vessel. I thought we must have struck a sudden calm, but, glancing up, I saw the sails were full, and the wind blew fair in my face as I turned toward the stern. I walked aft to the skipper, and touching my cap, I said, ‘Captain, how is it that when a ship is dashing along at this rate she doesn’t throw up any spray with her cutwater?’ He grinned a little, and said, ‘But she does, you know.’ ‘If you will come forward,’ said I, ‘I’ll show you that she doesn’t,’ and then we walked forward, and I showed him that she didn’t. I never saw a man so surprised. At first he thought that somebody had been squirting oil in front, but even if that had been the case, there would have been some sort of a ripple on each side of the bow, and there wasn’t anything of the kind. The skipper took off his cap and scratched his head. Then he turned and sang out, ‘Mr. Rogers, throw the log.’
“Now the log,” said the marine, turning to Mrs. Fryker and her daughter, “is a little piece of wood with a long line to it, that they throw out behind a vessel to see how fast she is going. I am not a regular Jack Tar myself, and don’t understand the principle of the thing, but it tells you exactly how many miles an hour the ship is going.
“In about two minutes Mr. Rogers stepped up, with his eyes like two auger-holes, and said he, ‘Captain, we’re makin’ no knots an hour. We’re not sailing at all.’
“‘Get out,’ roared the captain, ‘don’t you see the sails? Don’t you feel the wind? Throw that log again, sir.’
“Well, they threw the log again, the captain saw it done, and sure enough Mr. Rogers was right. The vessel wasn’t moving. With a wind that ought to have carried her spinning along, miles and miles in an hour, she was standing stock-still. The skipper here let out one of the strongest imprecations used in navigation, and said he, ‘Mr. Rogers, is it possible that there is a sand-bar in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, and that we’ve stuck on it? Cast the lead.’
“I will just state to the ladies,” said the marine, turning toward the table, “that the lead is a heavy weight that is lowered to the bottom of a body of water to see how deep it is, and this operation is called sounding. Well, they sounded and they sounded, but everywhere–fore, aft, and midship–they found plenty of water; in fact, not having a line for deep-sea sounding they couldn’t touch bottom at all.
“I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” said the marine, looking from one to the other of the party, “that things now began to feel creepy. I am not afraid of storms, nor fires at sea, nor any of the common accidents of the ocean; but for a ship to stand still with plenty of water under her, and a strong wind filling her sails, has more of the uncanny about it than I fancy. Pretty near the whole of the crew was on deck by this time, and I could see that they felt very much as I did, but nobody seemed to know what to say about it.
“Suddenly the captain thought that some unknown current was setting against us, and forcing the vessel back with the same power that the wind was forcing her forward, and he tried to put the ship about so as to have the wind on her starboard quarter; but as she hadn’t any headway, or for some other reason, this didn’t work. Then it struck him that perhaps one of the anchors had been accidentally dropped, but they were all in their places, and if one of them had dropped, its cable would not have been long enough to touch bottom.