Chapel watched as his mates rowed off with “the devil in the stern sheets.” He spat out a short curse of his own and continued up to the bridge.
Captain Leland was emphatic and brusque. The engine room was to be abandoned at once. The seas would quench all fear of fire, though explosions were still very possible. He said there was no duty left but to save as many lives as Providence would permit. With that, Captain Leland put the megaphone to his mouth and began to sort out the plight of the frantic passengers and crew still left on deck. In moments the captain’s thundering voice and force of will restored the frenzied passengers and crew to a fair degree of self-possession and good order.
Chapel prepared to charge down to the engine room to report to Mr. Gladis. He physically induced the gaunt and terrified bosun’s mate, Mr. Roody, to follow below directly and bare a hand hoisting the injured chief engineer up on deck. The captain’s express orders and Chapel’s clenched fist proved ample persuasion for the fainthearted Mr. Roody.
Mr. Page, having just emerged from the rope locker with a coil of stout line, offered to return below and assist with the rescue. He warned that the ship was torn through the bowels from stem to stern. There was eight feet of water in the holds and no working pumps to speak of. The necessity for dash was explicit if they were to return to the deck alive.
Chapel led the way down the companionway ladder to find Mr. Gladis resting uncomfortably where he had left him. The man was certainly conscious, but suffered in the darkest manner from spurs of unbearable pain. The extent of his distress registered in the livid color of his complexion and the contortion of his features when subjected to the slightest movement.
While Mr. Page fabricated a bosun’s harness, Chapel and Mr. Roody fished the engine room’s block-and-chain hoist to an overhead beam. It was in this way that they hoped to elevate Mr. Gladis to the upper catwalk and then onto the deck. Their efforts were so concentrated that no one seemed to notice that the frigid seawater had rapidly risen to the height of their hips. All the reeking filth and scum that had rested for years in the rusting bilges now floated on that rising water like lumpy crude oil.
Just as Mr. Roody secured the hoist, the ship, still impaled on its granite claw, gave a violent shudder and heeled ten degrees to starboard. The block and chain, which was not yet secured, slid off the catwalk before Mr. Roody could grab for it. The twenty-pound block plummeted down in a riotous tangle of chain that swung directly toward Chapel’s head. The bosun’s mate shouted a warning, but Chapel was still trying to regain his footing from the lurch of the ship. With the timely alarm, however, he did manage to avoid a direct blow as the lethal mass crashed into the steam return valve. The valve joint ruptured on impact, releasing a blast of scalding steam that caught Chapel square in the face six feet away. Ke Hop, the ship’s second cook, said later that he could hear Chapel’s scream all the way up on the galley deck. He said it froze the blood in his veins because it sounded so much like the dying ship’s whistle.
Chapel was now blind and in excruciating pain. The how and when of his escape from the flooding engine room seemed more a matter of raw torture than deliverance. Every movement brought gasps of unbearable suffering from Mr. Gladis, while Chapel’s agony peaked higher with every moment. His only balm was the chilled fetid water swirling about his stomach. With this he bathed his scalded face as the pain increased. Mr. Page and the bosun’s mate deposited their charges near the bridge, where they could be seen to by others and eventually helped into the boats if their luck held out. But luck, by its definition, is usually in very short supply upon the warping decks of a fast-sinking ship.
Chapel’s panic subsided with the knowledge that he would not at least be trapped below when the Los Angeles settled to the bottom. His world was now closed to all vision, so he began to piece together the frenetic activity on deck with the evidence of sound alone. He could hear Captain Leland close by thundering orders to the lifeboat crews.
When the black gang had absconded with the first lifeboat, it left the ship with only two remaining cutters and the motor launch. Captain Leland had ordered that the launch tow the cutters back and forth to shore until most of his eighty-five charges had made it to the safety of the beach below Point Sur. Chapel, Mr. Gladis, Mr. Page, Captain Leland, and three slightly injured passengers waited for the motor launch to take them aboard. They would be the last survivors to go ashore.
The night winds had grown in force, and the sea formed into hammerlike breakers that crashed against the port beam with deafening regularity. The surf to starboard, facing the beach, had taken on a hazardous chop. The shore breakers could be heard but not seen. They waited, but the launch did not return. Mr. Page came to Chapel with life jackets and bid him to put one on immediately. These were cumbersome, vestlike affairs that contained large blocks of cork front and back.
It was difficult enough getting a blind man into one of these contraptions, but poor Mr. Gladis was another and certainly more painful challenge.
Chapel helped as best he could, but without sight he was less than useful. Sadly he was obliged to sit and voice hollow assurances while Mr. Gladis moaned in pain. At last the two men were fitted up, and as added insurance, Mr. Page lashed the two men together with a length of line. Mr. Page apologized for the “crippled leading the blind” arrangement, but he thought it safer to handle one rope rather than two in the dark.
Mr. Gladis gasped out the observation that the rigid life vest, tightly lashed about his torso as it was, actually provided considerable relief to his tortured ribs. He felt a little more confident about the situation and told Captain Leland that he would look after Mr. Lodge should the need arise.
That very necessity arose thirty seconds later as the Los Angeles began to settle to the bottom of the ocean, seven hundred yards from shore off Point Sur.
Within moments the sea had taken possession of the decks and Captain Leland was forced to herd his charges toward the rigging of the ship’s vestigial mast. As the broken ship was sucked from beneath them, the hapless survivors climbed and clung to the ratlines and stays. Captain Leland shouted that the bottom off Point Sur was relatively shallow, and this fact was immediately confirmed when the mast ceased to sink and temporary refuge was afforded just below the flag yard. The company standard still flew from the top of the mast.
It wasn’t much of a hedge against immediate death, but Mr. Gladis observed that it was a damn sight better than nothing at all. In fact, Mr. Gladis was feeling somewhat better about everything. Since floating, even in the angry chop, took the pressure of gravity off his injured ribs, Mr. Gladis was allowed the privilege of breathing without incessant pain.
Chapel, on the other hand, could do little to influence his destiny except hold on tight and avoid drowning as best he could. Their biggest worry at present, besides the obvious absence of boats to carry them ashore, was the frigid temperature of the water. Captain Leland worried that cold hands would lose their grip, and he encouraged everyone to cling to each other as well as to the rigging.
In all, Chapel, like Mr. Gladis, was feeling his injuries less. The cold salt water bathed his scalded face to a point of tolerance, and though deeply worried about his eyes, Chapel felt that he had at least a fighting chance of survival. Now that he was embraced in the arms of the sea, he felt safe. He could swim, blind or not, and that was more than could be said for the poor Los Angeles now resting on the rocks beneath them.
If all else failed, Chapel felt he could always swim to the sound of the surf in the hope that God loved fools enough to bring him to the shore safely.
From out of the storm a large ocean swell transformed itself into a rogue breaker that crashed over the ship’s mast, engulfing the survivors clinging desperately to the rigging. When the wave passed, Captain Leland’s worst fears were realized. The two injured passengers, who had timidly held on with the others when the ship went down, were gone.
The couple’s cork vests would have doubtlessly brought them to the surface a
gain, but the starless sheet of night hid everything beyond the next wave, and finding the couple would prove little more than an exercise in futility without a boat. Captain Leland, a good Catholic, crossed himself with pragmatic reverence.
The captain kept his few remaining men close about him for fear of losing another soul to the waves. Though his own strength ebbed slowly into the frigid waters, Captain Leland pestered and prodded his half-drowned crew to hang on for their lives. Where he found the will to be optimistic about their future was a mystery to one and all, but they were obliged for his strength of character. They had been clinging to the mast’s tattered rigging for close to an hour by Mr. Page’s calculation, and there hadn’t appeared so much as a ghost of possible rescue. Where were the damn boats? Why hadn’t the motor launch returned as ordered?
Chapel, isolated within his blindness, was perforce required to interpret everything from the inside out, and it was one of these intuitive themes that peacefully indicated to him that his suffering would soon come to an end.
His limbs were no longer governed by the rigid cold. In fact, he felt new warmth rise within his bones. It beckoned him to release his grasp on fear and sleep untroubled on the cresting foam. To sleep was to surrender oneself into the hands of creation. All he had to do was let go and drift away on the waves. Luckily he was still lashed to Mr. Gladis, who in turn was secured by a strong line to Mr. Page.
Abruptly, and from the bleak void beyond his last dreams, there exploded an intrusive bubble of shouting and banging. Unexpectedly, Chapel slowly became aware of being discourteously hauled into the air like an exhausted tuna and then lifted down over the gunwales of a boat.
In his disjointed confusion, Chapel thought he heard the earnest chirping voices of his black gang, and he called out Tino’s name. In response, he heard Tino’s voice tell him that all was well. Then he glided into a relaxed dream of his own death. He wondered what his mother would say, and laughed.
Chapel had become reconciled to the thought of passing on and subsequently resented the wrenching summons to return to life. It was his last thought before passing out in the bottom of the Point Sur lifeboat.
It was hours before Chapel could reliably decipher the credible difference between dreams and reality. He had heard people talking from beyond the uncertain veil of consciousness. The voices mixed with his dreams, and he was surprised to hear Mr. Page’s voice emanate from his mother’s mouth, while his old dog, Grover, moaned and swore blue lightning just like Mr. Gladis.
While slowly coming to the surface of authentic comprehension, Chapel became aware that he still experienced the same angry frustration and annoyance that had marked his reluctant extraction from the safe, warm eternity of the sea. For Chapel, it almost felt akin to being forcefully dragged from his home.
His first waking sensation was one of extreme discomfort. Chapel remembered that his face had been soundly cooked, but he now experienced a burning sensation all over his body. When he tried to move, Chapel found himself completely sheathed and swaddled in a heavy cocoon of considerable thickness and strength. He couldn’t even move his arms.
Chapel knew it was still dark and that he lay upon the beach, the first because he could still smell the salty night fog and the second because he felt the pounding of the surf through the sand. He knew he was sheltered under a tent, because he could smell mildewed canvas, but the exact purpose of his heavy shroud disturbed his thoughts considerably. He imagined he had already been wrapped in old ship’s canvas, ready for burial. He longed to tell somebody he wasn’t dead. At least he didn’t think he was dead. After several moments of fruitless struggle against confinement, Chapel cried out for release. He swore his whole body was a bed of coals and begged for his liberty before he went mad with the torment.
A familiar and restoring brogue came out of the dark in short, emphatic gasps. It was Mr. Gladis. “Go a mite easy there, Mr. Lodge. You’re safe now, old son. A doctor has already gauged your timbers. You’ll float again. He said you suffered something evil from the cold. Battened you down for warmth, he did. Mr. Page here has a bottle of medicine for you. See to his needs, Mr. Page. Just breathing plays raw havoc on my ribs just now.”
Chapel felt Mr. Page kneel and slide his arm under his neck and shoulders. Page lifted the helpless bundle a few degrees, placed the spout of a small bottle between Chapel’s lips, and coaxed him to drink it all. “The doctor says you are to swallow it all, Mr. Lodge. He warranted it would make you as comfortable as conditions allowed. He also said your burns weren’t to give you cause for undue distress. He said that once the swelling went down you would get your sight back.”
Abruptly Chapel began to violently cough and sputter. The bitter flavor of the syruplike concoction had suddenly met resistance. Chapel begged for water. Mr. Page obliged and at last managed to muster the last of the medicine down Chapel’s gullet with additional water to help the tonic pass.
Mr. Page spoke words of reassurance all the while. “That there doctor is a genuine piece of work if ever I saw one. He’s as tough as a bosun’s boot, and that’s no mistake. When he heard our poor ship was stove in on the rocks, he borrowed a stallion and galloped all night to get to us. You can show your gratitude with patience, Mr. Lodge. Rest easy. The doctor said he would return. You just sleep while you can.”
The cumulative dosage of reassurance and remedy had their effect. Slowly Chapel could feel all previous discomforts and trepidation slip away to be replaced by a warm, drifting sense of well-being that excluded all reference to the terrifying experiences of the last few hours. Within a few minutes he was adrift in a sleep impervious to the assault of dreams, but he looked like a dead walrus.
Mr. Page commented on the eerie similarity to Mr. Gladis. The chief engineer laughed, which caused him to wince convulsively in pain. He sputtered out orders as though still aboard ship. “Now, stuff that nonsense, Mr. Page, and make yourself useful. Rummage up some dry tobacco and a dram of something besides water. Black rum would be much appreciated, if there be such about. I’m like to blow out my valves with the pain in me staves, so put your soul into it, if you please.”
When Chapel at last awoke from a dreamless pit of drugged sleep, it was to find he was in another setting altogether. Though his eyes were still well bandaged, he could sense that he now lay on a narrow metal bed between clean sheets. He had been washed and dressed in a long flannel nightshirt.
He lay quietly, enjoying long-forgotten sensations of peace and warmth. After a while he began to wonder if Mr. Gladis and Mr. Page were savoring similar joys, so he called out their names in a rusty unused voice that reflected his weakened condition. There was no answer but the echo of his voice in an empty room. He called again and, in response, he heard a door open and footsteps approach his bed. Sadly the voice of his visitor was unknown to him.
“How fare you, sailor? I’m Willard Copes, assistant light-keeper, Point Sur Station. We were beginning to wonder how long you would sleep. You’ve been kissing feathers for two days now. Dr. Roberts said you would sleep a while, but we didn’t think you’d be out this long. He gave you a draught to that purpose, I know, but we worried he might have overdone it. If you’re fit enough to eat, I’ll have some food sent up to you. Doc said to keep it simple at first, but you should regain your gut in a day or two. He left some ointment for your face too. He was confident we could take off your bandages in a few days. He couldn’t say for certain, of course, but he’s of the opinion that your eyes will take care of themselves if you’re careful with the burns.”
Chapel asked after Captain Leland, Mr. Gladis, and the others. Mr. Copes said that the coastal freighter Eureka arrived off the point shortly after the accident. The storm had moved on east by then. She had taken on those survivors who had regained their composure enough to step aboard another ship and had transported them north to Monterey.
Those who had seen the hand of the Almighty imprinted upon the disaster chose to be carted north in wagons rather than face another
voyage. Under the circumstances, it was probably a sound decision, according to Mr. Copes.
The last survivors had departed the previous day. Mr. Gladis was transported with the help of a mule litter fashioned by Mr. Page. The remaining survivors were anxious to get as far away from the site of the wreck as possible. The others, like Mr. Gladis, needed further medical attention in Monterey. The coast road couldn’t have proven a comfortable journey at that time of the year. The road was badly rutted by the winter rains, and rumor had it there had been landslides just south of Yankee Point.
Noting Chapel’s melancholy silence, Mr. Copes said that officials from the Pacific Steamship Company would arrive in a couple of days to inspect the site of the wreck. Chapel could, no doubt, make arrangements for return transport and back wages with them. Until then, Doc Roberts had ordered rest, hot food, and perhaps a whisper of medicinal whiskey after dinner to abet a sound sleep.
With that pleasant promise, Mr. Copes bid Chapel a peaceful recovery and departed with a light step. Chapel turned his anguished face to the warmth of the afternoon sun as it came through the window. He was consoled by the sensation that he could see as well as feel the light through his bandages.
That night Mr. Copes was as good as his word. After a delicious dinner consisting of creamed chowder of abalone and clams and a half loaf of hot fresh bread, Chapel was presented with a generous tumbler of peat-flavored whiskey. Mr. Copes stayed for a while to keep him company. He expressed a very natural curiosity about the disaster, but his questions were professionally pointed and almost crossed the hedge into language similar to that of an official inquiry.
After a few minutes, Mr. Copes apologized by saying that he had been a lighthouse hand all his life. It was his nature to take a veteran’s interest in such particulars.
Chapel spoke freely of what he knew, but stated for the record that it wasn’t very much. Only those on the bridge could know the truth of the matter, and the bridge officers alone would be consulted by any official board inquiry. “The engine-room black gang certainly knew when the ship was bound for the bottom, because we were the first bastards to get wet. Unfortunately, we knew little else save bilge gas and blind panic. If the Los Angeles died from negligence, sir, we would be hindmost in line with knowledge of it, or blame for it.”
Down to a Soundless Sea Page 7
