Mathias Sandorf

They started that evening. The “Ferrato,” always ready for sea, with provisions on board, bunkers coaled and compasses regulated, was ordered to sail at eight o’clock.

It is nine hundred and fifty miles from the Syrtis Major to the south of Sicily, near Porto di Palo. The swift steam yacht, whose mean speed exceeded eighteen knots, would take about a day and a half to accomplish the distance. She was a wonderful vessel. She had been built at one of the best yards on the Loire. Her engines could develop nearly fifteen hundred horse power effective. Her boilers were on the Belleville system—in which the tubes contain the flame and not the water—and possessed the advantage of consuming little coal, producing rapid vaporization, and easily raising the tension of the steam to nearly thirty pounds without danger of explosion. The steam, used over again by the reheaters, became a mechanical agent of prodigious power, and enabled the yacht, although she was not as long as the dispatch boats of the European squadrons, to more than equal them in speed.

It need scarcely be said said that the “Ferrato” was fitted so as to insure every possible comfort to her passengers. She carried four steel breech-loaders, mounted on the barbette principle, two revolving Hotchkiss guns, two Gatlings, and, in the bow, a long chaser which could send a five-inch conical shot a distance of four miles.

The captain was a Dalmatian named Kostrik, and he had under him a mate and second and third officers. For the machinery there were a chief engineer, a second engineer, and six firemen; the crew consisted of thirty men, with a boatswain and two quartermasters, and there was a steward, a cook, and three native servants. During the first hour or two the passage out of the gulf was made under favorable conditions. Although the wind was contrary—a brisk breeze from the north-west—the captain took the “Ferrato” along with remarkable speed; but he did not set either of the head sails or the square sails on the foremast, or the lateens on the main and mizzen.

During the night the doctor and Pierre in their rooms aft, and Point Pescade and Matifou in their cabins forward, could sleep without being inconvenienced by the movement of the vessel, which rolled a little like all fast boats. But although sleep did not fail the two friends, the doctor and Pierre bad too much anxiety to take any rest. In the morning when the passengers went on deck, more than 120 miles bad been run in the twelve hours since they had left Antekirtta. The wind was in the same direction, with a tendency to freshen. The sun had risen on a stormy horizon, and everything betokened a roughish day.

Point Pescade and Cape Matifou wished the doctor and Pierre good-morning.

“Thank you, my friends,” said the doctor. “Did you sleep well in your bunks?”

“Like dormice with an easy conscience!” answered Point Pescade.

“And has Cape Matifou had his first breakfast?”

“Yes, doctor, a tureen of black coffee and four pounds of sea biscuit.”

“Hum! A little hard, that biscuit!”

“Bah! For a man that used to chew pebbles between his meals!”

Cape Matifou slowly nodded his huge head in sign of approval of his friend’s replies.

The “Ferrato” by the doctor’s orders was now driving along at her utmost speed and sending off from her prow two long paths of foam. To hurry on was only prudent Already Captain Kostrick, after consulting the doctor, had begun to think of putting for shelter into Malta, whose lights were sighted about eight o’clock in the evening. The state of the weather was most threatening. Notwithstanding the westerly breeze, which freshened as the sun went down, the clouds mounted higher and higher, and gradually overspread three quarters of the sky. Along the sea-line was a band of livid gray, deepening in its density and becoming black as ink, when the sun’s rays shot from behind its jagged edges. Now and then the silent flashes tore asunder the cloud bank, whose upper edge rounded off into heavy volutes and joined on to the masses above. At the same time, as if they were struggling with the wind from the west and the wind from the east that they had not yet felt, but, whose existence was shown by the disturbed state of the sea, the waves increased as they met, and, breaking up confusedly, began to come rolling on to the deck. About six o’clock the darkness had completely covered the cloudy vault, and the thunder growled, and the lightning vividly flashed in the gloom.

“Better keep outside!” said the doctor to the captain.

“Yes,” answered Captain Kostrik. “In the Mediterranean it is either one thing or the other. East and west strive which shall have us, and the storm coming in to help, I am afraid the first will get the worst of it. The sea will become very rough off Gozo or Malta, and it may hinder us a good deal. I don’t propose to run into Valette, but to find a shelter till daylight under the western coast of either of the islands.”

“Do as you think best,” was the reply.

The yacht was then about thirty miles to the westward of Malta. On the island of Gozo, a little to the north-west of Malta and separated from it only by two narrow channels formed by a central islet, there is a large light-house with a range of twenty-seven miles.

In less than an hour, notwithstanding the roughness of the sea, the “Ferrato” was within range of the light. After carefully taking its bearings and running toward the land for some time the captain considered he was sufficiently near to remain in shelter a few hours. He therefore reduced his speed so as to avoid all chance of accident to the hull or machinery. About half an hour afterward, however, the Gozo light suddenly vanished.

The storm was then at its height. A warm rain fell in sheets. The mass of cloud on the horizon, now driven into ribbons by the wind, flew overhead at a terrible pace. Between the rifts the stars peeped forth for a second or two, and then as suddenly disappeared, and the ends of the tatters dragging in the sea swept over its surface like streamers of crape. The triple flashes struck the waves at their three points, sometimes completely enveloping the yacht, and the claps of thunder ceaselessly shook the air. The state of affairs had been dangerous; it rapidly became alarming.

Captain Kostrik, knowing that he ought to be at least within twenty miles of the range of the Gozo light, dared not approach the land. He even feared that it was the height of the cliffs which had shut out the light, and if so, he was extremely near. To run aground on the isolated rocks at the foot of the cliffs was to risk immediate destruction.

About half past nine the captain resolved to lay-to and keep the screw at half speed. He did not stop entirely, for he wanted to keep the ship under the control of her rudder.

For three hours she lay head to wind. About midnight things grew worse. As often happens in storms, the strife between the opposing winds from the east and west suddenly ceased. The wind went round to the point from which it had been blowing during the day.

“A light on the starboard bow!” shouted one of the quartermasters, who was on the lookout by the bowsprit.

“Put the helm hard down!” shouted Captain Kostrik, who wished to keep off the shore.

He also had seen the light. Its intermittent flashes showed him it was Gozo. There was only just time for him to come round in the opposite direction, the wind sweeping down with intense fury. The “Ferrato” was not ten miles from the point on which the light had so suddenly appeared.

Orders to go full speed were telegraphed to the engineer; but suddenly the engine slowed, and then ceased to work.

The doctor, Pierre, and all those on deck feared some serious complication. An accident had in fact happened. The valve of the air pump ceased to act, the condenser failed, and after two or three loud reports, as if an explosion had taken place in the stern, the screw stopped dead.

Under such circumstances the accident was irreparable. The pump would have to be dismantled, and that would take many hours. In less than twenty minutes the yacht, driven to leeward by the squalls, would be on shore.

“Up with the forestaysail! Up with the jib! Set the mizzen!”

Such were the orders of Captain Kostrik, whose only chance was to get under sail at once. The orders were rapidly executed. That Point Pescade with his agility and Cape Matifou with his prodigious strength rendered efficient service we need hardly stop to say. The halyards would have soon broken if they had not yielded to the weight of Cape Matifou.

But the position of the “Ferrato” was still very serious. A steamer, with her long hull, her want of beam, her slight draught, and her insufficient canvas, is not made for working against the wind. If she is laid too near, and the sea is rough, she is driven back in irons, or she is blown off altogether. That is what happened to the “Ferrato.” She found it impossible to beat off the lee shore. Slowly she drifted toward the foot of the cliffs, and it seemed as though all that could be done was to select a suitable place to beach her. Unfortunately, the night was so dark that the captain could not make out the coast. He knew that the two channels separated Gozo from Malta on each side of the central islet, one the North Comino, the other the South Comino. But how was it possible for him to find the entrances in the pitch darkness, or to take his ship across the angry sea to seek shelter on the eastern coast of the island, and perhaps get into Valetta harbor? A pilot might, perhaps, attempt the dangerous maneuver; but in this dense atmosphere, in this night of rain and fog, what fisherman would venture out, even to a vessel in distress? There was, perhaps, a chance that one might come, and so the steam whistle was set going, and three cannon-shots were fired, one after the other, as a signal.

Suddenly from the landward side a black point appeared in the fog. A boat was bearing down on the “Ferrato” under close-reefed sail. Probably it was some fisherman who had been obliged by the storm to take shelter in the little creek of Melleah, where his boat, run in behind the rocks, had found safety in that admirable grotto of Calypso, which bears a favorable comparison with the grotto of Fingal in the Hebrides. He had evidently heard the whistle and signal of distress, and at the risk of his life had come to the help of the half-disabled yacht. If the “Ferrato” was to be saved it could only be by him.

Slowly his boat came up. A rope was got ready to be thrown to him as soon as he came alongside. A few minutes elapsed, which seemed interminable. The steamer was not half a cable’s length from the reefs. The rope was thrown, but a huge wave caught the boat on its crest and dashed it against the side of the “Ferrato.” It was smashed to pieces, and the fisherman would have certainly perished had not Matifou snatched at him, lifted him at arm’s length, and laid him on the deck as if he had been a child.

Then without a word—would there have been time?—the man ran to the bridge, seized the wheel, and as the bows of the “Ferrato” fell off toward the rock, he sent the wheel-spokes spinning round, headed her straight for the narrow channel of the North Comino, took her down with the wind dead aft, and in less than twenty minutes was off the east shore of Malta in a much calmer sea. Then with sheets hauled in he ran along about half a mile from the coast, and about four o’clock in the morning, when the first streaks of dawn began to tinge the horizon, he run down the Valetta channel, and brought up the steamer off Senglea Point. Doctor Antekirtt then mounted the bridge and said to the young sailor:

“You saved us, my friend.”

“I only did my duty.”

“Are you a pilot?”

“No, I am only a fisherman.”

“And your name?”

“Luigi Ferrato!”

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