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Updated: June 28, 2025
With these I came on deck, put down my own stock behind the rudder-head, and well out of the coxswain's reach, went forward to the water-breaker, and had a good, deep drink of water, and then, and not till then, gave Hands the brandy. He must have drunk a gill before he took the bottle from his mouth. "Ay," said he, "by thunder, but I wanted some o' that!"
On inspection Scott saw that the solid oak rudder-head was completely shattered, and was held together by little more than its weight; as the tiller was moved right or left the rudder followed it, but with a lag of many degrees, so that the connection between the two was evidently insecure.
The explosion had gutted after-hold, after-cabin, sail-locker, and laid all bare even to the stern-post. `Twas a marvel the stern itself had not been blown out: but as a set-off against this mercy and the most grievous of all, though as yet we had not discovered it we had lost our rudder-head, and the rudder itself hung by a single pintle.
The rudder had been driven hard over to starboard and the blade partially torn away from the rudder-head. Heavy masses of ice were still jammed against the stern, and it was impossible to ascertain the extent of the damage at that time. I felt that it would be impossible in any case to effect repairs in the moving pack.
In the darkness of night it would be an easy trick to disconnect the steering-gear from the short tiller on the rudder-head, and then, by re-rigging the preventer tackles, steer from both sides of the poop well enough for'ard to be out of the range of the ventilator.
Even the man at the wheel shared their fate, though no one could know who were killed and who were simply stunned by the shock. The lightning capriciously leaped from the boom to the metal work of the wheel, shattering the whole into a thousand pieces, and splintering the rudder-head as though it had been so much glass.
"That 's the way he always does gets real good and cooks when he wants to make up," 'Frisco Kid hazarded, slipping the tiller into the rudder-head and obeying the order. "But even then you can't trust him." Joe nodded his head, but did not speak. He was in no mood for conversation.
"The rudder is out of the gudgeons." It was true the "Bertha Millner's" helm was unshipped. There was no more sleep for any one on board that night. Wilbur tramped the quarterdeck, sick with a feeling he dared not put a name to. Moran sat by the wrecked rudder-head, a useless pistol in her hand, swearing under her breath from time to time.
From the time the tempest struck the Waldo, she had been drifting towards the dangerous rocks; and when the wheel and rudder-head were shattered, the vessel became unmanageable. Six men, including the captain and the passenger, lay paralyzed on the quarter-deck. There were only three left the mate, the steward, and one seaman.
A ship hove-to with preventer tackles on the rudder-head is unmanageable. Each night we take our chance of unavoidable and disastrous collision. And at times, glimpsed through the snow-squalls, we see and curse the ships, east-bound, that drive past us with the West Wind and the West Wind Drift at their backs. And so wild is the mind of man that Mr. Pike and Mr.
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