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Chase was immediately given, but the water shoaled, and the pilot was asked if they could stand on. He replied in the affirmative, stating that they were now in the shallowest water, and that it was deeper within. The leadsman was ordered into the chains, but at the first heave the lead-line broke; another was sent for, and the Dort still carried on under a heavy press of sail.
Again the bell pealed a heavy stroke, which indicated that the steamer was in free water, and the leadsman settled himself for another nap. The passengers, save those whom we have before noted, were deep in the arms of Morpheus, rejoicing, no doubt, in their dreams, over the many tedious hours they thus annihilated. Wakeful and watchful, Henry Carroll still kept his post.
"By the mark six!" shouted the port leadsman, who was on the side nearest to the island of Santa Rosa. This did not induce the pilot to take any further action, and the Teaser continued on her course at less than half speed. Christy looked at his watch by the light of the binnacle lamps.
At the same moment the leadsman in the chains gave his warning cry: "Three fathoms only, and shoaling fast!" But the warning came too late, for the vessel had taken the ground, which evidently shoaled up with great abruptness.
It was Sunday, a day of heavenly calm, fresh yet windless, with a sea so smooth that the barrier reefs for once were silent, and one could hear, far across the hushed and shining water, the coo of pigeons in the forest. Under bare steerage way, with the leadsman droning in the fore chains, the ship hugged the shore and steamed at a snail's pace round the island.
He paused by the side of the wheel-house, to hear the report of the leadsman, who was sounding the depth of water, in obedience to the command of the pilot, expressed in a single clang of the heavy bell. Mechanically he had stopped, and with no interest in the matter he listened to the monotonous reply, "Quarter less three," &c.
Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry, 'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! until it become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking, and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of this endless string of half twains let a single 'quarter twain! be interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again, just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain was uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and side- marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take the boat there and put her in that same spot again yourself!
Now, let us see what happened to the son. He was the leadsman, that is to say, it was his business to sound the depths of the sea; he had plumbed the profound abysses of the ocean, calculated the elevation of the land and the apparent motion of the sky; he knew the exact time by looking at the sun, and he could tell from the stars how far they had travelled.
Through having mimicked the leadsman all day long, and also, perhaps, owing to all the drink he had consumed, he had become so much the part which he had played that he was unable to shake it off; and since he had brought into prominence the faults and weaknesses of the leadsman, he had, as it were, acquired them, and that flash from the leadsman's eye had rammed them down to the very bottom of his soul, just as a ramrod pushes the powder into the barrel of a gun.
Presently the weight shot forward and plunged into the sea a fathom or two ahead of the ship, the coils of thin line leapt from the leadsman's hand, and, as the ship surged slowly ahead, the line slackened, showing that the lead had reached bottom, and the leadsman, bringing the sounding line up and down, proclaimed the depth eighteen fathoms!
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