“I FELL THROUGH THE RIGGING.”
“I FELL THROUGH THE RIGGING.”
It was the forenoon watch, as the hours fromeight to twelve are called. The fellows who had been on deck since four o’clock had come below at eight bells, and after breakfasting had turned in to smoke a pipe and then get some sleep. They were in the port or chief mate’s watch, to which division of the ship’s company I was supposed to belong, though I don’t remember how I came to know this. We were still in “soundings” as it is termed—that is to say, not yet out of the Channel, though we were a long way down it.
On this morning there was a strong sea running on the bow, but not so much wind as the motion of the ship would have led one to suppose. The mids, when they came below, had told the others who were to relieve them that the vessel was under all plain sail saving the flying jib and fore and mizzen royals, and that the “old man” as they termed the captain, was driving her; that they had heard the mate say that he expected it would be an “all hands” job before four bells had gone—ten o’clock. I caught all this, scarce comprehending it, and lay drowsily and stupidly watching the lads get their breakfast and then vault into their bunks with all their clothes on—“all standing” as the sea saying is—ready to rush on deck to the first summons. The ship was lying over at a sharp angle, and there was a great roaring and seething along her sides of swollen waters smitten into yeast, and the cabin portholes came and went like the winking of eyesto the shrouding of the glass by the liftings and leapings of the green billows. Presently there were certain sounds on deck which unmistakably denoted that sail was being shortened.
“It’s ‘in main royal’ now, I suppose,” said one of the middies, sleepily, “and about time too. What’s the hurry all this side of Sydney, New South Wales?”
Presently more hoarse songs resounded on deck, along with the echo of tramping feet and of rigging dropped hastily from the hand.
“Old man’th growing alarmed, I reckon!” exclaimed the lisping long-nosed midshipman, whose name was Kennet. “Oh, how I do with,” he cried, feigning to speak in a voice as though he wept, “that I had thtoptht at home to bottle vinegar for my poor deah mamma. Eh, Rockafellar? Better to bottle vinegar athore, my beauty, than to lie thick and hungry in a nathty cabin.”
As he spoke, the third mate’s voice was to be heard ringing like the roar of a bull down through the booby-hatch—“All hands reef topsails! Up you come, all you young gentlemen bee-low there! Lively, now! before the ship falls overboard!”
The youngsters sprang from their bunks, and were out of the cabin in a breath. Then it was that I made up my mind to linger no longer sea-sick in this dismal, straining cabin. I pulled on my shoes, plunged into my jacket, and, setting my capfirmly upon my head, went clawing my way to the steps of the hatch, up which I staggered, feeling exceedingly ill and weak, but determined now to push on even to perishing sooner than suffer in darkness and loneliness below.
Talk of the confusion of hauling the ship out of dock! Here was uproar thrice confounded with a vengeance! The ship seemed to be almost on her beam ends; there was an ugly livid squall over the trucks and howling through the masts; they had put the helm up to ease off the weight of the first outfly, and theLady Violetwas thrashing and foaming through it with the spume blowing in snow-storms over her forecastle; all three topsail yards were on the caps, and the huge sails—for we carried single topsails—were blowing out like giant bladders in the grip of their gear. The outer jib was slatting on the jibboom; the clewed-up main topgallant-sail was making its mast up there whip to and fro like the end of an angler’s rod; the immense mainsail was thundering at its clews and sides and slowly rose to the yard to the drag of the sailors, who were roaring out at the ropes whichbelonged to it; the captain, standing near the wheel, was shouting out orders to the mate; the mate was bellowing to the second mate, who was forward; the second mate was vociferating to the boatswain; in all directions gangs of sailors were delivering their working choruses at the top of their lungs. The wind shrieked, the rain hissed through it like volleys of small shot; the shaking of the loose canvas on high might have passed for the discharge of the batteries of a frigate; the foam flew over the ship; the water washed in angry sobs along the scuppers. Preserve us!
To such a greenhorn as I was then, very young, very sick, with consternation and astonishment working in me like a passion, there was distraction and uproar enough here to have justified me in concluding that the end of all things was at hand.
In a few moments I found myself on the poop where the midshipmen were hard at work with the reef tackle and other gear preparing the mizzen topsail for reefing, snugging the spanker, and so forth. Their station was aft, and their duty lay in attending to all the sails on the mizzen-mast under the charge of the third mate. He was swinging off upon a rope, when he caught sight of me.
“Come along! come along!” he roared. “All the beef we can get is wanted here!”
I went in a staggering run to where the group were pulling and laid hold of the rope.
“Belay!” shouted the third mate, and sprang into the weather mizzen rigging, whither he was followed by the rest of the midshipmen. For a moment I hung in the wind, sending one thirsty, dizzy look aloft. “Well, now or never!” thought I; and with that I got on to the hencoop, swung myself into the rigging, and began the ascent.
“I SEEMED TO BE PINNED TO THE RATLINES.”
“I SEEMED TO BE PINNED TO THE RATLINES.”
The wind came so hard that I seemed to be pinned to the ratlines, and I felt as though all the breath were blown out of my body. I sent a yearning look up, and saw the third mate on the weather mizzen-top-sail yard-arm, striding the sparas though it were a horse, his muscular legs dangling between the dark heavens and the wool-white water. The lads were sliding out upon the foot-ropes, some to windward, some to leeward. I tried to make haste, but the sweep of the blast reduced my struggles to a mere crawling. It took me a full five minutes to reach to the height of the futtock shrouds—thin bars of iron which stretch at a sharp angle from the masts to the rim of the platform called “the top.” I took these irons in my little hands, but lacked the courage to swing myself by them over into the top. How on earth, then, was I to gain the yard upon which the midshipmen were working? Through the irons I spied a hole in the platform, and with great trouble and a deal of trembling I contrived to squeeze through it, and then I found myself on a sort of stage with the ship looking as if she were a mile below me, and the mizzen-royal yard as if it were two miles above me.
The wind screamed frantically in my ears, yet not so loudly but that I could hear my small heart thumping in them. I clutched a rope, and stood staring wildly at the yard on which my shipmates were knotting the reef-points. I thought Mr. Cock a much more wonderful man than Blondin or any tight-rope walker that ever I had heard of, to be able to sit upon that rocking point of spar without tumbling off, and to be passing the earing as coolly as if he were tying his shoes.
“Stop where you are!” he bawled to me; “we’ll endeavour to manage without you this once.”
The sea looked five times bigger than ever I had before seen it. The worst of the squall was over, and past the edge of the flying gloom to windward there was a sort of faintness in the sky, with curls and wisps of scud blowing up it out of the hard green of the distant water that looked calm, so far away it was; and right out in the midst of the distant ocean, over which the dim light of the sky was breaking, I saw a ship, like a toy, vanishing and reappearing amongst the surges, flinging the foam away from her in bursts of steam-light cloud; and so little did she look with her three milk-white bands of topsails and marble-like round of foresail, that whilst my eye dwelt upon her, I could scarce persuade myself that she was real: rather, indeed, some craft of fairy-land, which a great strong fellow, such a man as Mr. Cock for instance, might be able to hold in the hollow of his hand.
I was at no great height, yet the captain looked an insignificant little creature as he stood at the rail sending his gaze aloft; the man at the wheel resembled one of those dolls which you purchase as sailors for your model boat, and the decks of the ship from poop to forecastle showed like a long wet plank. It was wonderful to think so narrow a base should support the tall, wide-spreading fabric of mast, yard, and gear that was now somewhatnakedly shearing through the dusk of the squall, to the plunging and long floating rushes of the hull over whose side a sea would now and again fling a head of water that swept with the sparkle of a fountain clear into the milk-white race to leeward.
“Two reefs, Mr. Cock!” bawled the mate from the foremost end of the poop.
I watched the lads swinging in a row upon the foot-ropes, tossing up their heels as they brought the reef-points upon the yard, and wondered how long it would take me to learn their trick of working aloft, as coolly as though they toiled with the solid earth under them. All three topsails were being reefed at the same time. I could not see forward, but I could hear the voices of the men chorusing as they, lighted, the sails over. Evidently the captain expected dirty weather; and, to be sure, out abeam it looked ugly enough, with a kind of rusty light growing in the atmosphere that threw a malevolent complexion of storm upon the sky.
Presently the last knot had been tied in the mizzen topsail, and the midshipmen were in the act of descending.
“Jump aloft two of you and secure that t’gallants’l before it blows adrift!” roared the captain.
A couple of the mids sprang into the topmast rigging, and in a few moments were giving battle to the sail, that, even as the captain called, began to flog upon the yard.
Well, thought I, as I stood staring up at them, some day I dare say I shall be able to do that too; but I declare the possibility seemed mighty remote from me just then. Indeed, once again I was beginning to feel horribly sea-sick. The higher you mount above the hull of a ship, the wilder of course grows the rolling, and the mizzen-top in which I stood seemed to me to swing through the air a score of times more furiously than the decks below were swaying. It increased my nausea moreover to look up and see the two youngsters dizzily whirling under the dark sky, plunging and hauling at the thrashing sail, as though the hold they had with their boots was enough to save their lives if they fell backwards.
But now the others were swarming into the top, and swinging themselves over into the lower rigging, and dancing down the shrouds till, taut as those huge ropes were, they leapt again.
“Come along! come along!” bawled the third mate, as he plumped like a cannon ball alongside of me, and with a sinewy arm poised himself an instant before putting his foot on the futtock ratlines: “There’s nothing good enough to look at up here, to keep you staring open mouth as though you were a newly landed cod. Lay down smartly now, youngster, and tail on to the topsail halliards.”
His prize-fighter’s face vanished over the rim of the top.
“Lay down!” thought I, “what does he mean?” and I went nervously to the edge of the platform to ask him to explain himself, but saw that he was already on deck.
“Mizzen-top there!” cried the captain, “Lay down, will you?”
There can be no mistake aboutthat, thought I. I am not deaf. Twice I had been told tolay down; and with that I stretched myself along on my back, taking care however to keep a hearty good hold of some ropes which passed through the top within reach of my grasp.
“Mizzen-top there!” after a little came a roaring hail from the mate; “what are you about up there, sir? Do you mean to lay down or not?”
On hearing this, I crept on my knees to the rim of the top, and looking over, cried out in the shrill voice of my childhood, “Please, sir, Iamlying down.”
The captain was staring up at me, but on hearing this, he turned his back with a shake of his figure.
“Come down, Master Rockafellar,” sung out the mate in a voice full of laughter.
When I heard this I crawled over to another edge of the top where I could see him, and piped out, “The captain said I was tolaydown, sir.”
“‘PLEASE, SIR, IAMLYING DOWN.’”
“‘PLEASE, SIR, IAMLYING DOWN.’”
It was wonderful that my thin voice should have carried in such a wind, yet I was heard plainly enough. Then arose a shout of laughter from themidshipmen; the mate called something to Mr. Cock, who in a trice came bundling up the mizzen rigging, and flounded with a crimson face into the top.
“Why you young guinea pig, why don’t you obey orders?” he bawled; “tolay downat sea means tocomedown, and youknowit too; I see it in your eye! Over with’ee, over with’ee.”
His large nervous fist closed upon the collar of my jacket, and I found myself lifted over the rim at the top.
“Catch hold of the futtock shrouds!” he roared, “those iron bars, d’ye hear?—quick, before I let you go!”
I gripped at something, but whether it was iron or rope I was too horrified to know. He let go, and my legs swung out into the air. But green-horns cling too tightly to be in much danger on such occasions as this. A heave of the ship swung me in again, my toes struck something hard, and with the swiftness of a monkey I coiled my little shanks round it. Down I slid, breathless, and with the eyes half out of my head, and was not a little astonished and rejoiced to find my foot upon a ratline in the mizzen rigging, whence the descent was as easy as walking the deck.
“That’s your lesson,” exclaimed the third mate as he jogged down the rigging past me. “You’ll never shirk the futtock shrouds again, will you?”
But I had no breath with which to answer him. It was a rough lesson, but it did me good. It made me see that climbing and descending were no such terrifying processes as they looked. Possibly I might not have got so much confidence out of this adventure had I known that the third mate had only pretended to let go; that in reality he was maintaining his hold of my collar after my legs had swung out, though I was too much terrified to be sensible of this.
I have always considered that the alarm of this little business cured me of sea-sickness. Whilst in the top, as I have told you, the nausea was over-poweringly strong upon me; but when I had come down I was no longer sensible of it, and from that moment, indeed, I never had a return of it. There can be no doubt that this distressing malady lies mainly in the nerves, and the fright I had received by being hung out over the top, so to speak, had acted upon me as an electric shock, healing and ending the prostrating complaint.
It blew a gale of wind for three days. I don’t doubt I should have heard a deal about my adventure aloft from the midshipmen but for the weather. The wet on deck and the discomforts below were too much for the youngsters’ spirits, and until the sun shone forth again we were a very sulky lot. The ship was miserably uncomfortable. It rained incessantly, with such a continuous blowing of sprayover us, that it was sometimes above one’s ankles on the main deck. There were tarpaulins over the hatchways, and the ’tween-decks were as dark as the hold. There had been no time yet for the passengers to grow seasoned to the sea life; most of those in the “cuddy,” as the saloon was then called, kept their cabins. Now and again one of them at long intervals crawled into the companion-hatch, where he exhibited a face white as a spectre’s.
But the chief of the misery was amongst the emigrants. Boxes and chests were incessantly breaking loose, and menacing their lives as the poor creatures sat huddled in sea-sick groups under the booby-hatch, for the sake of the dim light that sifted down through it. There were times when the galley fire was washed out, and the emigrants had to content themselves with biscuit and molasses and cold water, and small doses of that nauseous food called “soup and boulli,” nick-named by the sailorssoap and bullion. I have seen a little family of them squatting round a sea-chest belonging to one of us midshipmen, an old towel for a table-cloth, and on it a tin dish or two containing hard ship’s biscuit, a mess of soup and boulli, a lump of pork fat, probably two or three days’ old, along with other such cold and throttling fare as the ship’s third-class larder yielded; and while they were attempting to make a meal off this trough-like collection of victuals, I have seen the chest slipaway from them, the food tumble on to the deck, and the whole family capsized on their backs.
I do not know that the emigrant in these days is a person very carefully and hospitably looked after at sea; but in my time the treatment he met with on shipboard—that is to say, the utter indifference to his comfort exhibited by owners and captains—rendered him the most miserable wretch afloat.
These three days of storm brought me into a tolerably close acquaintance with some of the hardships of the sailor’s life. Our cabin did not leak, yet somehow or other the deck of it was always damp, with a noise as of the bubbling of water under the bunks. The scuttles were incessantly under water, and all the light we had was imparted by the dingy flare of our malodorous coffee-pot-shaped lamp.
The food was perhaps the hardest part to my young stomach. Every midshipman’s father had been called upon to pay ten guineas mess money; yet I do not know that this ninety guineas obtained any stores for us, if it were not a cask or two of flour, a cask of sugar, a few dozens of pickles, and some cases of “preserved spuds,” as potatoes are called at sea. We were therefore thrown upon the ship’s stores, and fed as the sailors forward did. This I say was the hardest part to me, since, thoughmy sickness had passed, my appetite had not recovered its old strength, and for a long time I was never hungry enough to eat with the least relish the greenish masses of salt pork, and the iron-hearted rounds and squares and cubes of salt horse, and the pans of lukewarm slush-flavoured water, at the bottom of which rolled a handful of peas, as digestible as musket-balls, and the dark-skinned puddings, compounded of the coarsest flour and the skimmings of the greasy water of the cook’s copper, which the lad who waited upon us would come staggering with from the galley, and place upon the narrow slip of table, scarce visible in our twilight.
I believe I should have starved but for the biscuit, which was crisp and good, though Kennet, the long-nosed midshipman, endeavoured to cheer me by saying—
“Thtoph a bit, Rockafellah—wait till we’re a fortnight out, and then ththand by! They’ll be broaching the regular provithionth then, and if there don’t go a thcore of wormth to every chap’th bithcuith I’m a lobthter.”
The crying of children outside, the growling of men, and the shrill complaining of women combined with the crazy creaking and groaning of the fabric, so that it was very hard to get any sleep.
It was on the night of the day of my adventure in the mizzen-top that I stood my first watch. Itwas eight o’clock in the evening, and the moment after the last of the chimes of the bell on deck had been swept away by the gale, the four midshipmen who were in the starboard, or second mate’s watch, came bundling below. Their oilskins were streaming wet, and they blew upon their fingers’-ends as they entered the berth.
“Still raining, is it?” asked a fellow named Poole.
“Ay, murderously,” was the answer; “but the wind’s quartering us, and you’ll be making sail, I allow, before we turn out.”
“What’s been doing?”
“Nothing. But talk of the Bay of Biscay! Why, the Straits of Magellan might be close aboard. That’s right, my sweet and lively hearty! On with your boots, my noble fellow! One, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, open the door; five, six, cut all your sticks!”
And the youth who had thus spoken, and whose closing observations were levelled at me, thrust a short black length of clay pipe into the flame of the lamp, and sprang into his bed to refresh himself with a smoke before going to sleep.
I got into my sea-boots, which were very new and creaked noisily, wrapped my body in an oiled coat, wedged a sou’wester securely upon my little head, and followed the others on deck. The night seemed very black after the lamplight, dim asitwas, in the cabin. It was the darker at that moment for a heavy squall of rain that was blowing with a note of shrieking in it over the bulwark rail, and splitting in shouts and whistlings through the masts and rigging. I clambered on to the poop, and stood holding on to the brass rail staring about me in a blind way, for there was a deal to daze a raw-head like me coming new to the scene, I assure you. The ship was tearing through the water under three-reefed topsails and foresail. She made a great swirling and roaring of white water all round her, and the snow of it put an illumination into the black air till you seemed able to see a mile away. There was a high sea running, but it had quartered us along with the wind, and theLady Violetsank and rose very nobly and easily upon the long black seething coils of brine which chased her thundering to her counter, and expiring there in foam.
The other midshipmen hung about the quarter-deck, under the shelter of the break of the poop. Now and again they showed themselves, but at long intervals. The shadowy figure of the chief mate paced the weather-deck. Through the glass of the skylights I could see the people sitting in the cuddy below. Some played at chess or cards; others lolled in a sickly posture upon sofas; the captain, with his face burnished by weather, conversed with two ladies; a small chart lay before him, and hewas explaining something to them, running his forefinger over the paper, and smiling into their puzzled faces. It was more like a fancy than a reality to witness that shining interior set in the black frame of the night—that handsome cuddy, with its soft carpets, its brilliant lamps, its gleaming swinging trays, its globes of gold fish, its ferns and richly-painted panels, in which the lustre of the oil flames rippled; the whole showing, as it were, like a picture flung by some magic-lantern upon an atmosphere of sooty blackness.
I crept aft, and stood looking a little while at the man that steered. The light in the binnacle touched his face and figure, and threw him into relief. His sou’wester came low over his brow, and the rest of him, saving a knob of a nose and a pair of cheeks compounded of warts, freckles, and wrinkles, was formed of an oilskin coat, oiled leggings, and huge sea-boots. He grasped the wheel with hands of iron, often bending a reddish glittering eye upon the compass-card that swung in the bowl, and I watched him thrusting the spokes first a little way up and then a little way down, and wondered why he did not keep the wheel steady. But I did not like to speak to him, for what little of his face was visible looked very sour; and then, again, I was certain that he must be in a bad temper, through having to stand exposed to the lashing wet and strong cold wind of the night.
I went to the taffrail, and looked down over the stern of the ship at the frothing cataract of water that boiled out from round about her rudder, and streamed away pale and paler yet into the darkness, where I could see the dim line of it rising and falling upon the black surges. It resembled a footpath passing over a hilly country. The ocean looked a dreadfully desolate immense surface in that darkness, wider than the sky, it seemed to me, for the reason of the fancy of prodigious measureless distance coming to one out of the obscurity that lay in ink upon it, with the fitful flashings of the heads of seas showing in the heart of the murkiness. I shuddered as I thought how cold a death drowning must be. I shuddered again at the imagination of being alone in an open boat upon the vast surface of weltering gloom. I recalled what I had read of the sufferings of shipwrecked people, of fire at sea, of leaks which gained upon the pumps and sunk the vessel deeper and deeper, of sudden fierce storms which tore the masts out of ships, and left them helpless as logs of wood to slowly drown.
“‘WHAT D’YE SEE, MY LAD?’ SAID HE.”
“‘WHAT D’YE SEE, MY LAD?’ SAID HE.”
Whilst my little brains were thus busy, my eye was taken by what appeared to be a sort of smudge far away astern in the windy shadow of the night. If I looked straight at it, it vanished, but on gazing a little away from it I could see it very clearly. I continued to peer for some time, and was quite sure that the blotch—whatever it might be—was hardening,so to speak, and enlarging. I turned my head to see if the mate observed it, but was sure he had not by his manner of walking the deck. I stepped up to him, and said:
“If you please, sir, I think there’s something catching us up out there!” and I levelled my small arm at the ocean over the stern.
“Why, what d’ye see, my lad?” said he, very kindly; “you must have gimblet-like eyes to be able to bore a hole into such a night as this. It’s Master Rockafellar, isn’t it?” stooping to get a sight of my face. “Overtaking us, do you say?”
He walked right aft, I following him, and stood staring a moment or two, then with a start cried, “By George, theFlying Dutchman, I do believe! A big ship coming through the air it looks, and overhauling us as though she were a roll of smoke. Jump below, my lad, and fetch me my night-glass.”
He told me where his cabin was, and where I should find the glass, and off I rushed, proud to be employed. His cabin window overlooked the quarter-deck, and against the bulkhead the four middies of our watch were grouped, smoking and yarning in the shelter there.
“Why, what are you up to?” shouted one of them; “that’s the chief mate’s cabin. He’ll hang you up by the neck at that yard-arm, you young Rockafellar, if he catches you in his berth.”
“He has sent me for his night-glass,” answered; “there is a big ship coming up astern.”
“O-ho!” cried they, and emptying the bowls of their pipes, they fled like startled deer on to the poop.
I found the glass—a binocular—and ran with all my might with it to the mate, who, as he took it from me, said, “That’s right. You’re a smart boy!” a piece of commendation which so inspirited me that, I believe, had he told me to go up to the main-royal-yard, I should have promptly and comfortably have made my way to that great height.
The sight I had been the first to descry was, indeed, well worth watching. The speed of our own ship through the water, though she was under very small canvas, could not have been less than nine knots in the hour, yet the vessel astern grew upon us as though we were in tow of one of our own quarter-boats, and scarcely moving. She showed pale as the watery moon dimly glancing through a body of vapour.
“She is dead in our wake,” the chief mate said, as though talking to himself. “Does she see us, I wonder? Heavens alive! what is she under—skysailscan it be? It’s enough to make one think oneself in a dream.”
I saw him send a glance towards the companion-hatch, as though he had a mind to call the captain.
“THE VESSEL ASTERN GREW UPON US.”
“THE VESSEL ASTERN GREW UPON US.”
“Here, one of you,” he shouted to the midshipmen,who were grouped on the other side of the wheel, staring with all their eyes at the approaching ship, “whip that binnacle lamp out and show it.”
Kennet sprang to the compass-stand, unshipped the light, vaulted on to the grating, and there stood holding, at the height of his arm, the will-o’-the-wisp spark of flame.
The pursuing vessel was doubtless much closer to us when I first perceived her than I should have supposed by the pallid shadow she made on the troubled darkness of the waters. I think it must have been in less than half-an-hour’s time from the moment of my sighting her that she became a huge, easy-distinguishable shape in the heart of our wake. You saw sail upon sail towering upon her in pale spaces, which glimmered as though she reflected a strong starlight. By this time the news had reached the cuddy, and the captain had come on deck, together with most of the passengers, and we stood in a crowd, watching, and waiting, and wondering; for not yet had the tall and rushing phantom astern of us offered to shift her helm, and to my young eyes it seemed as though she was bound to steer right into us, cleaving us to amidships, like splitting a log with the blow of a hatchet.
“What does he mean to do? There seems no look-out on board!” called the captain to the mate. “Show more lights, Mr. Johnson, and let it be done quickly.”
The officer delivered some orders in a sharp, eager voice, and in a few minutes three or four sailors came running aft with large lanterns swinging in their hands.
“She has the cut of a Yankee,” I heard the captain say to the mate; “her high bows and crowd of canvas forward screen us from her quarter-deck. Great thunder! is she in a madman’s hands? She will be into us, sir. Fire a rocket!”
These signals were kept somewhere below. A midshipman shot away like an arrow, and returned, and then up soared the thing, the fire of it hissing as it sped javelin-like into the flying thickness on high, where it burst like a flash of lightning, flinging a green radiance far and wide, and sailing in a ball of flame slowly over our mizzen-mast-head on to the lee-bow.
Almost simultaneously with the detonation it made, like the blast of a blunderbuss, we saw the head of the vessel astern falling off. As she rose foaming to the head of a sea, her flying jibboom went majestically rounding away to leeward of us, opening out the fabric behind into a ship of some fifteen hundred tons, with high black sides and cotton-white canvas of the Yankee swelling from the water-ways to the trucks. A sort of groan of astonishment and admiration, mingled with a deep note of the fear that had been excited, arose from amongst the crowd of us. Indeed, but for herputting her helm over, her long bowsprit and tapering jibbooms must have been spearing our rigging in another five minutes, and her sharp clipper stem grinding into our counter.
A voice hailed us from her; our captain sprang on to the grating abaft the wheel, and roared back, “What d’ye say?” But no response was made to this. She swept past to leeward, within a musket-shot. You could hear the thunder of the wind in her canvas, and the roaring of the water crushed into yeast at her stem. It was like hearkening to the beating of surf on a stormy night on the sea-coast. She showed no light of any kind, not a spot of brightness on her deck or in her side to relieve the deep dye of blackness her hull made upon the obscurity. In a few minutes she had forged ahead, and a little later she had melted out upon the gloom over the port bow.
This was an incident to kill the tediousness of my first watch on deck very pleasantly. It was seeing life at sea too, tasting the excitement of it, and when eight bells sounded, and I went below, I began in good truth to feel myself something of a sailor.
But it was “watch and watch,” with us on board that ship, as in all other ships of those days, though what the practice is now in this age of steamboats I will not undertake to say. By “watch and watch,” I mean that one division of the crew went below for four hours, whilst the other division kept the deck. Those below then came up again for another four hours’ duty, and so on till the dog watches came round, when each watch had two hours of duty only, the object of the change being to vary the time of the four hours’ watches; so that, for example, if one division had to keep the middle watch, say on a Monday the dog watches contrivedthat that spell of duty would next night fall to the lot of the other division.
What “watch and watch” signified I never could have imagined till four o’clock in the morning was struck on the ship’s bell, and the midshipmen who had been on deck since midnight came in their headlong way below to rout us up.
“Eight bells! eight bells, my honeys!” they roared. “Out you come, and up you go! It rains beautifully, and is still as black as thunder all round.”
I was in a dead sleep, and could scarcely open my eyes. By way of helping me to wake up, one of the lads who had just descended threw his streaming sou’-wester at my face.
“Who’d be a sailor?” yawned the long midshipman named Poole. “This is a part of the life that they know nothing about ashore.”
“Oh, what would I give for my feather bed at home!” groaned another youngster, drowsily thrusting his arms into a damp jacket.
“Lively now, or I’ll feather bed ye!” shouted Mr. Cock from his corner bunk. “A sailor who talks of a feather bed should be tarred first before the down’s applied. My precious limbs! Was it out of such whinings as this that Trafalgar’s victory was manufactured?”
But there was no magic in the thoughts of Nelson to inspirit one at such a moment as this. For mypart, my sympathies were wholly with the lad who yearned for a feather bed, and though I had promised my father not to swap my clothes, I would have gladly given half my outfit for the privilege of turning in again. Oh the misery of the cold and wet of the deck, going to it as I did with lids of lead, and trembling in oilskins, from the comfort and warmth of the blankets! I shall give up the sea, I thought as I climbed the poop ladder with chattering teeth: I have already had enough of it. I would go on shore at once if I could. What is there in brass buttons to render this sort of thing tolerable?
There were no signs of daybreak till about six o’clock, and then down away in the east there stole out upon the gloom a faint, most melancholy grey light, against which the ridge horizon washed in a tumbling line of ink. How am I to express the cheerless aspect of the ship in the illumination of this dull and dismal dawn? Her reefed canvas was dark with wet, her slack gear was blown into semi-circles by the gale, her scuppers sobbed with wet, and the water floated from side to side of her deck with her rolling. But all the same, the planks had to be washed down, the hencoops cleansed, and the poop made tidy; so as soon as light enough came to see by, the pump was rigged, buckets got along, and there we were scrubbing for our lives, with smoke from the newly-kindled galley firebreaking from the chimney, the boatswain on the main-deck pointing his hose, and bawling to the sailors to scrub with a will, the wide-awake pigs under the long-boat grunting for their breakfast, the cow lowing gloomily at catching sight of the butcher’s mate, and the ship all the while rushing before the strong gale, with the chasing seas breaking in foam to the height of the main-brace bumpkins, and a grim and yellow salt in a tight sou’-wester swinging off upon the wheel, and mumbling upon a quid that stood high in his cheek, as though he were muttering sea-blessings to himself on the ocean life in general, and on theLady Violetin particular.
Well, when the gale broke we had fine weather, and nothing noticeable happened for some days. The passengers got the better of their sea-sickness, and came on deck, and the ship looked hospitable and homely, with ladies reading or knitting, or walking the decks aft, and with the poor women of the steerage forward sitting in the sun, with coloured handkerchiefs tied round their heads, their children romping about their feet, and the men belonging to their company lounging against the bulwarks, pipes between their teeth, their hats slouched, and their arms folded.
We were sliding towards the warm parallels, and Mr. Cock told me to keep a bright look-out for flying fish, as we should be seeing them spark outof the blue water alongside before long, “like silver paper-cutters, Master Rockafellar,” said he, “on the gauze wings of the dragon-fly.” By this time I was able to crawl aloft without a beating heart and trembling body. I could shin over the mizzen-top as lightly and easily as the rest of them, and had been once on to the mizzen-royal-yard, the highest yard on the mizzen-mast, to watch Kennet roll the sail up, that I might know how to furl it for myself another time.
In fact, I had now climbed the rigging often enough to enjoy being aloft. I would think as I poised myself upon a foot-rope, and overhung the yard it belonged to, that nothing nearer to the sensation of flying could be imagined. I swung between heaven and sea. The soft cream-coloured clouds looked to be rolling close over my head. Far away down was the narrow white deck of the ship, with sail upon sail swelling in curves of snow-white softness betwixt where I was perched, and the ivory-like planks deep down below. The blue ocean swept away into boundless distance, and the world of waters looked as huge as though the sight of them was a dream.
At last came a day that was to be marked by an incident of terror. The captain and mates had taken the sun at noon; the sailors had eaten their dinner, and the port-watch, the one that I belonged to, was on deck, to remain there till four. Two ofthe midshipmen were on the cross-jack-yard at work on some job there, the third was below, and I, the fourth of them, hung about the break of the poop in readiness to run on an errand, and to jump to any order given me.
It was a fine warm day, the wind right aft, and the ship was buzzing along with studding sails out on both sides. The tiffin bell had just sounded; there was nobody on the poop but the chief mate, myself, and the man at the wheel. Through the skylight I could see the passengers assembling at the luncheon table. Presently noticing that Mr. Johnson, the chief officer, was staring with unusual steadfastness at the horizon over the stern, I sent a look in that direction, and observed that there was a large black cloud sailing up the sky, exactly on a line with the course we were making. I never had before, and have never since, seen a body of vapour with so ugly a look. Its hinder part was tufted into the true aspect of thunder; its brow was a pale sulphur colour, which darkened into a swollen curve of livid belly; its wild extraordinary shape too made you think of it as of some leviathan flying beast, a mighty dragon, such as one reads about, or some huge and horrible creation descending from another world. The black shadow it threw upon the sea contrasted oddly with the flashing blue that was streaming merrily with us along the path of the wind.
However, it is a saying with Jack that you need never fear a squall that you can see through. The blue sky showed clear and bright past the tail of the cloud on the sea-line, as the mass of black vapour soared. The mate turned to pace the deck, just sending a careless glance over the stern now and again. It was easy to guess that he saw nothing to trouble him there; no order was given, and the ship continued to sail pleasantly on the wings of her far overhanging canvas before the warm and gushing wind.
Gradually the cloud overtook us, and then it overhung the vessel like an immense black canopy, plunging us and a great space of sea into gloom, and all around, beyond the confines of its murky dye, was shining summer weather. But the cloud, instead of blowing ahead, lingered over us as though its stooping bosom was arrested by our mast-heads, or the whole electric body of it attracted by our tall fabric. No rain fell, no squally gust of wind swept from it through the regular breathing of the breeze astern. The mate crossed over to where I was standing, and looked over the rail into the main-chains.
“Ha!” he cried, “jump down there, Master Rockafellar,” pointing to the platform called the channel, which in those days served to spread the rigging, “and cast that lightning conductor adrift.”