“I FELT MYSELF SWEPT BACKWARDS.”
“I FELT MYSELF SWEPT BACKWARDS.”
Now, this lightning conductor was of copperwire; the point of it rose above the main truck, and the length of it was led down the main-royal back-stay to the water’s edge. But the bottom end of it, instead of trailing in the water, was coiled up and “stopped,” as it is called, to one of the lanyards of the shrouds. In other words, it was tied to a part of the rigging by rope-yarns.
I stood a moment feeling for my knife, which I then remembered I had left in my bunk. The mate seeing that I was at a loss, and understanding by my gestures what my want was, cried to a young ordinary seaman, who was on the main-deck, to jump into the chains and cut the lightning conductor adrift, and drop the end overboard. He was a fine young fellow—an Irishman, I remember, named Barry. His sheath-knife was on his hip, and he whipped the blade from its leather case, as he bounded on to the topgallant-rail, and dropped over the side into the main chains.
He had got his hand on the coil of wire, and was in the act of passing his knife through the rope-yarns, when a great spurt of flame fell in a dazzling flash down the rigging. The whole ship seem to reel out of the shadow that was upon her in a blaze of crimson glory. In the same breath there was a single blast of thunder, one dead enormous shock, that seemed to bring the vessel to a stand, and thrill through every plank in her, as though she had grounded. I was standing close to the rail atthe moment; the flame rushed close past me; the air was scorching hot with it; but, for the beat of a pulse only, so far as I was concerned, for I felt myself swept backwards, as though lifted off my feet, and fell at full length upon my back. I immediately sprang to my legs, almost out of my mind with bewilderment and terror, but in no wise hurt. The mate, grasping the rail with one hand, was shading his eyes with the other. The captain, followed by all the passengers, came rushing up out of the cuddy, whilst such of the crew as were below tumbled headlong from the forecastle to see what had become of the ship.
“What is it? What is it?” shouted the skipper, as he ran towards us.
The mate turned his face, but continued to keep his eyes covered. “God forgive me!” he exclaimed; “I believe I am struck blind.”
In a moment the captain saw how it was, and the ship’s doctor, without a word, passed his arm through the mate’s, and led the poor fellow below.
“How did this happen, Master Rockafellar?” exclaimed the captain.
I quickly told him that the mate had gone to the side to see if the lightning conductor was all right, and had called to one of the ordinary seamen to jump into the chains to clear it.
He stepped to the rail to look over and allthe passengers went with him, shouldering one another to obtain a view. The sailor stood upright, with one hand yet upon the coil of wire. His right hand, from which the knife had fallen, was outstretched, but as we looked we could see it slowly, very slowly, sinking to his side, as the handle of a pump will fall from a horizontal position. I could not see his face; it was turned seawards.
“THE KNIFE HAD FALLEN.”
“THE KNIFE HAD FALLEN.”
“Are you all right down there, my lad?” sang out the captain.
The young fellow neither answered nor moved.
“He has been stunned!” exclaimed one of the passengers.
“Oh, but wouldn’t he have fallen overboard if that were so?” cried another.
The captain shouted to some seamen, who were overhanging the bulwarks in the waist:
“Aft here, a couple of you, and help Barry inboard.”
It was at that moment the ship slightly rolled to port, and the figure of Barry plunged into the sea, falling limberly in the most lifelike manner. He struck the water, and lay afloat, and then, as he went astern, I caught a glimpse of his face. It was the colour of chocolate, most horrible to view, with nothing of his eyes showing but the whites, and his lips distended in a dreadful grin, exhibiting his teeth and gums as though his mouth had been torn away. One of the ladies fainted. A shriek arose from many of them. The third mate sprang aft, and I saw him standing erect on the taffrail poising a lifebuoy; but even whilst he flourished the thing the body sank.
Never for an instant was it doubted by any of us that he had been struck dead, and that he was a corpse when he fell from the chains. It was a fate I myself had escaped by the very skin of my teeth only! But for my having left myknife below, I should at once have dropped over the side on being ordered to do so by the mate, and there have been killed by the flash that had slain the unhappy young sailor man! Yet nothing was made of my escape. The captain merely said, “Lucky for you, Master Rockafellar, that you weren’t in Barry’s place;” whilst the midshipmen hardly referred to the matter, except to say that the mate had no right to put a man to the job of handling a lightning conductor with an electric storm hanging over the mast-heads.
There is no sentiment at sea, and if you come off with your life no matter how narrowly, that is enough foryou. You are not expected to speak of the close shave, unless with a grin of indifference. Let your shipmates believe that you view it seriously, and they will set you down for a swab, a lady sailor, a longshoreman. This arises from an overstrained sense of manliness; yet it is true, nevertheless, that no genuine seaman will ever care to make anything of an accident, though no more than an inch of space or a single moment of time stand between him and a horrible end. However, that night, when I was in my bunk, and my messmates asleep, I got upon my knees in my bed, and, with tears and sobs, thanked my Heavenly Father for His preservation of me. I was very heavy when I first laid me down, but I kept myselfawake that I might lift up my young heart in gratitude, and pray for a continuance of God’s mercy; and when I put my head again on the bolster, there was just such a sense of peace and happiness in me as would have come had my mother stood by my bedside and kissed me.
For four days the mate was off duty, and it was feared that he would lose his sight, but to the general satisfaction of all hands—for he was an excellent seaman, a kind-hearted man, and popular fore and aft—he made his appearance on deck on the morning of the fifth day with a shade over his eyes, and by the end of the week his old power of vision was perfectly restored to him.
We took the trade wind, and swept down the broad Atlantic Ocean, making run after run in the twenty-four hours that was almost equal to steam, as steam then went. I was now as nimble aloft as need be, knew all the ropes of the ship, had learnt to make most of the principal knots, could polish a length of brass-work with the best of them, and, in other ways, was winning recognition as being of some use aft, small as I was. Mr. Cock was very kind to me, he showed me how to use the sextant, and took much trouble in explaining points of navigation.
Once during a quiet middle watch—that is, from midnight until four in the morning—I was standing near the wheel, looking at the compass,and thinking how like a live thing it was, as sentient as though it were informed by a human spirit, marvellously and beautifully faithful as a finger pointing the way to the mariner over the trackless breast of the deep. I was standing, I say, with my little head full of fancies coming into it out of the luminous circle of card, when Mr. Johnson, coming up, asked me if I would like to steer.
“Ay, sir,” I answered, “I should, very much.”
“You’re but a little one for that big wheel,” said he, and I could see him smiling by the starlight, “but the helm don’t kick, and you’re here to learn. Give him hold of the spokes, Hunt,” said he, addressing the man, “and show him what to do;” and so saying, he fell to patrolling the deck afresh, softly whistling, as if for more wind.
The breeze was abeam, a pleasant air that held the sails motionless, and we were quietly going along at about four and a half knots. I grasped the wheel, and the man stood behind me.
“I GRASPED THE WHEEL.”
“I GRASPED THE WHEEL.”
“Now, young gen’man,” said he, “you see that there mark? We calls that thelubber’s point. It’s on a line with the ship’s head, and when you know your course, you’ve got to keep the p’int of it dead on end with that there mark, if so be as she don’t break off, or if so be asthere ain’t no sea on. But if her head swings, then you’ve got to hit what’s called the mean of the oscillations of the card. Can you tell how her head is now?”
“Sou’, sou’-west,” I answered.
“You look again,” said he.
“South by west, three-quarters west,” said I after a prolonged squint at the compass.
“Right!” said he; “now you keep her tothat.”
She needed no steering, however. At long intervals a very small movement of the helm sufficed; but my enjoyment was very great. I was not yet fourteen, but had I been forty I could not have felt more fully a man. I cannot express how great was the sense of importance which possessed me when I considered that the big ship, with her costly freight and the many souls who were sleeping under my feet, was being directed by my young hands through the great enveloping shadow of the night. At first I could scarcely realize my power, and asked permission of the somewhat hoarse salt who leaned upon the grating behind me to move the wheel, that I might make sure that the ship would respond to the helm inmyhands.
“Well,” he answered, “I dunno that half a p’int off ’ll sinnify for a minute. Try her if you like, my lad.”
So I put my small weight upon the spokes, and brought the wheel over, till the sailor in muffled accents (that the mate might not hear) cried “So!” Great was my delight on observing the card to swing.
“There, young gen’men,” exclaimed my companion, “she’s a willing old mare, ye see. Now bring her to her course again.”
I thrust the spokes over the other way, intently staring at the card.
“Stead-dee!” came a hoarse whisper from behind me: “meet her, my lad, or she’ll be a p’int too high afore you know where you are.”
But he had to show me what he meant by slightly reversing the helm, as the ship came back to her course. I was highly delighted, and should have been glad to steer for the remainder of the night. However, the mate broke into my enjoyment by ordering me to trim the binnacle lamp; but always afterwards I was on the look-out for an opportunity to take the wheel, my experiences creeping cautiously from light airs into smart breezes, until it came to my being as well qualified as any man on board, having regard to my strength, of course, to stand a “trick.”
This reference to my first standing at the wheel of theLady Violetrecalls to my mind another incident of the middle watch a week ortwo later on. We were nearing the equator, and had already penetrated that glassy belt of baffling airs and sneaking cats-paws extending a degree or two on either hand the Line, and universally spoken of by sailors as the “Doldrums.” I turned out at midnight and went on deck. The sky was very full of large rich trembling stars, yet they seemed to diffuse no light, saving one planet in the south under which there lay in the black breast of the deep a little icy gleam of wake, or reflection; otherwise the ocean stretched as black as thunder to its horizon. There was a gentle wind blowing off the quarter, just enough to give us steerage way, with a long light swell from the westwards, upon which the ship rolled as regularly as the tick of a clock, her topsail sometimes coming in to the mast with a clap that made one think a gun had been fired up aloft.
It was a very hot night; now and again there was a delicate winking of violet lightning in the far north-east. It was about twenty minutes after midnight, and I was walking up and down the poop to leeward with Kennet, hearing him tell of a donkey race that he once rode in, when he suddenly came to a stand holding his breath as it were, and then exclaimed in a mysterious voice, “I thay, Rockafellar, what’th that?”
“What do you mean?” I asked; “anything to see or listen to?”
“To liththen to,” he said.
I strained my ear.
“There!” he cried.
“A bell,” I explained. “There must be a ship near us. The sound is off abeam here,” and we stepped to the lee rail on the port side of the vessel.
The chimes of a bell tolling very slowly, as though for a funeral, could be heard with curious distinctness, so delicate a vehicle for the transmission of sound is smooth water.
“Therth a bell ringing out to port here, thir,” called out Kennet to the mate.
Mr. Johnson crossed over to our side, and listened.
“Yes, a bell sure enough,” said he presently, after peering earnestly into the gloom in the direction of the noise, “but I see nothing of a shadow to resemble a ship. Do you, young gentlemen? Your eyes should be keener than mine.”
We stared our hardest, and answered, “Nothing, sir.”
“Fetch my binocular glass, Rockafellar.”
He searched the sea narrowly through it, but there was no distinguishable smudge of any sort.
Black as the ocean was, there were stars hanging low over the horizon, and had there been a ship within five miles of us, the eclipseof those stars by her sails would have revealed her. But the tolling assured us that the bell could not be half-a-mile distant. It swung in long floating chimes across the water, and I cannot express the quality of mystery and awe which the strange noise put into the darkness of the night. It made one think of a church ashore, and a graveyard with its mouldering stones glimmering to the starlight.
“Fo’k’sle there!” shouted Mr. Johnson, “do you hear the sound of a bell off the sea?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” came a growling answer out of the deep gloom of the fore part of the ship.
“Can you make out anything like a sail?”
There was a pause, and then came the reply, “No, sir; there’s nothing in sight.”
“This beats all my going a-fishing,” said the mate, going to the rail to listen again.
The watch on deck uncoiled themselves from the secret nooks in which they had been dozing, and went to the bulwarks, which they overhung listening, and then broke into exclamations as the ghostly tolling met their ears. Some of the fellows who were off duty, disturbed by the noise on deck, came out of the forecastle; then the captain arrived through the companion-hatch, and was presently followed by some passengers, so that it seemed as if the bell had woke the whole ship up; for here were we with a tolerablycrowded deck, and the hour one o’clock in the morning.
The growing clearness of the chimes showed that we were approaching the bell. The helm was shifted, so as to head the vessel in the direction of the sound, but very shortly after this had been done the wind failed, and a clock-calm fell; the long light swell rolled in folds of polished ebony, and we lay without an inch of way upon us.
The chiming of the bell, that did not now seem two cables’ length away from us ahead, broke with startling clearness through the dull flapping of the canvas as theLady Violetswayed. Yet there was nothing to be seen. Maybe there were now some eighty pairs of eyes staring from poop, main-deck, and forecastle, but there was nothing between us and the stars of the horizon. What could it be? I remember that my own little heart beat fast when Kennet, in a voice of awe, said that he reckoned it was some spirit of the sea ringing the ship’s funeral bell, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if by this time to-morrow night we were all dead men. You could hear a murmur of superstitious whispers and talk rolling along the line of sailors and steerage passengers at the rail. The captain poop-poohed, and I heard him say—
“Pshaw, gentlemen, there are noFlying Dutchmenin this age. It is a bell, I grant, and wherethe noise comes from I don’t know, but there is nothing in a little conundrum of this kind to alarm us.”
But all the same, even to my youthful ears, the secret superstitious dismay and wonder which were upon him sounded so clear in his voice that one did not want to see his face to know how he felt. All night long the bell continued to toll just off the bow, and not a sigh of wind was to be felt, so dead was the calm that had come down. Never a man or a boy of us all turned in. I went on to the forecastle with others, and followed Kennet on to the flying jibboom, at the extremity of which long spar we were nearer to the object that produced the noise than any person who remained inboard was, but there was nothing to be seen, though I stared into the quarter whence the chimes were issuing in a regular tolling, rhythmic as the heave of the swell, until my eyes reeled in my head.
The puzzle was not to be solved till daybreak, and then, when the swift tropic dawn had brightened out the sea from line to line, a cry half of laughter, half of indignation, seemed to break from all hands, as though they could now scorn themselves for the emotions of the night. In fact, within a quarter of a mile ahead of us there rose and fell upon the swell, that was still polished as quicksilver, a small wooden frame of an ellipticalform, supported on a somewhat broad platform, portions of the planking of which were split, as though it had at one time formed a solid body which had been wrenched and mutilated by a blow of the sea. Under the frame, amidships of it, dangled a large ship’s bell, the tongue of which, vibrating regularly as the heave of the sea swayed the whole fabric, struck the metal sides, and produced the dismal and melancholy tolling which had kept us awake and filled us with consternation throughout the night! Little wonder that the keenest eyes amongst us should not have perceived it; even by daylight, and at a short distance from us, it showed but as a very little object—so small indeed, that had it passed us within a biscuit-toss in the darkness, it must have slipped by unperceived.
It was no doubt a part of a wreck, and had probably belonged to some foreign ship. We could afford to laugh at our fears now, and certainly we deserved the relief of a little merriment, for our superstitious alarm throughout the long hours of the darkness had been very considerable.
“UNDER THE FRAME ... DANGLED A LARGE SHIP’S BELL.”
“UNDER THE FRAME ... DANGLED A LARGE SHIP’S BELL.”
We crossed the equator a little before noon on a Tuesday. Though I had learnt at school all about the imaginary line that girdles the earth, yet I was stupid enough to believe what Kennet and the others told me: namely, that if I ascended to the foretop with a telescope, and pointed it steadily over the starboard cat-head, I should obtain a good view of the equator. No more was necessary than to ascertain at what hour the ship was likely to cross the line, so as to save the anxiety of looking for the circle when it might still be some distance below the edge of the sea. On the morning of this Tuesday Kennet arrived on the poop with a telescope in his hand, and said—
“Poole and I are going into the foretop to view the equator. It should be in sight now from that height, for I heard the chief mate tell Mrs. Moore that if this air held we should be crossingit about half-past eleven. Will you come along with us, Rockafellar?”
“Yes,” said I; “I should like to see the equator. It will be something to talk about when I get home.”
We went forward and got into the fore-shrouds on the lee-side, that our going aloft might not be noticed from the poop. When we were in the top, Poole steadied the glass against the topmast rigging, and instantly cried out “Beautiful!”
“Is it in sight?” I exclaimed eagerly.
“Oh, lovely! oh, divine!” he said in a voice of rapture, with his eye glued to the glass. “Kennet, my dear, come and take a look.”
He held the glass, and Kennet peered.
“Ha!” shouted the long-nosed youth, drinking in a deep breath: “a noble picture, by George! I wonder if the captain would let ’uth go athore upon it? Wouldn’t a ride on a camel be jolly along that ththrait road.”
They were as grave as a pair of judges, saving the rapture which they endeavoured to express with their countenances.
“I say, Poole, let’s have a look!” said I, thirsting with curiosity.
“Make way for him, Kennet,” cried Poole.
I put my eye to the telescope, which the midshipman continued to hold steady against therigging, and sure enough, just a little way over the horizon, was the equator, a thin, very well-defined line, showing against the light azure of the sky like a delicate ruling in ink.
“Thee it?” cried Kennet.
“Yes,” said I, eagerly staring; “but it’s up in the air, Poole.”
“Refraction, man, refraction,” he answered; “it always shows like that.”
I sent a glance with my naked eye, and then peered again through the telescope.
“When shall we be able to see it without a glass?” I asked.
“I PUT MY EYE TO THE TELESCOPE.”
“I PUT MY EYE TO THE TELESCOPE.”
“That’ll depend upon the thtate of the weather,” answered Kennet.
“But do we sailunderit?”
“Oh, hang it, Rockafellar!” cried Poole, “you’renot at school now, little boy! Who’s to answer such questions? Let’s down on deck, or the mate’ll be singing out.”
As I descended the shrouds I saw some sailors at work in the waist, grinning very hard.
“Seen it, sir?” bawled one of them.
“Yes,” said I.
“No chance, I hope,” he sung out, “of its fouling our mast-heads, is there, sir? Otherwise it’ll sweep every spar overboard.”
“No, it looks to be too high up in the air to hurt us,” I answered, and trudged aft, followed by a half-smothered chorus of laughter.
The mate stood at the head of the poop ladder.
“Where have you been, sir?” he exclaimed.
“Up in the foretop, sir,” I answered.
“And what job carried you there, young gentleman?”
“I have been viewing the equator, sir,” I responded.
“Who showed it to you?” said he, with a twinkling eye.
“Mr. Kennet and Mr. Poole, sir,” said I.
He beckoned, with a solemn motion of his forefinger, to Kennet, who approached.
“Have you the equator handy about you, young gentleman,” he inquired.
Kennet coloured up, and said he had left it in his telescope.
“Bring it here, sir,” said the mate, “and let Mr. Poole attend, that we may have the benefit of his learning.”
The midshipman disappeared, and shortly after returned, with the glass under his arm and Poole at his heels.
“Now then, young gentlemen,” said the mate, “be good enough to show Master Rockafellar the equator from the poop point of view.”
Poole looked very sheepish; Kennet hung his long nose over one of the middle lenses, which he unscrewed.
“Now, let’s have a good geographical explanation, if you please, Mr. Poole,” said the mate.
“There’s the line, Rockafellar,” said Poole, taking the lens, and pointing to a hair stretched across it, secured by a drop of gum at either extremity.
It was now my turn to colour up. I had been handsomely gulled, and the worst of it was the sailors forward knew it.
“Never mind, Master Rockafellar,” said the mate kindly; “older birds than you have been caught by that kind of chaff. You can take the equator below, Mr. Kennet,” and, smothering a laugh between his teeth, he walked aft.
I was afterwards told that this was a very ancient trick; but, old as it was, a joke at my expense was made out of it, fore and aft; sincefor many days it never came to my passing two or more of the sailors but that one would sing out—
“Bill, seen the line?”
“No, Jack; where is it?”
“In Rockafellar’s eye, bully!”
However, to my great satisfaction, in due course this piece of humour grew stale, and was dropped.
I had read, when at home, a good deal about the customs practised by sailors on crossing the equator, and was not a little disappointed to find that the crew went on with their work as unconcernedly as though the Line were a thousand miles distant. I had been haunted by visions of a fine theatrical show, and had secretly longed for the hour that was to exhibit Neptune with a crown on his head, and a beard of oakum on his chin, attended by his wife, his physician, and the several courtiers who made up his train of state. I had followed, with boyish eagerness, the accounts of the ceremony in the works of Marryat and in other novels, and was much dejected on being told by Mr. Cock that this sort of skylarking was out of date.
“And well for you, young gentleman, maybe,” said he, “that it is so; for you’re a green hand, do you see, and it was always upon the like of you that the forecastle tomfoolery was poured outthickest. How would you relish, think you, being lathered with a mixture of tar and slush and filth; next, having your cheeks scraped with jagged bits of iron cask-hoops till they bled; then plunged backwards into water enough to drown you, and left to scramble out like a half-dead rat, amidst roars of laughter from the unfeeling Jack? No, no; I’m as fond as any man of honest skylarking, but there was always too much of Old Nick in the temper of the shaving and ducking custom to please my humour: and it’s a very good job, I think, that the mouldy bit of barbarity was long ago flung overboard.”
The ship was often brought to a stand by calms during our passage of the equator, and these intervals were very monotonous and hard to bear.
The midshipmen’s berth was so insufferably hot that during my watch below I was unable to remain in it, and would come on deck and hang about under the break of the poop where the side-wings of the saloon, or cuddy, made a recess, and where one was kept cool by the fanning of light draughts of air sent circling betwixt the rails by the swaying of the folds of the hauled-up main-course.
It was at this time that an old gentleman named Catesby—a passenger—who had lived in Australia for many years, related to some of us lads an extraordinaryexperience that had befallen him during a voyage he made to India when a young man. The old East-Indiaman was then afloat; pirates were also abundant; there was no steam then to be met with at sea, and the excitement and romance of the ocean were at their height. The old gentleman had known a relative of mine, and took a fancy to me, and would frequently bring a handful of almonds and raisins or some sweet biscuits from his pockets—purloinings from the dessert on the cuddy table—and slip the delicacies into my hand with a merry manner of cautiously looking around him as though he was afraid of the captain seeing him. I remember that he delightfully killed several long hot hours one day by telling two or three of us lads the story of his early adventure. I see him now with a cigar drooping between his lips as he went on reciting, and recall the stare of admiration and expectation we fixed upon his face as he proceeded.
The name which he said he always gave to his story when he told it to his friends was: