“In main royal and mizzen topgallant sail.â€
“In main royal and mizzen topgallant sail.â€
“In main royal and mizzen topgallant sail.â€
The canvas rattles like an old waggon over a stony street as the clewlines are manned, and whilst furling it the foretopgallant halliards are let go. What other sails are taken in you do not know, for the ship wants much clever watching, and the skipper is at hand to bring you up with a round turn if the vessel should be a quarter of a point off her course. Being eased, she steers more comfortably, but whole topsails and courses and main-topgallant sail are rushing her through it fiercely; the water on her lee quarter is pretty nearly as high as her main brace bumpkin, and the billow there goes along with her as if it were a part of the vessel; the main tack groans under the tearing and rending pull of the huge convex surface of canvas; now and again the blow of the swell which the racing vessel hits laterally makes her tremble fore and aft like a house under a clap of thunder. But she is to have all she can bear; the spell of dead calm is to be atoned for;and so on through the shrilling and echoing darkness rushes the great fabric, sweeping her pallid canvas through the folds of gloom like the pinions of some vast spirit of the deep, making the water roar past her as she goes, breaking the dark swell into fire and foam as she rushes through the liquid acclivities with her powerful stem, with notes of mad laughter and lamentable wailing in her rigging, and with streaming decks which hollowly echo the fall of the solid bodies of water which shoot up just before the weather fore-rigging, and roll in a rush of creaming white into the lee scuppers as far aft as the break of the poop.
At last you hear the welcome sound of four bells; your trick is up, the wheel is relieved, and catching your jacket off the grating abaft the helm you walk forward, wiping the perspiration from your forehead; and, dropping down the fore scuttle, grope about for your pipe, which you light at the slush lamp that swings from a grimy beam, and returning on deck squat somewhere out of the way of the wind and wet, earnestly hoping that if it is to be a case of “reef topsails†there will be time for you to have your smoke out before the order is thundered forth.
Sometime ago I heard that a bailiff had been carried off to sea whilst in the execution of his duty. Anxious to learn the nature of his voyage, how he fared, and what condition he was in, mentally and physically, when restored to his anxious relatives, I made inquiries, and my diligence was at last rewarded by meeting the mate of the vessel that had sailed away with the man. Truth obliges me to own that this mate was not what might be considered a very gentlemanly person. It was not his velvet waistcoat, nor a rather vicious squint, nor a striking-looking bald head ringed with a layer of red hair like a grummet of rope yarns; the want of genteelness was noticeable in his abundant use of what is called “langwidge.†“If I were a bailiff,†thought I, as I glanced at his immense hands and huge arms which swelled out his coat-sleeves like the wind in a sailor’s smallcloths drying in a strong breeze on the forestay, “I should not like to be put ‘in possession’ of a house occupied byyou, my hearty.â€
I took a seat opposite him and said, “So you’re the mate of the vessel that stole away the county court man?â€
“Right,†said he looking at me, without a move in his face; “but don’t you go and say that I’m the mateas gave him up again. If I’d had my way he’d be in charge o’ any goods he might have come across in the inside of a whale by this time. I’d ha’ chucked him overboard, as sure as that there hand’s on this table,†and down came a very leg-of-mutton of a fist with a blow that jerked his tumbler into the air. It was as good as a hint that the glass wanted filling; and when this was done, my companion opened the top buttons of his warm and tight velvet waistcoat, and composed himself into a posture for conversation.
“How,†asked I, “came your skipper to have a bailiff aboard his vessel?â€
“You may ask how,†he growled; “what I say is, what right had he to come? I’ve got nothing to say against the law as it works for them as lives ashore—for them as are in fixed houses, and can’t sail away with any blooming old rag of a chap, in a greasy coat, as come in with a bit of paper, and takes a cheer, and says, ‘Here I sit, mates, till I’m paid off.’ But what has the likes of such scowbanks got to do with sailor men when once they’re aboard? What I say is, that when a man’s on the water, his chest stowed away, articles signed, all the law that consarns him is in the cabin. The capt’n’s the law; and not only the law, but judge, magistrate, bailiff, husher, registrar, high chancellor, and Lord Mayor o’ London on top of it; and my argument is that any man as takes the liberty to walk over a wessel’s side and order the captain about, and sing out contrairy orders, and threaten to have him purged (I heard that very word. ‘Ye’ll have to purge for this,’ says the bailiff. Did ye ever hear such language applied to a captain?)—any man, I say, as takes such a liberty as that ought to be dropped overboard without asking ‘by your leave,’ and, as I said before, left to take possession of any goods hecome across in the inside of a fish or at the bottom of the ocean.â€
I waited until he had partially quenched his excitement by a long pull at his tumbler, and then asked him again how it happened that his vessel had been boarded by a bailiff.
“I’ll tell you,†he answered. “The wessel was a brig of 300 tons. Coming home she plumped into a schooner. It was the schooner’s fault; we sung out to her to get out of the road; instead of doing which she ported her helm as if to provoke us, and in we went, doing her a deal of damage and carrying away our own jibboom. Well, we arrived in port and discharged, and then filled up again with coal. It was Toosday afternoon, the sky middling dirty, and a fresh breeze of wind blowing. We hauled out and lay at a mooring buoy, waiting for the tide to serve. I was talking to the captain when I took notice of a boat coming along, rowed by a couple o’ watermen, and a chap in a chimbley-pot hat sitting in the starn sheets.
“‘Is that boat for us?’ says the captain, looking.
“‘Why,’ I says, ‘it looks as if she meant to run us down. Is it a wager? Bust me if hever I saw watermen pull like that afore!’
“They were dragging on their oars as if they would spring ’em, lying back until nothing but their noses was to be seen above the gunwale, and making the water fly in clouds over the cove in the starn as if prompt drowning was too good for him, and he was to be smothered slow. They dashed alongside, hooked on, and the fellow in the chimbley-pot hat comes scraping over the rail, shaking himself free o’ the water as he tumbled on to the deck like a Newfoundland dog.
“‘Just in time, captain,’ says he, with an impudentkind o’ smile, rummaging in his side-pocket; and with that he houts with a sort of dockiment, and hands it to the skipper.
“‘What’s this?’ says the skipper, smelling round the paper as it might be, but never offering to touch it.
“‘Only a horder for you to return to the bosom of your family,’ he says, ‘as the date o’ your sailing’s not yet fixed.’
“‘Isn’t it?’ says the captain, breathing short. ‘Who are you, and what d’ye want?’
“‘I’m a bailiff,’ says the man; ‘and I’m here to take charge o’ this wessel, pending the haction that’s been entered against her in the Hadmiralty side o’ the County Court by the schooner as ye was in collision with.’
“‘Can ye swim?’ asks the captain.
“‘Never you mind whether I can or not,’ says the bailiff, looking round at us, for all hands was collected and listening their hardest.
“‘Because,’ says the captain, ‘if you can’t swim you’d better turn to and hail that boat to come back again and put ye ashore.’
“‘No, no,’ says the bailiff, ‘I’m not going ashore, my friend. I’m here to take charge o’ this brig and stop her from going to sea.’
“Had the captain chosen then and there to give orders for that bailiff to be dropped overboard, I believe I’m the man as would have executed the command. Taking the temper I was then in, I don’t know anything that would ha’ given me more satisfaction to perform. The aggravation of being stopped when we were all ready to get away was the least part of it: it was the bailiff’s cool grins, the impudence in his eyes as he looked round, as much as to say, ‘All what I see is mine,’ his taking the skipper’s place and saying ye shan’t do this, and I won’t allow that, that made me want to lay hands upon him. The captain stared at him a bit, as if considering what he should do; then turning to me, he asked me the time. I told him.
“‘In another quarter of an hour,’ says he, ‘loose the torpsails and make ready to get away.’
“‘You’d better not,’ says the bailiff; ‘it’ll be gross contempt of court if you do.’
“‘Court!’ says the skipper, ‘Court! there is no court here, Mr. Bailiff. This is a brig, not a court. Don’t talk of courts to me. The gross contempt is of your committing. How dare you stand there ordering of me?’
“‘Rest assured,’ says the bailiff, ‘you’ll be punished if you don’t do what I say. You’ll have to purge in open court, and that’s a job that may cost ye enough to lay you up in the union for the rest of your natural days.’
“‘Stow that,’ says I, doubling up my fist and stepping close to the fellow; ‘if the captain stands that kind o’ jaw,Iwon’t.’
“‘I’m here in the hexecution of my duty,’ says the bailiff, dropping his confident grins, and beginning to grow whitish. ‘Whatever you do contrairy to my orders you’ll do at your peril.’
“And so saying he walks right aft, and sits on the taffrail with his arms folded.
“Never was any quarter of an hour longer than that which the captain told me to wait. I had my watch in my hand, and all the time I was afraid the skipper would change his mind and give in to the bailiff, who sat aft with his hat over his ears, looking at the shore with his little eyes.
“‘Time’s up, sir!’ I bawled to the captain.
“‘Loose the torpsails,’ he sings out, and in a momentall hands were running about, sheeting home, and yelling out at the ropes, being as much afeard as I was that if we were not quick the sight of the dogged bailiff ’ud operate upon the skipper’s hintellect and stop our just rewenge upon that funkshonary’s audacity. The bailiff seeing the men at work, tumbles off the taffrail and comes running forrards.
“‘D’ye mean to say you don’t intend to obey the law?’ he shouts out, holding on to his chimbley-pot.
“‘Out of the ways!’ answers the skipper, ‘there’s no room for law here. We’re full up, mate; and since ye’re bound for a voyage, blow your nose and wave your hand to them as ye’re a parting from!’ and, as he says this, the wessel, catching the wind that was coming strong enough to make nothing above our topsails necessary, lays down to it, and we heads for the open water.
“I saw the bailiff staring wildly around him, as if he reallywouldjump overboard, and it was worth a month’s pay to see him looking like that, and holding his hat on.
“‘Why, man,’ he shouts to the captain, ‘you’re never in earnest: d’ye know what you’re a doing of?’ and, finding that the skipper took no notice, he calls out to the men, ‘You’ll work this vessel at your peril if you obey your captain. My orders are to stop this brig, and if you don’t allow me to execute my duty——’ But just as he came to this the wessel met the first of the seas which were rolling outside the harbour—stiff seas they wos, for it was blowing half a gale o’ wind; she put her nose into it, and then rolled over, fit to bring her lower yardarms into the water; away flew the bailiff’s chimbley-pot hat clean overboard, and ye may boil me alive if I didn’t think he meant to follow it; for the send o’ the wessel tripped him over the weather hatch coamings, and he seemed to shoot—ay, as neatly as if he’d been kicked byone of them giants I used to read about when I was a little ’un—clean into the lee scuppers, where he lay stunned as I thought, until all on a sudden he jumped up and went clawing along till he come to the lee o’ the after deck house, where he squatted down, looking with his yaller face and blowing hair like a Madagascar monkey recovering from a fit of intoxication.â€
Here my companion broke into a loud laugh, which he repeated again and again, as if the thoughts awakened in his mind were of too exquisite a kind to be dismissed with a single guffaw.
“I don’t know,†he continued, after a bit, wiping his eyes, and then fixing his dismal and malignant squint upon me, “whether on the whole we should ha’ done better by dropping him overboard. The brig was as deep as pretty nigh twice her tonnage in coal could make her; she was a wet boat at any time; but now she tumbled about as if she had made up her mind to drown herself. I reckon she knew she had a bailiff aboard. Every dip forrards threw the water over her head in oceans; she’d roll to wind’ard almost as heavily as to leeward, so that the decks was all awash, and I was looking and hoping all the time to see the bailiff fetch away. But there was enough law left in him to keep him holding on. I was standing to wind’ard of the house—the skipper being aft agin the wheel—when Mr. Bailiff comes staggering round, his breeches clinging to his legs like wet brown paper, and his shoes full o’ water.
“‘Hallo, shipmate!’ I sings out, seeing him making for the cabin door, ‘where are you bound to? Aren’t you happy where you are?’
“‘I’m going to lie down on one of the lockers,’ says he. ‘I feel half froze, and I shall be sick presently.’
“‘You may be half froze and sick too,’ says I, ‘but smother me, Mr. Bailiff, if you shall use the cabin.’
“‘Not use the cabin?’ says he, gaping at me, and talking as if there was something in his swaller; ‘d’ye mean to keep me on deck all night?’
“‘Don’t ask no questions,’ says I. ‘You’re here by French leave. Nobody wants you. If I had my way you’d be towing astern, with your neck in a bowline; and if all the rest o’ your tribe and the blooming ’tornies you sarve were tailed on in your wake, I’d be willing to woyage round the world, and never grumble if we took years in reaching home.’
“I was in a passion, which rose my woice, and the skipper, hearing me, comes over.
“‘Hallo, bailiff!’ says he, cheerfully; ‘not drowned yet, my lad? What d’ye think o’ the weather?’
“‘Captain,’ says the man, ‘you’ve carried me away by force. D’ye mean to freeze me to death by keeping me on deck all night? Your mate here says I’m not to use the cabin.’
“‘Why should he use it, capt’n?’ says I. ‘Could a sailor man sit with the likes of him? I’ve messed afore now with Chaneymen; I’ve slept along with Peruvian beachcombers when the air’s been that thick with the smell of onions ye might have leant agin it; but ye may boil me, skipper,’ says I, ‘if ever I occupied a cabin along with a bailiff afore, and if he’s to share that crib along with us, I’ll sleep forrards.’
“‘You hear that, bailiff,’ says the skipper. ‘I can’t let my mate live forrards to oblige you. If you’re cold I dare say the cook ’ll let you warm yourself in the galley. But nobody wanted you here. You were not invited, consequently it’s not for you to grumble if you don’t find yourself perfectly comfortable and happy.’
“But as he says this, Nature fell to manhandling the bailiff as if she’d taken his own trade upon herself, and making one rush he lay over the lee rail so ill that I never saw the equal of it, even in a Frenchman; he twisted himself about just as if he’d been revolving on a corkscrew; the water blowing over the forward weather rail hit him neatly, and he was like a streaming rag in five minutes.
“We left him enjoying himself and went on with our work. It was falling dark, and not only blowing hard, but there was the look of a whole gale of wind in the south-west sky. The brig was making desperate bad weather of it under lower torpsails and reefed foresail, taking in the water fit to wash every movable thing overboard, and shoving through it very slowly with a surprising sag to leeward. The skipper went below for some supper, and after a bit he calls me in.
“‘Where’s the bailiff?’ says he.
“‘Don’t know exactly,’ I says. ‘To leeward somewheres. There’s a figure half over the rail just abaft the fore rigging, if that’s him.’
“‘I’ve been tarning it over in my mind,’ says the skipper, ‘and I’ve got a notion, William,’ says he, ‘that we’d ha’ done better not to bring that bailiff along with us.’
“‘But he wouldn’t go ashore when you told him,’ says I.
“‘Quite true,’ says the captain; ‘but that won’t make it better for us. After all, the law’s not a thing ye can take liberties with, and there’s something in his threat of making me purge in open court, William,’ says he, ‘which mightn’t matter if I knew what it meant; but, being ignorant, I’m willing to think it alarming.’
“‘Pooh,’ says I, ‘it’s only a lawyer’s word. There’s nothing in it. They use onintelligible words to scare plain men; but there can’t be anything more terrifying in language ye don’t understand than in language ye do.’
“‘I wish I had some book aboard that ’ud explain that word,’ says he. ‘The bailiff’ll know; but I’ll not ask him for fear he should think me afraid. But we can’t let him starve. Better send him here and let him get something to eat.’
“I was going to argue, but he wouldn’t listen.
“‘No, no,’ says he, ‘send him here;’ and I knew by that that the fear o’ the law was beginning to master him.
“Well, it was my duty to obey, so I went on deck, and after rummaging about I found the bailiff sitting up to his hips in water against the scuttle-butt abreast of the galley.
“‘Come along,’ says I, ‘supper’s in the cabin, and the captain wants you there.’
“He stood up, but was so cramped in his timbers that he could scarcely shuffle along, and I had to drag him by the collar. When the captain saw by the lamplight the plight the fellow was in, his heart failed him altogether. There was no more proper dignified scorn.
“‘Why,’ says he, looking at him, ‘I didn’t think it was such a bad job as that,’ and he jumped up and fetched him a suit of dry clothes, and then poured out a dose of brandy. This was regular knuckling under. He had gone on con-sidering and con-sidering until he was in an out-and-out funk. There was no use in my saying anything. The bailiff had growd on a sudden to become the strongest man aboard that brig, though as for me, when I tell you that had I been the captain I’d have sent the fellow aloft, and kept him there all night, as a hintto leave sailor men alone on future occasions, ye’ll allow thatmycaving in wur only because I wasn’t skipper, and that’s all. Well, sir, to cut this yarn short, luck turned in favour of that bailiff with a wengeance. At midnight it was blowing a hurricane, and the skipper said there was no good going on facing it, he must put back.
“‘There’s a handier port,’ says I, naming it, ‘than the one we’re from to make for.’
“‘Ay,’ says he, ‘but since we’re bound to up keeleg it’ll look better to carry the bailiff slick home than to give him a railway journey.’
“It would have made a hangel growl to hear the captain, all through fear, placing this bailiff afore the werry hurricane that was blowing, and thinking of him only whom he’d ha’ gladly drownded a few hours earlier, instead of the wessel and the lives aboard her. But reasoning was out of the question. The brig was just a smother of froth, the gale roaring like thunder, the seas as high as our maintop, and the old hooker shivering with every upward heave, as if she must leave all the lower part of her behind her. It was a job to get the vessel round, but we managed it, and at half-past five o’clock in the morning we fetched the harbour we had started from and brought up, nothing having carried away but the bailiff’s chimbley-pot.â€
“And what was the result of all this?†said I.
“Why,†said he, with a loud rumbling laugh, “the skipper had to find out what purging in hopen court means. He was brought up afore an old gentleman, who lectured him for about half an hour, said that the law was meant to be respected and that it would be a bad job for any man as sneered at it; and after having talked out all that lay in his mind, he up and fines the captainten pounds and fifty shillings costs. It served him right. He’d no business to bring that bailiff back. But he was hoperated on by the fear o’ words, and depend upon it the man who allows that sort of alarm to wisit him is not a fit person to carry a bailiff to sea.â€
Thepassage of the Horn has long ceased to be a thing to boast about. Time was when a man who had doubled that formidable iron headland reckoned he had performed a feat that entitled him to a good deal of respect. This is characteristically shown in “Two Years before the Mast,†the author of which dwells at great length upon the struggles of theAlertamong the ice in latitude 58 deg. South, as though he considered that part of the voyage to be something proper to hand on to posterity in a bulky form. Not so much notice is taken of the achievement nowadays. It still confers privileges; it qualifies a man to “spit to windward,†for instance, and no doubt it inspires many a youthful midshipman or apprentice with much big talk and nautical airs in the presence of lads who have yet to see with their own eyes what an Antarctic iceberg is like.
But the passage of the Horn is much too common an occurrence in these days to inflate anything but a boy. In Dana’s time a ship was a wonderful object down there; it seemed almost a deserted ocean; nothing was to be met but an old “spouter†jogging along with stump topgallant-masts, and her sides full of boats; or a cargo-ship, with a freight of “notions,†bound to the Peruvian or Mexican ports. Now, if it is not so full as the Atlantic,it is pretty nearly as busy; for since those days Australia has grown a mighty and populous continent; towns have sprung up as if by magic along the western seaboard of the Americas; even the little remote South Sea Islands have lent a hand in the thronging of the great Cape Horn highway; and the most desolate, sterile region in the world—such a harsh, forbidding, icebound piece of coast as no man who has passed within sight of it can ever forget—is skirted, week after week and year after year, by scores and scores of great steamers and sailing ships, bound west, and east, and north, if never south. The Panama Canal threatens the famous old route; and should that waterway ever be completed, the Horn will probably fall even more out of date than the Cape of Good Hope has. It is not to be expected, however, that even the most ancient mariners will be found to mourn over the desuetude. There are many uncomfortable spots to be encountered in a voyage round the world; but a turn off the Horn, in the months which we call summer here, probably beats anything in the shape of marine discomforts to be found on the ocean. Of course this is speaking of it as sailors find it—as it is experienced by the men who have to remain on deck, go aloft, stand at the wheel, and whose shelter is a forecastle with the scuttle closed, and not a dry stitch of clothes to be found by groping.
For it is off the Horn where the galley-fire gets washed out, and where, therefore, the streaming and hungry watch below have nothing to eat but what they may find in the bread-barge; where the tears freeze in a man’s eyes faster than the most pitying angel of a woman living could wipe them away; where one is glad to keep one’s sea-boots on for fear that one’s toes may go as well as the boots when they are hauled off; whereeverything is like sheet and bar iron aloft; where the very cockroaches turn in to wait for the Equator, and the hardiest rats are so put to it with frost that they watch in the gloom until a man goes to bed and falls asleep, in the hope of getting a meal off his nose. Unhappily the Horn does not improve. It blows and snows as hard there now as it did when the oldWagerrounded it, and when Drake or Anson was rolling among its stupendous combers. Other places are more tractable. For instance, Dana, twenty-four years after he made his memorable voyage, found that the climate off Point Conception had altered, that the south-easters were no longer the curse of the coast, and that vessels anchored inside at Santa Barbaro and San Pedro all the year round. No one could have told him this of the Horn. Had he chosen to beat to the eastward or westward a second time in the months when the attempt was made by thePilgrimand theAlerthe would have found the same blinding snow-storms, the same hurling seas, the same sunless, melancholy sky, the same plunging, washing, straining, roaring tumblification he recorded forty-two years ago. Let the story of a brig of 300 tons’ register bear witness to this.
It was in the month of May that the vessel in question was bound to Callao with a cargo of coal, but a strong north-westerly gale had driven her much further to the southward than the captain had any desire to find himself. The gale left them on a Wednesday morning, rolling their yardarms into it on a real Cape Horn swell. What is there to which to liken these prodigious heavings? The actual altitude of those liquid hills may seem small in comparison with the appearance they present when viewed from their hollows; but whatever may be their height, to lie dipping and wallowing among them in a vessel of the tonnage ofthat brig is to undergo an experience hardly less formidable than what was devised by the Mohocks, when they shut up old women in empty casks, and sent them spinning down Ludgate Hill. What straining and groaning and complaining of the tortured fabric, if it be of timber! Every beam, carling, tree-nail, transom, knee, stanchion, and futtock lifts up its dismal creaking and wailing voice as the bewildered craft, with her topsails rattling in the motionless atmosphere, is swung like a pendulum up the shoulder of the swelling mass of green water, leaning down as she goes until she is fairly on her beam-ends, with pots and pannikins, sea-boots and sea-chests, dishes, books, furniture, and whatever else may be inside of her, fetching away with dreadful noise to leeward, amid a volley of sea-blessings from skipper, cook, and steward, and muffled shouts from the watch below in the forecastle.
Luckily Cape Horn calms do not last very long; indeed, there is nothing but “weather†down in those regions, and a calm is only a short pause among the gales and squalls whilst they are considering whose turn it is next. Within an hour from the time of the first gale failing them, another gale from a little to the north-of-west was bowing down the bothered and beaten brig, which, under lower topsails and fore-topmast staysail, manfully struggled to look up to it with her head in the direction of Cape Horn and her wake streaming away over her weather quarter. It was one of those pictures of storm which are rarely seen in like perfection out of the parallels that divide Terra del Fuego from the South Shetlands—an ocean of mountainous seas, raising each of them a note of thunder as their arching summits crashed from a dark, oil-smooth ridge of green water into huge avalanches of snow: a sky of gloomy slate,along which masses of scud—torn, ragged, and tendril-shaped—were flying with incredible velocity. The horizon was broken with the incessant rising and falling of the pyramidal billows, dark as the night, against a ring of sooty clouds, from which, ever and anon, one would break away, like a winged messenger of evil, whitening and veiling the air with a kind of boiling appearance as it swept its furious and blinding discharge of snow and hail along. No wonder that in olden times the man who had passed these tempestuous and inclement seas should have considered himself an object of importance. Stand, in fancy, upon the deck of that labouring brig, and survey one of the countless aspects of marine life. The seas are breaking heavily over the port bow of the vessel, deluging her forward and racing aft in a foaming torrent as she sinks her stern to mount the huge surge that almost lays her yardarms level. The bitter, raw, flaying cold of the wind there is nothing in language to express. The flying spray smites the exposed face like a volley of sail needles. Now and again a squall of snow and hail comes along with so much fury in it that it takes the breath away from the strongest of the seamen cowering with their backs to it. The rigging crackles to every strain put upon it like burning wood. The snow upon the yards makes them glimmer like lines of pallid light as they furiously sway against the dismal ground of the dark and rushing sky. There are spears and arrow-heads of ice upon the bulwark rail, upon the catheads, upon the scuttle-butts lashed amidships; and though the seas repeatedly break over them they are always left standing. The helmsman, with his hard fists wrapped up in mits, rigged out in oilskins from his head to his huge, well-greased sea-boots, and with the after-thatch of his sou’-wester blownup by the gale, and standing out from his head like the tail of a gull, gets the full of it. Nothing of the man is visible but a fragment of mahogany face showing between the flannel ear-covers of his head-gear, and a pair of watering eyes, which he now and again wipes upon his mit when a pause in the yaws and come-to’s give him a chance to raise one of his hands from the spokes.
How would some of our summer-water mariners appear beside that salt-water sailor were they to have stood their trick at the helm on such an occasion as this; gazing to windward as yonder skipper is doing, holding on like grim death to a backstay, with the salt drying in crystals in his eyes; or making one of that oil-skinned group there to leeward of the galley, stamping their boots upon the deck to put life into their frozen toes, ducking as a shriek in the wind warns them of the passage of a green sheet of water over their heads, biting doggedly upon the tobacco in their cheeks, and growling as they reflect that another three hours must elapse before they are privileged to quit the deck and take such warmth and comfort as they may find in the forecastle, whose darkness is scarcely revealed by the sputtering slush-lamp, and whose beams and stanchions are decorated with draining clothes?
It was already blowing two or three ordinary gales in one, and the lower topsails were more than the brig could safely stagger under, though the captain held on, since by ratching to the northward he might hope to get clear of the ice, of which, on the previous night and that morning, some monstrous specimens had hove in view. Indeed, at one bell in the afternoon watch, during a flaw in a heavy squall of snow that was blowing in horizontal lines along the sea, they caught sight on the lee bow of the greenish marble-like glimmer of a berg that lookedto be a mile long and as tall as St. Paul’s Cathedral. It vanished, but reappeared broad on the lee-beam when the squall passed, and stood out in its complete shape against the smoke-coloured gloom of the sky over the horizon, where, though it was four or five miles off, the men on the brig’s deck could see the white, steam-like haze of the spray that flashed in clouds from its base, and fled past it in eddying volumes, and almost imagine that they heard the thunder of the smiting surges reverberating in the hollows and caverns of the mighty frozen mass. But when it had drawn on the lee-quarter another squall blew up and smothered it, and after that it disappeared entirely.
It was at this time that the gale increased in fury, and the sea grew terrible. The weather was enough to blow the masts out of the vessel, and all hands were turned up to stow both topsails and bring the brig to the wind under a small storm staysail. How is the aspect of that Cape Horn ocean to be described?—the rage of its headlong acclivities; the long sweep of olive-green heights, piebald with hissing and seething tracks of foam, blown along their gleaming sides; the hard iron-grey of the heavens, out of which the storm of wind was rushing, bearing upon its wings masses of vapour, which it tore to pieces in its fury; and the cold—the piercing, poignant cold—of the gale, with its lashing burden of sleet and spray and hail?
The men had come off the yards after having struggled, each watch of them, for hard upon three-quarters of an hour with the frozen topsails, when the brig shipped a sea just abaft the weather fore rigging. It was a whole mountain of green water, and it fell in a dead weight of scores of tons upon the deck, beating for awhile the whole life out of the devoted vessel, andmaking her pause, trembling and stunned, in the roaring hollow in which it had found her, whilst above the thunder of the dreadful stroke could be heard the crash of breaking wood, of splintered glass, and the rending noise of deck furniture torn from its strong fastenings. A heavy upward send drove the water off the decks, and all hands were found to be alive, holding on like grim death to whatever was next them; and then it was seen that a long range of the weather-bulwarks had been torn down flush with the deck, the cabin skylight broken into shivers, the long boat amidships stove, and nothing left of the port-quarter boat but the frame of its keel and stem, dangling at the davits. The loss of the two boats was a bad job, but still worse was the terrible straining the deeply freighted vessel had undergone, and the destruction of the skylight that left the cabin open for the floods of water that rolled along the deck. The benumbed and half-frozen crew turned to to secure what remained of the skylight and to cover it with tarpaulins; but whilst they were in the midst of this work the brig gave a heavy lurch, which made the men believe it was all over with her; and before a single cry could have been raised, a portion of the weather fore rigging carried away, and in a trice the fore-topmast broke off at the cap, and fell over the side—a horrible muddle—with all its raffle of sail, yards, and gear.
The early Antarctic night was now drawing down over the furious sea, and it was already so dark that the men could hardly discern one another’s faces. Some active fellows sprang forward at the risk of their lives to cut away the rigging, and release the wreck alongside before the yards upon it should pierce the brig’s bottom; and this being done, the helm was put hard up, with the idea of wearing ship, in order to secure the foremast.But the storm-fiend had marked this unhappy brig, and the successive blows came thick and fast. Scarcely was the wrecked spar sent adrift and the helm shifted, when all the rest of the port fore rigging carried away, and the foremast fell down, carrying with it the bowsprit, main topmast, and a portion of the port main rigging.
By this time it was as dark as the bottom of a well; the brig wallowed before the seas with a mass of wreckage over her side, pitching miserably in the fearful hollows, and huge surges curling their white heights around her. A man had need to be a seaman indeed, and to have a seaman’s heart in him too, to act at all in such a moment as this. The full extent of the mischief could not be guessed. Nothing was certain but that the brig was dispossessed of all but her mainmast, and that there were some heavy spars over the side, pounding at her like battering-rams with every hurl of the raging seas. The first business would be to get clear of this mischief, and the men went to work with their knives, feeling for the lanyards and hacking and cutting with a will. Darkness gives a peculiar horror to disasters of this kind at sea. In the daylight you can see what has happened; you can use your eyes as well as your hands and make despatch, and the worst is evident. But the darkness leaves everything to be guessed at. You shout for help for some job too heavy for you, and it does not come. The outlines of the sea grow colossal by the illusion of the faint light thrown out from their breaking crests; you cannot perceive the flying water so as to duck away from it, and in a breath you may find yourself overboard. It is all distraction and uproar, loud and fearful shouting, and blind groping. When at last the wreck was cleared, the vessel seemed little better than a sheer hulk, nothing standing but her mainmast, uponwhich the mainyard swung helplessly. That she should have lived through that long and fearful Antarctic night, the seas combing over her, icebergs in her vicinity, and draining in water with every roll, must count among the miracles of the deep. Her people had discovered that the mainmast, having little to support it, had worked loose, breaking away the mast-combings, and starting the planking all around it; so that through this large aperture the water poured into the hold in torrents. The port pump had been disabled by the fall of the masts, and the only other pump was manned and worked with such energy as dying men will put into their arms; but in less than an hour the coal choked it, and now nothing remained but to lighten the vessel by throwing the cargo overboard and baling with buckets. All through those black and howling hours, amid freezing falls of water, and in the heart of the raging Cape Horn storm, this severe labour was pursued, so that when the bleak and melancholy dawn broke upon the desolate ocean it found the brig still afloat, and the brave hearts in her grimly fighting death, though faint, famished, and frozen. Help came shortly before noon. A sail was made out heading dead for the wreck, and by the time she was abreast, the wind and sea had so far moderated as to enable her to bring all the men safely off. It was not a moment too soon, for twenty minutes after the crew had been transferred to the ship the brig was observed to give a heavy lurch, and so lie on her beam-ends, never righting, but slowly sinking in that position—so slowly that after her hull had vanished her mainmast remained forking out like the lifted arm of a drowning man.
When this story was told me I could not help thinking of what the Horn route was in Dana’s time, and thevery small chance that brig’s crew would have had for their lives had her name been thePilgrim, and had she been beating to the westward forty years ago. Certain it is, that however ships may come and go, and change the nature of their material and the form of their fabrics, the weather in the Pacific down there is very much what it was in Anson’s time, and as it has been, in all probability, since the creation of the world. Other climates may vary in the lapse of ages, and south-easters may in places be found to work themselves into north-westers. But the Horn remains always the same harsh, tempestuous, frozen headland, echoing at this hour the hurricane notes which reverberated over it centuries ago, and grimly overlooking the stormiest space of waters in the world. Who, then, does not hope that the final construction of the Panama Canal may abridge the bleak and icebound horrors of that point of continent which looks on the chart to stretch its leagues and leagues of tongue into the very heart of the southern frozen waters? To be sure, the passage of the famous cape has long since ceased to be a wonder; but none the less is it full of perils to vessels which, like the brig I have written about, are at the mercy of the monstrous seas and furious gales of that formidable tract of Pacific waters.
Oneis sorry to hear of the growth of the very un-English habit of sheering off and scuttling away after a collision. The first duty of a shipmaster who plumps into a vessel or is run into is to stand by, if the condition of his ship will permit him, and render all the assistance in his power. There is nothing more despicable and cowardly than running away after a disaster of this kind. We know what came of such conduct in the case of theNorthfleet; and week after week one reads in the shipping papers how such and such a vessel was run into, and how the other ship made off, and how so many people were drowned in consequence. Darkness, that is fruitful of collisions, is also, unhappily, favourable to these mean and unmanly escapes. At night it mostly happens that the utmost you can tell of the vessel that comes grinding into your ship is that she is big or little, a steamer or a sailing-vessel, and rigged in such and such a fashion. The letters on her nameboard cannot be deciphered; she will not answer your hail; and her reply to the melancholy shout of “For God’s sake don’t leave us, we believe we are sinking,†is to shift her helm and vanish in the gloom. The obligation to record such casualties in the log-book or to depone to them before receivers of wrecks does not, it is to be feared, alwaysimply the sort of accuracy that would be useful to sufferers. From time to time a buoy is sunk, a lightship run into, and the Trinity Corporation offer a handsome sum of money for information, but without avail. The absence of all reference by shipmates to such occurrences must make one hope that they are mainly the work of foreigners. But whatever the flag under which a captain sails, his sneaking away from a disaster in which he has had a hand expresses a species of cowardice that presses heavily upon the humbler order of shipowners. A little coaster is run into by a fine large vessel, which stops a minute or two and then proceeds. The master of the coaster may be her owner, and all that he has in the world is in his little ship. She is not sunk, but her masts are over the side, and she looks as if she had been for some hours under the guns of a fort. Whether or not the master be to blame for the collision, he is pretty sure to consider that the fault was not his; and his hardship is, that whilst he stands a chance of being ruined, he is unable to discover the name of the ship that ran into him, so as to be able to bring her owners into a court of justice, and take his risk as a litigant.
I was amused and interested some time since by hearing the story of the resolute behaviour of Mr. John Whitear, master of the schoonerJehu, a vessel of about 150 tons. Giving chase, if you can, is one way, at least, of clearing up the mystery of the paternity of an offending ship that sneaks off in the darkness in the hope of saving her owner’s pocket. Any way, Mr. John Whitear’s conduct illustrates a spirit pleasant to come across in the homely prosaics of the marine life of to-day. Eighty and a hundred years ago it was men of the stamp of Mr. Whitear who commanded British privateers; otherwise how should the maritime memorials of that kind ofvessel be so full as they are of the unflinching obstinacy and the grim courage which followed the fleeing enemy over leagues and leagues of ocean, through storms and through calms, finally overhauling and boarding the breathless chase in latitudes so remote from the point of departure that the span between the two places might even now be reckoned a long voyage?
Not very many days ago, then, theJehu, with 230 tons of coal aboard, was quietly jogging along on her way to her port of destination. The afternoon had been fine, and the night came down very clear and bright, with starlight. The water was smooth, though a merry wind was blowing, and the little vessel under easy canvas lay softly leaning in the gloom, with the white water rippling and crisping past her sides in a hollow, brass-like tinkling. Starlight gives beauty even to a coalman; and I have known stump topgallant-masts and sails yawning upon sheets hard upon a fathom from the points in the yardarms through which they lead, make as dream-like and dainty a picture in the tender sobering shadows of the night as the tall and tapering rig of the handsomest yacht now afloat.
At all events, theJehuwas Mr. John Whitear’s sea-home, and as he paced the weather side of the deck, sometimes squinting into the windward darkness where the loom of the land hung low upon the vague greyish softness of the water that way, or sometimes aloft where the stars, like so many benign and encouraging eyes, were tipping him cheerful winks through the black squares in the shrouds and over the main gaff and among the dim tracery of the standing and running rigging, whose heights seemed to bring near the sweeping enfoldment of the glittering heavens, as though the vast star-laden shadow were revolving and was weaving its circlingburden of gloom closer and closer yet round the lonely schooner journeying slowly along with a bell-like resonance of broken water around her, he was no doubt as well satisfied with his little hooker as the captain of an ocean steamer could be with his stately ship.
His pipe being smoked out, the weather looking as steady as a church, and all being well in every possible sense of that marine expression, Mr. John Whitear thought that no harm could come of his going below for a spell to take some rest. Accordingly, after exchanging a few words with his mate, and taking another good look to windward and then aloft, he walked to the companion and disappeared down the steps. But instead of going to bed like a landsman, he kept on his boots and his coat, merely removing his cap as a preliminary to turning in, and stretching himself upon a locker, within easy hearing of the first shout that should come down through the companion, he closed his eyes, and was presently contributing to the other creaking sounds raised in the plain and quaint little cabin by the occasional movements of theJehu.
How it came about he could not say, not having been on deck at the time; but whilst he lay dreaming such peaceful dreams as should visit a master mariner whose whole professional life is dedicated to the careful attention of the three L’s, he was suddenly aroused, and in some measure startled, by a loud and fearful cry in the companion of “Below, there! here’s a barque running into us.â€
Fortunately, Mr. Whitear had no occasion to stay to dress himself; in a breath he was up the ladder and on deck. The first thing he saw was a large barque on the port bow, apparently paying off, having just gone about. Fresh as he was from a deep sleep, Mr. Whitear had allhis wits about him in a moment; and he immediately perceived that, let him do what he liked and shout as he would, a collision was unavoidable. The barque loomed up large and massive in the darkness. Her lights were as plainly to be seen as the stars, whilst theJehu’sburned as brightly. The wind had freshened somewhat, and both vessels were heeling under it. All was silent aboard the barque—not the least sound could be heard; and in that thrilling and breathless moment all other noises took a startling distinctness—the washing of water, the creaking of spars, the squeak up in the darkness of a sheave upon a rusty pin. There is no sensation comparable to what is felt in the few minutes which elapse between the approach and shock of two meeting vessels. A railway collision gives you no time. If by chance you look out of the carriage window and see what is going to happen, before you can sing out the thing has come and is over. But a collision at sea furnishes you with leisure to think, to anticipate, and to make an agony of the disaster before it actually befalls you. Whichever way the helm of theJehuhad been jammed would have been all the same; the barque was bound to come, and in a few moments there she was, with her bows towering like a cliff over the low bulwarks of the well-freightedJehu, her jibboom and bowsprit arching across the little schooner’s deck like a great spear in the hand of a giant.
TheJehuheeled over under the blow until the rail of her starboard bulwarks was flush with the water. The men came skurrying, half-naked, out of the forecastle, thinking she was sinking, and rushed aft to be out of the way of whatever might tumble down from aloft. You heard the grinding noise of crushed wood; the thud of falling gear, the tearing of canvas. The weight of thebarque, that was a big vessel in ballast, swept the stern of the littleJehuto windward, rounding her in such a manner as to free them both. But by this time there was plenty of noise and activity to be noted aboard the barque. Orders were rattled out in plain English, and you could hear the scampering of feet and the songs of the seamen as they ran to and fro and pulled and hauled. She heeled over like a great shadow with her mainyards square and her fore-sheets flattened in. It was impossible to know what mischief she had done; and, running to the side, Mr. Whitear shouted to her at the top of his voice to stand by them, as he feared the schooner was sinking.
No answer was returned.
“They’re leaving us!†cried the mate. “Look! they’re trimming sail; they’re swinging the mainyards!â€
Again Mr. Whitear bawled to them not to abandon the schooner; but no answer was vouchsafed, and in a few moments it was not only seen that she was leaving them, but that she meant to get away as fast as she could, for they loosed their fore topgallant-sail and main-royal, and sheeted the canvas home with all expedition.
Under such circumstances most men would have contented themselves with bestowing a sea-blessing on the stranger, and then turned-to to sound the well, and, if the schooner was leaking fast, get the boats over. But Mr. John Whitear was made of the old, and, as some people might think, the right kind of stuff.
“Bill,†says he to William Dart, A.B., who was at the wheel, “keep your eye upon that old catermerang while me and the mate overhauls the schooner. Follow her without a wink, William; for if there’s a creak left in this old bucket, we’ll stick to her skirts and have her name, though she should go all on sailing till we comes to Australey.â€
Forthwith he and the mate went to work, sounded the well, looked over the side, peered at the damage done aloft; and then, coming aft again, “She’s tight and she’s right, boys,†said Mr. Whitear. “Now, bullies, here’s a mess that’s to cost some one pounds and pounds. That some one’s not to be John Whitear; so, William, starboard your helm, my lad; and the rest of ye all turn to and make sail forrard, every stitch ye can find, and then we’ll repair the main rigging, and get a new mainsail bent;†for he had discovered that the barque’s jibboom had cut through the centre cloths of the mainsail, ripping it open from the head to the second reef-band as neatly as if a sailmaker’s knife had done the job.
They all went to work with a will, putting uncommon agility into their limbs and spirits by calling the shadow ahead many hard salt names, and swearing they would catch her if she carried them into the Polar regions. The labour was severe, for there were not many of them to “turn-to;†nevertheless, they managed, in a time less by three-quarters than they would have occupied on any other occasion, to repair the damaged shrouds, set up preventer backstays, bend a new mainsail, and cover the little vessel with canvas. The barque was close-hauled, three or four miles ahead, on the port tack, lying over, as a light vessel will in such a merry breeze as was then blowing, under both royals and gaff topsail; she was trusting to her heels and running away, like a big bully from a little man whom he has accidentally hurt, and is afraid of. Her people would probably ridicule the idea of the deep-freighted schooner chasing them; indeed, they had left her apparently helpless, her port main rigging hanging in bights over the side, her mainsail in halves, and the whole fabric looking wrecked and stunned from the shock of the collision.
Meanwhile, Mr. John Whitear stumped the quarter-deck of his little craft, often pausing to point an old leather-covered telescope at the leaning shadow out away under the low-shining stars just the merest trifle to leeward of the lee knighthead, and then cocking the glass under his arm afresh, and swinging round with a sharp, obstinate stamp of the foot to resume his walk.
“Boys,†he sung out, “there’s no occasion for the Watch below to remain on deck.â€
“No, no,†was the gruff answer; “there’s no going below till we’ve found out that wessel’s name.â€
The wind came along with a fresh, strong sweep, and a deep moan in the gusts as they blew over the bulwark rail into the hollow glimmer of the great mainsail; there was a kind of flashful light in the breaking heads of the little black surges, and a regular rise and fall of fountain-like sound from forward, where the stem of the driven schooner was hissing through the dark water, and the wake ran away astern like a snow-covered road, until, looking at it, you seemed to see the dark water on either side stand up as if the white vein were the frothing stream of a cataract rushing into darkness betwixt the shadows of hills.
“Why, smother me, if she’s not got the scent of us!†suddenly cried Mr. Whitear with the glass at his eye; “she’s off three points, and there’s no luff left in her! Boys, did any of you take notice if she had her stun-sail booms aloft?â€
“No,†answered William Dart; “her foreyards were just up yonder†(pointing into the air), “an’ I’ll take my oath she’d got no booms on ’em.â€
“Then we’ll run her down yet: we’ll have her!†cried Mr. Whitear, fetching his knee a slap that sounded like the report of a pistol. “Keep her away a bit; easeoff the sheets fore and aft. Hurrah, my lads! theJehuknows the road! We’ll weather the sneak, boys!†And so he rattled on, sometimes talking to his men, sometimes to the schooner, and sometimes addressing the barque ahead.
Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, however, four or five sailing-vessels hove in sight and bothered Mr. Whitear exceedingly, for there was a chance mistaking the chase among them and pursuing the wrong vessel. All hands were implored to keep a bright look-out, and the glass was now much more often at the skipper’s eye than under his arm. It is strange enough to think of a little collier with 230 tons of coal in her bottom pursuing a vessel three times her size. It might really pass as a most satirical travestie of the old maritime business, were it not for the very strong commercial instincts at work in it. The purse was always as great a power on sea as on land, and the flight of the big barque from the little coalman was only another illustration of its supremacy.
To the great satisfaction of Mr. Whitear, the schooner turned out to be more than a match for the cowardly runaway. It was quite clear that the barque had no more sail to set; as it was, she was bowling along under a press of canvas that must have made her decks mighty uncomfortable, to judge from the sharp angle of her inclination. Had she chosen to put her helm up and bring the wind well aft, she would no doubt have walked away from the schooner, whose fore-and-aft canvas then would not have much helped her. But the barque could not forget that she had to work her way to windward, and that her port lay N.E. and not S.W.: and though she might slacken away her lee-braces in the hope of making the obstinate little schooner giveup, it would not answer her purpose to do more than that.
Inch by inch theJehucrawled up to her. Just before daybreak the wind breezed up like a squall, though the sky was clear, and Mr. Whitear, who all through the night had watched the chase with the intentness of an old British commodore following a squadron of flying Frenchmen, shouted out that she had taken in her royals and gaff topsail, and that, as it was, she was nearly out of water to windward. But not so much as a rope-yarn was touched aboard theJehu; she had never been so pressed since the hour that she was launched. She hove up the foam as high as the head-boards; every bone of her trembled; the wind boomed away from under the foot of her sails in a thunder-note, and the sheets and weather standing rigging stood like bars of iron. There seemed as much eagerness in her shivering, rushing frame as in her skipper, whose excitement deepened as the square and leaning shadow ahead loomed bigger and bigger. Earnestly was it to be hoped that the port main rigging would stand all this straining; and yet such was the temper of the captain and the men of the brave littleJehu, that, I believe, had the mainmast gone overboard, they would have held on after the barque with a single spar, just as I once saw a man with one arm and a wooden leg give chase to a rogue who had sneered at his misfortunes.
The faint grey of the dawn was in the sky when the barque was brought to the wind again, and, after holding on for a short while with a close luff, went about. Before she had her foreyards braced round, the schooner had stayed and was on the starboard tack, savagely breaking the quick seas which were rolling in the wake of the wind, and finding all the advantage she needed in theweathering she had made upon the barque, who, with the rising of the sun, appeared to lose all heart, for no more sail was made, and when she was braced up she was kept so close that the weather half of her fore topgallant-sail was aback. The white sunshine that had flung a deep blue over the stars, and transformed the ocean into a tumbling green surface full of sparkles and white lines, and a horizon so clear that it was like the sweep of a brush dipped in bright green paint along the enfolding azure of the morning sky, gave stout-hearted Mr. John Whitear a good sight of the tall vessel he had been chasing all through the middle and morning watches. She was what he called “a lump of a barque,†so light that half her metal sheathing was out of water, with very square yards and a main skysail mast, and she tumbled with such unwieldly motions upon the running seas that it seemed no longer wonderful that theJehushould have been able to weather and forereach upon her. Her way was almost stopped by the gripe of her luff, and within an hour of the time of her going about the schooner was on her weather quarter.
Mr. Whitear had already deciphered her name upon her stern, but he had some questions to ask; so, jumping on to the rail and clawing a backstay with one hand, whilst he put the other hand to his mouth, he bawled out, “Barque ahoy!â€
“Hallo!†was the answer.
“What’s the name of your vessel?†sang out Mr. “Whitear.
“Have you forgotten how to read, skipper? It’s under your nose,†came the reply.
“You’re the barqueJuno, of Maitland, N.S.—that’s clear enough on your starn,†shouted Mr. Whitear, whose temper, inflamed by the long pursuit, was notimproved, as may be supposed, by this reception; “and you’re the vessel that ran into us last night, and carried away our shrouds, braces, and running gear, the mainrail, topgallant bulwarks, and split our mainsail.â€
“No, we ain’t,†was the reply. “We know nothing of the job you’re talking about; so sheer off, will ye, and take care to spot the right party afore letting fly.â€
Without answering, Mr. Whitear shifted his helm so as to bring his vessel to leeward of the barque; and then, running forward when the schooner had forged abreast of the other vessel, he shouted to the man who had answered his hail to look over the port bow of the barque and there he would see the marks of the schooner’s chain-plate bolts, whilst farther evidence of the barque being the culprit lay in particles of her planking adhering to theJehu’schain-plates. This was too decisive to admit of farther denial; and Mr. John Whitear having obtained all the information he required, walked aft again, once more shifted his helm, saluted the barque with a farewell flourish of his fist, and then gave orders to his men to trim sail and head for the port to which they were bound.