MARIE BEGINS HER VOYAGE
This was the first voyage I had ever made. I was born in England, and
was left at school when my mother went round the Cape to India on
the second visit my father paid to that country. I had never in my
life crossed a wider breast of water than the English Channel between
Folkestone and Boulogne. Everything here, then, you will suppose was
wonderfully new to me; infinitely stranger indeed than had the ship
been a steamer whose funnel and masts have commonly but little in them
to bewilder the landgoing eye.
Hundreds of times had I watched ships passing over the blue or grey
waters which our house overlooked; but they were as clouds to me,
indeterminable though beautiful decorations of the deep: I knew nothing
of their inner life, of one's sensations on board, what the sailors
in them did. I looked up now and beheld three masts towering into a
delicate fineness to the altitude of their own starry trucks, with
yards across, rigging complex as the meshes of a web, white triangular
sails between. A sailor stood at the wheel, floating off from it with
the easy, careless posture of the sea, his knotted hands gripping the
spokes of the gleaming circle. A stout-faced man in the tall hat of the
London streets, his neck swathed in a red shawl, walked up and down the
deck near the cabin skylight. Mrs. Burke told me he was the pilot. She
pointed to a man who was standing on the forecastle as though keeping a
look-out on the tug, and said that he was Mr. Green, the first mate of
the ship: indeed the only mate. The boatswain, she informed me, who was
not a certificated officer, would take charge of her husband's watch
when the ship was at sea.
She talked thus to distract my mind. I asked her what she meant by her
'husband's watch,' thinking she meant the timekeeper in his pocket.
'Why,' she said, 'every ship's crew is divided into two companies
or watches, called port and starboard; the starboard watch is the
captain's and the other the mate's. Let us walk a little. Already you
are looking better, positively.'
Here Mr. Owen joined us.
'I declare, doctor,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, 'that Miss Otway has already
got a little colour in her cheeks, more even since we left Gravesend
than, I warrant, Sir Mortimer has seen in her the last twelvemonth
gone. If she means to begin to look well so soon, how will it be with
her, sir, when this ship's bowsprit is pointing the other way and we
shall be all ready to go ashore?'
Mr. Owen, in a soft felt hat, an academic bush of hair under either
side of it, like the cauliflower wig of olden days, and a warm, heavy
black cloak, might have passed for a clergyman. He asked permission to
stroll the deck with us, and pointed out objects ashore and upon the
water with an intelligence that proved him the possessor of a talent
for colour.
Once he broke off in what he was saying to look at the land; he sighed
deeply, yet, forcing a smile, said to Mrs. Burke:
'That parting should never be a sad one which promises a happy meeting,
at the cost of no more than patience.'
'Truly indeed not,' said Mrs. Burke cheerily.
'It is the meeting! it is the meeting! promise _that_, and what is
the leave-taking?' he exclaimed, and was all on a sudden too moved to
speak: he faintly bowed, and went to the ship's side and looked at the
shore.
We did not long remain on deck. I found the wind cold, my head
slightly ached; I was weary with the exhaustion which follows upon
fretting. Mrs. Burke went with me to my cabin, and we spent a long
while in talking, recalling old memories, and most of the time she was
cheerfully busy in seeing that my things were in their place and that I
wanted for nothing.
The night had drawn down dark over the ship when we passed from my
berth into the state cabin. It was about seven o'clock. Supper was
ready. The table was bright with damask and silver and flowers; under
the skylight the large globe lamp glowed steadily, and filled the
interior with the soft radiance of sperm oil. I heard some men singing
out on deck and the noise of ropes flung down upon the planks. The
sound was strange and put a sort of wildness into this interior,
despite its fifty civilising details of furniture.
A young sandy-haired youth, long and lank, in a camlet jacket, stood at
the foot of the companion-steps, and swung a bell with evident delight
in the noise he made. Mr. Owen started up from a locker in the corner
of the cabin on seeing us, and exclaimed:
'There is a brave wind blowing. Captain Burke hopes to be off Deal by
midnight.'
'That will be famous work,' said Mrs. Burke. 'But this is a clipper
ship.'
'Are we sailing?' said I.
'Yes. Some canvas is spread. But the tug still has hold of us,'
responded Mr. Owen.
I felt no movement in the ship. She was going along with the seething
steadiness of a sleigh. Just then Captain Burke came below. His
composed, cheerful face, peak-bearded with red hair and arch, merry
Irish eyes, seemed to bring a new atmosphere of light into the place.
He addressed some friendly sympathetic question to me; we then seated
ourselves, I on the captain's right, and Mr. Owen at the foot of the
table.
It was my first meal at sea, if indeed the ship could then be called at
sea, and memorable to me for that reason. I had tasted no food since
breakfast, and now tried to eat, but less from appetite than from the
desire to please my old nurse. My chat with her before supper had
determined me to fight with my grief, to regard the voyage as a long
holiday yachting excursion, which should be happy if I accepted it as
a twelvemonth's diversion that was to end in making me a new woman,
and in fitting me to become a wife. It was this last point that Mrs.
Burke had insisted upon, and, like a good many ideas which are obvious
and commonplace when uttered, it took my fancy, lighted up my views as
though it had been a sort of revelation, and whilst I sat at supper I
was so composed that more than once I caught Mr. Owen dart a glance of
surprise at me when I answered or put a question.
'The sea is very smooth here, Edward,' said Mrs. Burke.
'There's no sea yet,' he answered. 'It's river so far. We're towing
through what's called the Warp, near the Nore, whose light ye should be
able to see, Miss Otway,' said he, getting up and ducking and bobbing
to command the whole compass of a cabin window.
'I wonder the ship doesn't run the tug down,' said Mr. Owen.
The captain looked at me with his merry eyes and chuckled.
'Ay, we're a match for the old slapper even with nothing on us but fore
and aft canvas and two topsails,' said he. 'I wish Sir Mortimer was
with us. Here's a voyage to thread a heart through the strands of his
years. I don't know that ever I met a gentleman I took a greater fancy
to, unless it's Mr. Moore,' and he gave me a bow, whilst I smiled,
feeling a faint glow in my cheeks.
'There'll be a full moon at eight,' said Mr. Owen.
'So there will, sir, thank God,' answered Captain Burke. 'We sailors
can never have too much light. No, not even in our wives' eyes,' said
he, with an askant arch look at Mrs. Burke.
And now he began to talk. Though without the brogue in his tongue, he
had the fluency and humour of his country. He was full of stories of
adventure and experience; scarce a sea he had not navigated in his day.
His wife watched me eagerly, and if ever I smiled her face lighted up
and her kind eyes shone. All his efforts were directed to cheer me.
Observing Mr. Owen smelling at an egg he exclaimed:
'What's that you've got?'
'Something laid too soon, captain.'
'Doctor,' said the captain, 'I know a sailor who made an experiment:
he put a number of French eggs under a sitting rooster, and what d'ye
think was hatched? Cocks and hens in the last stage of decrepitude!
They hopped and staggered about in his little back-yard, and died of
old age in twenty-four hours. That was his test of a bad egg. If he
wanted to make sure he hatched it.'
Thus ran his careless, good-humoured gabble, and perhaps had he talked
wisely and soberly he would not have done me any good.
He went on deck presently, and the mate, Mr. Green, came below to
get his supper. He was a middle-aged man, of a very nautical cut in
figure and clothes, with a sneering face, and a beard of wiry iron hair
covering his throat, though he shaved to the round of his chin, and a
droop of left eyelid put the expression of an acid leer into that side
of his face.
Mr. Owen had withdrawn to his cabin. Mrs. Burke and I sat at a little
distance upon a comfortable sofa near the stove. The mate squared his
elbows and fell to work slowly but diligently, often lifting his knife
to his mouth and chewing with the solemnity of a goat.
'He rose from before the mast,' said Mrs. Burke. 'I hope he's a good
sailor. This is his first voyage with my husband. He holds a master's
certificate, but that don't signify much, I expect. A man wants to know
human nature to command a crew of sailors. He's been a common seaman
himself, and fared ill, and worked hard on a starvation wage, as most
of the poor creatures do, and that's likely to make him hard with
the men and unpitying. It's always so. It's the person who's been in
service that makes the exacting mistress.'
All this she spoke softly. She then inquired of the mate how the
weather was on deck.
'Why, not so fine as it is down here, mum,' he answered. 'There's a
vast of stars, but 'tis black till the moon comes up.'
'Where are we now?'
'The Girdler ain't far off,' he answered, masticating slowly.
'Is the tug still towing us?'
'Oh, certainly yes, mum!'
He did not seem disposed to talk, and answered with grimaces and the
awkward air of a man ill at ease.
I was looking at his square sturdy figure, with his weather-ploughed
face and the muscles all about it working like vigorous pulses to
the movement of his jaws, when I felt a slight motion of the ship, a
gentle, cradling heave of the deck: the lamp and all things pendulous
swayed; creaking noises arose from all parts; a sudden giddiness took
me. The movement was repeated with the regularity of a clock's tick.
'Isn't the sea getting up?' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, staring at the
gleaming ebony of the skylight windows and then around her.
The mate arrested the tumbler whose contents he was turning into
his mouth to distend his lips in a grin, which he probably thought
concealed.
'Why, I thought we were still in the river!' cried Mrs. Burke again.
The mate, picking up his cap, rose, contorted his square figure into a
bow to us, and went up the companion-steps.
The motion of the vessel affected me. Mrs. Burke got a pillow and made
me comfortable on the sofa, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, went on
deck. She returned presently and said that the river had widened into
a sea, with danger-lights sparkling here and there, and the full moon
rising solemnly and beautifully upon the port bow. She hugged herself
and said it was blowing fresh, and the ship under several breasts of
canvas was chasing the little tug, which was splashing ahead as fast
as she could go.
'We're doing between seven and eight miles an hour. Only think!' she
cried. 'We shall be opening the lights of Margate very soon. To think
of Margate and the sands and the shrimps, and us sailing past it to the
other end of the world. How do you feel, my dear?'
I answered that I felt sick.
'You will suffer for a day or two,' said she, 'and then you'll take no
more notice of it than I do. Hark! what is that?'
The sounds proceeded from Mr. Owen's cabin.
'They'll never get a cure for it,' said Mrs. Burke, looking in the
direction of the doctor's berth.
I lay motionless, feeling very uncomfortable and ill. Mrs. Burke gave
me some brandy and put toilet vinegar to my head. She advised me to go
to bed, but I begged leave to rest where I was. The motion of the ship
grew more lively the further she was towed towards the mouth of the
river, where the weight of the field of water past the Forelands would
dwell in every heave. At last, a little while after ten o'clock, I told
Mrs. Burke I felt as if the fresh air would revive me, on which she
wrapped me up in shawls and helped me on deck. She walked on firm legs
with the ease of an old salt, whilst I so swung and reeled upon her arm
that I must have fallen twenty times but for her support.
But, nevertheless, the moment I emerged through the little
companion-hatch, with its load of warm atmosphere closing behind me in
a sensible pressure of mingled cabin smells and heat, I felt better; a
shout of bright strong moonlight wind fair betwixt my parted lips swept
away for the time all sensation of nausea: I breathed deep and looked
about with wonder.
It was a fine, noble night-scene of water and ship. We were following
the tug under three topsails and a main topgallant sail and a flight of
fore and aft canvas; the sails swelled pale as steam into the moonlight
air, carrying the eye to the fine points of the mastheads, whose black
lines were beating time for a dance of stars. High up was the moon,
full, yellow, and glowing; if land was near, it was buried in the wild
windy sheen under the orb; the water rolled in liquid silver, islanded
here and there by the black flying shadows of bodies of vapour hurling
headlong, down the wind north-east: ahead the black smear of the tug's
smoke full of sparks, with a frequent rush of crimson flame out of the
funnel's throat, was flying low.
Captain Burke came from the pilot's side to salute me, and pointing
abeam to starboard (I offer no excuse for writing of the sea in the
language of the sea) exclaimed:
'There's Whitstable somewhere down there, Miss Otway. And yonder should
be Herne Bay. With a powerful telescope we should presently be able to
see the bathing machines on Margate beach.'
'What is that out there?' I asked.
'A Geordie,' he answered, 'a north-country collier.'
She was swarming along, a very spectre of a ship, lean, visionary,
glistening like the inside of an oyster shell in the moonlight, which
whitened the black hull of her into the same sort of misty sheen
that was upon the water, till she was blended with the air brimful
of moonlight, making a mocking phantom of her to fit in with the
desolation beyond, where you saw a red star of warning hinting at ooze,
and white crawling streaks and a pallid rib or two, with some fragment
of mast upward pointing in a finger of wreck, dumbly telling you
whither the spirit of the rest of it all had flown.
I watched our little ship bowing in pursuit of the tug; she curtseyed
her white cloths to the moon, and the brine flashed at her bows at
every plunge, and went away in a wide, rich race astern, for there was
the churning of the paddles in it too.
But soon I was overcome by nausea once more, the magic of the fresh air
failed me, and, yielding now to Mrs. Burke's entreaty, I suffered her
to carry me to my cabin.
After this for the next four or five days I was so miserably ill that I
lay as one in a fit or swoon, scarcely sensible of more, and therefore
remembering but little more, than that Mrs. Burke was hour after hour
in my cabin, sleeping beside me on a mattress during the night, and
watching over me throughout that distressing time with touching and
unwearied devotion. Mr. Owen was too ill to visit me; but what could he
have done? Did he cure his own nausea? I think he knew of no physic for
mine.
Indeed we met with very heavy weather in the Channel. The wind shifted
shortly after the tug had let go of the ship and blew a moderate
breeze out of the south-east, but in the morning the breeze freshened
into a gale; a head sea ran strong, short, and angry; the captain
drove the vessel along under shortened canvas, with sobbing decks and
spray-clouded bows as I learnt; but to me, inexperienced as I was, her
behaviour seemed frightfully wild and dangerous. I sometimes thought
she was going to pieces. My cabin was aft, the machinery of the helm
was nearly overhead, and the noise of it when she plunged her counter
into the foam, and the rudder received the blow of some immense volume
of rushing brine, sent shock after shock through the planks, and
through me as I lay in my bunk.
But the stupor of sea-sickness was upon me, I had no fear; had the ship
actually gone to pieces I do not think I could or should have opened
my mouth to cry out. All that I asked for was death, and I was so sick
even unto that state that I cannot remember I once wished myself at
home, or thought for an instant of my father or Mr. Moore.
But on the fifth day I was well enough to sit up and partake of a
little cold fowl and wine, and next day I was able to go on deck.
By this time we were clear of the English Channel, and I looked around
me at the great ocean, swelling in long lines of rich sparkling blue
under the high morning sun. Far away, blue in the air, were some
leaning shafts of ships, and at the distance of a quarter of a mile a
large steamer was passing, steering the same road as ourselves.
Weak as I was after my long confinement below, dazzled and confused too
by the splendour of the morning, and the novelty and wonder of that
windy scene of our bowing ship, clothed in canvas, gleaming like silk
to the trucks, I could not but pause with a start of admiration when
my sight went to that steamer. Captain Burke, seeing me as I leaned
on his wife's arm, crossed the deck, and after some commonplaces of
genial greeting told me that yonder vessel was a French man-of-war.
She was round sterned with portholes for guns there, and two white
lines full of gun-ports ran the length of her tall, shapely sides. She
was ship-rigged, and lifted a lustrous fabric of square canvas and
delicate cordage to the soft blue skies, a wide space of whose field
the gilded balls of her trucks traced as she rolled heavily but with
majesty, crushing the water at her bows to the impulse of her sails
and propeller into a heap of splendid whiteness, like to the foam at
the foot of some giant cataract. She was the noblest sea-piece I had
ever beheld: the tricolour was at her gaff-end, a blue vein of smoke,
filtering from a short black funnel, scarcely tarnished the azure over
the horizon betwixt her fore and main masts; a great gilt eagle was
perched with outstretched wings under her bowsprit, and seemed to be
poised for a soaring flight as though affrighted by the roar of spume
beneath; her decks were a blaze of light and colour when she rolled
them towards us, with the sparkle of uniforms, the flash of sun-stars
in bright metal, and gleams breaking from I know not whence, like
sudden flames from artillery.
'I think I see her in charge of an English lieutenant,' said Captain
Burke, 'making a straight course for Portsmouth. They have built good
ships for us and will build again.'
He placed chairs, and Mrs. Burke and I seated ourselves. I could now
look about me with enjoyment of what I beheld. The sun shone with some
warmth, and the wind blowing freely out of the west was of an April
mildness. The whole life of the universe seemed to be in that ocean
morning, with our ship in the middle of it bowing as she drove over the
long blue knolls. The hour was half-past eleven. Smoke was feathering
down upon the water over the lee side out of the chimney of the galley,
through whose door as I looked I saw a sailor emerge holding a steaming
tub, with which he staggered in the direction of a little square
hole on the forecastle. Immediately after a second sailor rolled out
similarly burthened.
'The men are going to dinner,' said Mrs. Burke.
'What do you give them to eat?' I asked the captain.
'To-day,' said he, 'they'll dine on beef and pudding.'
'It sounds a good dinner,' said Mrs. Burke. 'But all the while I'm at
sea, I'm wondering how sailors contrive to get through their work on
the food they get.'
'Go and put those notions into their shaggy heads forwards and there'll
be a mutiny,' said the captain.
'Beef as tasteless as one's boot if one could imagine it boiled,' said
Mrs. Burke, 'pudding like slabs of mortar, biscuits which glide about
on the feet of hundreds of little worms called weevils. Edward has had
to live on such food in his day, and I believe it is the beef and pork
of his seafaring youth that give him his premature looks. He oughtn't
to seem his age by ten years.'
He eyed her archly and kindly. 'Premature is a good word,' said he.
'Sailors are always too soon in life. Soon with their money, and soon
with their drink and pleasures, and soon with their years, so that it
is soon over with them.'
'They're a body of workmen I'm very sorry for,' said Mrs. Burke; 'their
wrongs are not understood, and they've got no champions.'
As she pronounced these words the hairy head of a man, clothed in a
Scotch cap, showed in the little square of the forecastle hatch; he
took a wary view of the quarter-deck, then rose into the whole body of
a man picturesquely attired in a red shirt, blue trousers, a belt round
his waist, and a knife in a sheath upon his hip. He was followed by
three others, and after a short conversation they came along the decks
towards us.
Captain Burke, appearing not to notice them, told his wife he was going
to fetch his sextant. Mr. Green, the sour-leering mate, was trudging
the weather side of the quarter-deck. The man who had first risen, the
hairy one of the Scotch cap, exclaimed, as the four of them came to a
halt in the gangway:
'Can we have a word with the capt'n, sir?'
'What d'e want?' answered the mate, speaking with half his back turned
on them as though he addressed some one out upon the water.
'We're come to complain that the beef to-day ain't according to the
articles.'
'As how?' said the mate, still looking seawards.
''Tain't sweet, sir.'
'No call to eat of it,' said the mate, turning his head and letting his
leering eye droop upon them.
'That's not the way to speak,' whispered Mrs. Burke to me with a note
of impatience and temper. 'Why shouldn't the meat be tainted? It's so
in butchers' shops often enough.'
'If there's no call to eat of it there's no call to turn to on it,'
said one of the men with a surly laugh.
Here Captain Burke arrived with a sextant in his hand.
'What is it, my lads?' said he quickly, but good-humouredly.
'The starboard watch's allowance of meat's gone off, sir,' said the man
in the Scotch cap civilly enough.
'The fok'sle's dark with the smell of it,' said another.
'Notice a blue ring round the flame of the lamp?' said the captain.
''Tain't meat for men,' exclaimed the man, who had growled out a laugh.
'Go and bring aft what remains of it,' said Captain Burke, and he
stepped to the side and adjusted his sextant to get a meridional
observation.
The men trudged forward. I could not but notice how eloquent of
grumbling their postures were as they walked. Experience has long since
assured me that no man can so perfectly make every limb and lineament
of him look his grievance as the sailor.
They presently returned, bearing a dish: Captain Burke stooped to it
and sniffed.
'You are right,' he exclaimed. 'Overboard with it, my lads. This should
never have been served out to you. 'Tis the cook's fault to boil such
offal. Mr. Green, see that the starboard watch have some canned mutton
for their dinner at once.'
The men emptied the contents of the kid over the side, looking very
well pleased, and then went forward.
'They have no champions, my wife says,' exclaimed Captain Burke to me
with a smile. 'Poor fellows! But I'll tell you what, Miss Otway: you'll
never find Jack's rights wrong for the want of Jack taking the trouble
to keep them right.'