THE HIDDEN LIFE OF THE SHIP
I devoted the afternoon of the first day of my recovery from sickness
to a journal which I meant should serve as a letter both for my father
and Mr. Moore, to be transmitted home in sheets as the opportunity
occurred. My old nurse told me that her husband had written to my
father whilst in the Channel, and had sent the letter ashore at
Plymouth by a smack; so they would have news of me at home down to two
days before.
I was so much interested in the little incident of the tainted meat I
have told you of, that I asked Captain Burke this day to let me taste a
specimen of the beef sailors were fed on. He laughed and said:
'Miss, your teeth are too little and white for such beef as that.'
'I'll try a cut, too, with your leave, captain,' said Mr. Owen.
The captain grinned at his wife, but complied nevertheless, and when we
sat down to supper, the steward placed a cube of forecastle beef before
us. There were plenty of good things on the table: my father had half
filled the lazarette, or after-hold, with delicacies, and we carried an
abundance of live stock: everything in that way, perhaps, but a cow,
for which no room could be made; but the steam of the sailors' beef
filled the atmosphere; the smells of all the other dishes yielded to
it. And yet it was good meat of its sort.
Mrs. Burke wrinkled her nose, and said, 'Miss Marie, please do not
touch it.'
'Captain Burke, I will taste a piece,' said I.
'And I will thank you for a slice, captain,' said Mr. Owen.
The captain made a great business of sharpening a carving knife, all
the while glancing from me to his wife with a laughing eye. The stuff
yielded to the sharp blade in a curled shaving: it was like cutting a
block of wood, that part I mean where the heart is.
'Don't put it to your lips, my dear,' cried Mrs. Burke.
I tasted a morsel: the steward watched me with an ill-concealed grin;
the meat, if meat it could be called, was hard as leather, salt as the
brine over the side, of a texture and hue no more resembling corned
beef such as we know the thing on shore than a whelk is like a turtle.
Mr. Owen chewed and chewed. 'This is what the sailors make snuff-boxes
and models of ships of,' said he.
'Is this as good as can be got?' I asked.
'As good as the best,' said the captain, looking at it earnestly.
'You'll have plenty to talk about when you get home,' said my old nurse.
'It is strange that science doesn't provide the seamen with food fit
to eat,' said Mr. Owen, helping himself eagerly to a slice of ham. 'I
believe I shall give the subject my attention when I get back.'
'Science doesn't think of sailors, only of ships,' said Captain Burke.
'If I had my way my crew should have a fresh mess every day. But you
can't go to sea _all_ live stock.'
Thus we chatted. I listened with interest and asked questions. It was a
new life to me. Little did I then imagine how fearfully and tragically
deep I was to read into the darkest secrets of it.
During a few days, which carried us to the Madeira latitudes, the
weather continued gloriously fine. A quiet north-westerly wind blew
throughout; the ship leaned gently away from the breeze and rippled
through the blue swell dreamily; all was so quiet aloft, all went
so peacefully on deck. I'd hang over the side for an hour at a time,
viewing the passage of the foam stars and flower-shaped bells, and
wreaths of froth sliding aft into a white line on either hand the
oil-smooth scope of wake; I'd watch with admiration the flight of
the flying fish, glancing from the ship's side like arrows of light
discharged through her metal sheathing; I'd drink in the large and
liberal sweetness of the wind, and stand in the sun that its light
might sink through and through me.
In those few days Mr. Owen assured me the ocean had already done me
good.
'But you are bound to profit,' he said as we walked the deck together,
'because you have not come too late to this physic of climates. People
are sent to sea with one lung gone and the other going, and their
friends wonder they should die, and talk of a voyage to sea as of no
use where there is organic mischief. You are here in good time, Miss
Otway: be that reflection your comfort.'
Then there came a change of weather; a few days of wet gale; green
seas ridging into cliffs upon the bow, and all the discomfort of a
long pitching and tossing bout. But I suffered no longer from sickness
however; I ate and slept well, and spent all the time in the cabin,
reading, working, chatting with Mrs. Burke or her husband, or Mr. Owen.
Captain Burke amused me in these early days by explaining how he worked
out his sights. He gave me a very good idea of the art of navigation;
he and his wife shared a pleasant cabin confronting mine. It was a
little parlour in its way as well as a bedroom, cheerful with oil
paintings of ships, a small collection of china, and other matters
all carefully cleated and otherwise secured. Amongst the pictures was
a cutting in black paper mounted upon white of myself when a child
in my nurse's arms, the lineaments defined by streaks of bronze.
Captain Burke told me that his wife valued that little memorial above
everything in the cabin, including himself and all that they owned
ashore.
He showed me his chronometers and explained their use; placed charts
before me and talked of the places we were to visit, and promised that
I should be able to take sights and work out the latitude and longitude
before we returned home.
He said this at the dinner table during one of those days of wet, foul
weather.
'Miss Otway,' he added, addressing Mr. Owen, 'is just doing what
everyone should do who goes a voyage, whether for entertainment or on
business; she's taking an intelligent interest in whatever's passing.
If everybody who went to sea did that the case of Jack would be
understood, and you'd hear no more of young ladies being astonished on
discovering that sailors look exactly like men.'
'I never could make head nor tail myself,' said Mrs. Burke, 'of my
husband's method of finding out where the ship is.'
'No voyage can ever be dull,' exclaimed Mr. Owen, 'that's sensibly
lived into. Yet every voyage is found dull.'
'There's too much water,' said Mrs. Burke, 'and not enough things to
look at. But dull days have long legs, Miss Marie. Time soon passes,'
said she with a cheery look. 'The top's never spinning so fast as when
it is asleep.'
'There's plenty to look at,' said I. 'I don't like weather that keeps
you under deck; but it can't be always so.'
'Scarce once in a white moon, and never even _that_ for sailors,' said
the captain.
'What,' asked Mr. Owen, 'do you consider the great sights of the sea?'
Captain Burke shut his eyes and scratched the back of his head, then
looking full at me he said:
'What do you think of a ship in full sail, becalmed in the heat of
the fan-shaped reflection of the moon, Miss Otway? Or would you prefer
a whale as big as a brig leaping half out of water with a killer at
its throat? Or what d'ye say to a quadrille of water-spouts, the
white satin shoes on their feet gleaming as they slide, and the black
feathers in their hair nodding stately among the clouds brilliant with
electric gems.'
'How?' inquired Mr. Owen, smoothing his bald head.
'But at sea the less you find to talk about the better,' exclaimed
Captain Burke; 'I'd like my ship's log-book to be as dull as a parson's
tale. Trifles on the ocean become serious in a moment; a slight
deviation from dulness will start a tragedy. Give us no excitements.'
The conversation was ended by his going on deck to send the mate down
to dinner.
The miserable weather came to an end, and then we took the north-east
trades and swept down the Atlantic under wide spaces of canvas which
for many feet overhung the ship's weather side, and she rushed onwards
with the salt smoke blowing from her bows, and that swallow of the
deep, the stormy petrel, freckling in its swarm the wide hollows
betwixt the quartering ridges. For five days we sighted nothing, though
Captain Burke promised that the first homeward-bound ship he met with
willing to back her topsail should receive my letter.
Once during these mornings, on coming on deck after breakfast, I found
the ship steadily washing through the seas with easy bowing motions,
leaving a league-long line of white behind her. We were in hot weather
now; an awning sheltered the quarter-deck, and comfortable chairs were
under it.
It was the improving health in me that gave me the spirit I had; I did
not want to sit; the life of the sea seemed to sweep into my being in
a holiday dance of heart. Now that I could feel without the suffering
that had before prostrated me, the whole vitality of the ship coming
out of the gallant flying fabric of her into the very poise of my form,
with a sense as of waltzing in each compelled motion of the figure, I
found an enjoyment in her buoyant motions, and in the rolling measures
of the surge, beyond anything my poor health had suffered me to know in
the ball-room, beyond all delight fine music had given me.
When we came on deck Mrs. Burke stood a little while with her hand on
my arm, whilst I looked aloft and around; our gaze met; she laughed in
the fulness of some instant emotion of pleasure, and cried:
'Oh, dear Miss Marie, I wish Sir Mortimer could see the light that is
in your eyes at this minute!'
'I wonder,' said I, 'if Dr. Bradshaw and the others foresaw that I
should enjoy this voyage?'
'Are you enjoying it?' she exclaimed eagerly.
'I am constantly pining for home,' I answered, 'and longing--and
longing, to see father and Archie. And yet, somehow, this splendid
sunshine and wonderful scene of sea, this delicious feeling of being
borne through the air, makes me so glad and light-hearted that I
believe the strong tonic of the wind has affected my head.'
'No more than it has mine,' she exclaimed.
'It is like drinking wine in sorrow,' said I; 'the mind seems merry
with it, and the eyes sparkle, but the heart is sad all the same and
will speak presently.'
'I'll tell Mr. Owen how you talk,' said she. 'You're not fair to the
remedy.'
'I don't want to sit,' said I. 'Let me look at the ship this fine
morning: I should like to take a peep at the sailors' parlour. And
suppose we go right into the bows there and watch the glorious white
foam.'
Captain Burke was in his cabin, the surly mate had charge of the ship,
so Mr. Owen accompanied us. There was little to see, however; we went
to the galley and looked in, and here we found the ship's cook making a
pie for the cabin. He was the fat-armed, dough-faced man who had stared
at us with imbecile curiosity when we came on board. It was a queer
little kitchen, not many times larger than a sentry box. Mrs. Burke
asked the man if the oven baked well.
'Too vell, mum,' he answered, turning his face with an expression of
dull surprise upon it at sight of us standing in the galley doorway.
'He's for burning up. He vants too much vatching.'
'How do you like being ship's cook?' said Mr. Owen.
'Almost as much, I dessay, as you likes being ship's doctor,' he
answered.
Mr. Owen looked deaf on a sudden, and, stepping back, found something
to interest him aloft.
'What pie is that?' said Mrs. Burke, who had been casting her eye over
the little interior, with its equipment of shelves, crockery, oven,
coppers and the like, with the critical gaze of an exacting housekeeper.
As she asked the question the ship leaned sharply upon a sea; the
cook staggered with a wild flourish of the knife he was trimming the
pie-crust with; the pie slipped and fell with a crash, breaking in
halves, and out rolled a dishful of preserved gooseberries.
'You can see vat it is for yourself, mum,' said the cook, lancing
his knife at the mess on the deck with a force which drove the blade
quivering into the hard plank. 'Who'd be a blooming ship's cook? This
is the sort of life it is!' and, heedless of our presence, he began
to swear, and then roared out for Bill or some such name--meaning,
I suppose, his mate--that the fellow might come and swab up the
gooseberry puddle.
We walked on to the forecastle.
'That cook's a very insolent fellow,' said Mr. Owen. 'I hope he will
give me the pleasure of prescribing for him.'
'All sea cooks are ill-tempered,' said Mrs. Burke. 'They live in little
boxes like that, and are obliged, for want of room, to stand close
to furnaces all day long, and their livers swell. But their trials
are many. I've heard of a sea striking a galley where the cook was in
it full of the business of the cabin dinner, and washing him and his
kitchen right aft, where he was rescued out of a depth of water as high
as a man's waist holding on for his life to a frying-pan. Cooks ashore
never meet with blows of that sort.'
A number of the crew were at work on various jobs in this part of the
vessel. Two sat upon a sail, stitching at it. Hard by was a little
machine called a spun-yarn winch, merrily clinking, with a boy walking
backwards from it as it yielded the line it twisted.
A man with a marline spike stood in the fore-shrouds working at a
ratline. I looked at everything I saw with interest and attention;
to me it was like the rising of a curtain upon a theatrical show of
incomparable beauty and variety; I found novelty in the very men;
I don't remember that I had ever seen such men on shore, least of
all down by the seaside, where the landsman seeks the sailor and
finds him in anything that wears a jersey and owns a boat. They were
hairy, burnt, wildly dressed, half-naked some of them; their trousers
turned above their knees, their chests bare, mossy, gleaming with
perspiration; arrows in Indian ink pointed like weather-cocks upon
their muscular naked arms as they moved them, and every man's fist was
barbarous with rings in Indian ink and his wrists with blue bracelets.
'Do you see that hole there, Miss Otway?' said Mr. Owen, pointing to
a square hatch in the forecastle deck. 'Those men sleep down in that
hole,' said he.
I drew close to the queer little trap-door to look down, taking care to
hold on to Mrs. Burke; for it was not only that the heave of the ship
was to be felt here in her falls and jumps, lofty as the peaks and deep
as the valleys which underran her: the trade wind stormed in thunder
out of the huge rigid hollow of the fore-course with the weight as of
a whole gale in the sweep of it, flying in long, steady shriekings and
whistlings under the arched foot, and smiting every heave of brine
leaping white above the cathead into crystal smoke.
I gazed into a sort of well, at the bottom of which upon an old green
battered sea-chest sat a sailor. The man had a squint that had almost
twisted each ball of vision into his nose; he was deeply pitted, and
had long, curling, sand-coloured hair and a yellow beard; he was pale
and weedy, with but a little piece of nose in the middle of his face,
and cheek-bones starting through his skin pale with heat, and when he
looked up and continued to stare at us with his desperate squint, he
made me guess how drowned sailors look when their bodies are washed
ashore. He was a sick man and off duty.
'How are you feeling?' the doctor called down to him.
'Oh, dot I vhas kep' togedder mit red-hot corkscrews,' he answered in a
voice that creaked like a sea-gull's note.
'Go on taking your physic,' said Mr. Owen.
'By Gott, yaw, dot vould be easy if der physic vhas rum,' answered
the man with a ghastly smile, continuing to stare up at us with an
occasional snapping blink of his eyelids. 'But der vater in der
bilge--und I gif you all der rats of der ship to be drownt in her
too--vas sweet gombared to him.'
Mr. Owen drew back and the sufferer ceased to speak.
'A nasty attack of sub-acute rheumatism,' the doctor said behind me.
The rest of the sailors were on deck: this man sat alone on his chest
in the bottom of that well, and I pitied the poor solitary wretch from
my heart when I considered how every plunge and sharp movement of the
ship must serve to give a new twist to all those red-hot corkscrews he
complained of. It was too dark below to distinguish more than the man's
figure. I observed the fluctuations of a thin, watery yellow light,
and tasted in the occasional puffs of thick atmosphere that came up a
horrid smell of burning fat.
'Do they cook down there?' I asked.
'It is the fumes of the forecastle lamp Miss Otway smells,' said the
doctor. 'It's fed with the slush the sailors make their puddings with.'
I wished to ask several questions, but the roar of the wind and the
sea silenced me. Mr. Owen took me by one arm, Mrs. Burke by the other,
and we carefully made our way into what is called the ship's head, past
a huge anchor and a little capstan, and ropes taut as harp-strings,
and vibrating with the wild drumming music of the sails whose corners
they confined. The huge bowsprit shot out directly ahead of us. It ran
tapering, and was like the finger of a giant pointing, inviting the
eye to the deep blue distant recess towards which we were rushing, and
which opened like the whole morning upon the sight each time our bows
soared to the foaming summit.
They say that the finest sight in the world is a ship in full sail,
and perhaps it is, but I doubt if there's one in a thousand, one in a
hundred thousand, who has ever seen such a thing; and the reason is
that a ship in full sail means studding sails out on both sides, and
every stitch of the rest of her canvas set, and this figure she can
make only under conditions of wind so rare as to render the spectacle,
as I understand it, something outside the experience of anyone, sailor
or landsman, that ever I have conversed with.
But to my mind there is a finer sight than a ship in full sail: and
that is the view of the vessel you are on board of rushing at you,
thundering at you, for ever charging into the seething troughs of brine
with the white foam scaling her wet and flashing bow, you meanwhile
perched out beyond her, watching her coming at you.
They provided this magnificent treat for me that day. It fell out thus:
I overhung the rail in the head, looking down at the boiling dazzle
there, watching with indescribable delight and wonder the beautiful
sight of the cutwater of the ship, metalled high, sliding through the
brine, bowing till the ivory-white lady that was her figure-head was
depressed almost to the sip of the cloud of foam which the hurl of the
bows sent roaring and flashing far ahead, to rush back in a singing,
seething sheet a moment after when the ship's head lifted upon the next
swelling heave, bright blue till it was charged and out-turned into
a noise and splendour of thunder and snow. Mrs. Burke and the doctor
looked down with me. My old nurse would sometimes turn an eye full of
satisfaction upon my face, which I felt was glowing with the spirit
this rushing ocean picture had kindled. I looked yearningly towards the
bowsprit end and exclaimed:
'Oh, now, if I were a man, to be able to get out there and watch the
ship coming at me!'
'Here comes Captain Burke,' said Mr. Owen.
He had arrived on deck just then, and, seeing us in the bows of the
ship, was advancing.
'Are you going to paint a picture of the "Lady Emma," Miss Otway?'
said he, coming to my side and looking down at the thick and giddy
foam, roaring and spitting sometimes within arm's reach, and throbbing
aft into a wake whose tail went out of sight in the windy blue haze.
'No.'
'You are studying every effect!'
'It is worth leaving home to see this!' said I. 'How fast are we
sailing?'
'Thirteen knots an hour.'
'Miss Marie wishes she was a man, Edward,' said Mrs. Burke.
'All gallant-hearted girls wish that,' said he. 'But why?'
'That she might be able to climb out on to the bowsprit and watch the
"Lady Emma" rushing at her.'
'Is that so, miss?' cried the captain, whipping round upon me with his
Irish briskness and arch merry eyes. I smiled. 'It can be managed if
you please.'
I looked at the long bowsprit forking out into jib-booms far ahead,
with white jibs curving upon it motionless as ice, save when now and
again one or another breathed to the plunge of the ship.
'There must be no risks!' cried Mrs. Burke.
'Chaw!' exclaimed her husband. 'Will you trust yourself in my hands,
Miss Otway?'
'I will indeed.'
He called to the boatswain of the ship, a big seaman with strong red
whiskers and a whistle round his neck: the finest specimen of an
English seaman I ever saw _out_ of a man-of-war; this man who acted
as second mate, though uncertificated, I had once or twice conversed
with when he was on the quarter-deck, and found him very civil and
communicative, and a relief to the eye after leering Mr. Green.
The captain gave him certain directions. He called to a couple of men,
and amongst them--but I am unable to explain their procedure--they
rigged up a chair attached by a tackle to a stay; they bound me
securely in the chair, and by some machinery of ropes they gently and
slowly hauled me on to the bowsprit, the captain and the boatswain
sliding out in company. Mrs. Burke watched us with a countenance of
fright: I felt excessively nervous whilst I was being drawn to the
extremity of the great spar, and held my eyes closed, but did not
shriek nor speak. Indeed, somehow I felt safe, though a landsman might
have regarded my situation as in the last degree perilous.
'Now look at the ship and tell me what you think of her,' said the
captain.
They had got me to the end of the bowsprit sitting very comfortably
and tightly secured in a chair, and the captain and boatswain were on
either hand of me, though what they held on by I don't know. I looked,
and what I saw I shall never forget. For there, right in front of me,
heeled by the shouting wind, was the whole body of the ship, her milky
whiteness, mounting to the royal yards, rounding into violet gloom from
the sun, with gleaming half-moons of blue betwixt each yard, and every
afterbreast sliding under the netted shadow of rigging. I rose high in
my chair above the sea. Under me ran the blue surge sparkling deep and
clear to the bows, where it burst into snowstorms. I commanded a clear
view of the white decks through the arch of the foresail, a hundred
shadows slipped along them as they slanted up and then slanted down
with the rhythmic swing of a pendulum; a hundred fiery lights broke
from all parts as the ship leaned to the sun. The wind was filled with
the music of the rigging: deep organ notes, then a large swelling of
fifes and trumpets, coming in a sudden gust or gun of wind, with a
drum-like roll trembling out of the taut shrouds and backstays, and a
ceaseless bugling in the hollow of the canvas that arched like some
vast pinion close beside me.
They carefully swayed my chair down the bowsprit and got me on to the
forecastle.
'If this don't do you good, Miss Marie,' said my old nurse, extending
her hand to help me on to my feet, 'what will?'