HOMEWARD BOUND
There was preaching and singing in the Sailors’ Home of Yokohama on the
evening of my arrival. The white-bearded missionary styled the service a
“mass meeting for Christ.” The beachcombers in attendance were not those
to cavil at names. So long as they were permitted to doze away the
evening in comfortable chairs, “holy Joe” might assign any reason he
chose for their presence, though there were those near me at the back of
the room who grumbled now and then at the monotonous voice that
disturbed their dreams.
No such protest, certainly, rose to the lips of the herculanean Chilian
with whom I had fallen in during the afternoon, for whatever his inner
feelings, they were stifled by his deep-rooted respect for religious
services. One by one, the beachcombers drifted out into the less
strident night; but the South American clung to his place as he would
have stuck to his look-out in a tempestuous sea. Had “holy Joe” been
gifted with a commonplace sense of the fitness of things he might have
held one hearer until the benediction. Late in the evening, however, he
broke off his absorbing dissertation on the Oneness of the Trinity to
assign a hymn, and, stepping down among us, fell to distributing pledges
of the “Royal Naval Temperance Society.”
“Válgame Dios!” breathed the Chilian, as a pamphlet dropped into his
lap. “He asks me to sign the pledge, me, who haven’t had the price of a
thimbleful in two months! This is too much! Vámonos, hombre!” and,
stepping over the back of his chair, he stalked to the door.
In the darkness outside, a cringing creature accosted us. Something in
the whining Italian in which he spoke led me to look more closely at
him. It was the Neapolitan half-caste; more ragged and woe-begone than
ever, and smudged with the dust of the coal bunkers in which he had
stowed away in Kobe harbor.
I told his story to the Chilian as we struck off together towards the
park which I fancied must be our resting-place for the night. The South
American, however, had not been three months “on the beach” without
learning some of the secrets of Yokohama. He marched self-confidently
down the main thoroughfare, past the German and American consulates,
turned a corner at the European post-office, and, brushing along a
well-kept hedge, stopped in the deep shadow of a short driveway. Before
us was a high wooden gate flanked by two taller pillars, beyond which
the thin moonlight disclosed the outlines of a large, two-story
dwelling.
“Look here, friend,” I interposed, “if you’re going to try burglary—”
“Cállete la boca, hombre!” muttered the Chilian. “The patrol will hear
you. Come on,” and, placing both hands on the top of the gate, he
vaulted it as easily as if it had been only half its six feet in height.
I followed, and the half-breed tumbled over after me, his heels beating
a noisy tattoo on the barrier. Once inside, however, the Chilian seemed
to lose all fear of the patrol and crunched along the graveled walk,
talking freely.
“Lucky thing for the beachcombers, this war,” he said; “If there were
peace we’d be sleeping in the park. Suppose the Czar knew he was giving
us posada?” he chuckled, marching around to the back of the building.
There was no sign of life within. Mounting to the back veranda, our
guide snatched open one shutter of a low window. The half-breed was
trembling piteously, though whether from hunger, fatigue, or fear, I
could not know. One needed only to look hard at him to set his teeth
rattling.
But I myself had no longing to be taken for a burglar.
“Here! What’s the game?” I demanded, nudging the Chilian.
“Why, man,” he replied, “this is our hotel, the Russian consulate,” and
he stepped in through the open window.
My misgivings fled. Japan and Russia were at war; the consulate,
therefore, must be unoccupied, and more than that, it was Russian
territory, on which the police of Japan had no more authority than in
Moscow. I swung a leg over the window sill.
“Ascolta!” gasped the half-caste, snatching at my jacket; “Ci sono
gente!”
I paused to listen. From somewhere close at hand came a muffled snort.
“Come on,” laughed the Chilian. “It’s one of the boys, snoring. Several
of them make posada here.”
When we had climbed in and closed the shutter, he struck a match. The
room was entirely unfurnished, but carpeted with grass mats so soft that
a bed would have been superfluous. The Chilian pulled open the door of a
closet and brought forth a candle, pipe, blanket, and a paper novel in
Spanish.
“Of course it’s only the servants’ quarters,” he apologized, spreading
out the blanket and lighting candle and pipe; “the main part of the
house is tight locked. But there’s plenty of room for such of the boys
as I have passed the word to,—sober fellows that won’t burn the place
up.”
He picked up the novel and was still reading when I fell asleep.
Sunlight streaming into my face and the sound of an unfamiliar voice
awakened me in what seemed a short hour afterward. The window by which
we had entered stood wide open, and a Japanese in European garb was
peering in upon us.
“What you make here?” he demanded, as I sprang to my feet. “Come out
quick or I call the police.”
The Chilian stirred and thrust aside the jacket that covered his face.
“Go on way!” he growled, in the first English I had heard from his lips.
“Go on way an’ leave us to sleep.”
“I call the police,” repeated the native.
“Bloody thunder, police!” bawled my partner, sitting up. “Go on way or I
break your face.”
The Jap left hastily.
“Close the shutters,” continued the Chilian, in his own tongue. “Too
early to get up yet. That fellow is from the French consul, who has
charge of this place. He disturbs us every morning, but he can do
nothing.”
Two hours later the Chilian stowed away his property. When the coast was
clear, we climbed the gate and returned to the Home.
Life on the beach in Yokohama might have grown monotonous in the days
that followed but for the necessity of an incessant scramble for rice
and fishes. Out beyond the park were a score of native shops where a
Gargantuan feast of rice and stewed _niku_—meat of uncertain
antecedents—sold for a song. There were times, of course, when we had
not even a song between us; but in the Chinese quarters nearer the
harbor, queued shopkeepers offered an armful of Oriental fruits and the
thin strips of roasted pork popularly known as “rat-tails” for half a
vocal effort. Or, failing this, there were the vendors of _soba_, who
appeared with their push-carts as dusk fell, demanding only two sen for
a bowl of this Japanese macaroni swimming in greasy water, and the use
of a badly-worn pair of chopsticks. The Chilian was versatile, I had
been “busted” before; between us we rarely failed to find the means of
patronizing at least the street vendors before retreating to Russian
territory.
Never had I doubted, on the day of my stroll back from Tokyo, that the
end of August would find me again in “the States.” By the time I had
learned to vault the consulate gate as noiselessly as the Chilian, the
Pacific seemed a far greater barrier. For shipping was dull in Yokohama;
the shipping, that is, of white seamen. That day was rare in which at
least one ship did not weigh anchor; but their crews were Oriental. His
book might be swollen with honorable discharges, his stubby fingers
nimble at making knots and splices; but plain Jack Tar from the western
world was left to knock his heels on the long stone jetty and hurl
stentorian oaths at each departing craft.
A “windjammer,” requiring a new crew, would have solved many personal
problems; and there were three such vessels, two full-rigged ships and a
bark, riding at anchor far out beyond the breakwater. But as far back as
the oldest beachcomber could remember, they had showed no signs of life,
and their gaunt masts and bare yards had long since come to be as
permanent fixtures in the landscape as the eternal hills beyond.
Moreover, rumor had it that the crafts were full-handed. Now and then a
pair of their apprentices dropped into the Home of an evening; more than
one of “the boys,” skirmishing for breakfast in the gray of dawn, had
come upon the light of one of their crews on his beams’ ends in the
gutter of the undignified district beyond the canal. But sober or
besotted, not a man of them dreamed of clearing out; and “the boys” had
long since given up all hope of being called to fill a vacancy.
I had, of course, lost no time in making known my existence at the
American consulate. Captains were not unknown in the legation; not many
moons since, a man had actually been signed on in that very building!
Each interview with the genial consul was full of good cheer; yet, as a
really satisfying portion, good cheer was infinitely inferior to a bowl
of soba. Between pursuing that elusive substance through the streets of
Yokohama and over her suburban hills, and wiping our feet on the mats of
steamship offices of high and low degree, neither the Chilian nor I
found cause to complain of the inactivity of existence.
In one thing the South American was eccentric. He would not beg. Though,
to tell the truth, there was small temptation to be overcome in that
regard; for the Jap is an ardent believer in the old adage anent the
initial dwelling place of charity. Twice we found work in the city, the
first in the press room of one of Japan’s English newspapers, the second
on the wharf. But if the price of living was low, the wage scale was
even more debased; and there were others to partake of our earnings, for
in Yokohama were at least a score of beachcombers with well-developed
appetites, closely banded together in a profit-sharing company.
When work failed, the blanket in the cupboard netted one yen. That gone,
there were a few odds and ends of wearing apparel in my bundle to be
offered up. The Chilian owned two pair of shoes; an extraordinary
amplitude of wardrobe that smacked of foppishness. He felt more
comfortable when the extra pair had been transferred from “holy Joe’s”
keeping to the sagging line above the pawnshop door. When the shoes had
been eaten, intercourse with the broker lapsed. Except for my kodak and
our pipes not a thing remained but the clothes we stood in.
Then came the legacy from “Frisco Kid.” The “Kid” was one of the few
Americans among us. On the first evening that we were forced to retreat
“sobaless” to the Home, he drew me aside for a moment.
“You know,” he whispered, “the _Pliades_ is going out to-night? I’m
going to have a try at sticking away on her, an’ the washee man has a
few of my rags.”
He thrust into my hand a wooden laundry check.
“If I don’t turn up in the morning, the stuff’s yours. So long. I’ll
give ’em your regards in the States.”
At nine next day he had not returned, and, having satisfied the
laundryman with a few coppers borrowed from the missionary, we feasted
royally on the contents of the bundle,—a khaki uniform and two shirts.
It was on Saturday, nearly two weeks after my return from Tokyo, that
the first prospect of escape from Japan presented itself,—a promise from
the consul to speak in my behalf to the captain of a fast mail steamer
to sail a few days later. Therein lay the last hope of completing my
journey in the fifteen months set, and I took care that the consul
should suffer no lapse of memory.
Early the following Monday, the last day of July, I turned in at the
consulate just as two men, absorbed in conversation, emerged. One was
the vice-consul; the other, a man of some fifty years, stalwart of
figure and of a meditative cast of countenance rendered more solemn by
thick-rimmed spectacles, a Quakerish felt hat, and long black locks. I
set him down at once for a missionary, and, with a seaman’s instinctive
aversion for the cloth, stepped aside to let him pass. The vice-consul,
however, catching sight of me as he shook the stranger’s hand, beckoned
to me to approach.
“By the way,” he said, addressing the stranger; “here is an American
sailor who has been hanging around for a couple of weeks, and he has not
been drunk once—”
Obviously not; it takes money even to buy saki.
“Can’t you take him on, captain?”
Captain, indeed! Of what? The mail steamer, perhaps. I stepped forward
eagerly.
“Umph!” said the stranger, looking me over. “On the beach, eh? Why, yes,
I am none too full-handed. But it’s too late to sign him on; my articles
have been endorsed.
“Still,” he went on, “he can come on board and I’ll set him down as a
stowaway, and sign him on when once we’re clear of port.”
“Good!” cried the vice-consul. “There you are! Now don’t loaf and make
us ashamed to ask a favor of the captain next time.”
“Here’s a yen,” said the captain. “Go get something to eat and wait for
me on the jetty.”
I raced away to the Home to invite the Chilian to a farewell luncheon;
then returned to the appointed rendezvous. The day was stormy, and a
dozen downpours drenched me as many times during the seven hours that I
waited. Towards nightfall the captain drove up in a ’rickshaw and,
without giving me the least sign of recognition, stepped into his
launch. As he disappeared in the cabin below, I sprang to the deck of
the craft.
Ten minutes later I should have given something to have been able to
spring back on the wharf. The launch raced at full speed out across the
harbor, past the last steamer riding at anchor, and turned her prow
towards the open sea. Where in the name of Father Neptune was she bound?
I wiped the water from my eyes and gazed in astonishment at the receding
shore. The last tramp was already far astern. The higher waves of the
outer bay caught the tiny craft as she slipped through the mouth of the
breakwater and sent me waltzing about the slippery deck. Had the
long-haired lunatic in the cabin chosen a launch for a sea voyage or—?
Then all at once I understood, and gasped with dismay. Far off through
the driving rain appeared the towering masts of the sailing vessels, and
that one towards which we were headed had her sails bent, ready for
departure. That blessed vice-consul had sentenced me to work my way home
on a windjammer!
[Illustration: The Russian consulate of Yokohama, in which we
“beachcombers” slept]
[Illustration: Japanese types in a temple inclosure]
Dusk was settling over the harbor when the launch bumped against the
ship’s side. The rain had ceased. Several seamen, sprawling about the
forward deck, sprang to their feet as I poked my head over the bulwarks.
“Hooray!” bellowed a stentorian voice, “A new shipmate, lads. Turn out
an’—”
The rest was lost in the resulting uproar. Sailors in every stage of
undress stumbled out of the forecastle; pimple-faced apprentices bobbed
up from amidships; even “Chips” and the sailmaker lost their dignity and
hurried forward, and in the twinkling of an eye I was surrounded by all
hands and the cook.
The “doctor” gave me leave to dry my uniform in the galley, and I
retired to the forecastle to spin my yarn to the excited crew. A general
laugh greeted the account of my meeting with the captain.
“A stowaway, is it!” cried one of the seamen. “There’d be more truth in
sayin’ you was shanghaied. That’s a favorite game with the old man to
cut down expenses an’ square ’imself with the owners. Sign you on! Of
course ’e could if ’e’d wanted. No damn fear! An’ ’im five ’ands short.
Hell, if this was a civilized port not a clearance paper would ’e get
until ’e’d signed on the crew the articles calls for. Howsomever, ’ere
you are, an’ it’s no use kickin’ after you’re ’ung. But it’s a ragged
deal t’ ’ave t’ work your passage ’ome on a windjammer.”
“This tub?” he went on, in answer to my request for information. “Aye,
when I’ve lighted up, I’ll gi’ you ’er story in a pipeful. She’s the
_Glenalvon_, square-rigged ship an’ English built, as you can see wi’
your eyes shut, 1927 tons, solid enough, being all iron but ’er decks
an’ the blocks; but that’s all’s can be said for ’er. This crowd shipped
on ’er out o’ Newcastle two year ago with coal for Iquique, loaded
saltpetre for Yokohama, and she’s bound now for Royal Roads in
ballast—to load wheat for ’ome, like ’nough. With a cargo she’s a good
sailor, an’ ’as made the States in twenty-four days; but with only mud
in ’er bottom an’ foul wi’ barnacles there’s no knowin’. Maybe a month.”
“Countin’ yourself there’s thirty-three on board, one of ’em a woman an’
two of ’em goats. To begin with, there’s the skipper. Ten t’ one you
took ’im for a ‘Christer.’ They all does ashore, but ’e’s a hell of a
way from bein’ one afloat. He’s a bluenoser named Andrews, an’ the
biggest —— that ever come out o’ Halifax. Mind you don’t fall foul of
’im.”
“The mate’s a bluenoser, too, bit longer ’n a belayin’-pin, with no ’air
under ’is cap, an’ no sailorman. Oo ever seen a bald-’ead as was? _’E_
ain’t been caught ’igher aloft these two year ’n the spanker-boom.
“Second mate’s a Irish lad, just got ’is papers an’ a good seaman, but
hazin’ the boys like all these youngish chaps. The doctor’s a Swede,
Chips comes from the same island, an’ Sails is a Dutchman. Then there’s
seven men in the port watch an’ five in the second mate’s, ten
apprentices amidships, only three of ’em big enough t’ be more ’n in the
way, an’ ‘Carrot-top,’ the cabin boy. The skipper’s wife—if she is—is a
scrawny heifer you wouldn’t be seen walkin’ down the Broomielaw with; a
bluenoser, too, some says, but there’s no knowin’, for not a ’and ’as
she spoke these two year. An’ there you ’ave the outfit, four less ’n
when she shipped ’er mud-hook—after losin’ one off the Horn, two
clearin’ out in Chilly, an’ plantin’ my mate in the English cementery up
there on the Bluff.”
By the time my clothes were dry the second mate came forward to assign
me to the starboard watch, and I turned in with my new messmates. That
we were not called until dawn was a sure sign that the day of sailing
had not come. After breakfast four apprentices rowed the captain and his
wife ashore, and we spent the day painting over the side.
Once turned in again, it barely seemed possible that I had fallen asleep
when there came a banging on the iron door of the forecastle and a
blatant bellow of:—
“All hands! Up anchor, ho!”
With only five minutes’ grace to jump into our clothes, we tumbled out
precipitately. Twenty-two men and boys, their heads still heavy with
sleep, grasped the bars of the capstan on the forecastle-head just as
five bells sounded, and for four hours we marched round and round the
creaking apparatus. One man at a steam winch could have raised the
anchor in ten minutes, but here everything was entirely dependent on
man-power; the _Glenalvon_ had not so much as a donkey-engine.
Dawn found us still treading the never-changing circle in time to a
mournful dirge sustained by long-winded members of the crew. The sun
rose and the sweat ran in streams along the bars. Hunger gnawed us
inwardly. The skipper turned out for his morning constitutional, a
steamer slipped by us, at every revolution I caught myself gazing
regretfully across the bay at the flag-pole of the Russian consulate.
Then all at once the second mate, peering over the side, raised a hand.
“Belay all!” bellowed the skipper, from the poop. “Lay aloft, all hands!
Shake ’em out! Man the wheel!”
The crew sprang into the rigging. We loosened a dozen sails and, leaving
a man on each mast to clear the downhauls, slid down on deck again and
sheeted home the topgallants and the lower topsails. Then came a more
arduous task,—to hoist the upper topsail yards. Every human being on
board except the captain and his wife tailed out on the rope; even then
we were not enough. The massive iron yard rose, but only inch by inch,
and every heave seemed to pull our arms half out of their sockets.
Seamen, like Arabs, work best in unison under the inspiration of music.
“Sails,” the _Glenalvon’s_ acknowledged leader in vocal productions,
burst out in a rasping shriek:—
“As I was walkin’ down Ratcliffe Highway.”
All hands caught up the chorus in a roar that the distant cliffs threw
back at us:—
“BLOW! BOYS! BLOW THE MAN DOWN!” heaving together at each repetition of
the word “blow.”
“Sails” continued:—
“A pretty young maid I chanced for to meet.”
“OH! GIVE US SOME TIME TO BLOW THE MAN DOWN!”
“Says she, ‘Young man, will you stand treat?’”
“BLOW! BOYS! BLOW THE MAN DOWN!”
“‘Delighted,’ says I, ‘for a charmer so sweet.’”
“OH! GIVE US SOME TIME TO BLOW THE MAN DOWN!”
The yard rose a bit faster but by no means rapidly. The skipper paced
the poop, cursing us all for blunderers.
“Steward!” he roared, “bring a bottle of grog!”
The “doctor” let go the rope as if it had suddenly turned red-hot, and
ran for the lazaret. A smile of anticipation flitted along the line of
perspiring faces. A promise of double wages for all hands would have
been less effective. The resulting heave took me so by surprise that I
was carried off my feet.
The cook appeared on the quarter-deck, and the skipper snatched the
bottle he carried and examined it attentively. We were too far away to
hear their conversation; but the yard was moving skyward by leaps and
bounds. Then suddenly the lord and master of us all turned and pitched
the bottle into the sea.
“My Gawd!” ran a horrified whisper along the rope. “E’s threw it
overboard. ’E thinks we’re sodgerin’.”
But for the tenacity of a few of us the yard must have come down by the
run.
Inspiration came again, however, for the cook ran off and returned with
a second flagon. The first, it turned out, had a tiny hole in the bottom
and was empty.
The topsail was quickly sheeted home and I lined up with the rest before
the galley-door to drink my “three fingers” of extremely poor whiskey.
Then, breaking up into smaller groups, we hoisted the “fore-and-afters,”
and, when we turned in for breakfast an hour late, weak and ugly from
hunger, the _Glenalvon_ was carrying every stitch of canvas but the
three royals and her cross-jack.
“At least,” I told myself, rubbing my aching arms between mouthfuls of
watery “scouse,” “we’re off, and the worst is over.”
Which proved only how little I knew of the vagaries of “windjammers.”
Tokyo Bay, shaped like a whiskey bottle with the neck turned westward,
is so nearly land-locked that few masters of sailing vessels attempt to
beat their way out of it. When we had begun to heave anchor a fair wind
promised to carry the _Glenalvon_ straight out to sea. By dawn, however,
it had shifted and before grog had been served it blew from exactly the
opposite point of the compass. Nothing was left but to tack back and
forth against it. A bellow summoned us on deck before breakfast was half
over, to go about ship. A few more mouthfuls and a short pipe and we
wore ship again. But it was no use. The head wind increased, the bay was
narrow; on the third tack the skipper ventured too close ashore, lost
his head, and roared out an order:—
“Let go the anchor!”
The “mud-hook” dropped with a mighty roar and rattle of cable; the
fore-and-aft sails came down with a run; ropes screamed through the
blocks; the topsail yards fell with a crash; the topgallants bellied out
and snapped in the breeze with the boom of cannon; the blocks at the
corners of fore and main sails threshed about our heads; ropes and steel
cables of every size squirmed about the decks, snatching us off our feet
and slashing us in the faces; pulleys, belaying-pins, apprentices, and
goats sprawled in every direction. It seemed, as a seaman put it, that
“all hell had been let loose”; and in three minutes the work of five
arduous hours had been utterly undone.
When the uproar had abated we took up the task of reducing the chaos to
order; furled the sails, squared the yards, coiled up the thousand and
one ropes that carpeted the deck, manned the pump and washed down. To an
unbiased observer this would have seemed work enough for one day, but
after a bare half-hour for dinner we were routed out once more and sent
over the side with our paint-pots.
Exactly this same experience—without the grog—befell us the next day,
and the next, and the next. It came to be our regular existence, this
being called soon after midnight to man the capstan, and to work
incessantly until twilight fell. Day after day the wind blew steadily in
at the mouth of the bottle, barely veering a point; and, what was most
regrettable, it was just the breeze to send us flying homeward, once we
were out of the bay. My shipmates were less downcast than I, for it
mattered little to them whether they earned their wages in Tokyo Bay or
on the open sea. But even they began in time to grumble at the long
hours and to curse the captain for his parsimony in refusing to charter
a tug.
A week went by. The bark that had long ridden at anchor near the
_Glenalvon_ towed out to sea and sailed away. The mail steamer glided by
so close that the Chilian hailed me from her forecastle-head. A dozen
craft went in and out, and still the peerless cone of Fujiyama gazed
down upon us. Had there been any chance of the request being granted, I
should long since have craved to be set ashore.
There were ominous whispers in the forecastle that it was dangerous to
be forever tacking back and forth in Tokyo Bay. Nor was such gossip
idle. One morning, after the usual fiasco, we dropped anchor not far
from the northern shore. Immediately a small Japanese war-vessel steamed
out and hailed us; but her officers spoke no English, and our captain,
consigning them all to purgatory, turned down into his cabin. He was up
again in short order and what he saw caused his jaw to sag and his
rugged countenance to take on a sickly green pallor. Just beneath our
bow, a half-ship’s length ahead, the Japs had anchored a small buoy
bearing the red flag that indicates the presence of a submarine mine.
The “old man” did not wait for a repetition of the offer of the Japanese
to tow him to a safer anchorage. The crew manned the capstan with
unusual alacrity and a cable was quickly made fast to the stern
bollards. At the very moment, however, when we were beginning to
congratulate ourselves on a narrow escape, the cable parted. Urged on by
half a gale, the _Glenalvon_ commenced to drift rapidly and unerringly
towards the red flag. For one brief moment pandemonium reigned.
“Carrot-top” and half the apprentices were for jumping overboard; but
the foremast hands behaved like men, and a second cable was made fast
just in time.
For all this experience Captain Andrews persisted in his attempt to beat
out of the bay. The harbor of Yokohama came to be a sight odious to all
on board, the crew was worn out in body and spirit, I began to despair
of ever again taking up the well-fed existence of a landsman, and all
because our niggardly skipper had set his heart on saving a paltry sixty
pounds. But he was forced to yield at last, and all hands rejoiced that
his miserliness had recoiled on his own head. On the morning of August
eleventh we turned out to heave anchor for the tenth time. The skipper
had been rowed ashore the afternoon before and a tug was waiting to take
us in tow. Late in the day she dropped us outside the narrows and when
night fell the _Glenalvon_, under all sail, was tossing on the open sea.
Officially my presence on board was still unknown. Next morning, as the
starboard watch was about to turn in, I received an order to lay aft.
The skipper was sitting at the cabin table with the open log before him.
“Here’s the entry I’ve just made,” he said, as I stepped in. “This
morning, soon after losing sight of land, a stowaway was discovered on
board, who gives the name of H. Franck, nationality, American, and
profession, seaman. He has been turned to with the crew and entered on
the articles with the rating of A.B., at one pound a month”—my shipmates
drew three—“under the maritime regulations covering such cases.”
I touched the pen with which the captain had inscribed my name on the
articles, muttered a “thank you,” and returned to the forecastle.
[Illustration: Yokohama street decorated for the Taft party. The display
is entirely private and shows the general good will of the Japanese
toward the United States]
My signing on was by no means the last episode to break the monotony of
the voyage. In fact, unexpected episodes came with such frequency during
the trip that even they in time grew monotonous. First of all, the
breeze that had held us bottled up for twelve days shifted to a head
wind that soon increased to a gale. For more than a week it blew
steadily from the same quarter, varying only in violence. Rain poured
almost incessantly. Lashed by the storm, the sea rose mountains high,
and the ship, being in ballast, reared like a cowboy’s broncho, or lay
on her beams’ ends like a mortally wounded creature. There was no
standing on the deck. The best pair of sealegs was as useless as the
wabbly shanks of a landlubber. We moved about like chamois on a mountain
peak, springing from bollard to bulwarks and from bulwarks to hatch
combing, or dragging ourselves hand over hand along the braces to
windward. A steady gale would have made life less burdensome, for so
erratic was the weather that every square of canvas from the
mizzen-royal to the flying-jib must be furled, reefed, and shaken out
again a dozen times a day. The bellow to lay aloft was forever ringing
in our ears; we lived in the rigging, like apes in their tree tops. If
the trimming of sails languished for a moment, there was a standing
order to go about ship as often as men enough for the manœuvre reached
the deck.
It was a submarine task, this wearing ship. The lee braces rarely
appeared above the water line, and, once tailed out on them, every man
clung to his rope like grim death, for it was literally his only hold on
life; to let go meant a short shift to Davy Jones’ locker. With every
roll the sea swept high above our heads and left us floundering in the
scuppers like fish strung on a line. There were no rousing “chanties” to
cheer us on, for not even the sailmaker could air his vocal
accomplishments to advantage under water. But even without such
inspiration no man thought of loafing at the lee braces; and more than
once we took “a long pull and a strong pull” before the ship righted and
brought us sputtering and choking to the surface. Out on the jib-boom
the duckings were of even longer duration, for there one went down,
down, down into the cool, green depths of the sea until the world above
seemed lost to memory.
There were chronic pessimists on board the _Glenalvon_, there were
several who posed as infallible prophets in maritime matters; but it is
certain that not one of the ship’s company had anticipated any such trip
as this. Word drifted forward that the “old man” swore never before to
have known such weather on the north Pacific. All hands took solemn oath
that rounding the Horn had been a house-boat excursion in comparison. In
the forecastle the conviction grew that there was a “Jonah” on board.
The identity of the culprit came to be the question of the hour.
Gradually the crew broke up into three contending factions. One group
accused me, as a newcomer, of being the hoodoo, another regarded the
bald-headed mate as the source of evil, while the suspicions of the
third fell on the one-eyed goat. The varying notions gave rise to many a
heated debate, to mutual vituperation, and occasional blows; but the
real cause of our misery was never clearly established.
The head wind, the pouring rain, and the intermittent gales continued,
not only for days but for weeks. The weather turned bitter cold. Unable
to hold to her course, the _Glenalvon_ ran “by the wind” far to the
north. One night on the second week out the one-eyed goat froze to
death. With only my khaki uniform I should have suffered a similar fate
but for the kindness of a shipmate, who, having purchased at auction the
clothing of the man lost off the Horn, and being deterred by a seaman’s
superstition from wearing a “dead man’s gear” on the same voyage, put
the garments at my disposal. In the thickest raiment we shivered at
noonday; no man’s chest contained sufficient wardrobe to keep him warm
during the long night watches.
A mere enumeration of the hardships and misfortunes that befell the
_Glenalvon_ during that voyage would draw out this yarn to unprecedented
length. We slept in wooden bins with a sack of chaff at the bottom, and
lashed ourselves fast to keep from being thrown out on the deck. The
condition of the beds mattered little, though, for we rarely found
opportunity to occupy them. The skipper worked his crew like
galley-slaves because it was his nature to do so; the bald-headed mate
kept the starboard watch on deck two-thirds of the time because he had a
grudge against the second mate that included even the men under him.
Every garment forward of the mainmast was dripping wet or frozen from
one week’s end to the other. The rigging was coated with ice from
bulwarks to masthead. The sails were frozen as stiff as sheet iron and
reduced our fingers to mere bleeding stumps. The food in the lazaret
fell so low that we were reduced to half rations; which was as well,
perhaps, for the stuff had been on board for more than two years and
there was not an ounce of it that could not be smelled from the royal
yard, as it passed from galley to forecastle. The “salt horse” was
worm-eaten, the pork putrid; the man who split open a sea biscuit and
found therein less than a dozen weevils carried it around to his mates
as a curiosity. The biscuits in one cask, broached towards the end of
the voyage, were stamped with the date 1878.
The effect of this delectable diet was an epidemic of boils. As many as
five men were laid up at a time from this cause, even though the skipper
refused to enter on the sick-list any one with less than a dozen. An old
Welchman in the port watch displayed forty-two at one time. Having
joined the ship more recently, I escaped the attack, but with that
single exception not a sailor nor an apprentice was spared, and even the
second mate appeared one morning with a shame-faced air and a bandage
peeping out from the sleeve of his ulster.
Accidents were as common as boils. But for the fact that a seaman prides
himself on indifference to minor injuries, there would have been nothing
left but to heave to and turn the craft into a floating hospital. The
stoutest apprentice was struck on the head by a flying block and
rendered senseless for days. A burly Swede, the best seaman on board,
clung too zealously to a tack sheet, which, yanking his hands through a
hawser hole, broke his right arm. Looking forward to an easy passage,
the captain had rigged out the ship in her oldest suit of sails. One by
one the gale reduced them to ribbons. The bursting of canvas sounded
above the roar of every storm. As each sail went, new ones of
double-weight canvas were dragged from the locker and hoisted aloft. It
was ticklish work to bend a sail on the icy yards, with the foot-rope
slippery and every line frozen stiff, while the ship swung back and
forth far below like a cork on the end of a stick. Every sail of the
“soft-weather suit” carried away before that unchanging head wind and
even the new canvas could not always withstand its violence. Between
Yokohama and Royal Roads the _Glenalvon_ lost no fewer than twenty-seven
sails.
The most dismal day of the voyage was the second of September. About
seven bells of the morning watch, the mate, fearing a blow, let go about
half the canvas. All of it except the fore-royal had been furled when I
returned the “scow-pans” to the galley. It was then about three minutes
to eight bells, and under ordinary circumstances the flying royal would
have been left for the next watch. There were, however, in the port
watch, two apprentices, nearly out of their time, who had won the enmity
of the first mate.
“What the devil are you hanging back for?” he shouted, advancing upon
them. “Lay aloft and furl that royal!”
The apprentices mounted, muttering to themselves. Eight bells sounded
before they were halfway up the mast. Squirming out on the yard, one
hundred and sixty feet above the deck, they took in the slack of the
sheet. But their anger, evidently, had not abated, for one, grasping a
gasket, wound it once round the sail, and yanked savagely at it. The
rope carried away. With flying arms the apprentice fell head foremost,
struck on a back-stay, bounded against the foresail, and crashed on the
deck a few feet from the forecastle door. His brains washed away in the
scuppers.
One by one the crew slunk into the forecastle, shuddering or grumbling.
Soon, however, there came a summons for all hands to lay aft. We
hastened to execute the order. The captain, no doubt, wished to express
his sorrow at the misfortune. He stood at the break of the poop, puffing
fiercely at a huge, black cigar; and not a word did he utter until every
man had assembled.
Then, stepping to the rail, he raised a clenched fist and bellowed:—“Why
the bloody hell don’t you damn fools be careful! Don’t you know we’re
short-handed already? Lay aloft, a couple of hands, to furl that
royal—and clean up that mess forward.”
On the eighth of September we crossed the meridian less than half a
degree south of the Aleutian Islands. During the week ending that noon
we had been routed out from every watch below, we had pulled and hauled
and reefed and furled times without number, and we had covered just
sixty miles!
But on that day the Jonah weakened, for the wind turned northerly, and,
though the gale continued, the _Glenalvon_ caught the breeze on her beam
and raced homeward like a steamer. The invalids began to pick up, though
the garbage doled out to us was as nauseating as ever. Then came an
unlooked-for catastrophe to depress our rising spirits. The tobacco gave
out! Those fortunate beings who had a plug laid away would not have sold
it for its weight in gold. They chewed each quid for half a day and
stuck it up on the bulkhead above their bunks, smoking it when it had
dried. The Swede gave a suit of clothes, a sou’wester, and a half-worn
pair of shoes for two cubic inches of the weed. Another offered a
month’s wages for a like amount and was deterred from carrying out the
transaction only because the skipper refused to note it in the articles.
The tobaccoless smoked the ground beans that passed for coffee—or tea,
according to the hour; and, when the “doctor” refused longer to supply
the stuff, they smoked rope-yarns and scraps of leather picked up in the
rubbish under the forecastle-head.
It must not be supposed that our labors were confined to the mere task
of sailing the vessel. Far from it. The “old man” begrudged every sailor
his watch below; he would have died of apoplexy had he caught one of us
loafing during his watch on deck. He was a firm believer in the
rust-eaten adage, “Six days shalt thou labor and do all that thou art
able; and, on the seventh,—holystone the deck and scrape the cable.” We
did both these things and a great many more. It mattered not in the
least whether the watch had been robbed of its “time below” for several
consecutive days, there must be no idling during “ship’s time.” On this
passage of the Pacific there was not a day that the _Glenalvon_ carried
the same canvas steadily for four hours; yet we found time during the
trip to paint the entire hold from keel to deck, to overhaul every yard
of rigging, to chip and rub off with sand and canvas all paint above
decks and daub on a new coat, to scour and oil every link of the cable,
to overhaul the capstan, and to braid rope-yarns enough to have supplied
the British merchant marine for a twelvemonth to come. When all else
failed we were sent down in the hold to sop up the saltpetre saturated
bilge-water,—and lost most of the skin on our hands in consequence.
There was no getting the upper hand of Captain Andrews. One memorable
day when the wind held good for a few hours and even the second mate was
gazing helplessly at several unoccupied seamen, the “old man” gathered
the watch together and dragged out of the hold the “automobarnacles.” It
was a contrivance not unlike a wagon-box fitted with great stiff
brushes, designed to do the work ordinarily accomplished in dry dock.
With a rope attached to each end the thing was thrown over the side and
dragged back and forth under the hull, each circuit leaving the crew
blue in the face and often tearing asunder two barnacles as huge as
snail shells.
On the nineteenth day of September the rumor drifted forward that we
were nearing port. There was no confirming it. The dignity of the
quarter-deck requires that the skipper shall permit information of this
sort to leak out only in such a way that it cannot be traced to him. The
pessimists in the forecastle swore that the voyage was not half over,
the conservatives vowed that we were still several days’ run from the
coast; but for all that, an unwonted excitement prevailed on board.
In the middle of the afternoon watch all disputes were settled by an
order to get the anchor over the side. It needed no cursing to arouse
every man to his best efforts. The watch below forgot their sleepiness
and turned out to scramble into the rigging, laughing childishly. In
record time the anchor swung from the cathead and we waited impatiently
for signs of land.
But the fog horn had been croaking at regular intervals for days. The
best pair of eyes could not have made out a mountain a ship’s length
away. Moreover, the skipper was none too sure of his whereabouts; his
reckonings, like those of many a “windjammer’s” captain, were fully as
much dependent on guesswork as mathematics. At four bells, therefore, we
wore ship and ran due north. At midnight we went about again, and for
two days we beat up and down the coast, while the crew nibbled
worm-eaten biscuits in helpless rage.
On the twenty-first the gale died down to a moderate breeze and we hove
to as near the entrance to Puget Sound as the skipper’s reckoning
permitted. In the early afternoon the fog thinned and lifted, and a
mighty cheer from the watch on duty brought every other man tumbling out
of his bunk. A few miles off to starboard a rocky promontory rose
slowly, throwing off the gray mist like a giant freeing himself of a
cumbersome garment. A tug hovering under the lee shore spied the
flapping canvas of the _Glenalvon_ and darted out to meet us.
As the tow-line slipped over the bollards, the first bit of news from
the outer world passed between our skipper and the tug captain.
“Is the —— in yet?” bellowed the former, naming the bark that had passed
us in Tokyo Bay.
“Aye,” came back the answer, “three weeks ago—”
A sizzling oath mounted to the lips of the “old man.”
“You’re down for lost, captain,” continued the newcomer. “She reported
you aground on Saratoga Spit.”
“Aground hell!” roared our beloved commander, “Though we’ve struck
everything but ground, and no bloody mistake.”
All night long the tug strained at the hawser, while the second mate,
dreading the loss of his reputation as a “hazer,” called upon us to trim
the bare yards each time the light breeze shifted a point. In the
afternoon we dropped anchor in a quiet cove close off a wooded shore
decorated by several wigwams, and the “old man,” being rowed ashore,
returned at dusk with a side of fresh beef and a box of plug tobacco.
The next morning I turned to with the crew as usual and toiled from
daylight to dark. No hint of relief having reached me by the next
afternoon, I marched aft and asked for my release.
“What’s your hurry?” demanded the skipper. “I’ll sign you on at full
wages and you can make the trip home in her.”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” I answered, “but I’m home now, once I get
ashore.”
“Aye!” snorted the captain, “And in three days you’ll be on the beach
and howling to sign on again. I can’t sign you off here, anyway, without
paying port dues. Turn to with the crew until she’s dumped her ballast
and tied up in Tacoma, and I’ll give you your board-of-trade discharge.”
I protested against such a delay as forcibly as the circumstances
permitted.
“Huh! That’s it!” growled the master. “Every man jack of you with the
price of a drink coming to him puts his helm hard down if a shift of
work turns up. Well, to-morrow’s Sunday. I’ll get some money of the
agents when I go ashore and pay you off on Monday morning. But I’ll have
to set you down on the log as a deserter.”
“Very good, sir,” I answered.
Fifty-seven days after boarding the _Glenalvon_ I bade farewell to her
crew. Dressed in khaki uniform and an ancient pair of sea boots that had
cost me four messes of plum duff, I landed with the captain at a rocky
point on the further side of the cove. He marched before me until we had
reached the door of an isolated saloon, then turned and dropped into my
hand seven and a half dollars.
“I’ve brought you here,” he said, “to save you from losing your wages to
those sharks down there in Squiremouth. You must be back on board by
to-morrow night.”
“Eh!” I gasped.
“Oh, I have to tell you that,” snapped the skipper, “or I can’t set you
down as a deserter,” and, pushing aside the swinging doors before him,
he disappeared.
I plodded on towards the city of Victoria. The joy of being on land once
more, above all of being my own master, was so acute that it was with
difficulty that I refrained from cutting a caper in the public highway.
For once I realized the full strength of that instinct which drives the
seaman on the day he is paid off from a long voyage to plunge headlong
into the wildest excesses of dissipation.
In reality I was still in a foreign land; yet how every detail about me
suggested the fatherland from which I had so long been absent. The
wooden sidewalk drumming under my boots; the cozy houses, roofed with
shingles instead of tiles, and each standing with retiring modesty in
its own green lawn; the tinkle of cow-bells in neighboring pastures—a
hundred unimportances, that passed unheeded when I dwelt among them,
stood forth to call up reminiscences of my pre-wandering existence. In
Victoria every passer-by seemed a long-lost friend, so familiar did each
look in feature, garb, and actions. All that day, as often as I heard a
voice behind me, I whirled about and stared at the speaker, utterly
astonished that he should be speaking English.
I caught the night boat for Seattle and landed at midnight in my native
land after an absence of four hundred and sixty-six days. For two days
following I did little but sleep, then set out one evening to “beat my
way” eastward, landing in Spokane the second night thereafter. My wages
as a seaman being nearly exhausted, I put up at the “Ondawa Workingman’s
Inn,” purchased a job at an employment agency, and spent a week “bucking
the concrete board” for J. Kennedy, a bustling Irish contractor to whom
Spokane is indebted for most of her sidewalks. At the end of that time I
turned over another dollar to the employment agency and shipped as a
railway laborer to Paola, Montana. The train halted at midnight at the
station named, an isolated shanty in a wild mountain gorge; but, having
no desire to tramp ten miles across the parched foothills to the camp of
the contractor, I went on, like several of the “agency gang,” by the
same train—this time crouched on the steps of a Pullman car. My
companions dropped off one by one as the night air set their teeth
chattering, but I clung to my place until daylight came and the
conductor, raising the vestibule floor above my head, invited me to “hit
the grit.”
A four-mile walk brought me to Havre. From one of its restaurants I had
barely emerged when a ranchman accosted me. When night fell I was
speeding eastward in charge of seven car-loads of cattle. Six days later
I turned the animals over to the tender mercies of a packing-house in
Chicago, and, on the morning of October fourteenth, entered the portals
of my paternal home.
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Transcriber’s note:
1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.