They jumped out on deck into a wind that nearly took their breath
away, and it was as black as the inside of a tar-pot, save where the
sheen of the foam to loo'ard illuminated the darkness. Spray and sleet
slashed through the air, and the wind was as keen as the edge of a
knife--a squall that shrieked in the tautened weather rigging, and
which was playing a devil's tattoo with the clewed-up canvas aloft,
and orders were being volleyed from the bridge which ran clean from
the poop to the fo'c'sle head. "Haul up yer cro'jack! Haul up yer
mains'l! Aloft an' stow!"
The combers were crashing over the weather rail in solid cascades, and
the scupper-ports were not large enough to carry it off. As the big
logy barque did not rise to the seas, the lee side of the main-deck
was awash to the height of the to'gallant rail, and in this bitter,
swirling brine the crew, manning the furling gear, tugged on the
swollen ropes--slipping, washed along and sliding on the sloping
decks--in water up to their waists, while the mate, leaning over the
bridge rail, cursed and flayed them to herculean exertions with bitter
jibes and frightful threats.
The four apprentices and an ordinary seaman went up to the
mizzen-t'gallan's'l, the yard of which had been braced to spill the
sail already clewed up, and with Thompson at the bunt, singing out,
they dug their fingers into the hard, wet canvas in an effort to catch
hold and pick it up. "Now, my sons!" bawled the senior apprentice.
"All together! Sock it to her! Dig your claws into the creases an'
hook her up! What th' hell's a bit of canvas anyway to five husky
men!" But picking up the sail in other blows and picking it up in a
Cape Horn snifter is a horse of another color. Twice they had it
almost on the yard, and twice the squall slatted it away from them.
Donald's fingers were bleeding at the nails and his hands were numb
with the cold, while the ordinary seaman with him on the weather
yard-arm was cursing and whining with the chill and the strenuous
labor. "Pick it up, damn you, pick it up!" shouted Thompson. "Now,
boys, all together!" They dug in, hauled the canvas up bit by bit, and
had almost got it on the yard and ready to pass the gaskets, when
Moore gasped, "Aw, t' hell with it!" and let his portion of sail go.
The wind ballooned the loosened fold and whipped the canvas out of the
others' straining fingers. Thompson gave a growl of rage and instantly
clawed his way along the foot-rope and jack-stay to where Moore hung
inside of Jenkins at the lee yard-arm. "You miserable skulking hound!"
he yelled, kicking Moore savagely with his rubber-booted foot. "I've
a--(kick)--dashed good--(kick)--mind to--(kick)--boot you into
the--(kick)--ruddy drink! You dare let go again while a kid like
McKenzie, half your weight, holds on!"
Whimpering and crying like a baby, Moore bent over the yard while
Jenkins at the lee yard-arm encouraged him by further threats, and the
five began their muzzling work again. "Now then, my sons, up with
her!" yelled Thompson. Beating at the stiff canvas with numb and
bleeding fingers, they fought like devils for hold while the sleet
slashed at their faces and the cold caused their oilskins to become as
rigid as though cut from tin. A hundred feet above the ship, they
struggled desperately on precarious, swaying foot-ropes, leaning over
the jerking yard and using both hands and trusting to finger-hold to
prevent being blown or hurled off. It was strenuous work--work which
called for tenacity of purpose and the exercise of every ounce of
strength, and when, after taking a yard arm at a time, they finally
got the sail rolled up and secured by the turns of the gaskets, they
scrambled into the cross-trees, breathless and utterly exhausted.
Bitter work for boys, truly! But they would be called to more
desperate tasks ere the _Kelvinhaugh_ made to the west'ard of the
Horn!
They scrambled down on deck to be greeted by Mr. Nickerson.
"Where'n Tophet hev you lazy young hounds bin to? Stowin' th'
mizzen-t'gallan's'l, eh? Why, curse yez, I've a mind t' set it again
an' give ye some sail drill!" Scant praise for strenuous
accomplishments! As Donald came aft again--dodging the seas which
were, ever and anon, tumbling over the rail--he felt miserably wet and
cold under his oil-skins and jumped into the half-deck to examine
himself. In spite of the marline which he had tied around his wrists
and over his boots, and the "soul-and-body" lashing around his waist,
his cheap oilskins allowed the water to soak through the shoddy
fabric, and as wet-resisters, they were worthless. Having no others to
wear, he had, perforce, to put up with the discomfort and pray for
fine weather.
During the middle watch the wind stiffened and the _Kelvinhaugh_ was
making heavy weather of the going. The captain was on the poop
watching the ship, and as Donald passed to loo'ard of him to make it
four bells, he had evidence that the Old Man had been having a nip.
The mate, a long, rangy statue in an oilskin coat, sou'westered and
sea-booted, lounged in his favorite corner sucking away at a dry clay
pipe and watching the straining leach of the mizzen upper-tops'l. It
was snowing by now and the flakes could be seen driving athwart the
ship in the light of the skylights and the binnacle. The skipper
turned from the rail over which he had been leaning, and called the
mate to him. Donald, pacing to loo'ard, heard snatches of the
conversation down the wind. "That fella Hinkel," the Old Man was
saying. "No worth his saut as a second mate. He canna be trusted ...
canna dae his wark. When this blow cam' on her he was snoozin'
somewheres ... doesna ken a squall when he sees th' signs ... nae
guid!"
The mate's nasal voice advised, "Hoof th' square-head scum forrad!"
"Aye! Ah'm thinkin' so.... Ye might take him in hond, mister, an'
shunt him oot. Ah'll make the entry in th' log ... incompetent an'
derelict in duty ... that's th' ticket. Tell him at eight bells ...
an' we'll pit Martin in his place ... auld hand and a smert man....
Thompson's too young." Donald could see the tall figure of the mate
straighten up and a saturnine laugh came from his direction. "I'll
shunt him, sir!" he said.
When Donald called the watch prior to eight bells, he told Thompson
the news he had overheard. "Breaking the second mate, is he?"
ejaculated Thompson, gleefully tugging his boots on again over wet
stockings. "Jerusalem! I wouldn't miss the fun for a farm. I'm going
to hang around for a bit afore turning in." They slipped out in the
wake of Moore and Jenkins and just reached the poop-break in time to
hear a furious altercation on the deck above. The second mate was
shouting, "Send me forrad? Send me forrad? Ju candt do id! I my work
know id!" "Ye're a damned bluff from A to Zee!" came Mr. Nickerson's
nasal bawl. "Ye're a boy-bully--a ruddy, no-account squarehead from
Heligoland or Hamburg! You're a common A.B. from this minute, Dutchy,
an' ef ye don't move along off this poop an' forrad where ye belong
I'll help ye with th' toe of my boot! Shift naow! Look nippy!"
There was a sound of oaths and blows in the darkness--a stamp of
sea-booted feet--a guttural curse--and a bulky form came hurtling down
the poop ladder. It was Hinkel, and the boys could see his
face--ferocious in the light from a port-hole. He had been thrown
clear down on the main-deck from the poop, and before he could pick
himself up, Nickerson came flying down on the hand-rails with his
sea-booted feet clear of the steps. In his dive down the ladder, he
landed on the ex-second mate's prone body, and commenced booting him
in a manner supposed to have passed away with the Western Ocean
packet-ships.
"You sojer! You no-sailor, you! You slab-sided gaffer o' Fielding's
gang! I'll work yer old iron up, my son!"--and he kicked Hinkel into
the lee scuppers, where the fellow wallowed in the water attempting to
rise to his feet. "I got yer number, you German sauerkraut! I had it
the night you jammed McKenzie into th' hen-coop! It's an old trick o'
yours, ain't it? Well, here's something--(kick-kick)--for poor little
McFee--(kick-kick)--an' yer hen-coop dodge on the _Orkney Isles_!" He
knocked off, panting, while Hinkel scrambled to his feet and looked
sullenly at the avenging Nickerson.
The men had gathered aft, wondering spectators of the scene, and the
mate swung around and addressed them. "This joker here is dis-rated
an' sent forrad. He's an A.B. from naow out! He's th' squarehead what
served two years in San Quentin penitentiary in 'Frisco for killing a
boy named McFee on the ship _Orkney Isles_! Naow, ye know th' hound,
an' ye'll know haow t' treat him!" Then to Hinkel, "Forrad, you scum,
or I'll help ye! Th' stoo'ard'll shoot yer duds aout in th' morning!"
And Hinkel, with all the fight kicked out of him, slunk away from the
mate's vicinity and disappeared into the darkness.
In the half-deck, after they had pulled off their wet clothes,
Thompson and Donald discussed this momentous incident. "And who was
McFee?" enquired the latter. Thompson wrung out a soaked shirt and
hung it up. "From what I have heard, he was a young first-voyager on a
Glasgow ship called the _Orkney Isles_. He wasn't a bright kid--I
think he was soft in the nut a bit--but he was a 'prentice on that
hooker bound from London to 'Frisco 'bout three years or so ago. It
appears that her second mate--(this Hinkel, I suppose, though he
wasn't called Hinkel then. His name was Hemelfeldt, I think)--got
adown on the kid and almost bullied the life out of him. Off the Horn,
the youngster refused to do something, and this swine jammed him into
the hen-coop and kept him there the whole of a bitter, freezing watch.
The boy had no coat or oilskins on, and he was almost frozen to death.
He took ill, but this bucko hauled him out of his bunk and made him
work around in the wet and the cold at various work-up jobs, and the
little beggar took pneumonia and died. When the ship got to 'Frisco,
the other 'prentices and some of the men complained to the
authorities, and Hinkel or Hemelfeldt was arrested, convicted and
sentenced to two years in a California prison. The way he ill-used
that kid was the talk of the Coast at that time. That's the yarn as I
know it, and I tell you, son, I wouldn't care to be in Hinkel's shoes
from now on. Between the mate and the hands for'ard, his life will be
merry hell from 'naow aout'--as Nickerson says!"
Now commenced a period which Donald and all the hands never wished to
experience again. The savagery of the Horn latitudes in winter-time
buffeted them in all its bitter hellishness, and the heavily laden
barque was smashed and banged about in a manner which beggars
description. Gale succeeded gale, with all their concomitants of
bitter cold, driving sleet and snow, and tremendous seas. Twice they
sighted the lonely light on Cape St. John, and twice they were driven
back to flounder in the big combers and rips of Burdwood Bank, hove-to
under scanty canvas. During the lulls in the gales they would get sail
on her and attempt to make their westing, but the trailing log would
only record a few miles in the desired direction before a blast of
wind and snow would call for strenuous clipping of the _Kelvinhaugh's_
wings. "Clew up! Haul down! Let go! All hands! Aloft and furl!" became
dreaded and commonplace commands. On certain tantalizing occasions the
wind came away fair for a slant and the crew would have a breathing
spell, praying and hoping that they would get around "this time," but
a fresh gale would strike in from another quarter and the weary watch
below would be roused from slumber by the raucous hail of "All hands
wear ship!" And wearing ship was the easiest way to tack her, and an
operation which the _Kelvinhaugh_ made a dirty job of. As the helm was
put up in the smooths, the barque would expose her long, deep
broadside to the mountainous combers, and she seldom wore 'round
without shipping it green the whole length of her. In paying off, and
in coming to the wind on the other tack, the big four-master swung
around so slow that she courted destruction, and several times, the
crew, huddled together on the comparative safety of the poop, never
expected to see her emerge from boarding combers which would bury her
completely from fo'c'sle-head to poop-break.
Added to the cruelty of the weather were the long, dark hours of the
high latitudes in mid-winter, and what little daylight there existed
was as gloomy as night with lowering, leaden skies and the black
squalls slashing out of the west. It was here, in the "stand-by"
latitudes, in fifty-five south, that Donald McKenzie had all the
romantic ideals of sea-faring knocked out of him. It was here where he
learned that he had come to sea to be disillusioned and that romance
existed mainly in the printed page, the picture and the imagination of
boys and poets. The man who writes and sings best of the sea is the
man who has been but little acquainted with the hardship and
monotonous drudgery of a sailor's life. Young McKenzie came to sea to
realize the romance he dreamed of. He had run from fifty-five north to
fifty-five south and retrospection failed to bring out any phase of
his life on the _Kelvinhaugh_ as being anything other than desperately
hard work, relieved by spells of tiring monotony. He slept and ate in
a steel tank with white painted walls pierced by starboard and port
doors and two port-holes, and furnished with a deal table and two
plank seats. Four bunks, two uppers and two lowers, completed the
furnishings of this combined bedroom, dining room and parlor. True,
there was a small bogey stove, but this was more of an ornament than
an article of utility. There was no fuel supplied to keep it alight,
and only on rare occasions (when the boys stole some coal from the
donkey-boiler room, or when some chips and shakings could be secured)
was a fire ever kindled in it. In this cubby-hole, jammed up with four
sea-chests, suitcases, sea-boots on the floor and oilskins and
clothing on the walls, the four lads, "gentlemen rope-haulers," lived
during their hours of relief from duty. The unsheathed steel walls and
overhead beams dripped moisture, which made rusty streaks from the
rivet-heads, or dropped on the upper bunks or to the floor--there to
add their quota of damp discomfort to the salt water which squirted
through the jambs of the door every time she shipped a "green" one.
Chiseled into one of the overhead beams ran the legend--"Certified to
accommodate four seamen." Thompson, with the aid of an indelible ink
pencil had altered this to a more fitting rendition--"Certified to
_suffocate_ four seamen," and in the stormy latitude of fifty-five
south, with doors and ports tight shut, and bedding, blankets and
clothing sopping wet and exuding their own peculiar aroma, mixed with
those of the parrafin-oil lamp, tobacco reek, food, boot-grease and
damp oilskins, the amended version was nearer the truth.
McKenzie's companions, also, were "hard-bitten," or had become so
through the environment. Clad in filthy garments, and unwashed through
lack of fresh water and opportunity, they wolfed their wretched food,
cursed and blasphemed and bullied one another in a manner that would
have shocked their parents. There was little consideration given them
by their superiors and they, in turn, had but little consideration for
each other, though all, except Moore, would do what they could for a
ship-mate in sharing clothing and tobacco. It was a rough comradeship,
but a true one, nevertheless, and while such weaknesses as sympathy or
sentiment were tabooed, yet each would stand by each in a pinch or
time of peril.
For a boy brought up as Donald had been, he had shaped up remarkably
well. He had been bullied and knocked about a great deal more than any
of the other apprentices on the _Kelvinhaugh_, but hardship seemed to
have toughened him and he stood the physical grind as well as the
best--sure evidence of untainted blood and wiry stock of Highland
forebears. Mentally, he had received the greatest gruelling, but, in
addition to quick wit and keen intelligence, he had the rare faculty
of adaptability, and without losing his finer feelings or allowing
them to become demoralized, he fitted himself to his environment, but
kept a leash on his talk and actions which may be summed up in
Thompson's characterization of him--"a dashed clean, plucky little
nipper who always plays the game!"
Clean, plucky, and "playing the game"--a delicately nurtured lad--a
mother's boy--but bred from good stock and holding to his ideals with
true Scotch tenacity--was Donald McKenzie. The romantic aspect of a
sea life had faded away, but there still remained the thought that he,
a lad of sixteen had done things, could do things, that strong, grown
men ashore would hesitate and refuse to tackle. The bitter grind of
seafaring tempered his boyishness and taught him self-reliance and
courage; the rigor of the discipline had taught him to obey without
question, and when a man can obey, he is fitting himself for command.
He had gone through the first degree; had been initiated into the
great fraternity of seafarers, and he knew seafaring for what it
was--shorn of its false romance--a gruelling grind which called for
men of courage, men who were willing to cut themselves adrift from the
comforts and allurements of the land, and who became as a race apart.
With romance shattered, he was willing to stick to the end, to go
through the mill until he reached the goal where he could take
something from the sea which had exacted so much from him. It had
ruthlessly claimed his father and seared the soul of his mother, but
he, an apprentice seaman, was learning its ways, its varying moods,
and as a seaman, he was acquiring the sea-cunning and strategy to use
it for his will. That was his new ideal. He would take something from
the sea which had already exacted so much from him!