Six weeks of desperate effort! Six weeks of plunging in Cape Horn
"graybeards," during which time the _Kelvinhaugh's_ crew plumbed the
depths of physical and mental misery; physical--in the savagery of the
weather, the ceaseless grind of back-breaking labor and the
wretchedness of living conditions; mental--in the seemingly endless
succession of gales thwarting their passage of the stormy corner at
the foot of the world and the relentless tyranny of the hard-driving
Nova Scotian mate. When they retired to the comparative comfort of
their sopping bunks praying for a rest, it was Nickerson who roused
them out and drove them from task to task with lurid oaths and fearful
threats. And they knew his threats were not idle phrasings--many a
skulker had felt the weight of his fist and boot. "Rest?" he would
voice their mental desires. "Rest when ye're dead. Ye'll have rest
enough then, by Godfrey!"
Day after day, with the yards on the backstays, clawing along in the
teeth of the westerlies, under all the driving sail the wind would
allow, the _Kelvinhaugh_ traced a spider's web of traverses in the
area bounded by sixty and seventy degrees west longitude and
fifty-four to fifty-eight south latitude, and failed to win past the
desired meridian. Captain Muirhead proved in those days of stress to
be "poor iron." He was vacillating and easily discouraged, and, worst
of all faults in a ship-master, he was endeavoring to stiffen his
nerve with excessive drinking. When the whisky was in him he forgot
his worries, and as the days crept along with no change in the
weather, he betook himself more and more to his liquid solace, and
left the sailing of the ship to the mate.
In the intervals between "bouts," Captain Muirhead would show his
weakness as a commander by seeking affirmative advice from the Nova
Scotian. "Don't ye think, mister, it would be a guid notion tae square
away an' mak' a runnin' passage of it to the east'ard by the Cape an'
across the Indian Ocean an' th' Pacific?" or "Would it no be better
tae knock off an' put in tae Port Stanley in th' Falklands an' lie
there 'til the edge is aff this awfu' weather?" To these suggestions
the mate gave but one answer, "Sock it to her an' drive her around!"
To this the master would shrug his shoulders and protest querulously,
"Ye canna do that wi' this ship, mister! She's no built fur drivin'!
Ef she was a double-stayed ship an' wi' a big crowd for'ard, ye micht,
but drive her, an' she'll shed her sticks or she'll dive tae th'
bottom. She's no sea-kindly. She's a long, heavy, logey barge wi' nae
lift tae her. Pit sail tae her an' she'll jist scoff everything aff
her decks. She's a lubberly, meeserable bitch of a scow, an' if it
wasna that I was on a lee-shore an' jammed in a clinch I'd never ha'
took her.... Nickerson, ma laud, never let an owner get a grup on ye!
Ef ye do, ye're done! Aye ... done!" When he had liquor in him, the
Old Man was unusually talkative and hinted at things which Nickerson
noted carefully.
The mate undertook to drive her one day when the skipper was below,
"keeled over" by an unusually stiff bout with the bottle. Under three
t'gallants'ls he was ratching her to windward in a heavy wind and a
"nose-end" sea, when the barque took a dive into a towering
"greybeard" which thundered over the fo'c'sle-head, buried the for'ard
house and stove-in the fore-hatch. Another sea would have finished her
had it been allowed to pour its tons of chilly brine down into the
uncovered hold, but Nickerson had the helm up and the barque wore
round and running before the wind ere such a disaster could happen.
When the Old Man heard of it, he made a noisy, but weak, remonstrance,
and celebrated the escape from Davy Jones' locker by another solitary
spree.
Under the grind of the ceaseless gales, the bitter cold, and the
continual round of laborious work in water and wet clothing, the crew
began to play out. Seldom a watch reported aft but one or two of their
numbers were in their sodden bunks useless through rheumatism, cramps,
sea-water boils, shivering fits, bruises or sheer exhaustion. The
panderers to shore vices collapsed under the drilling of Cape Stiff
and they received scant consideration. Nickerson or Martin would go
for'ard and diagnose the case. If the sufferer was fit to pull on a
rope--out he would have to come--sick or not. Skulkers and sufferers
from "Cape Horn fever" had their ailment quickly cured by the "laying
on of hands" or "repeated applications of sea-boot." Sick men received
the best treatment the medicine chest and the ship could
afford--enough to bring them on deck when the necessity arose.
The former second mate, Hinkel, went through a severe drilling.
Loathed and despised by the men among whom he was forced to live;
bullied by the Britishers and treated with contempt by the "Dutchmen"
and "Dagoes," his watches below were but little better than his
watches on deck under the eagle eye and scorching tongue of the young
Nova Scotian mate. Nickerson roused him around with a vengeance, and
the man had his crimes rowelled into him when the mate "rode him down"
and used the spurs. Tender-hearted little McKenzie was really sorry
for his late tormentor, but he had miseries of his own to keep his
sympathies for.
The boy was suffering terribly through the wretched clothes he had
been supplied with. He was never dry during the knocking about off the
Horn, and his feet and fingers were chilblained with the cold. He had
waited on the captain and asked for a re-fit from the slop-chest, but
the Old Man curtly dismissed his plea by stating sourly, "Mister
McKenzie told me that the rig he bought ye was tae do ye th' trip
until we were bound hame. He'll no pay me for onything I may gie ye
oot ma slop-kist. Awa' wi ye an' start a tarpaulin muster with yer
pals in th' hauf-deck!" Thompson and Jenkins spared what they could.
The sullen Moore made no offers.
One bitter day the mate found him huddled in the lee of the
chart-house crying with the misery of sodden clothing and aching
fingers and toes. His sea-boots had burst from their soles and he had
"frapped" and covered them with strips of canvas and old socks. His
oilskins were patched and coated with pitch and oil to render them
waterproof, and upon his hands he had a pair of discarded woollen
socks as mittens. The officer stood and scrutinized the little pinched
face peering from under the thatch of a painted sou'wester, and his
eagle eye spied the tears and the make-shift clothing. "Hell's
delight, boy, but is that the best rig you kin muster for this
weather? Hev ye bin pipin' yer eye?" He spoke harshly.
"No, sir," replied Donald, straightening up. "The wind was making my
eyes water. I'm all right, sir!"
The young Nova Scotian looked at him for a moment and then his stern
face lit up with a smile of almost brotherly affection--and smiles on
Nickerson's face were rare in fifty-six south. Stepping up to the lad,
he put his arm over his shoulder in a big brotherly way. "Dern my
stars'n eyes, son, but you've got grit, guts'n sand in that skinny
carcase of yours. I like your style, sonny--blister me ef I don't!
Wouldn't the Old Man give you a new rig from the slop-chest?" Donald
told of the skipper's charity and the mate's face resumed its stern
saturnine look. He was silent for a moment. "Come below with me,
sonny, and we'll try and square up that pierhead rig of yours." And
Donald followed him down to the saloon and along to the steward's
quarters.
"Looky here, Johnson," said Nickerson sharply to that individual,
"open up that slop-chest an' give this nipper a full rig-out!"
The steward stared. "Why, sir, I--I cawn't do that," he stammered.
"The slawps belong to the kepting, sir, h'an 'e gyve h'orders, sir,
that McKenzie 'ere wos not to be h'allowed to dror anyfink--"
The masterful mate interrupted sternly, "Naow, looky-here, you
stew-pot walloper, you'll jest bloody well do as I tell you, or I'll
trim yer hair. I don't care a tinker's dam what the 'kepting' has
said. I'm not agoin' to allow this here youngster to freeze to death
on a Scotch lime-juicer's charity. You give him the duds pronto, an'
you kin charge them up to his uncle--the owner of this packet!" And he
concluded by fixing the steward with a ferocious scowl and the
familiar spur to action, "Look slippy naow!" And Donald went into the
half-deck with a full kit of fairly good gear, which he donned with
heartfelt thanks to the mate, and some little, but not much,
trepidation as to what the captain would say about the forcible
commandeering of his treasured "slops."
However, as events turned out, the captain was put in a position where
his remarks would carry but little weight. For weeks he had been
drinking heavily and the navigation of the ship had been left almost
entirely to the mate. He kept to his quarters in the after cabin,
sitting before the stove soaking himself in whisky and hot water. When
he came on deck, it was to curse the ship and the weather, and to
suggest putting the barque before it for a run around the world to the
east'ard, or to put into the Falklands. After making these
suggestions, he would retire to the warm stove and the "mountain dew"
again.
One morning at the change of the watch, when the barque was rolling
scuppers-under in an ominous Cape Horn calm, Mr. Nickerson and Martin
called their respective watches aft. The mate leaned over the poop
rail and addressed them. "Men," he said quietly, "the master of this
hooker is continually drunk and incapable of handling the ship. Naow,
we want t' git along, and I cal'late I kin git her along. Mister
Martin and I have talked the matter over, and we have come to the
conclusion that it is the best for all hands if I take over the
command of the ship. What d'ye say, men?"
The men may not have loved Nickerson as an officer, but they admired
and respected him as a sailor. They all knew that the Old Man was a
"rum hound" and a weakling, and they had already chewed the matter
over in fo'c'sle parliaments and wished for something to happen to get
them away from "Cape Stiff." Nickerson couldn't be any worse as master
than as mate. The assent was unanimous.
"I will make the necessary entries in the ship's log, and I will ask
you men to come aft here an' sign yer names to it," said the Nova
Scotian. "And, naow," he added, "as I am in command of the vessel, I
want some action. Ye'll git those three r'yal yards crossed again
right naow while this quiet spell lasts--" The men looked glum--royals
prophesied more work setting and furling--"and as you men have to work
hard, it is only right that ye sh'd be fed properly and have warm
quarters. I'll order the stoo'ard to improve your whack, and while
we're down south here I'll see that ye git coal for yer stoves. Naow,
turn-to both watches!" The glum looks were replaced by grins and
appreciative smiles, and under the direction of Martin, now acting as
mate, the men set to work getting the royal yards off the skids and up
aloft on the masts where they belonged.
The senior apprentice, Thompson, was made acting-second mate and would
be in charge of the starboard watch. Martin, the former bos'n, though
uncertificated, was a first class seaman, and was quite capable of
taking the mate's place. McLean, of the cropped head--cropped no
longer--was promoted to bos'n and donkey-man.
When Thompson came into the half-deck to remove his gear into the
cabin, he had some interesting news. "The skipper was full as a tick
when Nickerson and Martin broke the sad news to him. He kicked up an
awful rumpus and lugged a revolver from under his bunk mattress, but
our Bluenose mate rushed him and wrenched it out of his hand. Then
Nickerson told him he had the choice of being carried to Vancouver in
irons, or of staying in the after cabin, and the old soak took the
best choice. He had three cases of whisky and a small keg of rum in
his clothes cupboard, and the mate left him the whisky--telling him
to enjoy himself for the rest of the passage lapping it up. It was a
hot session, believe me, and old Muirhead cursed enough to blister the
paint. That Limehouse wharf-rat of a steward kind of sided with the
Old Man, but Nickerson settled his hash by telling him if he tried any
monkey business he'd send him for'ard and ride him down like a
maintack. So the skipper is a prisoner in his quarters and the steward
is skipping around licking Nickerson's boots. It's a rare tear, my
sons, and believe me, chums, we're going to have some fun from 'naow
aout' as our new skipper says."
McKenzie and Jenkins expressed joy at the change in
affairs--especially at the allowance of coal and improved grub--but
Moore remarked that "Nickerson was exceeding his rights and had been
tryin' to run the ship ever since we left port!" This brought Thompson
on him. "Listen, you moocher!" he said, threateningly. "You're going
to sweat in future! You came to sea to learn to be a sailor, and as
long as you're on this packet you'll do your whack. You've been
shoving it on to McKenzie and Jenkins all along, but you won't now.
You're coming into the starboard watch with me, and I'm going to look
after you. I'm not one of the half-deck gang now. I'm second mate of
this hooker, and you'll address me as 'Mister Thompson' and you'll
clap 'sir' on to your answers, and you'll work, you bally sojer, or
I'll know the reason why." And with a portentous look at the sullen
apprentice, he left for the cabin.
The foggy calm lasted about eight hours, and while the big barque
wallowed in the trough of the mountainous swells, the crew sent the
royal yards aloft, shackled on the gear and bent the sails. A sight of
the sun at noon and in the short afternoon placed the ship in 56° S.
latitude, and 63° W. longitude--a poor showing for six weeks' effort.
But with the change in commanders and conditions, all hands hoped for
better times and a fair slant to push the barque to the west'ard of
the seventieth meridian. The older hands, however, knew the vagaries
of the Horn latitudes, and calms were invariably the fore-runners of
fiercer gales. By the manner in which Nickerson hovered around the
mercurial barometer in the cabin entrance; his hopeful tapping of the
glass to hasten its prophecies, and his continuous scrutiny of the sky
and horizon, they knew he was looking for something to happen, and
wondering where it was coming from.
The short day came to a close and tea-time found the barque rolling
her lower yard-arms into the tremendous swells. The gear aloft banged
and crashed and the sails flapped thunderously, while water spurted in
through scupper hole and clanging wash-port and swashed across the
decks. Lying thus, helplessly becalmed, in an atmosphere chill with
winter cold, and under a sky as black as ink, they waited for the wind
which they knew was coming.
At the close of the second dog-watch it began to snow, and within an
hour the barque was filmed with the flakes and appeared as a
ghost-ship in the velvet darkness. When the first flakes began to
fall, Nickerson ordered the stowing of the cro'jack, the
t'gallants'ls, the mains'l, and the mizzen upper-topsail. All
fore-and-aft sails were down except the fore-top-mast-stays'l, which
is seldom hauled down at sea. As the men rolled the canvas up on the
swinging yards their voices floated down out of the blackness aloft
like unto spirits crying in the dark. The swishing canvas and the
falling of the snow in the windless air, combined with the aerial
shouts to conjure a picture in McKenzie's Celtic imagination as of
"giants aloft sweeping the floors of Heaven with mighty brooms!"
At midnight the ship wallowed in a world of sheer blackness, in which
neither sea or sky could be defined. Albatrosses, driven to rest on
the water through lack of wind to bear their mighty pinions, squawked
mournfully in the dark, and their cries, mingling with the tolling of
the ship's bell as she rolled, filled the night with eerie warnings
distinct from the screeching, clanking, flap and rattle of the sails,
chains and gear aloft. "That's an auld sailor frae Fiddler's Green,"
remarked McLean, when the squawks of the albatross came out of the
murk. "He's givin' us warnin' tae stand by fur dirt. Auld sailormen
never die ... they gang tae Fiddler's Green, which is a pleasant
harbor seven miles tae loo'ard o' hell, whaur ye never pay fur yer
drinks. It's all free tae auld sailors--smokes an' drinks. When ye
wants a cruise around, ye jist turn intae yin o' them albatrosses....
Aye! A great-place fur sailormen is Fiddler's Green!"
"Is there no Heaven or Hell for sailors, Mac?" asked Donald.
"Nane ava', laddie! Jist Fiddler's Green--that's Heaven. There's nae
hell fur sailors. Tae wurrk hard, live hard, die hard an' go tae hell
after all would be hard indeed! Na! na! we get oor taste o' hell in
these things ... up on a tops'l yard ... doon hereabouts!" And he
sighed--content with his philosophy.
One bell had struck when Nickerson's voice cut through the darkness
and brought the standing-by watch to vigilance. "Lee fore brace!" The
helmsman stood stolidly at the wheel staring into the binnacle and
awaiting orders to swing the ship in the direction the wind and master
dictated. "How's her head?"--the nasal tones again.
"South by west, sir!" came the answer, and the man had no sooner
spoken when the sails gave a thunderous flap and a shrieking squall
came out of the west. The ship, without way upon her, rolled her
monkey-rail under to loo'ard and the sea plunged over the bulwarks and
filled the lee deck. Nickerson cursed. "West again, blast it! Another
nose-ender!"
The sails, braced sharp up, took the wind and lifted the vessel
through the water and away she plunged--smashing her blunt bows into
the seas, and with her jib-boom pointed for the South Pole. Down the
wind came the sleet, which blew athwart the ship like chaff from a
blower, and which adhered to the gear and froze in the increasing
chill--adding to the misery of the crew in handling ropes, jammed in
the blocks and fair-leads, and sails, hard as iron with frost and
snow-skin. The long swell began to define itself in the darkness with
ghostly foam caps which grumbled, hissed and roared, and the
_Kelvinhaugh_ invited them aboard in every part of her except the
poop--which, rejecting the solid green, nevertheless had to accept
the sprays, and these, freezing in their flight through the air,
slashed the poop's occupants with shot-like hail.
Within an hour of its coming, the squall proved too much for the
barque, but Nickerson had no intention of wearing ship and letting her
scud before its fury. He was out to make westing, and if he could not
pick up a slant in the vicinity of the Cape, he would drive her
south--aye, even to the edge of the Antarctic ice--and work to the
west'ard from there. He kept her on her southerly course and ordered a
further reduction of sail.
It was in getting the big foresail to the yard that Donald, in company
with both watches, got a taste of Cape Horn devilishness. Strung along
the ice-coated foot-ropes--ten hands on each yard-arm, with the
gaskets aft of them, struggled and fought like demons with the
threshing canvas, endeavoring to burst the confining bunt-lines and
leach-lines. Clutching the jack-stay with one hand for self and using
the other for the ship was no use. In the _Kelvinhaugh_, short-handed
and with heavy gear, it had to be two hands for the ship and God help
the man who was caught unawares by a back-flap of the rebellious
canvas, or who lost his footing or balance on the foot-rope!
Slashed with hail-like spray, cut with slivers of ice flicked from the
sail or the gear aloft, and chilled with the biting cold, they
struggled in the dark, panting, swearing, clutching at canvas, rigid,
bellying, iron-hard and full of wind, and spurred on by the
oath-besprinkled exhortations of Martin and Thompson and McLean at the
bunt and lee and weather yard-arms. "Up with her, ye hounds!" they
were encouraged. "Put yer guts into it an' grab ahold! Lay back, you
swine, an' I'll boot you off th' yard inter th' drink! Now, me
sons--an' ye know what sons I mean--altogether! Up with her!"
Each man and boy clutched his portion of sail with numb fingers and
muzzled it between his chest and the yard, and paused for breath. Then
another clutch, another heave up, and another band of sail was added
to the imprisoned roll. Many times, a fiercer gust would fill an
opening of the canvas and battle for the mastery, and often, in spite
of a roared "Hang on all!" the hard-won portions would be wrested from
a weak clutch and the wind would claim the sail from all and the awful
fight would have to be waged again.
In this desperate struggle they worked themselves into a sort of
Berserker frenzy of strength and determination to master flogging
canvas, wind, weather, and the limitations of the human constitution.
The sail _had_ to be furled. There was no getting away from that. The
Anglo-Saxons showed the grit of their northern blood and tugged and
hauled and gasped blistering blasphemies in a savage rage at the
opposition of wind and canvas to their muscles and brains, while the
Latins and others hung on to the jack-stay, useless, apathetic,
whining and remonstrating feebly at the kicks and curses bestowed on
them by their sturdier shipmates.
"You yellow dogs! Oh, you herring-gutted, paperbacked swine!" snarled
Thompson at two frightened, cowering seamen alongside him. Then, with
up-raised fist, he threatened in hoarse rage, "Grab-ahold, curse you!
Grab-ahold, or I'll jam my fist into the monkey-mug they gave you for
a face when they made ye! Never mind grabbin' that jack-stay! Grab
canvas! That's what ye're up here for, you--you--" he paused for a
suitable epithet, but none coming to mind, he broke off in disgust and
beat at the sail as if he were beating the men he had threatened.
Forty minutes aloft and twenty men had failed to subdue the sail.
Martin at the bunt stood on the truss and clutched the chain sling.
"Now, men," he bawled hoarsely while the canvas jigged a rigadoon
below them, "we're going to make one more try--just one more, and
she's _got_ to come this time. If any man sojers or lays back on the
job, I'll kill him--s'help me God, I will! Now then! A-a-all
together!" And they bent to the task again--cursing, whining, crying,
and wishing the fores'l, the ship, and everyone aboard her in
sulphurous flaming hell.
They got the rolled-up canvas on the yard at last and were passing the
bunt and quarter gaskets when someone gave a guttural yell in the
blackness, and two of the men instinctively felt that a man was gone
from between them. "Somebody's fell off the yard!" cried a seaman
sensing the gap in the ranks along the foot-rope. "Who is it? Where
did he go?" yelled Thompson, who was on the fateful yard-arm.
"Hinkel, I think, sir!" The second mate swung back of the men along
the foot-ropes to the truss and scrambled down the weather rigging,
followed by Martin. Dodging a boarding sea, both men slid down to
loo'ard behind the for'ard house and scanned the lee scuppers. "He
ain't there!" shouted Martin. "Must ha' gone over the side!"
"Might have fallen on top of the house," cried Thompson climbing the
ladder. A moment later his hail brought Martin up. "He's here. It's
Hinkel, and he's alive, though unconscious. Get some of the hands and
we'll get him aft!"
The former second mate was carried into the cabin and placed in a
spare bunk. He was unconscious and bleeding from a cut on the head.
His arms and legs hung limp, and at the moment, it was impossible to
determine the extent of his injuries. "Tell the stoo'ard to attend to
him," said Captain Nickerson. "I'll look him over later."
Crashing and floundering in the big seas under shortened sail, the
_Kelvinhaugh_ staggered south, driven by the fury of the gale and
filling her decks with frigid brine in monotonous regularity. All
hands were sodden, frozen and exhausted, but as they huddled around
the bogie-stoves in fo'c'sle and half-deck, "standing-by," they
murmured curseful thanks for the grateful warmth to the iron man who
paced the poop and studied glass, ship, wind and sea with an eye
vigilant for the weak opening in Cape Horn's armor of implacable
spite.