Captain Nickerson drove the _Kelvinhaugh_ in genuine "Down-east"
fashion, and the big barque made the best speed it was possible to
attain in such a model, and with such a weak crew. The cheap gear gave
trouble, sheets parted, shackle-pins broke, braces carried away, and
the sail-maker--who had looked for a fairly easy time in a new ship
with new gear--was kept busy mending split sails, while the men had
their fill of bending and unbending canvas. "Nah yer gets an h'idear
o' wot h'its like h'on them ruddy Bluenose packets!" growled a seaman.
"Ye spends orl yer watches h'on deck wiv the hand-billy and the strop
and ascrapin', apaintin' and apolishin' h'of 'em, and orl yer watches
below sendin' dahn, amendin' and abendin' th' bloomin' canvas they
busts h'in their sail draggin'. Ho, them's th' perishin' packets for
'ard work, me sons! Them Bluenose mytes, like h'our fella there, lies
h'awake nights thinkin' up work for the 'ands, they does, bli'me!"
"A reg'lar plug!" Nickerson would growl, when, with a stiff breeze and
under all the sail she'd stand, the log would only record a speed of
nine or ten knots. These were records for the _Kelvinhaugh_! Her usual
gait was around five and six sea miles per hour with breezes in which
a clean-lined British or American clipper would be running her two
hundred and forty miles from noon to noon.
The Nova Scotian was no believer in ambling along. He slept during the
day and kept the deck at night, driving the big barque along by every
trick of wind-coaxing he knew. In the "variables" off the Chilean
coast he box-hauled her in the flukey airs, and when the squalls came
down, it would be--"Stand by yer r'yal halliards!"--but no command to
"clew up and let go" would be given unless the skipper judged the
weight of the wind to be too much for sail and mast to stand.
Nickerson would sooner split a sail than take it in--so the hands
averred--but headway is more often made at the expense of canvas than
by mothering it, as the Yankee clipper ship records show.
From the strenuous, desperate labors of the high latitudes, the crew
progressed to the monotonous grind of scraping, chipping rust, and
painting. Decks were sanded and scrubbed clean to new wood and then
oiled; rigging was set up and "rattled down," or rather "up," as the
fashion now is, and Donald, with the other two boys, had his fill of
tarring and slushing. Nickerson's liberal use of the ship's paint
would have caused David McKenzie to sweat blood could he have seen it,
but by the time the barque had crossed the Pacific equator, she was
scraped, scrubbed, painted and varnished until she looked like a yacht
inboard. The running gear was overhauled from spanker-sheet to
flying-jib down-haul; the standing rigging was tarred down and set up
bar taut, and the brass-work--what there was of it--shone until it
glittered like new-minted gold in the sun. All of this spelt "work,"
and Martin and Thompson would feel that they had done all they could
do in "sprucing her up," but the artistic eye and labor finding
imagination of the skipper would suggest some other job "to keep the
hands from gittin' hog-fat an' lazy"--even to the extent of polishing
"Charley Noble"--the galley funnel.
Through the sweltering heat of the "Line" and its heavy down-pours and
thunderstorms, the _Kelvinhaugh_ was coaxed into the north-east trades
again, and when the Tropic of Cancer had been crossed, the crew felt
that they were almost in port and they fervently longed for the day
when they could set foot on shore once more. Would they ship in the
_Kelvinhaugh_ again? Not by a perishin' condemned sight! They had had
enough of her--these lean, taut-muscled sea-wolves. Their voyage in
the ship had been a nightmare, and their desire to "hit the beach" was
accentuated by the daily lessening quantity and bad quality of the
beef, pork, flour and biscuit which was being served out. The voyage
had been over-long and food was running low. Fresh water had been
secured in the tropical down-pours, but the tanks were foul through
want of liming. Even the lime-juice--a feature of British
sailing-ships on long voyages--was scarce and only served to those men
who showed symptoms of scurvy.
McKenzie--the pale-faced, sensitive little mother's boy of six months
back--had developed into a lithe, hard-muscled youth--"tough as a
church rat," as the skipper remarked--and he had thrived wonderfully
in the cruel grind of "lime-juice" seafaring. As a sailor, he was far
ahead of the other two boys--thanks to Hinkel's hounding and
Nickerson's drilling. Moore was useless, and would never amount to
anything at sea. He was the stuff "they don't make sailors of," as
Martin sarcastically remarked, while Jenkins, though a willing lad and
of considerably more sea experience than McKenzie, was slow to learn
and was of the kind that acquired knowledge in time through
sub-consciousness of repeated lessons and dint of much driving them
in. Compared with his previous voyage on another ship, his experiences
in the _Kelvinhaugh_ had sickened him, and he talked of "cutting his
stick" and serving the balance of his time before the mast in another
ship.
In the less strenuous hours of the tropic latitudes, Donald had time
to think, and he made up his mind not to remain by the _Kelvinhaugh_.
His life on her had knocked his ideas of the future "galley west," and
while he intended to remain at sea-faring, he did not plan to serve
out his time under the McKenzie house-flag. Nickerson's ominous advice
had impressed him. He felt that the skipper knew more than he cared to
tell him, and if the Nova Scotian would keep his word, he would
follow his fortunes and take a chance on his future. In common with
the inmates of fo'c'sle, half-deck and cabin, Donald looked forward to
the end of the voyage. "The more the days, the more the dollars!"
sailors say, but none of the _Kelvinhaugh's_ crowd were anxious for a
long voyage pay-day.
As they crawled up the North Pacific, gossip fore-and-aft wondered
what would become of Captain Muirhead. He had "lapped up" all his
supply of spirits and was now sullen, sober and sick looking. For a
while each day he appeared on deck, and the men wondered at
Nickerson's charity in allowing the deposed master such freedom, but
the Bluenose evidently had Muirhead "jammed in a clinch," for he made
no move to secure his usurped position either by word or deed. The
dis-rated Hinkel was for'ard again with his arm in a sling, and useful
only to the cook. The fo'c'sle would have none of him. He was a
veritable ocean leper, and ate in the galley and slept in a berth
intended for a painter.
Six months and ten days out from Greenock, the _Kelvinhaugh_ stood in
and raised the land. When the hail came from a man who had been making
up gaskets on the foret'gallant-yard, all hands tumbled up for a look.
There was a light wind from the nor'west and they ambled towards the
high coast line, which stretched as far as the eye could discern. When
darkness fell it gave them a definite position in the flashing light
on Estevan Point, Vancouver Island. Thrice welcome beam! Harbinger of
the seaman's yearning for stable earth, trees, grass and flowers, cosy
homes, bustling streets and the concomitants of the land!
During the night, as they drifted down the coast towards the Straits
of San Juan de Fuca, the crew roused a big towing hawser up onto the
fo'c'sle-head; knocked the plugs out of the hawse-pipes, rove the
chains through them and shackled on the anchors under the auspices of
"chips" the carpenter. Overhauling the ground-tackle! Happiest of
deep-sea tasks--fore-shadowing of a voyage's end.
Dawn found them standing in between the land, with a flood tide aiding
the light wind in squared yards. With the breeze fair for a run up the
Straits, Nickerson intended to save a stiff tow-bill, and they held
along past the Vancouver Island shore in a drizzle of rain--typical
fall weather on the West Coast. Shipping was more numerous now and
tramp steamers with lumber deck-loads, and three-masted schooners
forged out of the haze outward-bound from British Columbian and Puget
Sound ports. Early morning brought them the sight of a beautiful
clipper-bowed, two-funneled Canadian Pacific liner, which flashed past
them, bellowing raucously in the mist. A lithe, white-painted ghost of
a ship she appeared as she slipped along at fifteen knots. "She's
bound for Yokohama, Shanghai and Hong Kong--Japan and China," remarked
Thompson to Donald. "Japan and China?" echoed McKenzie dully. "Ah,
yes.... Japan and China!" Romance to him was dead, and the mention of
these far-off destinations in the mystical Orient failed to awaken a
spirit of world-wandering. Different, indeed, from the time, six
months back, when he dreamed glorious imaginings of the coming voyage
"out west," and when the words, "Aye, I'm sailing to-morrow. 'Round
the Horn to Vancouver..." conjured a wonderful vista of romantic
sights and experiences.
Aye! aye! he had been around the Horn and Vancouver was a mere jog
ahead, but the youthful glamor of his shore dreams was gone. To
realize his dreams he had experienced hard work, hard fare and hard
knocks, and the price was too heavy for the realization of the ideal.
A sailor's life...? He found himself unconsciously echoing his
father's words, "It's a dog's life at the best of times!"
Still, he ruminated, maybe he hadn't been given a square deal? Maybe
he had struck it tough? He thought over the yarns of his shipmates for
opposition reasonings, but a mental summary of their reminiscences
failed to bring up any expression from them of infatuation for a
seafaring life. "Seafarin'? Aye, mate, it's all segarry in yer
bloomin' yacht when you is the bloomin' owner; when you lies in yer
blinkin' bunk 'til nine an' presses th' button for the stoo'ard to
bring yer blushin' cawfee; when you lolls around in a deck-chair or an
'ammick under an awnin' aft an' has another flunkey amixin' ye up gin
an' bitters, an' arfs-an'-arfs, an' whiskies an' sodies, an' when
ye're sick o' rollin' about, ye jest ups an' tells th' skipper to run
yer boat inter th' nearest pleasant 'arbor. That's real seafarin'! Any
other way is plain hell!" So Cock-eyed Bill expressed his ideas one
night, and the growl of assent which came from the audience seemed to
confirm the sentiments. To them it was all "a hard drag"--a monotonous
round of drudgery in an unstable ship-world in climates torrid,
temperate and frigid, and punctuated by spells of desperate effort and
nerve-breaking thrills. When sailors talked of good times, they were
memories of shore jaunts and sprees. The fun and pleasant memories of
those sea-toilers invariably savored of "the big night we had at Red
Riley's place in 'Frisco," or "Larrikin Mike's dance hall in
Sydney"--never at sea! And yet, in spite of it all, men would go back
to the sea and the ships again--tire of "the beach" and sign and ship
for another spell of knocking about. What was it? he asked himself.
What was the indefinable something which irresistibly drew men back to
sea-faring after drinking deep of its cup of loneliness, monotony,
hardship and misery? He could not answer--not yet. He was but an
initiate in the lodge of the sea. He had other degrees to master and
he had not yet been ashore and alone with his sea memories. When the
voyage was over and he was free from the ship and his shipmates; when
he was safe on the beach and fraternizing with landsmen who knew
nothing of the degree he had worked, nothing of the sea and
sailormen--then would old ocean's magical lure get aworking. His time
would come--some day--_if he were of the genuine Viking blood_.
The wind died in the forenoon watch and in an "Irishman's hurricane"
of up-and-down drizzle, the _Kelvinhaugh_ drifted, tide-borne, on a
glassy sea. Far to the west a square-rigger was lying becalmed; the
C.P.R. liner's smoke hung low along the horizon, and the serrated
peaks of the Olympics loomed high to starboard. The waters of the
Straits were dotted, here and there, by fishing boats, and slabs of
bark and huge tree-roots drifted past with the tide or current.
Nickerson relaxed his work-bill for once, and the crew, except the
wheelsman and look-out, took shelter from the rain and discussed the
future.
Poor sea-children--they had all been burnt by the fire of their
experiences, and all were for "slingin' their hook" from the
_Kelvinhaugh_. They had it all planned out. Some of the Scandinavians
had friends in the fisheries and they would look them up and land a
job handling salmon nets or halibut trawls. No more wind-jammering
deep-water for them "by yiminy!" A green hand announced his intention
of making for the Klondyke gold fields--that being the incentive which
sent him fore-the-mast on the _Kelvinhaugh_. Some of the others
planned getting work ashore, or, failing that, they would make for
Puget Sound ports or San Francisco "where the boarding-house masters
treat a feller right an' a man could take a pick o' ships to sail in
ef he didn't get drunk!" That was the ticket! 'Ware mean Scotch
barques with ornamental donkey-boilers and four heavily-sparred masts
and eight able seamen's bunks forever empty in the fo'c'sles. They
knew the Scotch shipowner, by cripes! It was them that invented hard
work and small pay. Didn't they start the donkey-boiler dodge? Didn't
they invent these four-masted hookers with their fore, main and mizzen
sails all the same size, so that the tops'l of the one could be used
on the tops'l of the other, thus saving a spare suit of sails for
every mast--a Scotch money-saving dodge! And they brag of the handy
four-mast barque which could carry a whacking big cargo and only
needed, with the donkey, a small crew to work the ship! More Scotch
shrewdness! Aye, they sat in their offices in Bothwell street, and
Hope street and Neptune Chambers and thought these schemes out! The
_Kelvinhaugh_ was a sample, and when Cock-eyed Bill admitted with
pride that "doin' twelve months hard in Barlinnie Jail was a blushin'
holiday compared with this v'y'ge," they perished and blistered their
sanguinary eyes and cursed Scotch economy in ships, food, and
creature comforts. Young McKenzie, listening, felt a pang of shame for
the economical characteristics of his countrymen.
The muggy night found the barque still with the wind "up and down the
mast." For'ard, the crew were packing their bags and having a
sing-song--the first for months. Aft, McKenzie, Jenkins and Moore
(sullen no longer) yarned of their experiences and discussed the
future. Donald was non-committal--"he probably would stick by the
ship"; Jenkins was going to "fly the coop between two suns--clothes or
no clothes" and put his time in on some other ship as a seaman
'fore-the-mast, and take his chance on securing a clean discharge.
Moore had enough of the _Kelvinhaugh_ and a sea-faring life to last
him the rest of his days. He would cable "Pa" from Vancouver to send
him the price of a ticket home. After a month or so's rest, he would
enter the brewery's office, where he could make up invoices instead of
gaskets. No more "Up you go, you skulker, and overhaul and stop the
royal buntlines!" and perching and hopping around the lofty branches
of the trees which grew from a windjammer's decks. "It's all right for
a bally bird," he said, and the other two loathed him for lack of
sand. A "stuck sailor," forsooth, and the beer factory would suit him
handsomely!
A light southerly sprung up with the cessation of the rain in the
middle watch, and "Lee fore-brace!" roused the hands out to haul the
yards aft and trim sail to the wind. Early morning found them around
Beechy Head, Race Island, and off Royal Roads at the entrance to
Victoria Harbor, and they backed the main-yard while a pilot boarded
them. He was a brother Bluenose and scrambled up the Jacob's Ladder
with a "Got here at last, cap'en!" as if he had long been expecting
the ship. His boat's crew hove up a bundle of newspapers, which
Captain Nickerson took and failed to read, as they were filched
shortly afterwards by the half-deckers--hungry for news and wondering
if Canadian papers contained British football and cricket results.
The greetings done with, the pilot glanced around. "Cal'late, cap'en,
ye'd better bring-to here in Royal Roads an' let go yer killick.
Carmanah got yer number yesterday and your Vancouver agents are
sending over a big tug to lug you in. Devil of a current runs through
the channel hereabouts ... pull you through them at slack water.
Better clew up yer muslin naow an' edge in an' let go off th' shore
there. Th' quarantine people will look ye over here, but I guess there
ain't much ailin' your crowd but hard muscles and empty bellies." And
he chuckled reminiscently.
The barque glided slowly in to the anchorage as sails were being
clewed up and the yards lowered. "Come-to hereabouts, cap'en," said
the pilot. The helmsman put the wheel over, and when the ship lost
headway, the skipper sung out, "Leggo y'r anchor!" The carpenter, in
the eyes of her, swung his maul and knocked out the pin of the
chain-stopper, shouting "Stand clear!" as the mud-hook plunged into
the water with the chain thundering and rattling through the
hawse-pipe. Then came a moment of silence--a further rattle of heavy
cable-links--and a jarring tremor betokened that the ship had taken up
the chain and that the anchor had bitten the bottom. "Anchor's
holding, sir!" came the hail from for'ard. "Alright!" grunted
Nickerson, and to Martin he said, "Naow, git her canvas stowed ... an'
make it a harbor furl. She'll not need sail for a while naow!" His
lean young face had a complacent grin as he puffed on a cigar. He had
worked the old scow in, and the _Kelvinhaugh_ had completed her first
voyage under canvas--a passage of one hundred and ninety-five days.
Nickerson and the pilot went below, and the men working on the poop
noticed that both they and Captain Muirhead were sitting around the
saloon table chatting away in the most friendly manner. "A rum go!"
they remarked. "What's in the wind?" But the young Nova Scotian was
evidently playing a game of his own. "Yes," he was saying to the
pilot, "Captain Muirhead has been a very sick man. Knocked out down
south ... have had to take his place ever since. Second mate fell
from aloft ... hurt...." The pilot was murmuring his sympathies and
Muirhead was shaking his head as if in corroboration of Nickerson's
testimony. In truth, he did not look a well man. The long confinement
had washed the sea-tan off his pock-marked features and, no doubt, his
heavy drinking had affected his system.
With the rest of the hands, Donald was aloft helping to furl the sails
into that neat uncreased roll which is known as a "harbor stow." They
took their time at the job. None of your lump, bulgy furls, like "a
bunch of tricks," with a bunt like a balloon and clew-lugs sticking
out like a whale's flukes, in a harbor stow. That sort of thing was
all right for Cape Horn, where it was roll 'em up anyhow and get the
gaskets 'round them, but the last furl had to be a furl where the
canvas would lie, without a crease, like a white ribbon along the
yard, and the gaskets would be passed like unto a neat serving. With
sails stowed, they clambered to the deck and braced the yards
faultlessly square; took up the slack in running gear and faked it
down on the belaying pins in neatly stopped coils. When this was done,
the _Kelvinhaugh_ looked, in the placid water of the Roads, a proper
picture of an inward-bound deep-waterman. No seaman could mistake the
clean paintwork and scrubbed decks _inboard_ and the taut rigging and
well-furled sails aloft for an outward-bounder. The chafing gear on
the stays and the rusty, sea-washed and red lead patched hull told its
unmistakable story, for every sailor knows a wind-jammer goes to sea
with a clean hull, but with cluttered decks and riggers' snarls and
"Irish pennants" (loose ends) aloft, and a ship is in her best trim
after her sailormen have toiled on her between port and port.
A launch brought the port doctor out and he glanced perfunctorily at
the lean, hungry-looking mob lined up on the deck for inspection. He
examined Hinkel's mended bones and muttered, "A good job--well done!"
A professional compliment to Nickerson's surgery, truly! He then went
into the cabin, and when he came up again, Thompson heard him say to
Nickerson, "Your skipper has a bad liver ... been drinking too much,
I'm afraid.... Sick man ... better be careful!" And he went over the
rail.
Shortly after the man of medicine departed, a big deep-sea tug came
around a point and forged towards them. She had a huge rope fender
over her bows and several wooden ones trailing along her sides. A
wheel-house was perched forward on her superstructure, and it was
profusely ornamented with nameboards in gilt and a spread-winged eagle
crowned its roof. Donald had never seen such a tug before and he was
interested in the fine points of difference between it and the
low-riding, paddle-wheeled craft which had hauled them to sea over six
months agone. She ranged handily alongside, with her skipper half in
and half out of the wheel-house. He was in shirt-sleeves and wore a
hard bowler hat, and looked like a drygoods clerk, but he knew how to
handle his craft. When she was fast alongside, he sung out to the
pilot, "Better get yer hook _hyak_ (quick)!" he drawled--masticating a
quid with jaws that never ceased to work. "I wanna git this big hooker
through in slack water afore them _skookum_ (strong) currents start
arunnin'! This one'll be a sight worse'n any raft o' big timber by th'
looks o' her, I reckon!" Punctuating his conversation with Chinook
idioms, he chewed and yarned with the pilot and Nickerson while the
crew prepared to get under way again.
McLean had steam up in the donkey, and it hove the anchor short amid
fervent comment from the barque's crowd. "Fust time that ruddy
ornament has worked sence we left for out!" they remarked. "Pity they
couldn't ha' used it them times we was doin' ruddy watch-tackle drill
or handlin' them cussed yards!" Aye, but coals cost money and
muscle-power was cheaper, and these were days of low freights.
In tow of the steamer, the _Kelvinhaugh_, with a man at her wheel,
glided out of the Roads, rounded Discovery Island and pulled into Haro
Strait. The pilot and Nickerson paced the poop exchanging news and
views, and Nickerson evidently astonished his fellow countryman,
judging from the "Waal, I swan's!" and "Th' hell ye say's!" which came
from the pilot's lips. "Aye ... lucky to get here ... a slow ship,"
the captain was saying.
The pilot glanced around. "New ship, too ... ye hev her spruced up.
Not like aour old Bluenose packets, whittled out of the bush above
tide-water, eh? A lime-juicer for discomfort ... no wheel-house to
keep the man at the wheel out of the cold and the wet. Stand in the
open an' freeze an' be damned to you! That's th' lime-juice way for
ye!" The tug was plucking the big barque along at a faster clip than
she usually made under sail and the reek of her Nanaimo coal gave the
barque's crew a tantalizing memory of Glasgow's bituminous atmosphere.
The tide was running in strong astern of the ship and helped to shove
her along, but soon it was noticed to slacken when they hauled through
the island-studded channels.
Donald, working on "stow away jobs," feasted his eyes on those
islands--rugged, rocky, dense with rank undergrowth and lofty with
mighty cedars, spruce and red pine. Huge fallen trunks thrust their
tops into the water, and mighty gnarled roots--"snags" the pilot
called them--danced in the tide swirls or lay stranded on the beaches.
Bare rocks were passed, upon which seals basked or slipped into the
quiet water when the ships loomed near, and ever and anon, they passed
fishermen in open boats, towing trolling-lines to entice the
clear-water salmon. Once a Siwash Indian family in a dug-out canoe,
made from a single cedar log, swung lazily under the barque's stern,
and the head of the family imperturbably continued his paddling in the
wash from the "_skookum sail-ship_," while his "_klootch_" (woman)
cuffed her curious brood to the dug-out's floor. "Yon's an Injian,"
observed McLean to Donald. "A rid Injian. There's lots o' them in
these parts." And Donald's thoughts turned for a space to the stirring
tales of Fenimore Cooper and the "Buffalo Bill Library." "Do they
scalp and go on the war-path nowadays, Mac?" he enquired.
The bos'n laughed. "They're gey good at scalpin' th' heid aff a whusky
bottle if they can get yin. Ah was a year on this coast yin time ...
tradin' ... up north. We sold them whusky for pokes o' gold an' skins.
They're quiet folk ... no th' scalpin' kind."
Threading around the channels and dodging dangerous up-rooted trees as
long as the ship's main-yard, called for good steersmanship. "A lazy
hooker!" remarked the pilot. "A slow ship in stays, I reckon?"
Nickerson nodded. "Slower'n scullin' a loaf o' bread 'cross a tub o'
Porto Reek molasses in January!" he answered--quoting a "Down-east"
phrase indicative of the extreme in tardiness. "Aye ... boxhaul her
around or wear ship most of the time ... a condemned scow!" The pilot
laughed. "Minds me o' th' time I was a kid in an ol' three-mast
schooner timber-droghin' from Nova Scotia to the West Indies ... flat
on the bottom ... wake 'ud be forrad o' th' fore-riggin' ... took a
whole watch to tack her in and the whole ocean for sea-room. Haul
daown heads'ls an' fores'l, sheet in mains'l an' spanker 'n roll th'
wheel daown. Then slack yer after canvas, h'ist fores'l an' jibs ...
sheets to wind'ard ... an' she'd git around ... maybe!" And he
chuckled over the reminiscence.
From Haro Strait, they emerged into the placid waters of the Gulf of
Georgia, and in a lifting of the shore haze, the wonderful beauty of
the coast ranges on Vancouver Island, and the mainland burst on the
vision. All around the horizon the great peaks thrust their summits
into the ether and fleecy wisps of mist caressed their tree-clad
slopes. Far to the east, dominating them all, Mount Baker, Queen of
the Cascades, hove her snow-crowned crest almost eleven thousand feet
above the level of the sea.
McKenzie was entranced with this tow-line voyage. This was the
happiest day of his seafaring, and Nature's prodigality in this
wonderful country charmed and fired his imagination. He remembered his
last sight of land the breadth of two continents away--a dog-toothed
spur of wave-lashed granite, a splinter of stone from the tail of
America's tremendous vertebrae--Diego Ramirez rocks to the west'ard of
the Horn. Aye! things were different then, but even the Ramirez were
good to look upon ... a welcome milepost on a hard traverse.
In mid-afternoon, with no work to do but watch the nip of the towing
hawser, and undisturbed by the fear of an oath-besprinkled command, he
sat on a fo'c'sle head bitt and absorbed the wonders of that
hundred-mile drag. In the words of the fare-well chantey:--
"_The sails were furled--the work was done!_"
And he relaxed and dreamed and feasted his eyes and starved soul on
the magnificent panorama which was unfolded with every mile the ship
made up the Gulf. Aye, here was romance! The thrill of having
travelled a hard, dreary road and stepping, all of a sudden, into
Fairyland. Only those who have experienced it can realize the
heart-hunger for the land after six months of nothing but heaving,
restless sea. McKenzie forgot the sea and the ship and the voyage and
unleashed his soul and imagination to appreciate the glories of the
serried peaks which ringed him around, and the gem-like islets set
like emeralds on the turquoise of the water.
In the dog-watch, when the sun was setting in an oriflamme of red and
gold behind the western peaks, and the lazy waters of the Straits
mirrored the lights and shadows in brilliant crimson, gold and blue,
they towed past the Fraser River estuary, and the Sand Heads
light-ship gleamed scarlet in the sun-glow. Numerous sailboats dotted
the turbid flood at the mouth of the river--their occupants setting
the twine to enmesh the river-seeking salmon. "Fushin' fur salmon tae
be tinned--or canned, as they ca' it oot here," vouchsafed McLean.
"They turn oot millions o' tins o' salmon up yon Fraser River. Them
fishermen are nearly a' Japs, an' there's a wheen o' them on this
coast ... aye, an' Chinks an' Hindoos an' sich-like Mehommedahs!"
It was dark when the tow-boat swung the barque around Point Grey and
headed in for the Burrard Inlet Narrows. Between Prospect Point and
the high-wooded slopes of the opposite shore, they pulled through a
narrow channel, and the huge trees of Stanley Park commanded Jenkins'
admiration. "By golly," he cried, "I don't know whether it's a trick
of the moonlight or not, but did you ever see such monsters? They're
higher'n the masts of this ship!" No indeed! Donald never had, but he
promised himself a closer scrutiny of those lofty trunks at the first
opportunity.
Round a picturesque cliff, capped by a brilliant light, they hauled,
and the City of Vancouver burst upon their vision with a blaze of
twinkling electrics, which spun twisting threads on the mirror of the
harbor waters. The Queen City of the West! It has been called thus,
but to one sea-wearied lad it was Fairyland--a veritable Valhalla for
ship-tired Vikings--and he hungered for the moment when he could set
foot ashore and roam its streets. The fo'c'sle crowd gladdened at the
sight of a town again, and McLean and other old-timers were busy
answering eager questions. "Is the beer good an' cheap ashore here?"
or "Is this der place where dot Two Bit Hilda has dot haus mit der
lager und der gals?" "Aye, aye," McLean was saying, "ye can get a' th'
whusky an' gurls ye want here if ye hae th' dollars. Let me tell ye
aboot th' time...." Donald listened carelessly to a vicious adventure.
It did not affect him. He was staring longingly at the city and the
snow-clad heights around and paid no attention to the excursions in
vice which the crew were planning. Nature's beauties had no place in
their make-up. It was whisky and women, and most of them knew the
beauty spots of the world only by the price and quality of the liquor
to be procured therein. Poor devils! It was their idea of pleasure,
and after what they had gone through, it was corporeal joys they
appreciated rather than mental.
He was brought to things material by the warning shriek from the
tow-boat's whistle, which found an echo in the lofty heights. "Stand
by, forrad!" came Nickerson's voice. The men shambled to the bows.
"Haul in yer hawser!"
The steamer slipped the rope and the barque rounded up and threw her
great hull and spars athwart the moon-path. "Leggo yer anchor!" came
the strident command from aft. A plunge--a roar--a rattle of
chain--and silence. The awakened waters showed new facets to the
moon-glare and spread in concentric rings away from the disturbing
hull, and with a voice hailing from the departing tug, "We'll berth
you at five!" the _Kelvinhaugh_ lay quiet and motionless at the end of
her chain, like a tired horse that had travelled a long and weary
road.