side, while the bo'son mixed the paint. It was blue, and Corlett
stared hard at Eales.
"Well, I'm d-dashed," said Eales; "this is the queerest start!"
He watched the bo'son go up to the new hand and take him carefully by
the collar.
"'Ere, you sculpin, take this pot and this brush and get down on this
stage----"
"What for?" asked Brogger. "I'm--I'm----"
"Oh, no, you ain't," said the bo'son quickly,--"you ain't 'im by a
long sight."
"It's blue paint," said Brogger weakly. "It's blue."
"Very blue," replied the bo'son drily. "And all that's white you'll
paint blue."
He half-lifted Brogger on the rail, and watched him clamber down upon
the stage. A strange, quiet ripple of laughter ran along the men at
work.
"I--I don't understand," said Brogger to Eales, who was sitting on
the stage with him.
"It's a good sea compliment to them that's gone," said Eales.
"Paint, you beggar, paint."
The bo'son put his head over the rail.
"If you don't get to work, Juggins, I'll have to come down there and
talk with you."
And the man who was spoken to knew of old what a terror the bo'son
could be if he liked. He shivered and dipped his brush in paint.
After he had made a few feeble strokes, the bo'son's head
disappeared, and Brogger whispered to Eales--
"Who's it for?"
"It's for poor old Brogger," said Eales.
THE OVERCROWDED ICEBERG
There was a deal of ice about, and it came streaming south, in all
kinds of shapes, right into the track of ships. There were
flat-topped bergs and ice-fields, and there were all kinds of
pinnacled danger-traps which were obviously ready to turn turtle and
load up any unwary steamer with more ice than she would ever require
to make cocktails with. That year ice was reported in great
quantities as far south as latitude 40°, and there is every reason to
believe that there was more ice run into than was ever reported by
one unlucky liner and five tramps which were posted at Lloyd's as
'Missing.' The Western Ocean is no-peace-at-any-price body of water,
and it tries those who sail it as high as any sea in the world, but
when the Arctic turns itself loose and empties its refrigerator into
the ocean fairway it becomes what seamen call 'a holy terror.' For
ice brings fog, and fog is the real sea-devil, worse than any wind
that blows. It was a remarkable thing in such circumstances that
Captain Harry Sharpness Spink of Glo'ster preserved his equanimity.
As Ward, the mate of the _Swan of Avon_, said, he wasn't likely to
preserve the _Swan_.
"Dry up, Ward," said his commanding officer, "be so good as to dry
up. When I require your advice to run the _Swan_ I'll let you know,
but in the meantime any uncalled-for jaw on that or any other subject
will make me very cross."
"Do you think you can lick me since you went to see that swab at the
Foreign Office?" asked Ward, as he edged towards Spink. "Don't you
savvy, Spink, that I'm just as able as I was before to pick you up
and sling you off of this bridge on to the main-deck?"
"That's as may be," said Spink, "and I don't deny by any means that
you are a truculent and insubordinate beast. That's why I shipped
you. But it don't follow by no means that because my unfortunate
disposition compels me to have officers that can lick me, that I
should let 'em navigate the _Swan_ on the high lonesome principle.
As I said before, you will be so good as to shut your head. Ice or
no ice, I'm going at my speed, not yours. Do you think you are out
yachting that I should look after your precious carcase?"
"I believe you are ready to cast her away," said Ward. "Are the
bally owners going shares with you?"
Spink shook his bullet head.
"They ain't, and you know it, Ward. There are men would take such an
insinuation as an insult, and if I could lick you perhaps I would.
But you know as well as I do that if I wanted to cast her away I'd
not do it here. There's no kind of fun that I so despise as open
boats in cold weather, and the Western Ocean in ice-time isn't my
market for a regatta. I ain't called on to explain to a subordinate
my idea in running full speed through this fog and ice, but out of
more regard for your feelings than you ever show for mine I don't
mind revealing to you that I'm trusting to my luck."
"Your luck!"
"Yes, my luck," replied Spink with great firmness; "for luck I have
and no fatal error. I've been thinking of it a lot this trip, and
come to the conclusion that I've more solid luck than any man I know
intimate. To say nothing of my commanding a rust and putty kerosine
can like this old tramp at the age of thirty, when you, that can lick
me in a scrap, have to be my mate though you're older, didn't I come
out of that little affair at Aguilas with flying colours?"
"You came out with a hole in the funnel that you had to pay for
yourself," said Ward. "I don't see where your luck came in."
"Don't you see it might have been worse, you ass?" cried Spink
irritably. "But that's nothing. What I've been pondering over
chiefly is my very remarkable luck in never having been caught, for a
permanency, by any of the ladies that have been after me."
"They haven't lost much," said Ward discourteously. "And I reckon
that you are mistook when you think you're that enticing that women
hankers to drag you in by the hair of your head and kiss you by
force."
"I never said so," replied Spink; "but the fact remains that I'm not
married."
"You're a selfish beast, Spink, and I sincerely hope you'll be
married before you're through," said Ward.
"You are the most insolent mate I ever had," replied Spink, "and the
most unfeeling. Did you hear a fog-horn?"
Though it was in the middle of the forenoon watch it was pretty
nearly as dark off the Banks as it would have been inside a dock
warehouse, for the fog was as thick as a blanket. The rail and the
decks were slimy with it, and the skipper and his mate were as wet as
if it had been raining. The fog came swirling in thick wreaths, and
sometimes half choked them. The wind from the north-east was light
but very cold, as if it blew off the face of an iceberg, as it
probably did. The _Swan_ had an air of thorough discomfort, and in
spite of it was steaming into the west at her best speed of nine
knots an hour.
It is no wonder that Spink and Ward quarrelled; there was hardly a
soul on board who was not in a bad temper. Nothing disturbs seamen
as much as fog, and the fact that Spink refused to be disturbed by it
made it all the worse for the others. Ward was distinctly nervous,
and let the fog play on his nerves. He saw steamers ahead that had
no existence, and heard fog-horns that were nothing but the sound of
his own blood in his ears.
"Yes, I do hear a fog-horn. It's on the starboard bow," he said
anxiously.
"Not a bit of it, Ward, it's on the port bow. It's some darned old
wind-jammer. I'll give her a friendly hoot."
He made the whistle give a melancholy wail, which was not answered by
the ship for which it was intended, but by a gigantic liner which
burst through the fog looking like high land, and booming at the rate
of at least twenty knots. She loomed over them in the obscurity, and
Ward gave an involuntary howl which fetched the _Swan's_ crowd out on
deck in time to see that there was no need to kick their boots off
and swim for it. They were also in time to answer the insulting
remarks of the liner's two officers on the bridge, as she scraped
past them with about the length of a handspike to spare.
"You miserable, condemned tramp," said the liner as she swept by.
"Oh, you man-drowning dogs," replied the crowd of the _Swan_.
And everything else that was said never reached its mark. The liner
was swallowed up, and resumed her attempt to make a good passage in
spite of what she logged as 'hazy' weather.
"What did I tell you about my luck?" asked Spink coolly, and Ward
very naturally had nothing to say till he got his breath. What he
said then could only have been said to a skipper who had so
unfortunate a disposition towards violence that he had to ship
officers who could lick him.
"You are a wonder," said Ward, "and I wish you had been dead before I
saw you. Ain't you thinking of others' lives if you ain't of your
own?"
"What's the use of arguing with a thick-head like you, Ward?" asked
Spink. "If that blamed express packet slowed down to our jog-trot
her skipper would feel as sick as if he had anchored, and he'd log it
'dead slow,' and the rotters that judge divorces and collisions would
call him the most praiseworthy swine that ever ran another ship down.
What's the logic of it? Why should I daunder along at five knots? I
might be lingering just where I'd be caught by such another or by a
berg. I trust in Providence and my luck, and if you don't like it
you can get out and walk."
At this moment a bellow was heard for'ard, 'Ice on the starboard
bow,' and Spink, who for all his talk had the eyes of a cat, motioned
to the man at the wheel to starboard the helm a few spokes. The
_Swan_ ground past a small berg, and had a narrower shave than with
the liner.
"If we'd been going a trifle slower, Ward," said the skipper, "I
might have plugged that lump plump in the middle, and you would have
been down on the main-deck seeing the boats put over the side."
"There's no arguing with you," growled the mate, "you'd sicken a hog,
and I wish it was Day's watch instead of mine. If he has the same
temper when he wakes that he went below with, you'll have a dandy
time with him."
He relapsed into a silence which Spink found more trying than open
insubordination, for Spink was a cheerful soul.
"Here, I can't stand this, Ward----"
"What can't you stand?" asked Ward sulkily.
"Not being spoken to, of course," replied the skipper. "I order you
to be more cheerful. I don't ask you to be polite, for I know you
can't be; but you can talk when you aren't wanted to, so you just
talk now."
"I won't unless you slow down," said Ward. "I don't see why I should
talk and be cheerful with a sea-lunatic."
"Well," said Spink, "I'll slow her down to half speed to please you,
for the Lord knows there's enough ice about without my having a lump
of it for a mate. Ring her down to half speed, and be damned to you!"
Ward rang her to half speed without any second order.
"And I sincerely hope I shan't regret bein' weak enough to give way,"
said Spink, "for I'm a deal too easy-going and reasonable."
He lighted his pipe and smoked steadily. As both Ward and Day
admitted, he might be hard to get along with, but he had nerves which
would have done credit to a bull. Most skippers in the Western Ocean
get into the state of mind which sees disaster before it is in sight,
and if they don't take to drink it is because they die of continued
scares. Spink feared nothing under heaven, and though he sometimes
drank more than was good for him, it was not because he wanted it,
but because he liked it. There is a great distinction between these
two ways of drinking. After a few minutes of silence he turned to
Ward.
"Do you feel easier in your mind, Ward?"
"I do," said Ward. "I own it freely."
Spink snorted.
"As sure as ice is ice when you get a command of your own you'll take
to drink," said Spink. "And now, as you're satisfied at getting your
own way, I'll go below and have a snooze."
About six bells in the forenoon watch the _Swan_ ran out of 'Bank
weather' into beautiful sunlight, and Ward rang her up to full speed.
All about them were icebergs small and large, which sparkled like
jewels in the sun. There was one long, low berg right ahead of them,
there was one to the south'ard which was peaked and scarped and
pinnacled into the semblance of a mediaeval castle. Ward, as Spink
said, had no soul for beauty unless it wore petticoats, and to him,
as to all seamen, ice in any shape was ugly.
"If he'd had his way she'd have come a mucker on that beggar ahead,"
said Ward, as he passed to windward of the big, table-topped berg.
"I wish we was out of it. This fine spell won't last long, and there
is more thick weather ahead of us or I'm a Dago."
He gave her up to Day at noon with pleasure, and took his grub alone
as the skipper was fast asleep. When he turned out again at four
o'clock he found the fog as thick as ever, and Bill Day as cross as
he could stick at having to yank the whistle laniard every minute or
so. As soon as Ward showed his nose on the bridge Bill let out at
him.
"What kind of a relief do you call this?" he demanded savagely. "I
wish I'd had this laniard round your neck, I'd have had you out of
your bunk in good time, I swear."
As a matter of fact, Ward was only three minutes behind time, and
always prided himself on giving a good relief.
"Has Double Glo'ster been worrying you that you're so sick?" he
asked. "You know damn well that you owe me hours. Oh, don't talk,
go below and die, as you always do when you see blankets. Has there
been much ice?"
"It's blinking all round the bally shop," returned the second mate.
"Didn't you wake when I stopped her dead?"
"No," said Ward.
"And you talk of my dying when I get below," retorted Day. He slid
off the bridge, and proceeded to justify the mate's accusation by
falling asleep before his head touched the pillow, in spite of the
melancholy hootings of the _Swan_ as she picked her way delicately in
the fog and ice. It was very nearly eight bells again before Captain
Harry Sharpness Spink of Glo'ster showed on deck. As he meant to
stay on deck all night he had really been very moderate.
"So I've missed Newcastle?" he said.
"Lucky for you," returned Ward; "his temper was horrid."
Spink sighed.
"I'm the most unfortunate man that ever commanded any blasted hooker
that ever sailed the seas," he said. "Day tries me more than you do,
Ward. There are times I regret I ever knew him. I must have been
brought up badly to have such a disposition as I have. Well, well,
it can't be helped, a man is what he was meant to be, there is no
get-away from that. But I should admire to see you plug him. Oh, I
say, it's fairly thick, ain't it?"
It was a deal thicker than much of the pea-soup served up in the
_Swan_, though Spink rather prided himself on the way the men were
fed in her.
"Are you nervous?" asked Spink.
"I ain't by any means happy," said Ward; "and no seaman worthy of the
name can be happy on the Banks in weather like this."
"That's a slur on me, I know," said Spink, "but I look over it."
"What would you do if you didn't?" asked Ward.
Spink did not reply to this challenge, and inside of a minute both he
and Ward had something to think of besides quarrelling about nothing.
The fog lifted for a moment, and showed ice all about them. The air
grew bitterly cold, and was soon close on the freezing point, Spink
slowed her down again, and almost literally felt his way through the
obstacles. Once he touched a small berg, but when he did so he was
going dead slow. Ward stood by and saw the 'old man' handle the
_Swan_ with admiration. When they were once more through the thick
of it he spoke.
"I wish I could understand you, Spink," he said, with far more
respect than he often showed. "You're the most reckless skipper I
ever sailed with, and now you're more careful than I should be."
"I don't trust in my luck till I can't see," said Spink, and he
turned her over to Ward, saying, "Go your own pace, my son. It's
most agreeable when you are civil."
And next minute the catastrophe happened, for at half speed the old
_Swan_ bunted her nose into a low but very solid berg, and the result
was very much the same as if she had tried conclusions head on with a
dock wall. She crumpled up like a bandbox when it is inadvertently
sat on, and it would have been obvious to the least instructed
observer that her chance of going much farther was a very small one
indeed. She trembled and was jarred to her vitals, her iron decks
lifted up like a carpet with the wind underneath it, one of the
funnel stays parted with a loud twang, and the crowd forward came out
on deck as if the devil was behind them. And the fog was still so
thick that it was impossible to see them from the bridge. But they
soon saw Bill Day, for even his ability to sleep through most things
could not stand being thrown out of his bunk.
"What's up now?" roared the second mate. And the skipper showed at
his very best.
"Ward would have her at half speed," said Spink coolly, "and that
gave the southerly drift time to bring that blasted berg just where
it could do its work."
And poor Ward hadn't a word to say. Spink had plenty. He spoke to
the crew below.
"Keep quiet there you," he snapped, without the least sign of a
disturbed mind. And up came the chief engineer, M'Pherson, in
pyjamas and a blue funk.
"What's happened, captain? Oh, what's gone wrang the noo?" he cried.
"She's hit more than a penn'orth of ice, Mr. M'Pherson," replied the
skipper, "and if I were you I'd get my clothes on. Tell me what
water she is making, and look slippy. Mr. Ward, see to the boats.
Mr. Day, take the steward and a couple of hands and get some stores
up on deck."
He was so cool that he inspired unlimited confidence, although it was
now obvious to them all that the _Swan's_ very minutes were numbered.
It did not require old Mac's report that the water was coming on
board like a millstream to show them that. The engineers and firemen
came on deck, and Spink addressed them in what he considered suitable
and encouraging terms.
"Now then, you stokehold scum, less jaw there, you won't get drowned
this trip."
They were exceedingly glad to hear it, for a lot of them were of a
different opinion and said so. There was no time to waste, and
indeed none was lost. The real trouble began when it was found that
one boat wouldn't swim, after the manner and custom of boats in the
Mercantile Marine, and when another was staved in by a swinging lump
of ice the moment it took the water. This lump was a small 'calf' of
the larger berg which they had struck on, and the next moment the
original obstacle swung alongside and ground heavily against the
steamer.
"There ain't enough boats," said the skipper. "Mr. Ward, d'ye think
you could hook on to that berg? We'll have to board it and make out
as best we can."
As the _Swan_ was a vessel of close on fourteen hundred tons, her
kedge anchor ought to have weighed something like four and a half
hundredweight. As a matter of fact it had once belonged to something
in the shape of a tug, and it weighed barely two. Ward picked it up
as if it was a toy and hove it on the berg, and followed it with a
warp.
"Bully for you," said the skipper, and as he spoke the _Swan_ gave
forth a noise very much like a hiccup. "Down on the ice the port
watch, and the others get the stores over the side. Steward, all the
blankets you can get. Mr. Day, put over the side anything to make a
raft of; we may want one if the berg melts."
Spars and hencoops and everything that would float went over the
side, some of it on the ice and some of it into the water. A couple
of hands in the only sound boat kept her clear of the berg and the
_Swan_, and shoved the floating dunnage to those on the new vessel,
which had promptly been christened 'The Sailors' Home.' Their late
home was about to disappear, and said so in terms that were quite
unmistakable by the initiated.
"Now then," said Spink, "when the rest of you are over the side I'm
ready. Ward, take the chronometer as I lower it down. And be
careful with this bag, there's the ship's papers and my sextant in
it."
"Now boom her off," said Spink, "for the _Swan's_ going."
There was a tremendous crack on board.
"The fore bulkhead," said Spink, and then the poor old _Swan_ cocked
her stern in the air. A furious gush of steam came up from the
engine-room and all the stokehold ventilators, until the sea came
almost level with the after hatch.
"She's going down head-foremost," said the crew, "poor old _Swan_."
And then there was a mighty shivaree on board. The whole of the
cargo in No. 1 and No. 2 holds fetched away, and evidently shot right
out at the bows. All this mixture of cargo must have been followed
by the engines slipping from their beds, for instead of doing a dive
head-foremost, the _Swan's_ stern, which had been high in air, went
under with a big splash, and she lifted her ragged bows in the fog
before she went down with a long-drawn, melancholy gurgle.
"She warn't such a bad old packet after all," said the sad crew. And
for at least a minute no one said another word. Then Ward spoke.
"Where the hell's your luck now, Spink?"
"What's become of your theory that half speed in a fog is any better
than going at it at my rate?" asked Spink. "You haven't a leg to
stand on, and I don't propose to take advice from you again. You've
disappointed me sadly! My luck is where it was, except in the matter
of my officers, and it's notorious that I have no luck with them.
We're out of the _Swan_ without a life lost, we've got heaps of grub,
plenty of blankets, and a fine comfortable iceberg under us. There's
many this hour in the Western Ocean that might envy us, and don't you
make any error about that. I come from Glo'ster, and my name is
Captain Harry Sharpness Spink, and drunk or sober it's as good as
havin' your life insured to sail with me. Oh, I'm all right, and I
propose to plug the first man that growls, if he's as big as the side
of a house."
None of them was in trim to take up the challenge, and Spink lighted
his pipe.
"Three cheers for the captain," said the crew; and they cheered him
heartily, for which he thanked them almost regally, though he
somewhat spoilt the effect of it afterwards by telling them to go to
hell out of that and pick a place to camp in at a little distance.
"So far as I can see in this fog there's plenty of room for
everyone," said Spink, as the night grew dark. That was where he was
wrong, for they soon discovered, by falling into the water on the far
side, that they were on no great ice island, but had picked a very
small berg indeed. Spink consoled them by telling them that they
wouldn't be on it long, and they could hardly help believing him as
he seemed so certain of it.
"And after all," he said to Day and Ward, "the old _Swan_ was insured
for more than she was worth, and I shouldn't be surprised if the
owners were pleased with the catastrophe."
He wrapped himself in blankets and lay down. In five minutes he was
breathing like a child.
"I tell you," said the second mate, "the 'old man' is a wonder, for
all we have to treat him like a kid. I say, Ward, let's be kind to
him to-morrow and say Glo'ster is just as good as any other county."
"I don't mind," said Ward; "but if we do he'll take advantage of it."
"Oh, let him," said Day. "He's a fair scorcher, and if he gets too
rowdy we can always put him down. On my soul I'm gettin' to like
him. He's got the pluck of a bull-dog. Where's old Mac?"
They found Mac sitting in a puddle of melting ice-water, weeping
about his family at Glasgow. The second engineer, whose name was
Calder, was trying to console his chief by saying it might have been
worse.
"It canna be waur, man," said old Mac. "What can be waur than bein'
wreckit, and on a wee sma' bit o' ice that's veesibly meltin' as I
sit on it? The cauld is strikin' through to my very banes, and in
the hurry I've had the sair misfortune to come away wi'out the
medicine for my rheumatics. To-morrow I'll be i' a knot wi' 'em, and
nothing for it but cauld water, which I couldna abide sin' I was a
bairn. And all my work on the engines wasted. I'm a mournful man
this hour."
He drank something out of a bottle. As he had left his medicine
behind it could not have been that. It certainly did him no good,
for he wept all the more after taking it, and throwing himself in
Calder's arms he insisted that the second engineer was his mother,
and begged her not to insist on his having a cold bath.
"He's a puir silly buddy," said Calder, "and I've no great opeenion
of him as an engineer, though he's no' the fool he seems the noo."
And the night wore away while Mac wept and Spink slept the sleep of
the righteous, and Ward and Day smoked in silence. As for the crew,
they lay huddled up together, and only woke to swear at the new kind
of 'doss.' On the whole, everyone but the chief engineer was not
unhappy, and even he, by reason of the attention he paid to the
bottle which did not contain medicine, fell fast asleep and snored
like a very appropriate fog-horn. The dawn broke very early, at
about three, and it found most of the inhabitants of the berg still
unconscious. In the night the fog had lifted, and the sea was almost
as calm as a duck-pond. What wind there was now blew from the west,
and was much warmer than it had been. Within a mile there were two
or three other small bergs, but when Spink grunted and yawned and
crawled out of his blankets there was nothing else in sight.