flow of blood which was rapidly saturating his clothes; why the block
didn’t crack his head like a walnut will ever remain a mystery to me;
it would have broken the skull of any one but a Russian seaman. For
some few minutes there was a dead silence fore and aft; then Rarx
walked up to Karl, shook him heavily, and cried, “Now, then, get away
out o’ this, you ---- ---- ----; fine mess you’ve made on the deck. Go
wipe the blood out o’ yer eyes, and bring a swab and get this out the
deck, _and don’t you be long about it, neither_.” It struck me
that this was rather hard lines, having to mop up your own blood; but
in a few minutes more Karl recovered enough to totter forward, and when
he next appeared he had a bucket of sand and water and a broom, and at
the end of half an hour no trace of the assault remained save a large
gloomy stain, which will have to wear out.
Later in the evening I remarked to MacFoy that this was the most
villanous and unprovoked piece of brutality that I ever imagined,
and that it was astonishing that a man who appeared to be such a
well-principled fellow as Rarx would do such a thing. “Well-principled,
is it? Huh,” was David’s comment; “peaceable enough to you aft I
guess, but you’d think different if you could see him dark nights on
the main-deck wearin’ ship. Did you ever see a Yankee second mate that
wasn’t a hound?” “I don’t know very much about them personally,” I
answered, “but they certainly have a hard name; the only other American
second mate whom I ever knew was on a foreign ship, where he had to
treat the sailors like men.” “Oh,” said MacFoy, “what do you think
o’ what you saw this afternoon?” “Well, about the only thing anybody
could say about it is that it was damnable,” I answered. Here the bosun
looked steadily at me and said, “If you’d seen what I have in these
ships for four years you’d think no more o’ that than steppin’ on a
cockroach.”
At any rate, I’ll never forget the scene at the instant before the
block struck Karl’s face: about half the watch in the rigging looking
angrily down, the clumsy form of the Russian spinning round from the
kick, and the second mate standing over him, red with anger, in the
act of swinging the block well back to gather force for the blow. And
this is what is known as “discipline” in Yankee deep-water men! Well,
my only comment is, thank God that my wife wasn’t on deck to see it.
Latitude, 17° 45′ south; longitude, 38° 5′ west.
+June 18+
No one to-day made the least allusion to yesterday’s sinister deed
until this evening; Mr. Rarx was as bland as usual, and after supper
all that the skipper said was, “They tell me the second mate had a
little fun yesterday.” This indifference served to corroborate the
bosun’s remark about what he had seen in Yankee ships. I think that the
skipper wanted me to express my opinion and then he was going to tell
me his in a loud voice before the men; but I asked him if there wasn’t
a ship over to leeward, pointing abaft the beam; it served the purpose
very well, for he fetched up his lumbering, prehistoric telescope and
passed five minutes or so in looking for a vessel which wasn’t there,
so that he forgot all about Rarx and the Finn.
To our great astonishment we were enabled by a little shift of wind
to fetch by the Abrolhos Islands and to keep on, as we were on the
port tack. It was a matter of great satisfaction to us all, and it
put the captain in quite a radiant humor. The wind has been pretty
well from the eastward of late, and even if it hasn’t been very
strong, it enabled us for the first time in many days to round in
the weather-braces and take advantage of what there was. Last night
was exactly like the weather during a summer northeaster on the New
England coast, one of those disagreeable spells which occur two or
three times in July and August that fill the hearts of the hotel
proprietors with dismay. A dense drizzle, increasing at times to heavy
showers, prevailed throughout the night, accompanied by a mist which
concealed everything one hundred yards away; while at times we had
short but severe puffs of wind, for which we had to stow the sky-sails.
At 9.30 in the evening a very strong breeze came out of the east; and,
increasing, the second mate, whose watch it was, went forward to haul
down the jib-topsail. So he left us on the poop in a heavy shower, and
in a few minutes we heard some sharp slatting, but paid no attention to
it, supposing that the jib-topsail-sheet had got adrift. Presently Mr.
Rarx came back breathing heavily, and remarked, “Very funny; I don’t
see how that sail could go like that.” “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Wrong?
Why, the main-top-gallant-stay-s’l’s clean gone out the bolt-ropes, and
in a minute we’ll have the old man up here tellin’ me ’twas my fault.”
Sure enough, in a few moments the captain’s bushy face arose through
the companion-way, and he said without preliminary, “I suppose that was
the main-t’-gallant-stay-s’l that went, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mr. Rarx, meekly, “I was----”
“I suppose you were going to say that you was about to haul it down;
well, you needn’t bother to explain; if you hadn’t had it too flat
’twouldn’t have went; thirty years ago, men didn’t sign as second mate
till they knew how to trim a sail.”
The blighting sarcasm with which he said this put the second mate’s
temper on edge again, and I expect that he’ll store this up against
the skipper for possible future use, for he is unquestionably a fine
sailor-man.
It is rather remarkable that we have caught no fish lately, as the sea
in the vicinity of the Abrolhos Islands is the greatest fishing-ground
on the whole Brazilian seaboard. For twenty-four hours now we have
been on soundings with an average depth of forty fathoms; and while
the water is of a dirty green color, it is wonderfully phosphorescent,
though not quite equalling the water on the equator; still, when the
patent log was hauled in last evening at eight o’clock (it hung up and
down at that hour), the line was a rope of fire, dripping with silver
sparks, and long after it had been coiled away over a pin it continued
to emit brilliant flashes of phosphoric light.
Our new main-topgallant-yard is coming along nicely. It is being
trimmed down from one of the double top-gallant-yards which the ship
used to carry; this is a rather remarkable fact, that if a vessel
carries double top-gallant-sails the yards will be larger in every
way than if they were single. It would be hard to conceive a more
gnome-like appearance than that presented by the carpenter to-day as he
was hewing at the spar with an adze, seen from a distance of about one
hundred feet; nearer, the illusion vanished. But his tall, peaked felt
hat, immensely broad face, open dungaree-jumper which refused to meet
over his globular person, and short, fat legs, lent him, when he rested
on his adze with wide-spread feet, a wonderfully elfin aspect.
In a squall this morning I noticed that the mate wore for the first
time a tremendously thick garment of red cloth, which he called a
llama coat, being made of the wool or hair of that quadruped. It looked
something like a flannel shirt, but was not split up the sides, and
seemed to be as thick as a felt slipper. Mr. Goggins says that he
has never yet seen the rain which can penetrate it. Perhaps the most
remarkable thing about it is the fact that he has worn it for fifteen
years and intends to wear it fifteen more. How sailors hate oil-skins!
Their aversion to them is universal, and seems to be unreasonable. The
captain, for instance, has several ancient, heavy suits which he calls
his Cape Horn clothes. Whenever his presence is required for any length
of time in a heavy rain, he dons one of these suits and goes on deck in
a soft felt hat and a pair of slippers, only to return in fifteen or
twenty minutes with dripping garments, his slippers sobbing at every
step; in two minutes, though, he is arrayed in another suit, with the
same foot-gear, and marches on deck again to repeat this operation as
long as his dry clothes hold out. All this for dislike of oil-skins and
boots. Latitude, 19° 56′ south; longitude, 38° 15′ west.
+June 19+
Rio is said to possess a superb climate in the winter months; but
if it is finer than the weather which we are having now it must be
supernaturally beautiful. For twenty-four hours we have run before a
fresh northeast breeze, the only fault to be found with which is the
fact that, as we are now dead before the wind, the after-sails are the
only ones which draw, blanketing the others. The course this morning
was given to the quartermaster, southwest, which will not be altered
except in case of necessity till we have passed the Falklands. No
mention has been made, by the way, of our helmsmen, dignified by the
name of quartermasters. They do not really hold this rank, as they
are merely sailors who have been picked out by the mates as the best
helmsmen, and receive no more wages than able seamen. The idea of this
is to have only certain men to steer the ship, that they may thoroughly
understand her under all circumstances. It is curious to see how much
less tanned these men are than the others, owing to the protection of
the wheel-house.
The old mate continues to crawl growlingly about the decks, grumbling
at various actual and phantasmagorical afflictions. His mode of
progression is a sort of creeping prowl, as he thrusts his face into
every nook and cranny, with a hundred wrinkles in his great, flabby
nose, as though he were continuously assailed with disagreeable odors.
He hazes the men a great deal more than the second mate does, though I
do not think that he is particularly courageous; a flock of Gogginses
might, like jackals, prove dangerous, but singly, his valor I’m sure
would dwindle at close quarters. Being a poor seaman, the men have no
respect at all for him, and in the presence of the skipper he bawls at
the sailors and makes a feint of hitting them, glancing at the old man
for approval, as he rolls about, exhorting them in his most rasping
voice to “Come now, git a move on.”
Mr. Rarx gets several times more work out of his watch, for he knows
how to handle the men; and as he has recovered his equanimity he
continues to exhibit his claims to being a humorist. His men were
hoisting the yards up taut in the second dog-watch yesterday, and when
they came to the maintop-gallant-halliards, they burst into a fine
chanty, “Whiskey”; then when they had finished with the main-yards they
began on the foretop-gallant-halliards, but without a song. The yard
seemed to stick a bit; and as sailors can always do twice the work
with the inspiration of a song, Mr. Rarx called out, “Give us a little
more of that whiskey, fellows”; which so tickled the fellows’ fancies
that some of them shook in their extremity of mirth, though a sailor
must always laugh at a mate’s joke. If the second mate were not such a
bad-tempered man he would not be an unpleasant companion, for he talks
well and is always very neat; but his recent villanous deed deprives
his conversation of most of its erstwhile attractions, while he appears
to think absolutely nothing of it.
Louis Jacquin is indisputably the best sailor in the forecastle, though
young Broadhead, the New Yorker, is by no means a bad second. Louis’s
marlinspike seamanship is really beautiful; and it turns out, as I
expected, that he has served a long period in the French navy. Strange
how sailors shift back and forth from man-of-war to merchantman. This
man has good principles, too; for when the little bosun Rumps began to
blackguard the skipper the other day, saying, “I’d like to have a crack
at you ashore,” looking up at the poop, the Frenchman said, “Zat ees
not right”; nor was this intended for me to hear. Louis made a queer
mistake the other day. He was telling Broadhead about the attractions
of Paris, and finally asked him, “Have you evair seen Père la Chère?”
“What’s that?” said Broadhead. “Père la Chère, zee cemetarie,” answered
Jacquin. It was an odd mistake for a Frenchman to make.
The captain is in fine feather now that we are doing well, but is
annoyed that we do not meet more steamers. I never saw a skipper so
anxious to be spoken and reported as Captain Scruggs; and last evening
when a large steamer passed us bound south, probably to Rio, he almost
wept because it was dark.
One of our two cabin cats has vanished; it was the “coon-cat,” and
after a long search to-day we were forced to the belief that it has
fallen overboard. It is hard luck, and its companion, the Maltese, is
inconsolable. The captain seems really cut up about it, for he has all
a sailor’s fancy for animals. One of Mr. Goggins’s traits, however, is
his cruelty to the poor, ugly alley-cat which belongs to him,--another
illustration of the sort of creature that he is. Latitude, 22° 30′
south; longitude, 39° 25′ west.
+June 20+
At nine o’clock this morning I sighted a vessel’s upper canvas ahead,
far down in the southwest; she seemed to be a bark, and as such I
reported her to the skipper. The breeze was from the eastward and
blowing fresh, so that every sail was drawing to the utmost, and we
were doing nearly eleven knots at the time. Slowly we drew up on the
vessel, slowly but certainly, and at eleven o’clock she proved to be a
ship, and we concluded that she was one of the Englishmen which sailed
a week ahead of us: the “Balclutha,” from London, the “Merioneth,” from
Swansea, and the “Peleus,” from Hamburg, all bound to San Francisco,
and the “Annesley,” from Cardiff for Portland, Oregon. It was quite
probable that we would fall in with each other hereabouts. In spite
of the power of our glasses, however, it was impossible to tell for
a long while whether she was a Yankee or a Britisher, until all at
once she yawed, when the sun reflected from her sails showed that they
were of cotton, so that the chances were in favor of her hailing from
the States. We paid no further attention to her, though, till after
dinner, when, by that time having raised her hull out of the water,
we perceived that she carried a stunsail on the starboard side! Here
was a spectacle as unusual as a blue moon in these days of scanty rigs
and short crews! Still, in spite of her extra cloths, we overhauled
her, and soon made the additional discovery that, like ourselves, she
crossed three sky-sail-yards. (What a graceful, slender look they give
to a vessel!) Captain Scruggs at this instant emerged from the cabin
with his ancient, feeble-looking, clattering, brass telescope under his
arm, levelled it at the flying stranger, bracing the long, tottering
tubes against the top-gallant-backstays, gazed at her for a full
minute, and announced her name,--the “Judas Dowes.” Now, this vessel
sailed from New York for San Diego six days before we did, and though
she has a fine record as a fast sailer, lo! we have overhauled her
on the fortieth day. I am under the impression that Captains Scruggs
and Platt had a wager as to who would pass the equator first; and as
the “Dowes” undoubtedly crossed ahead of us, our skipper was in quite
a bad humor when he found who the stranger was. We asked him if he
couldn’t be mistaken, to which he disdainfully answered, “Mistaken? Of
course not; wasn’t I master of her four years before I took the ‘Hosea
Higgins’?” “Does Platt recognize us, do you suppose?” I asked him then.
“Most certainly he does,” testily replied the captain; “who wouldn’t
know them upper topsails?” And in truth the “Higgins” could be picked
out among a score of other vessels simply by her long topmasts. There
is every prospect of passing the “Judas Dowes” in the night, for at the
moment, 4 +P.M.+, we cannot be more than seven or eight miles
apart.
Many people, even those identified with affairs nautical, will be
surprised to learn that there are still fully half a dozen of our ships
which make a regular practice of carrying stunsails whenever they will
draw. Those vessels which I am certain follow this plan are the “Paul
Revere,” the “Judas Dowes,” and the “Indiana.”
The sail which the “Dowes” carried this afternoon probably doesn’t
add half a knot to her speed; but some of the ships mentioned carry
such an extra spread of canvas as to very decidedly augment their
sailing powers. For instance, Mr. Rarx said, “While I was second
mate of the ‘Paul Revere’ awhile ago, we had stuns’ls that added a
thousand square yards to the ship’s canvas and put two knots on her
speed.” Some seafaring people of the present day do not believe that
fifty years ago our famous clippers carried royal-stunsails, a leading
maritime publication in New York saying a year ago, “We never heard
of a ship-master foolish enough to carry royal-stunsails.” Now this
is a mistake, for Mr. Goggins has positively asserted that about
thirty years ago he was in a bark for some months that set these
auxiliary sails, the vessel’s name, according to the mate, being the
“Chickloa,” so called after a large coffee plantation in Guatemala. Far
more conclusive proof, however, is to be found in “Two Years before
the Mast,” in which Dana, always minutely accurate, mentioned the
royal-stunsails set on the ship “Alert,” in which he returned to Boston
from California.
Last evening at the pumps I had some interesting yarns from Murphy, who
is a round, jolly, chubby individual, very active and good-natured. The
second mate says that this fellow is not at all a bad lot, and that
his only fault lies in his inclination to be a little “fresh.” Murphy
commenced about the American bark “St. James,” in which he went out
from New York to Shanghai in ninety-seven days three years ago. “Oh,
but she’s just a daisy, she is! Why, she’s a square-rigged yacht. And
go, I tell you honest, I saw her log fifteen knots on that voyage under
the tops’ls and fores’l between Tristan d’Acunha and the Cape; and if
ever you want to sail with a nice man, you ship with Cap’n Banfield;
there’s no better.” As a matter of fact, the “St. James,” which is a
very large vessel to be bark-rigged, being of fifteen hundred tons,
is the most yacht-like square-rigger under the stars and stripes, and
a friend of mine who went out to Shanghai in her on this very voyage
which Murphy mentioned, in speaking from a passenger’s stand-point,
corroborated every word of the sailor’s, and said that it would be
impossible to find a more agreeable man to sail with than Captain
Banfield, who for some time was in the large Boston schooner yacht
“Alert.”
In contradistinction to this fast passage of the “St. James” friend
Murphy spoke as follows: “The last time I went round the Horn was in
the Yankee ship ‘Centennial,’ and we were a hundred and ninety-nine
days from New York to ’Frisco. We had a terrible time off Cape Horn,
and ran back twice to the Falklands for repairs, and at last a third
time we bore away for Montevideo. We passed close to Stanley this time,
too, but there was a heavy gale on and we dasn’t try for that place
again. As we ran by, though, we saw an American ship tryin’ to weather
the Billy Rocks at the entrance to Stanley Harbor, and we passed so
close to her that I heard the cap’n say as how he could see the sailors
in the riggin’ with the glasses. We afterward found out ’twas the ‘City
of Philadelphia.’” Then I remembered the tragedy of this ship. She
sailed from Philadelphia for San Francisco a little over two years ago.
Her captain had just bought her for himself, and she had on board a
passenger travelling for his health. The vessel was disabled off Cape
Horn, bore away for Stanley for repairs, missed stays off the harbor,
struck on the terrible Billy Rocks in a gale of wind, and every soul on
board perished.
The last Yankee square-rigger to lay her bones upon the beach was the
“Commodore,” which ran on Malden Island in the Pacific, in 5° south and
155° west, about a year ago, while on a voyage from Honolulu to New
York with sugar. All hands saved.
Murphy, like Louis, is a man-o’-war’s man, and said that the last
government vessel in which he served was the “Olympia.” “Oh, Lord,
she’s a terror for work,” he added. “I’ll bet she can’t beat this
packet in that line,” said one of the men. “She can’t, eh? I’d just
like to see you try her once. This ship’s a playground compared to
her.” This, in part, bears out what Mr. Rarx said, that this is one of
the hardest ships for work that he has ever seen. _If sailors get
enough to eat_, though, by far the best way to run a ship is to
keep them hard at work continuously; they will always be in far better
humor, and when they turn in they will think more about sleep than
about imaginary grievances, which foremast hands are very prone to do.
Latitude 25° 12′ south; longitude, 42° 14′ west.
+June 21+
Oh, simple, childish Captain Platt of the “Judas Dowes!” This morning
when day broke we looked in vain for this vessel, for behold the watery
expanse void of objects fashioned by the hand of man save ourselves. We
had confidently expected to see the “Dowes” upon our quarter, where,
in truth, she would have been if Captain Platt hadn’t shown the white
feather, sheering off under cover of the darkness and secreting himself
beyond the horizon.
How odd it is to meet an acquaintance away down here near the end
of Brazil! The last time that we saw the “Judas Dowes” she lay on
the opposite side of the pier from the “Higgins,” both ships having
just come in from sea; and lo! we renew our intimacy far down here,
thousands of miles from home, below the southern tropic. And a sort
of mutual good-fellowship springs up between us, for are we both not
going to fling down the gauntlet to the dreadful Horn in the darkness
and gloom of midwinter? Everything is so very smooth and sunny and
cheerful here at present, that it is hard to believe that there are, no
doubt, at this moment, giant four-masters struggling in the grip of an
Antarctic sou’wester, hove to, with a tarpaulin in the after-rigging,
or driving before it for their lives, buried to the rails in those
great Cape Horn surges which roll so grandly onward in their endless
journey around the globe.
Turning, then, from such violent scenes, it is doubly pleasant to
be wafted thus along over a motionless sea, rippled by the fresh
northeasterly breeze that blows us over two hundred miles of water
every day. It is warm, too, for this latitude at this season, 77°
at noon, for the sun to-day reached the most northerly point of his
declination, and at four o’clock this morning, at Greenwich, he entered
the constellation of Cancer, ushering in the first day of the southern
winter.
Our skipper has formed the very obnoxious habit of immersing beer and
Apollinaris bottles in the galvanized iron bucket which holds our
drinking-water in the pantry, for the purpose of cooling them off; so
that we were shocked one day to observe several labels floating about
in the water, having added to it glue and other equally unpleasant
foreign substances. Fortunately, the weather will soon be cold now,
which will, I hope, put an end to these objectionable proceedings.
Every Sunday thus far Captain Scruggs has blossomed out in a white
“biled” shirt, with a standing collar turned over in front, by reason
of which he suffers torments throughout that day, until about three
in the afternoon, when indications of a sudden metamorphosis begin to
appear. First he begins to move restlessly in his chair, elevates and
depresses his chin with great force, inserts his hand inside the band
and tugs away at it, and finally, unable to stand it any longer, off
comes the offending collar with a great wrench, while he passionately
nods and revolves his massive head, to free himself of all restraint,
as though he had been in a pillory.
It is a curious fact that hardly a single ship-master will say anything
in favor of Nelson; personally, I have never yet met one who would
admit that this greatest of sea-fighters was better or worse than any
other naval commander, for all of whom they appear to have a silent
disdain. A sea-captain usually takes as his model Napoleon or Cæsar or
even the present emperor of Germany; our skipper reveres the memory
of Napoleon and considers him the embodiment of everything grand and
exalted; as for Nelson, he won’t even deign to talk about him, and
brusquely dismissed the subject to-day by saying that Nelson didn’t
even have much command or influence over his men!