rasping whisper, as is his wont whenever he is about to reveal a
startling theory, he said, mysteriously and very suddenly,--
“The human race is on the decline, sir.”
I didn’t reply, and he continued, “Where are the strappin’ big fellows,
five-foot ten, five-foot eleven, and five-foot twelve, you used to see?
Where are they, I say? _Gone. Gone._ And wot do ye find now? The
present generation is growin’ up small and feeble, sir. They’re weak
and no good. And luk at the winds; they’re changin’ too. They hain’t
wot they used to be in the Atlantic; nor in the Pacific; nor off Cape
Horn. The Trades is changed. Everythink’s changed. I may be a hold
fool, sir, but I knows a thing or two. There’s more in my ’ead than
comes out with a fine-tooth comb.”
All this with the most intense earnestness and so much stifled emotion
as to render him partially unintelligible, while he snapped and jerked
his long sleeves about in the most uncomfortable manner.
Then he abruptly changed the thread of discourse and began, “You talk
about seas comin’ aboard, but you ought to been with me once when I
was mate o’ the ‘Commodore.’ ’Twas in the Santa Barbara Channel, and
blowin’ a whole gale o’ wind. We were runnin’, but bime by the old man
thought he’d heave her to. So we put the hellum down, and as she was
comin’ up, be gar’s sakes, sir, she shipped a sea that I thought was
goin’ to take the hatches off. ‘You’d better jump below and call the
second mate,’ said the cap’n; so I slipped down the after-companion-way
into the cabin, where the old man’s eight-year-hold son was jockeyin’ a
sofy that had fetched away, and says he, ‘Dad’s a-givin’ of ’er ’ell,
ain’t he?’ he says. Well, I called the second mate, and then the cap’n
says to us, ‘Go down and cut the lashin’s o’ that ere water-cask by the
after-hatch; she’ll wipe the houses off if she don’t free herself.’
’Twas a funny thing to do, but he was cap’n; so we crawled down on the
main-deck where the watch was knockin’ about and cut the barrel adrift.
In less nor five seconds it went through the rail, and in a minute
there warn’t a capful o’ water on deck. It cost about ten feet o’ the
port bulwarks, but ’twas our only chance.”
Now that we are well up past the rigors of Cape Horn, it actually seems
as though we were close to San Francisco, while five thousand miles
of latitude remain and fully fifty degrees of longitude, as ships are
forced well out into the Pacific by the northeast Trades. Latitude, 48°
30′ south; longitude, 88° 25′ west.
+August 1+
Oh, how divinely beautiful and grand the dark-blue floor of heaven is
after four weeks of hard gales, leaden, lowering clouds, and gray,
clammy mists! To-day for the first time the sun shone with dazzling
splendor, and although the altitude at meridian was only 26° 51′,
we agreed that never before in our lives had we known a day of equal
magnificence. And, even making allowance for our enthusiasm, the
weather was well-nigh perfect. Between sunrise and dusk not the
smallest cloud blurred the blue sky, which was reflected in a sea of
dazzling crests, whose valleys partook of that dark, superb, velvety
blue which is seen only where the ocean-bed sinks to immense depths,
and which Mark Twain says looks solid enough to walk upon. A sparkling
breeze whistled out of the west as exhilarating as pure oxygen, giving
us a speed for the twenty-four hours of nine knots. That blighting,
killing chill has vanished and one’s ears no longer tingle on exposure;
and at noon we enjoyed a temperature of 50°, a rise of twenty degrees
from the lowest. What a change in six days from 60° south, 76° west,
to 45° south, 88° west! Pretty good work that, in less than a week; it
is so much better than the average that it seems incredible. We cannot
believe that in so short a time we have been blown across what ought to
have been the worst part of the entire voyage. It was all the work of
the east wind.
Just now there is a long, deep roll coming in from the southwest,
and I am earnestly looking for some of those immense waves for which
the South Pacific is famous. According to sailors, they usually
occur two or three days after new and full moon; and as we had a
new moon last night, perhaps we will see some of these rollers.
This reminds me, however, that scientists have determined, after
protracted observations, that the moon’s phases have no influence at
all on the weather. Sailors often say during a spell of bad weather,
“Well, there’s a change in the moon to-night; we’ll have a fine day
to-morrow”; and if chance supports their remark, heaven couldn’t shake
their belief.
This heavy sea that is met with here is generally not at all ugly;
only a deep heave-up from the southward, often without wind, and is
said to be one of the most impressive of all oceanic phenomena. The
South Atlantic as well as the Pacific is also visited periodically by
immense seas during calm weather. At St. Helena and Ascension they are
called “rollers,” while at Fernando de Noronha and on the West African
coast they are known by the Portuguese name of “calemmas.” They seem
to occur chiefly in January, and, strange to say, they invariably
came from the northwest. The quotation that follows is from the pen
of Captain S. P. Oliver, who visited St. Helena in 1881 in one of the
Union steamers:
“These rollers set in from the northwest on Thursday, January 13, with
unusual severity, but lulled somewhat on the following day, Friday,
only to recur with abnormal force on Saturday, attaining their maximum
strength on Saturday night, so that the spectacle on Sunday morning was
grand and magnificent, while the weather was bright and calm. It was
surprising to see the spray of these deep ocean waves hurled by sheer
force, for there was no wind, like fountains over the huge cliffs of
Goat Pound Ridge and Horse Pasture, which rise perpendicularly seven
hundred feet sheer out of the sea. The force of these enormous billows
was spent by Sunday night, and gradually subsided into the normal calm
on Monday morning.”
At our present rate of sailing a fortnight would see us on the equator,
but if we cross it in three weeks it will be fine work. What sort
of luck are we going to have between these westerly winds and the
southeast Trades? That is one of the crucial points of the voyage that
remain, another being, how far south will the northeast Trades blow?
We had a little excitement to-day at dinner. Ever since our cabin fire
has been going, it has been the custom of the steward to put a can of
whatever vegetable we were to have that day for dinner upon the top of
the stove to heat; the proper way, of course, is to place the can in
a dish of water and that in turn upon the stove or what not. To-day
it was a tin of string-beans, and the steward, fully an hour before
dinner, put the can upon the stove, which was nearly red-hot. (The
warmer the day the hotter the fire, here as elsewhere.) When the soup
had been cleared away, the gentle, timid little Malay took the tin into
the pantry and attacked it with a can-opener. But no sooner was the
metal pierced than the whole pantry was filled with a suffocating steam
that rushed hissing out of the vent with the most astonishing fury.
We sat aghast. The old man cursed a little and the mate got up, but
instantly thought better of it and sat down again. And still the steam
came belching out of the can, which had fallen down and was shooting
about the pantry like a demented steam-cylinder, while we could dimly
perceive the slender form of the little steward through the pungent
vapory clouds making courageous efforts to lay hold of the bewitched
bean-can. For nearly a minute steam continued to escape with such force
that it almost shrieked; and had the tin remained another five minutes
on the stove it must certainly have exploded and scattered boiling
water, beans, and jagged fragments of tin and lead about the room.
Last evening at supper a bottle of Apollinaris burst in my hand with
a loud report as I was opening it, scaring the valiant Goggins into
upsetting a full cup of tea upon a clean cloth, for which the old man
fixed him with his eye and held him thus for quite half a minute during
an awful silence.
If only for the sake of the sailors we are anxious to get into warm
weather again as soon as possible. Now that they have removed the
mufflers, etc., from their necks and heads, we can see how pale and
washed out most of them are. There are only two among them who do not
bear ocular proof of the hardships of a month in the Southern Ocean
in July. Paddy is perhaps the worst looking of the whole crew, though
he cannot be thirty years of age. This is due probably to his never,
under any circumstances, shirking his work, and to his exerting himself
more than any one else in the ship. Indeed, he was so full of nerve
and energy in the worst weather, that the captain surprised us once by
saying, pointing to Paddy on a yard-arm in a heavy squall, “There’s
what I call a brave man; he doesn’t know what fear is.” The skipper
didn’t mean to insinuate that Paddy was courageous for going out on the
yard at that moment; he was thinking about his general conduct.
Poor Paddy’s arms from wrist to elbow are perfect mountain-chains of
sea-boils, and he looks as ghastly and pallid as a corpse, with pointed
nose and staring eyes; his entire appearance has changed. It may be
interesting to add that the majority of foremast hands do not live to
be forty-three years old.
I forgot to say that for the first time in five weeks the mate shaved
for dinner to-day, and so sleek and blue and shiny and naked did it
make him look, that it was almost a shock when he sat down opposite us.
Latitude, 45° 2′ south; longitude, 87° 40′ west.
+August 2+
This day was even finer than yesterday, except that since ten this
forenoon we haven’t had much wind. But the weather is warmer, 48° at 8
+A.M.+, and the sea is as placid and still and clear as under
the line. All the ground-swell has disappeared, and the great, level
expanse of the mighty South Pacific stretches on all sides in tiny
crinkles, frosted here and there by a crisp sparkle of froth; and the
sea-rim bounds the view in a circle as sharp and black as ink. It was
a day of almost tropic beauty, save that the air lacked the ineffable
balm characteristic of a day at sea between Cancer and Capricorn. We
rejoice at seeing the sky-sails once more expanded to the breeze, for
to-day the three yards were crossed, giving to the ship a fine-weather
look. Juan Fernandez will soon be abeam, and then only a few degrees
more to the Trades, for we made three and a half degrees of latitude
yesterday and hardly any easting. How pleasant it is to think of the
approach of warm weather again, when we can lie in deck-chairs in the
shadow of the wheel-house with a good book, or pass away the hours with
a backgammon- or cribbage-board!
We are very much pleased to find how free this ship is from roaches
that usually abound in sailing vessels; the only member of that
objectionable family that we have yet perceived was a small red one;
of the large, black cockroaches we have not seen one, though on the
“Mandalore” we were told that they were numerous on all wooden ships.
Neither have we discovered any of the more villanous creatures, which
cannot be said of many transatlantic mail steamers.
A fact worthy of note, as deplorable as it was unexpected, is that
since passing the meridian of Cape Horn we have not seen a single
albatross. Indeed, during the whole passage we haven’t seen more than a
dozen of them, they having been most numerous between the river Plate
and Staten Land. In truth, the albatross seems to be disappearing,
which is not astonishing when it is considered that many ship-masters
either use them as rifle-targets or catch them by the half-dozen
with hook and line, and take the quills and down home to sweethearts
and wives. Is it not odd, by the way, that there are more benedicts
among sea-captains than are to be found among the men of any other
profession? Yet long-voyage skippers, who are invariably married men,
see their wives only once a year.
Perhaps the albatross has been driven away into regions even more
solitary than Cape Horn, but it is my belief that they are gradually
vanishing, which is to be much lamented. They are of no apparent use
to mankind, but neither is the tiger; yet if that royal beast were
upon the eve of extermination, as our bison is, there would be a great
wailing heard in the land. The albatross, be it said, has all the regal
dignity of the bison; and no one who has not seen it can imagine the
imperial flight of a full-grown wanderer. Latitude, 41° 35′ south;
longitude, 86° 56′ west.
+August 3+
Pleasant northerly breezes, a smooth sea, and brilliant sunshine
gladdened our hearts this morning, and at noon we found ourselves
well north of 40°. The wind hauled to the northward somewhat during
the night, though, so that, with the variation, we did not make good
a better course than northeast by north, and are now heading for Juan
Fernandez in 34° south.
We have made a disagreeable discovery about Timothy Powers in the
port-watch. I don’t remember whether it was mentioned before or not,
but Tim was said to have fallen off the forward house two weeks ago
and sprained his right arm. From the first the captain never could
discover anything wrong with it, but as the fellow insisted that he
suffered terrible pains in that member, there was naught to do for
a while but to believe him. At last the skipper grew tired of Tim’s
loafing, and, going out on the main-deck this morning, he gave the
Irishman a very sulphurous dressing down and compelled him to turn to.
He was sent forward to clean out the pig-pen, and he went to work with
a woful countenance to lift off two planks that served as an apology
for a roof to the sty. He couldn’t move them with one hand, so he
stopped, looked carefully about to see whether or not he was observed
by the mates or any of his friends, deliberately took his arm out of
the sling in which he still insisted on carrying it, lifted the heavy
planks down with ease, put his arm back in the sling, resumed his
pitiful look, turned to reach for a broom, and found the eyes of the
second mate fixed steadily upon him. Mr. Rarx had been concealed and
had witnessed the whole affair. That settled it. Tim almost fainted
from shock, and from now till the end of the voyage his will not be a
bed of roses. Think how this creature has been imposing not only on
the captain and officers, but on his fellow-shipmates as well! For two
entire weeks his most arduous duty consisted in keeping the lookout on
the forward house in the daytime, perfectly well, with all night below,
while his friends, ill and drenched to the skin, had to dive around
the main-deck day and night with chattering teeth, two hands short in
the worst weather,--two hands, because old Neilsen has been laid up
in his bunk with general debility, too weak to even put his foot on
the main-deck. Tim is the sort of animal who contributes much to the
misery and suffering of sailors. A captain, for instance, catches a
man in such a deceit, never forgets it and refuses to believe the next
man, who actually has hurt himself, so that the real sufferer has to
bear the penalty of the other’s fraud. It is not a criminal offence,
but a low, contemptible trick; though just such a one as a man with a
face like Tim’s would be guilty of. The mate’s powers of divination
are not particularly acute, for he observed one day off the river
Plate, looking at Tim, “There goes a feller that _I_ call a good,
faithful man.”
At dinner to-day I chanced to remark that, as we had had such benefits
from the easterly wind, we ought to accept our three points of easting
now without grumbling. Mr. Goggins, however, is a fearful kicker, even
for a sailor; so, thinking to please the old man, he instantly replied,
“We ain’t had forty-eight hours o’ good luck on the hull passage.” This
was so remarkable a statement that my wife was provoked into saying,
gently but positively, “The man who talks like that doesn’t deserve
to reach port for six months more.” “Well, we ain’t,” quoth Goggins,
doggedly. Then I took a hand (it is usually best not to argue with him
and the skipper), and asked as sarcastically as I could, “I suppose
that three days’ easterly gale doesn’t count? And how about the first
sixteen days of the voyage? You’re enough of a sailor, I suppose,
though, to have forgotten all that.” I thought that he was floored; but
he was possessed of more vitality than one would have supposed, for he
came back at me with, “Well, the yards was ag’in the backstays all the
time in the North Atlantic.”
This was such a novel stand to take that we let him alone, so that
he got up and tramped out of the cabin much inflated. What possible
difference it could make whether or not the yards touched the backstays
as long as the ship lay her course and went through the water was
beyond my powers of reasoning.
We are now followed by an immense number of Cape pigeons. What merry,
blithesome little fellows they are, apparently all good-nature and
love for one another as they circle around the ship, almost brushing
the standing-gear in their mad, tumbling flight, now skimming just
above the sea, now soaring over the mast-heads, and sweeping down again
for very joy that they are made! But let a bucket of table refuse be
thrown over the side, and then away with good-fellowship and fraternal
affection. It’s a true case of every one for himself and the devil take
the hindmost. No sooner does the refuse touch the water than two or
three catch sight of it, and in an instant fifty pigeons are involved
in furious battle. They fairly scream in their excitement, and beat
each other with their powerful wings, and snap viciously right and left
with sharp, curved bills. Then one lucky one will perchance seize a
choice morsel. Instantly he is set upon by a dozen of his companions,
who mercilessly bear down upon him before he can rise from the surface
with his prize, and actually beat him down under water in their fierce
efforts to get at the tempting mouthful; but so plucky are they, that
we have never seen one relinquish anything when his bill has once
closed upon it.
While the pigeons are engaged in this deadly strife a great molly-hawk
sometimes looms up astern, having sighted the combat from afar, and
dashing into the centre of the squabbling flock, which scatters before
his huge wings and wide, formidable beak, like crows before a vulture,
he snaps up the bone of contention and soars away to enjoy it at his
leisure. After the rapacious monster has departed from out their midst,
the dejected little creatures return, and hover over any particle of
food that may remain, ever and anon diving far below the surface for a
crumb that they perceive deep down in the placid depths, rising again
with such amazing buoyancy and energy as to lift themselves clear out
of the water, like an inflated bladder suddenly released. They afford
us much amusement; but another six hundred miles farther north will, no
doubt, see the last of our merry little companions. Latitude, 39° 35′
south; longitude, 85° west.
+August 4+
Although the lovely clear skies have for a while disappeared, being
obscured by the most clearly defined stratus clouds that I ever saw,
the weather is bracing and dry, with a sea so smooth that it never
would be supposed that we were hundreds of miles from any land larger
than Juan Fernandez or its neighbor, Mas-á-Fuera. Each day sees a rise
of two or three degrees in the air and sea, and we are moving well up
into the heart of the thirties. We will, no doubt, soon fall in with
vessels from Chilean ports bound around the Horn; but those from San
Francisco have been driven so far to the westward by the Trades that
in this latitude they are away over in 125°. The wind is still to
the northward of west, and we continue to make more easting than is
desirable; because, if we have to steer much farther in towards the
land, our course when we take the Trades will have to be northwest in
order to cross the line in the right place, which, of course, would be
dead before the wind, an undesirable position in a square-rigger, as in
that event only the after-sails draw.
Captain Scruggs was quite a treat at the mid-day meal, for he appeared
in one of his majestic phases, when no one can tell him anything that
he doesn’t already know. My wife unhappily mentioned that this would
be fine yachting weather. Now, the mere mention of a yacht nearly
always upsets him; and we, therefore, had to listen while he disputed
vigorously with himself for some minutes; and he finally concluded with
the assertion that he could take the “Volunteer” and sail right round
the “Defender”; he knew the old one was better, anyhow, than that there
new brass boat, or whatever she was made of. On suggesting that he
might find some little difficulty in consummating such an undertaking,
he replied, “Well, I’ve got that confidence in myself; I used to sail
small boats when I was a boy, and I ain’t forgot how.”
He concluded his remarks, always delivered in explosions as though
challenging you to deny them, with a disquisition on jams. He believes
in the theory that all kinds of preserves are boiled down together,
and that different labels are then stuck on the tins. “Look at that,
now,” he growled, pointing to one on the table. “What d’ye call
that?” I showed him the device of a fig on the wrapper, with the name
beneath it. “Lemme taste it,” said he, plunging a knife deep into the
preserves. “There, what’d I tell you? ’Taint fig jam, it’s currants;
they hain’t got the right libel onto it,” he explained.
When dinner was over we repaired, as usual, to the after-cabin, while
the old man strode heavily back into the dining-room, called the mate,
and abruptly demanded, “Have you got that spigotti out yet?”
“What’s that, sir?” asked the mate.
“Spigotti, spigotti; like macaroni. Don’t you know by this time what
spigotti is?” said the skipper, very angrily, for he knew that he
didn’t have the name right and that we could hear him.
“No, sir, Cap’in Scruggs, sir, I’m d---- if I do,” stammered the
hapless Goggins; for we could perceive the captain through a chink in
the door bristled up like a ruffled bantam, and the hideous, grisly old
mate, his eyes popping out like a pair of deviled kidneys, racking his
brain for a translation of spigotti.
But the particularly scintillating jewel in the skipper’s galaxy of
remarkable pronunciations is his name for the inhabitants of Chile.
They become Chilaneans; though, now that I think of it, I have heard
other ship-masters put themselves to the trouble of so pronouncing
it. Where do they get that extra syllable from? Now, in the case of
Cubians, it’s different. They all say Cuby, so why not Cubians? It’s
logical. But Chilaneans is unreasonable.
Speaking of Cuba reminds me of what a Chesapeake Bay fisherman asked me
once, “Hain’t Mayceo fit with the Cubians before?” This was just before
Maceo was killed.
Captain Scruggs seems utterly unable to avoid contradiction, and,
being possessed of very uncouth manners (which he nevertheless knows
quite well how to correct), it may be conceived how trying an ordeal
half an hour at the table with him must be. “Don’t talk with him,
then,” is very easy to say; we don’t talk between meals to him, but at
table it is almost necessary to make one or two observations in thirty
minutes; and whenever the silence becomes overwhelming and we hazard a
remark, it is disheartening to listen continuously to “_I_ don’t
_think_ so.” Latitude, 37° 3′ south; longitude 83° 20′ west.
+August 5+
Just another such day as yesterday, with the sky obscured by
sharply-cut, stratus clouds. The only perceptible difference is that
to-day the air is a little more balmy; the wind and sea are precisely
the same, and our experience so far has been that the Pacific is most
aptly named. Of course we ought to be reaching smooth water now,
though it is often rough in the southeast Trades; the surprising part
is that we had such a quiet sea in the stormy forties. The air has
been wonderfully soft all day, the thermometer indicating 58° at noon,
although the sky was completely overcast.