desire it, in spite of our surroundings. The wind has freshened
constantly, and, being to the eastward of southeast, it has sent us
along at an eight-knot clip, steady and true, and we have done one
hundred and ninety miles in the twenty-four hours by the log, for we
have had no sights for three or four days. The temperature is almost
perfect, about 65° day and night, and as there is no sun to dazzle
one, reading on deck has once more become a joy.
Yesterday afternoon MacFoy returned Nansen’s “First Crossing of
Greenland,” which he borrowed a few days ago; he is an intelligent man
and knows all of Nordenskjold’s works pretty thoroughly. There is a
notion, though, to which he clings with characteristic Scotch tenacity;
in spite of everything, he insists that Nansen started upon his last
great voyage in a steam whaler from San Francisco.
But if this fellow is well read, what can be said of old Kelly, in
the mate’s watch. We pumped together yesterday afternoon and had much
conversation, during which he said that he hailed from Charleston,
but that his family had moved north to Troy when the war broke out,
and that his parents had brought him up strictly and decently. He
volunteered no reason for having turned sailor, but branched off
into literature, beginning with a pertinent quotation from Burns
and another from Moore. These led him on, and he expressed great
admiration for ancient history, concluding with a well-turned eulogy
on Gibbon’s “Rome,” with illustrations for preferring it to any other
account of that great empire. At first it seems extraordinary to find
so intelligent a man before the mast, living a beast’s life, and
surrounded by men with whom he has but little in common. Yet such
fellows are by no means uncommon at sea, for one often happens upon a
man in a Cape Horner’s forecastle whom Nature did not intend should be
there.
How different is old Kelly’s conversation from that of the mate,
especially at dinner and supper, when he shouts out his witless jokes!
To-day he burst in with the following silly story, and it was totally
irrelevant to what we were talking about: “There was a hold feller I
knoo onct that lived in the country, and when ’e saw the telegrapht
wires put hup past ’is farm, ’e ’ung a pair ’o boots on ’em to send
’em to ’is son.” At the conclusion of such pleasantries his sense of
humor is so agitated that he seems upon the brink of spasms, and his
temporal arteries swell out as big as lead-pencils, while he chortles
and wheezes and gasps like an old tattered bellows.
What quaint expressions sailors have, too! Mr. Rarx was talking about
athletics last night, and incidentally asked who was now the greatest
“hammer-heaver”; it must be remembered that objects at sea are never
thrown, they are always hove.
As we approach the final quarter of the voyage we cannot help wishing
that we were going to land at Calcutta as we did before. Oh, the
incomparable delight, the unbounded pleasure of those two months in
India which followed the termination of our voyage in the “Mandalore”!
The memories of those nine weeks in British India carry with them a
charm perfectly indescribable; and were it given us to visit but one
more country on the globe during our lifetime, we would unhesitatingly
choose another stay in the land of the Himalayas. Latitude, 24° 28′
south; longitude, 87° 5′ west.
+August 10+
Moderate southeasterly breezes, a smooth sea, and magnificent weather.
He who would not be happy here now must needs be hard to please. At
midnight we cut the circle of Capricorn, and have, happily, once
more entered the torrid zone, after an absence of fifty days, for it
was on June 20 that we passed Capricorn in the Atlantic. Verily, it
doesn’t seem as though almost two months have elapsed since we first
sighted the “Judas Dowes” that Sunday in the latitude of Rio. How time
speeds on at sea! A week does not seem longer than twenty-four hours,
and before we realize it they will be making ready the anchor. Our
progress is very gratifying, though the perversity of the skipper will
not allow him to believe or even to suppose that we have taken the
Trades. He has surprised us much in the last few days by going down
on the main-deck and assisting in the repair of the old sails. See
how inconsistent he is! He considers himself so infinitely above the
sailors that mere proximity to them under other circumstances, even
for a moment, carries infection with it; yet now, down he stalks to
the main-deck, off comes his coat, and down he drops flat, his short
fat legs sticking wide out before him like a brownie’s, as he turns to
in a cluster of the defiling sailors. For some days he sewed merrily
away on top of the deck-house, which was a different affair altogether,
and sail-making is a very agreeable pastime. But we were immeasurably
astonished at the arrogant Scruggs’s consorting thus with the foe.
As the captain and I were pacing the poop at ten o’clock last evening,
the sky at the time being cloudless and the moon almost full, suddenly,
as we turned to go aft, we saw, over our shoulders, a dazzling glare
of light from forward, like a very bright lightning-flash, and,
turning quickly, we observed a ball of fire shoot by at right angles
to our course and disappear behind the foretop-gallant-sail. “What was
that?” said I. “Oh, that was just a meteor or whatever you call it,”
answered the skipper; “you often see ’em hereabouts. Last voyage one
bursted near the ship at night at the dark o’ the moon somewhere about
15° south, and most scared all hands to death.” Such exhibitions are
met with in all parts of the world, even in cold, high latitudes. I
remember the case of the large British ship “Cawdor,” Captain Jardella,
during one of her recent voyages from Swansea to San Francisco.
She made a very long passage on this occasion of one hundred and
eighty-four days. She had a terrible battering in the Southern Ocean,
and reported on arrival that off Cape Horn an enormous meteor plunged
into the sea with a stunning explosion, so close as to flood the decks.
We learned last evening of a horrid accident that occurred on this ship
six weeks before we sailed on the present voyage. The mate spun the
yarn in these words: “We had just warped into the docks in Brooklyn to
discharge, when a gang o’ stevedores came over the side to rig the gear
for unloadin’. ‘Where’s the cargo pendant?’ says the boss stevedore.
‘There it is,’ says I, ‘and there’s a gantline, too,’ I says, pointin’
to a coil o’ brand-noo manila. Well, they began for to rig the falls,
while I went into the cabin for dinner. I seen one o’ the fellers on
the mainyard as I went in, but I didn’t think no more about it for
maybe ten minutes, when I heard a sickenin’ crash, and out I jumped.
Did you ever hear a man fall from aloft? Hit’s awful, sir. When I got
out on deck there was a lot o’ stevedores standin’ around lookin’ at
somethin’ on the main-’atch. I didn’t want to look at what I knew it
was, but I had to; so I shoved my way through, and there lay the big,
heavy man I’d seen on the mainyard. I didn’t see anythin’ wrong with
him first off till I went round on t’other side, and there was his head
cracked open just as if you’d dropped a mushmellon on the ground, and
the hinsides was spattered all over the ’atch cover. Plenty o’ these
here stevedores git hurt, and often it’s the fault o’ rotten gear, and
then there’s a case ag’in’ the ship. But I’m too hold a bird to git
took in like that, and I always gives ’em brand-noo rope.”
It is strange that more sailors are not killed by falling from aloft,
for they not only appear to be, but really are, very careless, and
two or three of our men have more than once just saved themselves
from tremendous falls. Not long ago that handsome four-masted ship
“Puritan” lost two men from the upper foretop-sail-yard, only two
hundred miles from Sandy Hook, bound out to Hiogo; and it is a serious
matter to start an eighteen-thousand-mile voyage short two hands, when
ships are allowed to go to sea in these days with twenty seamen instead
of thirty. Latitude 22° 19′ south; longitude, 89° 15′ west.
+August 11+
Still no change in anything but the thermometer, the instrument at
mid-day showing 70° for the first time in many weeks. How superb, how
glorious this weather surely is! There is not too much sun to render
sitting anywhere on deck at all unpleasant, yet we have enough to give
us all the necessary observations; the soft, rich southeast Trades come
flowing smoothly over the quarter, while the ocean, the limitless South
Pacific, lies motionless to the horizon, save for the brittle, little
cat’s-paws that spangle the royal blue of this great but placid ocean.
Oh, the enjoyment of these balmy days! Oh, the unutterable charm of
the sea when for days together the ship moves serenely over its quiet
surface with nothing to interrupt the profound peace to be obtained
only in the solitude of the oceans!
“Oh! the sea, the sea, the open sea,
The pure, the fresh, the ever free.
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round.”
Although everything in nature is so somnolent, not so the sailors; all
day long both watches have wrought like bees unbending the heavy, new
sails and sending aloft the old fine-weather ones. The mending was
finished yesterday, and the old, brownish-gray canvas looks very dull
after the glare of the new duck and changes the whole appearance of
the ship. This is another point of usefulness in the donkey-engine,
for steam was got up this morning, and the different sails were sent
whizzing aloft like sacks of corn into a mill in a tenth of the time
that would have been necessary in manual labor. Nor be it supposed
that the sails of a two-thousand-ton ship are feather weights, for our
main-sail alone would tip the balance at eight hundred pounds.
Last evening was the first occasion for at least two months on which we
have been able to eat our 5.15 o’clock supper without lamplight; and it
was a very grateful change to see the mellow rays of the setting sun
streaming in at the open door, instead of the weak flicker of a very
bad lantern. The cheerful air of the saloon was the cause of further
very great volubility on the part of the mate, and he told the only
humorous joke (is this tautology?) that he has uttered on the passage.
He said that his wife once asked him why it was that a captain couldn’t
keep tally of the size of his anchor so that he wouldn’t have to weigh
it every time he left a harbor. This, for Goggins, wasn’t bad.
Some days ago we finished “Farthest North,” and so lucid and
straightforward are his writings that we seem to know Fridjof Nansen
personally. Three great characteristics stand forth pre-eminently in
this book,--manliness, lack of affectation, and the total absence of
the “I am.” Latitude, 20° 23′ south; longitude, 91° 20′ west.
+August 12+
Somewhat more cloudy to-day, and, since the morning watch, the Trades
have been a good deal stronger, though last night the wind dropped to
force 3, the average for the week having been force 4. A noticeable
fact is that even though the weather is so cool for this latitude, 70°
at noon, the Cape pigeons are still with us; I thought that they would
have left us long since, for on the other voyage we saw our last pigeon
in 30° south. One of the birds has been following us for weeks; we can
always pick him out by the fact that two of his right-wing quills are
broken, which renders him conspicuous at quite a distance.
The ship was pumped out with the donkey last night, after the sails
were all bent, and having had no exercise for some days, the men having
pumped only at four in the morning on account of sail-making, etc., I
was constrained to take hold of the handle-bar and follow the wheel
around, which afforded even more exercise than the ordinary way. If the
men maintain constantly thirty strokes to the minute it is good work;
whereas, with the donkey whirling the pumps around at more than sixty,
the very exertion necessary to keep up with this speed is more than
considerable. It is attended, too, with some danger of bodily harm;
for if your foot should slip on the wet deck and you did not instantly
let go the handle-bar, you would either be jerked over the wheel and
slammed down on the other side, or at the next revolution the bar would
catch you under the chin and knock your lower jaw into bone-dust. The
captain conjectured later on that he, too, needed some exercise, for
he went down and worked away with ferocious abandon for perhaps five
minutes, standing forth in the bright moonlight a most ridiculous
object. For his short, plump, little body was taxed to the very utmost
to keep up with the machine, and when his coat-tails whisked wildly
about and he staggered now and then to keep his balance, and his arms
were jerked back and forth like shuttles, his coat up between his
ears, he looked like John Gilpin in a cyclone. But funniest of all was
his face. Whenever he exerts himself he always glares over at us to
ascertain whether we are laughing at him or not; and last night, as he
gazed up at us over the whizzing bar, with bursting cheeks and popping
eyes, we thought we had never seen so ludicrous a sight; even more
droll than the other day while he was “chinning” himself on the weather
mizzen-sheerpole, when he peered over his shoulder at us with so
distorted and writhing a countenance that we thought he was strangling.
The skipper has a clipping-machine, with which he has almost denuded
his head and face of their shaggy masses, and he insists that my own
thick growth of hair and beard will be uncomfortable in hot weather,
which is no doubt true; but when he offered to “run the machine over
your whiskers,” as he expressed it, I thought it best to risk them as
they are. Fancy reaping one’s beard with clippers!
Mention has not been made of a certain dish that was placed upon the
supper-table a few nights after the last pig had been killed. In one
of the compartments of the rack was a plate of cold salt beef; while
in the other was something that we thought was mighty good, judging
from the fragrance that rose from beneath the cover. When the latter
was removed, though, there lay revealed some queer-looking, black
fragments that might have been anything rather than meat. It turned out
to be pig’s flesh right enough, but no one could guess what portions
of his anatomy they were. Some of the objects were cylindrical; these
were sections of the creature’s tongue. Others were very irregular and
unusual-looking; these were the ears; while a villanous mass that stood
aloof from the rest was recommended by the skipper as the heart. “I
think you’ll like that,” he observed, “though some do say there’s too
much muscle in it.”
The only really unsuccessful article manufactured by the merry little
Cantonite is the pie-crust. It is very attractive and tempting to
contemplate, which makes the reality harder to bear, for it is the only
wholly indigestible article of food I ever came across; you can even
feel your teeth gliding smoothly over flakes of sticky lard scattered
freely through it. Nothing but hydrochloric acid could have the
least solvent effect upon it. Oh, yes, there is something else,--the
captain’s digestive organs. It will be recalled that when we first came
on board he mentioned that he was a dyspeptic; but goodness, gracious
me! it is a revelation to watch him denude meat or fruit pies of the
armor-plate which invests them. He has another favorite dish, too,
that he usually eats for breakfast; it looked familiar at first, and
we tried some, but instantly desisted. It was like large grains of
sand; the captain called it boiled hominy. Latitude, 18° 25′ south;
longitude, 93° 55′ west.
+August 13+
Fresh Trades, moderate sea, and dazzling skies were ours during this
day, and we made more than two degrees of latitude and only five
miles less than three of longitude. It is glorious, and everything
has assumed a tropical aspect: the sea, which undulates in swinging,
dark-blue heaves, topped with sparkling froth; and the air, which
sleepily fans one with its soft, drowsy breath. Even the men have begun
to show the influence of warmer climes, and duck and dungaree garments,
long buried in the noisome and impenetrable mysteries of a sailor’s
chest, have suddenly bloomed forth like lilies in the spring. We have
kept away a little to the westward of northwest so as to cross the line
in about 116°.
The pumping took place last night at 7.30 as usual, and I took a hand
in it, alongside of that villain, Tim Powers (he of the wounded arm),
while opposite to us rose and fell the cadaverous countenance of Paddy.
Neither of the mates was within hearing distance, but no one spoke till
Jimmie Rumps, the little bosun, called out “Let her rest a minute,”
and then Tim grew loquacious.
“I’m afeard this is too long a v’yage for the lady, sor; it’s a sight
o’ sea.”
“Yes,” I answered, “but it’s not that that bothers us. We went out
to Calcutta a couple of years ago and were at sea a hundred and
twenty-seven days, so we knew it might be a hundred and fifty when we
started.”
“Is thot so, sor,” said Tim, with immense energy and interest,--“to
Calcutta? A grand place. If yez don’t mind, what was the name o’ the
ship?”
“The ‘Mandalore.’”
“Oh,” with great satisfaction and relief, “an English ship. I’ll bet
yez had a different----”
“Shake her up again, boys,” came from the main-hatch in Jimmie’s thin
little voice, and we turned to in silence till the mate’s growl,
“That’ll do the pumps,” put an end to the job. Then I asked Paddy how
he was enjoying himself.
“To speak the truth,” he answered, wearily, “I’d rather be in me grave
than where I am, and this is the first time I ever said such a thing
aboard ship.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” I asked him. “You’re always skylarking with
the cook and steward.”
“Well, what’s the good in tryin’ to make a row?” he philosophically
demanded.
“Don’t you get enough to eat?”
“Ye-e-e-s, but it’s not what I’ve heard the mate tell you it’s like.
It’s the drivin’ we mind. But even that’s not the worst of it; you
can’t do a thing to please the mate or the old man. I dunno about Mr.
Rarx; you know I ain’t in his watch, but I guess he’s no better than
most second mates, and I guess you know what _that_ means. Work,
work, work till you split yer finger-ends and then kicked around and
thumped for a farmer. But I’m not makin’ a row,” he added, “only you
asked me.”
Paddy, it must be said, is one of a rare species, a fair-minded sailor,
which I discovered some time ago by his taking the mate’s part when
telling me of some trifling incident that happened on board.
A couple of hours later, it being the second mate’s watch, I asked him
to tell me honestly why he liked American ships better than others,
knowing that he has sailed in English vessels.
“Well, the principal thing is the pay,” he replied. “It’s a good
deal better in our ships than in foreigners; and the cabin table’s
generally better, too. Now, there’s the British ship ‘Fulwood’ (a
fine steel ship she is), I know they don’t have soft bread on the
table but once a week.” It seemed to me that this would be quite a
recommendation for the “Fulwood,” for we have yet to see soft bread
aboard ship much better than a worn-out sponge. But as for the wages,
he is certainly right. Take the wages out of Hamburg as an example.
The chief officers of the largest and fastest express steamers receive
an amount equivalent to only sixty dollars of our money! What sort of
remuneration is that for a man of ability, in many cases a university
graduate, a man second in authority aboard a ten-thousand-ton mail
steamer rippling through the most crowded ocean in the world at
twenty-one knots, with fifteen hundred souls below-decks? And it makes
one positively angry to think of a human being like Goggins, a densely
ignorant and practically worthless creature, a person who can’t work
a traverse and get the same answer twice, receiving the same amount
as mate of a wind-jammer! Why, our steward, a Malay and a man of low
intellect, has a good deal more than half as much wages as the first
officer of the “Normannia” or “Augusta Victoria”! It is positively
incredible. Latitude, 16° 14′ south; longitude, 96° 30′ west.
+August 14+
Another day, beautiful beyond expression. We never remember one in all
our sea experience that was as fine. The sun poured down from a sky
without a shred of cloud, and the Trades, still as fresh as ever, came
singing so sweetly and cheerfully over the starboard quarter, that you
were moved to lean back in your chair and think, “Who is so happy as I?”
Even if the weather were not so delightful, our fine progress would
cover a multitude of grievances, for we have done five hundred and
eighty-six miles in three days, a continuous average of eight knots. If
credible, the nights are even finer than the days, and we sat late on
deck last evening plunking away on the banjo, with everything steeped
in the white light of the moon just past the full. So wonderfully
brilliant were her beams that the shadows of the weather mizzen-rigging
cast upon the immense concave expanse of the main-sail stood forth as
from an arc-light. The serenity of such a night is almost unearthly.
The first step in the rehabilitation of the ship for port has been
progressing for two days,--the tarring down of the standing rigging. It
is always the dirtiest job aboard ship, and the men are plastered from
crown to toe with the sticky fluid. Next after this comes the painting,
then the holy-stoning, and lastly the varnishing of what little bright
work there is on the poop.
[Illustration: Tarring down]
When at the pumps last evening I learned that the men had been deeply
impressed with my having assisted the donkey the other night. Murphy
especially seemed to extract much amusement from the fact, and when I
told him that some exercise was necessary to health, he said that he
never allowed that subject to bother him, adding, “There’s one thing
I’m just grand at,--lyin’ in me bunk.” His appearance substantiates
this statement, for he is as round and rugged as he was three months
ago; I truly believe that he is the only man forward who doesn’t bear
the marks of either Cape Horn or a belaying-pin. On the other hand,
Louis the Gaul is the saddest and most dejected-looking man I ever saw.
He has at all times that melancholy, dispirited look that one sees in
the eyes of a captive ourang-outang. We talked together last night, and
he informed me that this was his first American ship, and, please God,
it would be his last. In very broken English, and in the deferential
tones of a foreigner, he asked, “Sair, do your laws allow men to be
treated as ze men are treated aboard zees sheep?”
“No,” I answered; “but so far there does not seem to have been any
attempt made by the United States authorities to enforce the laws they
have made.” Jacquin didn’t know enough English to go more deeply into
the subject, and the talk drifted to the French navy, in which he has
served sixteen years altogether; and when I told him that I knew the
“Jean Bart” very well, his delight was child-like. Then he imparted
a bit of rather astonishing news by saying that a man who has served
for twenty years in the French navy (and it need not be all in one
stretch) is pensioned by the government at three francs and a half per
day. Besides possessing the second most powerful navy, France has some
rattling fine square-riggers, such as the “La France,” the largest
sailing vessel in the world bar the “Potosi,” the “Dunquerque,” and the
“Quevilly,” the greatest tank sailing ship afloat, carrying one million
gallons of oil in bulk between Philadelphia and Rouen.
Our pigeons have left us, and well they might, considering the
latitude. What a distance they followed us! From 30° south in one
ocean to 16° south in the other, and from the forty-fifth to the one
hundredth meridian. Quite a stretch of salt-water that. Mother Carey’s
chickens have come as a sort of compensation, hovering over our wake
and darting down between the waves like swallows whizzing through the
air after insects. Latitude, 14° 5′ south; longitude, 99° west.
+August 15+