so, and I pray the reader to bear with me, and to remember that if
he were in my place he would no doubt give expression to the same
thought. If the entire voyage, except that part lying in the Pacific
between the southern tropic and the equator, were composed of gales
and snow-storms, it seems as though these winds would atone for any
amount of previous distress and inconvenience. It seems wonderful that
the atmosphere can possess simultaneously such exhilaration and such a
smooth, luscious balminess. Oh, superb, glorious southeast Trades, thy
equal is not in the world!
THE TRADE-WIND’S SONG.
Oh, I am the wind that the seamen love,
I am steady and strong and true;
They follow my track by the clouds above
O’er the fathomless, tropic blue.
For close by the shores of the sunny Azores
Their ships I await to convoy;
When into their sails my constant breath pours,
They hail me with turbulent joy.
I bring them a rest from tiresome toil,
Of trimming the sail to the blast;
For I love to keep gear all snug in the coil,
And the sheets and the braces all fast.
From the deck to the truck I pour all my force,
In spanker and jib I am strong;
For I make every course to pull like a horse.
And worry the great ship along.
As I fly o’er the blue I sing to the crew
Who answer me back with a hail;
I whistle a note as I slip by the throat
Of the buoyant and bellying sail.
I laugh when the wave leaps over the head,
And the jibs through the spray-bow shine;
For an acre of foam is broken and spread
When she shoulders and tosses the brine.
Through daylight and dark I follow the bark,
I keep like a hound on her trail;
I’m strongest at noon, yet under the moon
I stiffen the bunt of her sail.
The wide ocean through for days I pursue,
Till slowly my forces all wane;
Then in whispers of calm I bid them adieu,
And vanish in thunder and rain.
Oh, I am the wind that the seamen love,
I am steady and strong and true;
They follow my track by the clouds above
O’er the fathomless, tropic blue.
Thus has Thomas Fleming Day delightfully written of the flowing Trades.
The men are busily engaged shearing away the great mops of hair that
protected their heads in cold weather. Coleman (a man with a baneful
eye and one who ought to be watched) seems to be the most accomplished
tonsorial artist in the ship; he has already operated on half a dozen
men, and all hands but one have assumed that appearance of cleanliness
usual among sailors in the tropics. The exception is Tim, who, bar Mr.
Goggins, is the dirtiest man on board. And now for a secret, profound
and extraordinary! Let the peruser of these pages prepare himself
for the concussion; let him brace himself for the impending blow! Mr.
Goggins was seen to go forward to the galley an hour ago and return
with a basin of water! Can it be possible that he is about to submit
his face and hands to the purification of a quart, a whole quart of
fresh water? But no; this could not be. Let us banish the thought. He
would perish of shock. Yet it must be for this that he fetched the
water, for it is the only conceivable use to which he could put it,
so we live in hopes of a change at supper. We have never anywhere
come in contact with a person so irreclaimably obnoxious, and we can
only wonder why the captain allows him to come to the table in such a
condition. If a man wants to be dirty, it’s his own personal affair;
but when he becomes objectionable to others, steps ought to be taken to
remedy the evil.
By far the most agreeable persons on board are the steward and
cook, not to mention David MacFoy, who is so much more pleasant and
entertaining than the rest that he forms a class all by himself. The
cook, though, is a jolly little man, and welcomed us with much homely
attention when we invaded his precinct the other day to learn how to
make curry properly. To start with, it is hard to get good curry-powder
even in India, and that which we brought back with us from Calcutta in
glass jars is not as good as that which can be bought in San Francisco
in square tins, that city being the only place in the United States
where this particular sort can be obtained. But besides the necessity
for good powder, there are certain proportions of chopped onion, flour,
butter, etc., to be added in its preparation, so that in order to learn
how to make curry properly it is necessary to witness the process as
performed by an Indian or a Chinaman.
A rather interesting little fact to us to-day is that this is the
first occasion on which three figures have ever been necessary to
express our longitude. Latitude, 12° 5’ south; longitude, 101° 40′ west.
+August 16+
Fear not. I do not intend to say how much more beautiful to-day is than
yesterday, though I should like to, and it is hard to refrain from
doing so in such weather; but more than enough has been said on this
subject. As a matter of fact, it is not quite so fine to-day, for the
wind is dead aft, so that the after-sails are the only ones that do
much good, and our run has not been quite up to the usual standard.
This has been a grand cleaning day forward. Every movable object was
taken out of the forward house and spread on the forecastle-head in
the baking sun, and a curious sight did the men’s old clothes and
bedding present after lying mildewed and sodden for so many weeks.
They lay in a wretched heap, the outside of which was composed of
ancient, grimy bedticks, frowsy, ill-looking quilts, and disreputable,
mouldy mufflers. The forecastle itself was then swept cleanly out and
thoroughly washed with soap and water.
We have scores of snow-white birds with us now, about the size of
common gulls, called bosuns. They are pretty creatures, with the most
remarkable tails; for, instead of the usual fan-shaped arrangement
of feathers, their bodies seem to be elongated into pointed spines,
so thin and sharp that it is almost impossible to see the extreme
end. These birds are very noisy and keep up a harsh croaking, whence
their name, as a bosun is supposed to live in a continual state of
exhortation. On coming up from supper last night just before six, we
saw a plump, little feathered creature bearing down upon us, which
had a very familiar appearance; and great was our surprise a moment
later when we found that it was a Cape pigeon! Imagine one within six
hundred miles of the equator! He must have been the last survivor of
some vessel ahead of us, and, having abandoned her, concluded to stop
and see if he couldn’t find some scraps here. He looked very calm
sailing about on motionless wing among the flocks of bosuns and Mother
Carey’s chickens that appear, in comparison, to make so great an effort
at flying. This morning, though, we found that this, the last token of
Cape Horn, had vanished. Mr. Rarx, however, didn’t seem much surprised
at the appearance of the pigeon, and told us that he had seen them
often in the harbor of Callao in 12° south.
In a maritime paper that the second mate showed us to-day there
was rather an interesting article concerning the naming of ships.
According to it, French merchant-vessels are usually called after
provinces, towns, wines, and victories, but never after men, except
the greatest men of French history. British ships are generally named
after mythological characters, lakes, bays, glens, and cities; German
vessels after rivers, ports, poets, states, and characters in German
literature. The Italians name theirs after characters in Italian
literature, and names of hope, courage, enterprise, and religion.
Spanish ships are almost always called after cities or the great
commanders in Spanish history. Norwegians and Swedes take the names of
localities dear to them; while American ships are given the names of
their owners, relatives, friends, or “any old thing.”
The same paper contained a short dissertation on scurvy. I wonder
how many people there are who know that, according to the latest
researches, scurvy is not a disease produced by eating salt meat? For
many years Professor Torup, of the University of Christiania, has been
studying this dreaded malady, scurvy, in all its forms, and about
five years ago he proved to his own satisfaction that it is produced
by ptomaine poisoning incident to putrefaction in meats which had not
been properly cured or preserved. Fridjof Nansen believed in this
theory, and when he was fitting out the “Fram” for her Arctic voyage
he took the most extraordinary precautions to have every can or barrel
of preserved meat that went on board in the best possible condition,
particularly the salt meats. The sequel to this care was that upon his
return every man on board was in perfect health, and had been during
the three years’ voyage; this has been considered sufficient proof
that it is poison in the meat, and not the salted meat itself, which
produces that most ghastly of all diseases. Latitude, 10° 8′ south;
longitude, 103° 56′ west.
+August 17+
Still the same weather conditions, with a little more wind and, strange
to tell, a heavy ground-swell from the southwest. Imagine how hard
the gale must have been to drive the swell through thirty degrees of
latitude, as it is not probable that a wind strong enough to raise such
a sea would prevail north of 40° south. Soon, indeed, now we will enter
upon the last quarter of our voyage, and that portion of the Pacific
between the line and 40° north is at this season often responsible for
more long passages than any other part of the Cape Horn voyage. Many
a flyer has rolled booming across the equator on a record-breaking
trip, struck the Doldrums north of the line like running into a stone
wall, and added fifty days more to the passage before sighting the
Farallones. Just a year ago the “Shenandoah,” one of our fastest
vessels, was forty-six days sailing up to ’Frisco from the equator.
Last night in the first watch I had a long talk with the second mate.
It seems that he and Mr. Goggins have had words several times lately,
and as Mr. Rarx knows what we think of the mate, he unburdened his mind
in a very unusual manner. He says that Goggins would make a tip-top
mate of a garbage-dumper, but that he isn’t fit for a geordie brig,
much less a clipper ship, or what passes for a clipper in these days.
“But the worst of it is, he’s no seaman; and when my watch on deck
comes ain’t there a h---- of a fine mess, and I’ve got to do it all
over again. And look at his men, the state he’s got ’em into; there’s
not a man-jack o’ the whole lot that’ll turn a finger for him, with his
shoutin’ and hollerin’ and swearin’. I wonder the captain shipped such
a ---- ---- old cripple, for he knew him before. I’m gettin’ bloody
sick o’ the voyage. What’s the matter with the mate is that he came in
through the cabin-windows instead o’ the hawse-pipes.”
All this and much more did Mr. Rarx pour forth, working himself into
quite a rage as he went along, and embellishing his discourse with
regular handspike oaths.
In the American merchant service a mate always rises to that position
through the various grades from ordinary seaman up; but on British
ships boys (frequently gentlemen’s sons) sign for three years as
apprentices, live aft, and are taught navigation and seamanship
perfectly and practically by captains who are often privileged to write
R. N. R. after their names, paying, I think, about one hundred guineas
for this instruction. When this course is over they are fit for second
mate, and in another two years pass for mate and then master. How
different in America, where the law requires no examination for a man
before he goes in command of a sailing vessel! How Mr. Goggins could
rise to be mate from a cabin-boy without passing through the forecastle
is quite marvellous, as he has always sailed in Yankee ships. He is a
very obscure individual, though, and no doubt landed in the cabin in
some inscrutable manner.
Mr. Rarx, on the other hand, would make a good mate of a large yacht
were it not for his temper, which is very violent, and he has a way of
harboring up revenge for petty trifles. We have seen more bad treatment
of the men at the hands of Goggins; but my belief is that the second
mate does considerable hammering on his own account the other side of
the forecastle-house. It is a curious fact that so many bright men
stick at second mate all their lives, never rising any higher, simply
because they have never learned the use of a sextant, or how to copy
figures from an epitome, for that’s all that navigation amounts to as
carried on at sea. This is the great dividing line between first and
second mate, which a man like Rarx could overcome in a few weeks of
application. When a second mate has passed his thirty-fifth year his
pristine ardor and zeal begin to wane, for by that time his aspirations
for improvement are not so keen as they were; and if he is not a mate
shortly afterward, he never will be. Similarly, when a mate has passed
that age and never has had a command, he settles down in the capacity
of chief officer, and by the time he is forty he performs his duties
thereafter with no more ambition than the ox that hauls the plough.
Many ship-masters refuse to take either a mate or a second mate who is
more than thirty-five years old. Reference is made to sailing craft
only, as men in the transatlantic mail service not infrequently reach
fifty years before succeeding to one of the greyhounds. In the early
days of Yankee clippers scores of men went out as master at twenty-one,
and capable ones at that, as the records show.
Whenever there is a pause in the conversation at meals now, Captain
Scruggs always fills in with some remarks about Nansen (or Naysen, as
he always calls him) and Arctic expeditions. It is remarkable with
what regularity he does this, and the mate as regularly asks in a
grieved tone, addressing no one in particular, “And will yer tell
me wot good hit’s a-goin’ to do when they do find the pole?” Then
the skipper indignantly asks him if he supposes that an expedition
is idle all the time in the ice; to which the mate replies, “Well, I
know there’s nothin’ to be found out about the land up there, cause
there hain’t none.” And then they go at it like a pair of quarrelsome
cats, till suddenly the old man fetches the table a whack and cries
out, “Very well, sir; you’re not here to argue; that’ll do, sir,” in
his fiercest tones. At such times he looks like the ogre of childhood.
These set-tos are extremely amusing, though, for neither knows anything
about the subject, and the air throbs with “magnetic poles,” “Arctic
circles,” and “phemomemoms.” By the way, it is interesting to know that
England held the record for the highest latitude for two hundred and
seventy-five years, or since Hudson’s voyage in 1607 to 1882, when the
record passed to the United States, to be wrested from her thirteen
or fourteen years later by the Norwegians. Let us hope that Peary,
whom Sir Clements Markham calls “the greatest living ice-traveller,”
will regain what we have lost, and this time succeed in attaining that
geographical point, the quest of which has resulted in the loss of such
splendid men as Franklin and de Long.
Almost all of the painting aloft has been finished except the lower
masts. The topmast and lower mast-heads all glitter in the glory of a
coat of dark reddish-brown, and the rigging fairly scintillates in the
sun in its dress of glossy tar. Mr. Goggins says that he well remembers
the first wire-rigged sailing vessel seen in the United States. She was
a full-rigged London brig, and when she arrived in New York she looked
so neat and trim aloft that even the old shell-backs, who doubted the
efficacy of wire, were obliged to admit that in appearance, anyhow, she
was away ahead of the old style. “But you wait till she strikes a gale
o’ wind,” said these Solons, “and then you’ll see.” And they didn’t
have long to wait, for on her return voyage to England she was totally
dismasted three hundred miles west of Cape Clear. Latitude, 8° 19′
south; longitude, 105° 40′ west.
+August 18+
A still fresher breeze to-day, but it is dead aft. But we are moving
so steadily in the same direction, northwest, that we slip through the
water without appreciating how fast we are going; and as each noon puts
us two degrees farther north, we ought to cross the line next Saturday.
Gradually, too, we have been gliding into warmer weather, and last
night we experienced, for the first time in the Pacific, the tremendous
heat of the equatorial regions. There is something inexpressibly
depressing to many people after a few days’ sojourn in the tropics;
something that seems to drain the vitality. Personally I have never
experienced this feeling, and exercise should never be omitted in hot
weather by robust persons, although it should not be severe, and ought
never be taken when the sun is more than ten degrees above the horizon.
This morning as we were hanging over the side in the shade, watching
the copper slipping smoothly through the water, while a perfect
cataract of cool wind poured over us out of the lee side of the
cross-jack, we saw a disk of vivid green resting upon the surface of
the clear, blue depths. We thought it was a cluster of sea-grass till
the captain said, “Hello, there’s our first turtle.” So it proved to
be, and as the ship passed within a few feet of him we had an excellent
view of his broad, corrugated back, fully three feet across; he was
reposing in peaceful slumber as we slid past, with head retracted, but
feet and tail extended like a starfish, and he looked immeasurably
comfortable, resting so placidly on the water, indolently rising and
falling in the quiet sea; and we envied him, lying there in his clear,
cool element. Latitude, 6° 38′ south; longitude, 107° 44′ west.
+August 19+
One hundred days at sea, and we celebrated the circumstance in real
old-fashioned, long-approved Yankee style. Last evening, immediately
after supper, we went up on the cabin-house and sat down to enjoy the
sunset. All at once we heard angry voices forward, and then Louis, the
Frenchman, shot head first out of the lee door of the carpenter-shop,
followed by the massive body of Chips himself, who held in his hand
a bludgeon. They were both in a passion. Louis dropped his hat as he
flew through the doorway, and as he stooped to pick it up, smack! came
the truncheon upon his flank. Then Louis straightened up, shot out
his fist, and smote Chips painfully on the chin; the latter returned
the blow, and in a second they were at it tooth and nail. Now, Louis
is a very active, powerful man, and in a long spell he would, no
doubt, wear the other out, but in close quarters he was no match for
the carpenter’s weight; for a few seconds Louis prevailed, but Chips
recovered, and, being a foot taller than the Gaul, he seized him by the
throat and backed him over towards the rail, against which he caused
Louis’s head to come into such frequent and violent contact that we
could hear the tattoo where we sat. Then Louis began his national, low
habit of kicking, but was unsuccessful in his contemptible trick, and
they were still in the throes of battle when the mate appeared and
cautiously hauled them apart. The shirts of both were in shreds and the
Frenchman was in a fearful rage. By and by Chips came aft to supper; he
bore no facial marks of the encounter save that he was very pale.
At seven o’clock I went up to one of the men, Charlie, and asked him
what the row was about. He said that, as far as he knew, Louis went
into the carpenter-shop to get some kerosene to cleanse the paint from
his hands, and, having no business in there without permission, Chips
had thrown him out. The carpenter, by the way, hasn’t been fair to
the men lately with their water. One day off Cape Horn, when he went
into the forecastle with the men’s allowance, one of them said to him,
thereby exhibiting an unusually good spirit, “Say, Chips, there’s no
good o’ givin’ us all that water in cold weather, we can’t drink it.”
Then when the hot weather came and the men grew thirsty, Chips refused
to give them more than they asked for off the Horn, though each man is
entitled here to four quarts per day.
Well, then, we continued to sit where we were till after dark,
discussing the event; presently eight bells went, MacFoy came aft with,
“The watch is aft, sir,” to which the mate replied with the usual
growl, “All right; relieve the wheel and lookout,” and the starboard
watch came on deck. At about 8.15, in the midst of that deep, wonderful
silence that pervades a sailing ship at night, we were startled by loud
voices up near the main-mast, just where we couldn’t tell, as it was
pitch dark; immediately afterward, however, we recognized the voices of
Mr. Rarx and Louis, which quickly rose to shouting. The first sentence
that we caught was from the second mate, the words coming in jerks, as
though he had a man by the neck and was shaking him: “So you were in
there tryin’ to steal oil eh? You ---- ---- French ---- ---- ----.” To
which Louis answered in a loud voice, “I deed _not_, sair.” Then
came another broadside from Rarx, and again, “Etees _not_ so,
sair.”
At this point several voices broke in, and the old man then ran down
the weather poop-ladder to see what was the matter. Suddenly a
death-like silence reigned for a few moments; then came a sound of
scuffling, and all at once Rarx cried out, “God! He’s stuck me, cap’n!”
“What’s that?” yelled the skipper.
“The damned French hound’s put a knife into me, sir!”
Paralysis instantly fell upon all hands. The tension was fearful, but
was relieved somewhat by the steward’s opening the port cabin door,
allowing a broad path of light to stream forth into the darkness,
which had hitherto rendered the affair mysterious and horrible. It
fell upon a group of startled men by the main-mast, with the skipper
in the centre supporting the second mate, while the latter, pressing
his hands above his left hip, shuffled painfully aft. He was led into
the cabin, where he sat down upon the coal-box, and I pulled up his
shirt and exposed the wound. It was a wide gash in his side, a little
to the front of and just above the pelvis. The blow had evidently been
aimed at the groin, but in the darkness Louis had slightly missed.
Rarx’s clothes were somewhat blood-soaked, but the flow had ceased,
showing that probably none of the large arteries had been punctured.
Still, there was more than a probability that he had been dangerously,
nay, fatally, hurt, and even at that moment might be bleeding to death
internally, and we could not tell whether or no any of the vital organs
had been touched. The skipper ran at once for listerine, and together
we contrived to bind up the wound and put the man to bed. Then the old
man stepped out on the main-deck and shouted,--
“Send that Frenchman aft, Mr. Goggins, and put the irons on him.”
The mate went gingerly up to Louis, who, in the midst of a knot of men,
was raving like a maniac, and, seizing him gently by the arm, led him
aft. Oh, how that man raged and blasphemed! He was like an angry bull,
and his loud voice rang out far over the peaceful ocean and echoed and
reverberated high up overhead in the hollows of the upper sails.
“Did you hear what ’ee call me, sair?” in shrill tones. “I, who have
bose fazair and mozair. _I weel not stand zat, sair._ I die
fairst; you can keel me, sair. And I, I stuck ’eem; I would cut ’eem
again, sair, or any one else, that call me zat name. +I am a man,
sair.+” This last in a perfect shriek.
Never a word said the old man. Then Louis turned on him, and,
insolently sneering, his head thrown back scornfully and one foot
advanced, he cried,--
“And you, Capitaine Scruggs! What are you? I have been to sea twenty
year and nevair saw a capitaine like you before. You starve us! you
starve us! Why do you starve us? When we fairst left New York we ’ad
plentee to eat, zee food was waste, and now for seex wicks we have
had nossing at all. Bah! Peef! _You_, a man like _you_, a
capitaine!”
At this juncture the skipper said abruptly, but without the least show
of anger, for which great credit is due him,--
“Where’s the knife you cut the second mate with?”
“Where zee knife, eh? Here zee knife. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Ha, ha!” And he jerked it over the side into the sea.
All this time the mate was fussing with the irons, trying to find a
pair that would encircle his great wrists; but at length a pair was
found, locked on his arms, and he was led aft to the wheel-house,
several other pairs of irons in the mate’s hand clanking mournfully as
he walked. Into the after-division where the tiller works Louis was
hustled, and his hands were then fastened with a rope to a ring-bolt in
a carlin overhead, so that he had to stand upright all night.