In spite of all Captain Miles' endeavours to effect an early start from
Saint Vincent, we were not really able to weather the island that
evening until many hours after our anchor was tripped and all plain sail
made.
This was not due, however, either to the delay caused in hoisting the
obstreperous cow on board or to the embarrassing episode that occurred
after she was shipped. It was entirely owing to the failure of our
moving spirit the wind; for we lay becalmed until morning under the lee
of the giant Souffriere, whose dark shadow prevented the land breeze
from reaching the vessel, while the next day was far advanced before we
could gain an offing so as to take advantage of the light airs that then
sprang up from seaward. But, then, the _Josephine_, bellying out her
canvas, bore away on her voyage.
The wide gulf of sea which we were traversing--named after the
aboriginal Caribs who ruled over its domain lang syne, and hedged in
from the Atlantic Ocean by the semicircular group of the Lesser
Antilles, or "Windward Islands" of the West Indies--presents great
difficulties to the navigators of sailing ships; as, while the wind
throughout its extent blows almost constantly in one direction, a series
of cross currents set in another, making it a hard task for even
experienced seamen to preserve a straight course towards any particular
point when going to windward, the result of which is that "the longest
way round," as in other matters pertaining to shore life, is frequently
"the shortest way home!"
Taking up the chart casually, a novice would imagine that our direct
route from our port of departure to the English Channel would be
indicated by a line drawn between the two points and passing through the
Azores; but, a sailor accustomed to tropical latitudes would know that,
however feasible this might appear in theory, we could not possibly have
adopted such a course. It would have presupposed, in the first case,
our possessing the ability to sail straight in the teeth of the north-
east trade wind, and, in the second case, that we took no account of the
influence of the equatorial current, the stream of which setting
westwards into the Caribbean Sea, would have drifted as so far to
leeward that at the end of the day's run we must have been pretty nearly
where we started from, any progress we made ahead being neutralised by
the action of the stream carrying us in a lateral direction.
For these reasons, all navigators up to their work, when making the
passage home from the West Indies and _vice versa_, instead of fighting
against the forces of nature as some old seamen of the past used to do,
now make both winds and tides run harmoniously in their favour by
meeting them half-way, so to speak. Captain Miles, in our instance,
therefore, did not wear out his crew by trying to beat to windward in
order to get to the open Atlantic immediately. On the contrary, he kept
his vessel well away to leeward, shaping a course for Saint
Christopher's, so as to pass afterwards through the Anegada Channel,
between the Virgin Islands, and reach the ocean in that way. In other
words, following the example of the ready-witted Irishman who drove an
obstinate pig to market by pulling him back by the tail, he deliberately
steered to the north-west while really wanting to go to the north-east.
But, circuitous as such a route looked, the captain was in the end a
gainer by it; for, not only did he keep the wind well abeam of the ship
all the way on the starboard tack, but he had the additional advantage
of having the strong north-westerly current in his favour in lieu of
trying to work against it.
During this portion of our voyage the weather was beautifully fine, the
sky being of a clear transparent opal tint without a cloud and the sea
of the purest ultramarine blue, with little merry dancing wavelets
occasionally flecking its changing surface into foam.
The air, too, was balmy, and not unpleasantly warm, a fine healthy
breeze blowing, which filled our good ship's sails, so that they
expanded to the furthest limits of the bolt-ropes, speeding her on her
way at the rate of some eight knots an hour, as rising and falling she
surged through the sparkling water and left a foaming wake astern that
spread out in the shape of a fan behind her track, widening until it was
lost in the distance.
When I mentioned my going to visit the _Josephine_ as she lay at anchor
while taking in cargo at Grenville Bay, I think I said that I had never
before been in a vessel. This, however, was not strictly accurate, for
when dad came out to the West Indies from England with my mother and
sisters some few years previously, I, of course, accompanied them; and
as we had to cross the Atlantic in order to reach Grenada, and there was
no other mode of overcoming the three thousand odd miles of ocean that
lay between us and our destination except by our adventuring the passage
in the ordinary way, I was then really for the first time taken on board
a ship. But it must be remembered that I was only at that period a tiny
baby about the size of my little sister Tot; and, therefore, my
recollections of the time being rather hazy, my first real experiences
of the sea and all the incidents of the voyage came upon me with all
that novelty and interest which unfamiliarity alone can produce. It is,
nevertheless, only right that I should make this correction of my former
mis-statement, for I wish to give a true and impartial account of all
that happened to me from first to last. I am not "spinning a yarn"
merely, as sailor's say, but telling a true story of my life with all
its haps and mishaps.
Now, therefore, as the _Josephine_ dashed along, all was new and strange
to me; the limitless expanse of blue water shimmering in the summer sun,
with flocks of flying-fish rising in the air occasionally to seek refuge
from their enemies of the deep, only to fall back again below the
surface after a short curving flight, to avoid the grey pelicans
hovering above to attack them there; the fresh bracing breeze, which
blew in my face so exhilaratingly; the swaying motion of the vessel that
gave a lurch now and then, heeling over when the wind took her suddenly
on the quarter as she rose on the swell; the whistling of the cordage
and creaking of timbers and rattling of blocks, combined with the cheery
yo-ho-hoing of the sailors as they slacked a sheet here and tightened a
brace there. Really, I was so pleased, excited, and delighted with the
whole scene and its surroundings that it seemed as if I were in the ship
of a dream sailing on an enchanted sea!
Presently there arose out of the deep on our starboard bow the Pitons of
Saint Lucia, two twin conical rocks like the Needles, only ever so much
bigger, being over three thousand feet in height. They were festooned
from base to summit with beautiful evergreen foliage; and the entrance
to the harbour of the island was to be seen within and beyond these
outlying sentinels, stretching up inland towards a mass of purple
mountains from a beach of yellow sand.
Next, we passed to the leeward of Martinique; and, then, towards sunset
of the same day, as we approached Saint Kitts, islet after islet jumped
up out of the sea in front of us, to the right hand and to the left.
They were all misty at first, but changed their colours from slaty grey
to green as we approached them nearer, although their shape was all
pretty much the same--tall sugar-loaf peaks surrounded by verdure
sloping down in graceful curves to the water's edge, the surf breaking
against the shore of those to leeward in clouds of spray, while the
waves washed the rocky feet of those on the windward side without a
ripple.
When the sun disappeared below the western horizon, Montserrat, Redonda,
Nevis, Saint Christopher, and Saint Eustatius were all in sight around
us; and, just at ten o'clock at night, when the moon was at the full,
lighting up the scene with its silvery beams as brightly almost as if it
were day, we passed between Saint Eustatius and the island of Saba. We
approached the latter within two miles, but when its north point bore
west we steered for Dog Island, clearing the reefs somewhere about the
middle watch.
Soon after sunrise next morning we weathered Sombrero, the last of the
Antilles, and thus got fairly out into the Atlantic, leaving the West
Indies behind us as we hauled our wind and bore away for the Azores--
although a long stretch of ocean had to be crossed ere we might hope to
reach this half-way port on our voyage.
But I have not yet described our ship and those on board.
The _Josephine_ was an old-fashioned barque of about five hundred tons
burden, built with a high poop and a topgallant forecastle, "or
fo'c's'le," as seamen call it.
She was a roomy vessel, possessing great breadth of beam, which made her
a staunch sea-boat in rough weather, for she could tumble about as much
as she pleased without causing much damage to her timbers or risk of her
stability; and this roominess, besides, allowed good accommodation aft
for a large number of passengers, although in this instance I was the
single solitary "landsman" aboard--that is, if a young shaver of
thirteen can be dignified with such a high-sounding title!
Her officers and crew consisted of eighteen hands all told; and amongst
the former Captain Miles, her master, a sturdy old sea-dog of forty-five
or thereabouts, is entitled to be the first described. He had a broad
honest face, with a pair of bushy, reddish-brown mutton-chop whiskers,
for, unlike the sailors of to-day, the captain was always clean shaven
as to his chin and upper lip, esteeming a moustache an abomination,
"which only one of those French Johnny Crapaud lubbers ever think of
wearing."
The next officer in rank after Captain Miles was Mr Marline, the first
mate, a thin wiry north countryman, with a lot of latent fun and dry
humour in him; and then came Davis, the second mate, a thick-set bull-
necked dark-haired Welshman, not more than twenty-four or five years of
age. He had been promoted from the foremast on account of his
predecessor having died on the passage out. Davis was a very good
seaman and up to his work; otherwise, his education being sadly
deficient, as even I, a boy, could perceive, and his temper and
disposition being none of the best, he was certainly not very well
fitted to command those with whom he had formerly associated as an
equal.
My old friend Moggridge, the boatswain, and Adze, the carpenter,
completed the list of those in authority; and, besides these, must be
enumerated Cuffee, the king of the cook's galley; Jake, who had been put
on the muster-roll as an ordinary hand; Harry, the captain's tawny
mulatto steward; and ten able seamen--the finest and strongest of all
these being Jackson, a smart young Cornishman hailing from Plymouth, who
stood some six feet two in his stockings and gloried in such a broad
pair of shoulders that he was worth any three of the other hands put
together.
To complete the description of our ship, the lower portion of our cargo,
stowed in the ground tier of the hold above the dunnage, was sugar and
coffee, with some odd bags of cocoa from my father's plantation to make
weight; but our chief freight, fortunately for us, as you will learn
later on, was rum. The puncheons containing this were packed as tightly
as possible fore and aft the ship above the heavy produce, reaching up
amidships to the level of the main hatch, all the spaces between being
so compactly filled in with the lighter samples of cargo that not even a
cockroach could have squeezed itself in sideways.
In the waist of the vessel on the upper deck, ranged along the inside of
the bulwarks on either hand, from the entrance to the cabin under the
break of the poop to right away forwards just abaft the foremast, was a
row of water-casks. A couple of these had their tops sawn off
lengthwise and contained several live turtle which Captain Miles was
hopeful of carrying home safely in time for the next ensuing banquet at
the Mansion House on lord mayor's day, an enterprising ship's chandler
in the Minories having given him an order to that effect before he left
England on his voyage out to the West Indies. In a similar way, against
the sides of the poop were fixed what looked at first sight to be
benches for sitting down upon, but which on closer inspection I
discovered to be hen-coops,--their occupants projecting their long necks
and heads therefrom, in much perplexity evidently at their strange fate
in being thus brought to sea; for, as was the case with myself, this was
their first experience of what life on board ship was like, and the
exigencies of the cabin table would most probably cause it to be their
last!
It was not until the fourth day after we had set sail from Grenada that
I was able to note all these particulars. Up to that time I had been
too much interested with the moving panorama around me to notice things
inboard; and, besides, the motion of the _Josephine_, when she got
lively in the seaway amongst the islands, produced an uneasy feeling
which led me ere long to retire below and bewail my old home and those
from whom I had been so ruthlessly severed with greater grief than I had
felt before. I suffered from that fearful nausea which Father Neptune
imposes as a penance on the majority of his votaries, and it was
wonderful how very melancholy the sensation made me.
However, I struggled gallantly against the fell foe, and, one morning, I
crawled out of my bunk early, just as the men began to wash down the
decks, the first work of the day aboard ship. This was shortly after we
had cleared the island of Sombrero, and when the _Josephine_ was working
her way out to sea.
At first I stopped in the waist, near the entrance to the cabin, but
Davis, the second mate, who stood with his trousers tucked up showing
his bare feet and legs, superintending the hands sluicing the water
about from the hose attached to the head pump out on the forecastle,
told me politely to sheer off, as they wanted no idlers in the way; so,
I ascended the poop-ladder, and was commiserating the poor fowls in the
hen-coops along the rails, when Captain Miles, who was standing close to
the helmsman at the wheel, addressed me.
"Hallo, Master Tom," said he, "got your sea-legs again?"
"Yes, captain," I replied, "I'm all right now, thank you."
"Beginning to feel peckish, eh?"
"Not very," said I, for I was qualmish still, although the fresh air had
considerably revived me even in the short time since I had come out of
the close cabin.
"Ah, but you must eat, though, my boy," observed Captain Miles kindly,
giving me a kindly pat on the back. "An empty stomach is the worst
thing in the world to voyage on. Why, you haven't hardly eaten a bite
since the other evening when that poor cow knocked our dinner all into
the middle of next week! Never mind, though, breakfast will be ready at
eight bells, and we'll see whether we can't get some lining upon your
ribs, my little skillygalee."
"I have already asked Jake to get me a cup of coffee, sir," I said in
reply to this; but, before the captain could answer me again, we both
had our attention drawn to the deck below. There seemed to be some sort
of commotion going on in the cook's galley away forward, for all the men
had their faces turned in that direction, and they were laughing as if
at some good joke.
"Waist ahoy, there!" shouted out Captain Miles, going to the edge of the
break of the poop and looking down. "What's the row forward?"
"Hanged if I know, sir," answered Davis somewhat surlily, adding more
gruffly still to the hands around him, "Here, you lazy lubbers, lay
along to your work, or I'll give you something else to grin about!"
"You need not haze the men like that for nothing," said the captain
sharply, muttering something under his breath about "setting a beggar on
horseback, and he'll ride to the--"
However, his further words were cut short by a loud shout of laughter
from the men all together, as if with one accord; and then the commotion
in the cook's galley increased, for I could now distinguish the sound of
some violent altercation, voices being raised in anger, mingled with the
noise of shuffling feet and the crash of crockery-ware.
"By Jingo, they're going it!" exclaimed Moggridge, who stood in the
waist immediately below us. "They'll be like the Kilkenny cats, and
leave only their tails behind!"
"What's the matter?" again asked Captain Miles. "Anybody fighting, eh?"
"Yes, sir," said the boatswain, "the two niggers. They've been at it in
the caboose ever since we began to wash down decks."
"Then it's high time to stop them," cried the captain darting towards
the poop-ladder with the intention of ending the fray, whatever it was.
But, before he could descend two steps, the half-door of the galley
burst open outwards with a crash, when two dark figures, locked in a
tight embrace and pommelling one another with immense fury, came rolling
out upon the deck. They then scrambled and tumbled into the lee
scuppers, where they continued to struggle still, unmindful of the foot
deep or more of water, into which they were suddenly plunged, that was
swishing to and fro with the motion of the ship.
"You take dat now," I heard Jake's voice say excitedly. "I mash um face
well."
"An' you take dat, you hangman tief," cried the other with equal
earnestness. "Golly, I gib you gosh!"
Then came the thud of blows, easily distinguishable above the splashing
of the refuse water that had accumulated to leeward from the sluicing of
the decks, with the convulsive movements of two pairs of arms and legs
mingled together in a confused mass--one woolly head being occasionally
uplifted above the other and immediately as quickly dragged down again.
The crew all the while screamed with laughter, enjoying the combat with
the utmost relish, and without attempting to interfere in any way
between the angry antagonists.
"Stop the rascals, stop them!" sang out Captain Miles, jumping down into
the waist and hurrying to the scene of action. "They'll either kill or
drown each other!"