STILL UNDER CANVAS.
“O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!”
BYRON, _Corsair_.
Some portion of the time, however, was necessarily spent below. Dancing
was the favourite pursuit with the majority, but was only practicable
when the wind was light and the sea calm.
Although Terpsichore was my least beloved of the Nine, one had but
little choice when the promenade deck was cleared, and the pale light
of the moon supplemented by all the lanterns that could be spared.
Music, too, furnished a deal of enjoyment, both to those who could
perform themselves and to the majority who could only appreciate the
performances of others.
A large stern cabin, almost the only one unoccupied by passengers, was
turned into a saloon, where singing could be indulged in without fear
of disturbing others. The custodian of this sanctum was the captain’s
wife, herself a well-trained musician; and she only issued invitations
on the strict stipulation that there was to be no flirting. And I
think, indeed, that the few flirtations were strictly of the Platonic
order; and that most of the young ladies were led to the Hymeneal
alter within a few weeks of their landing, not—be it observed—by any of
their shipmates, but by older residents in the country; some may have
succumbed in the “City of Palaces,” but the majority were probably in
request farther up country.
Yes, India was a famous place for matrimony in those days. The supply
almost equalled the demand: the arrival of an Indiaman sent a thrill
of excitement through many a manly breast; and much manœuvring was
resorted to in order to see the young ladies land.
But the whirligig of time and the agency of steam have considerably
modified the Furlough Rules; and men come to England to marry the
women, instead of the women going to India to marry the men.
Without meaning to be hypercritical, one is tempted to wish that
Indiamen were freighted as of yore!
The efforts of those who most did congregate in the music-room soon led
to a concert, which was an undeniable success. The great feature of the
evening was an Ethiopian entertainment, preceded by a prologue given by
Bones and Banjo, part of which still lives in my memory, especially a
borrowed epigram, levelled at a certain individual who laboured under
the delusion that he was no mean vocalist:
“Swans sing before they die: ’twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.”
A higher flight in the intellectual domain was now attempted in the
shape of a weekly paper, over which a man of erudition, one at least
who had successfully climbed the rungs of a University career, was soon
persuaded to preside, while his wife undertook to provide a manugraph.
Contributions, signed only with a _nom-de-guerre_, had to be placed in
a box affixed to the mainmast, of which the editor had the key; and,
from the conspicuous absences, it soon became evident that many were
deep in the agonies of composition.
But even this flower of promise was nipped in the bud; and the captain
showed his experience of the ways of passengers when he prognosticated
that it would share the fate of any other nine days’ wonder.
Before its extinction, however, this unhappy organ fanned into a flame
the smouldering embers of cliqueism, which had originated with dancing.
Except during the prevalence of the trade-winds, our “runs” varied very
considerably. These particular winds, however, brought contentment to
all; they are uniformly cool and steady by day and night; every stitch
of canvas is set, and the ship heels over to a certain angle and there
remains for days together, so steady, indeed, that on a specially
inclined table one could with comfort indulge in billiards.
The officers and crew have a comparatively easy time of it as long as
these winds last, being exempt from all necessity of furling, reefing,
or bracing of yards—while the enjoyment extends even to the dumb
portion of the “live stock,” the cows in the long-boat, the sheep in
their pens, and the poultry—everywhere.
To the uninitiated it appeared strange that we should, when outward
bound, have to proceed so far south in order to round the Cape, while
on the homeward journey we could hug it so closely as to see the
low-lying coast; but the phenomenon was easily to be accounted for by
the prevalence of certain winds and oceanic currents.
The history of the art of navigation, from the mariner’s compass of
the fifteenth century, when Columbus discovered its variations, down
to the perfect instruments of the present day, has always seemed to me
highly interesting. Even in the sailing days the captains practised
it with wonderful accuracy. Far out in mid-ocean, we were bearing
right on an island laid down in the chart, and I asked the captain
whether he intended altering the ship’s course. “Not at all,” he
replied; “we shall sail right over it.” We did so. An early navigator
probably saw a dead whale there, which he duly entered on the chart.
And unquestionably as logarithms and modern instruments have simplified
matters, it is even now not quite so easy as it appears.
We had now entered colder latitudes, where we were glad to put away
the easy-chairs and fold up the awning, and in lieu thereof pace the
decks in a vigorous manner enveloped in warm clothing. But we were not
unprepared for the change, which came on gradually; and, even in its
extremes, did not approach that which was once experienced by a Bishop
of Newfoundland, who had to visit a small island in his diocese that
lay right in the Gulf Stream. He left his main charge, so he told me,
enveloped in furs, but the moment his steam yacht crossed the line of
demarcation—perceptible by the change of colour in the water—he had
to exchange them for the thinnest garments he could muster. The exact
readings of the thermometer plunged in on either side the line, as he
told them to me, I no longer remember; but I do recollect being struck
by the great difference—so great, indeed, that, had the information
not come from such a source, I should have been incredulous. Great as
are the irregularities in the weather that one experiences during a
sea voyage, they vanish when compared with the caprices of the true
British climate. And yet we take a kind of gloomy national pride in it;
and I have known homeward-bound Englishmen quite looking forward to a
“Channel fog” from the moment they left Bombay. A juster appreciation
of its merits is shown by our Yankee cousins, one of whom said of
our atmosphere: “No climate, not even weather; nothing but samples”;
while another is responsible for the following excellent parody of a
well-known rhyme:
“Dirty days hath September, April, June, and November;
From January to May, the rain it raineth every day;
From May until July, there’s not a dry cloud in the sky;
All the rest have thirty-one, without a blessed ray of sun;
And if their days were two and thirty, they’d be just as wet
and quite as dirty.”
The evenings were now long, and our share of daylight was curtailed,
so that a still greater proportion of our time was spent below in
conversation, cards, chess, &c.
Our habits with regard to “turning-in” were somewhat primitive; all
lights had to be out by 10 p.m., and a responsible officer went the
rounds to see that the dictum was scrupulously carried out.
The very thought of “fire” on a wooden ship well saturated with tar,
and far away in mid-ocean, was enough to make one’s blood run cold; and
so it is not to be wondered at that the captain showed his teeth on one
occasion, when one of the passengers was reported for infringing this
law, and threatened to place him in irons for the rest of the voyage.
Need I say that the offender gave no further cause for complaint?
We may be thankful that nowadays the chances of a fire breaking out on
board ship are, thanks to the electric light and the less combustible
materials of which our ships are built, reduced to a minimum.
The ladies were invariably the first to retire, though they probably
continued prattling until long after we were in bed and asleep; a habit
which, as Dundreary said, “No fellow could understand.” Precept and
example have been tried in vain: for as it was in the beginning, &c.,
&c.
After we had been at sea for some time without seeing a living thing
other than fish, the air suddenly became alive with Cape pigeons and
albatrosses; and I managed to capture one of the latter on a stout hook
baited with a piece of pork. After a little hesitation, he pounced upon
the prize, and, raising his beak, swallowed it at a gulp.
I was fully prepared for his taking flight, and, indeed, had he got
my line foul of the rigging, I should soon have been in difficulties.
But, discarding such a course, he planted his webbed feet firmly before
him, offering thereby such resistance to the water that it was no
easy matter to get him alongside. At last, after I had received timely
assistance from a passing sailor, the bird stood on deck, and was at
once violently sick, vomiting great quantities of a clear, oily liquid.
I have since learnt that all sea-birds are sick on board ship, and
quite unable to use their wings.
According to my invariable practice of despatching my victims as
quickly as possible, I killed this one immediately—one might almost
add painlessly—with a small dose of prussic acid. He turned out to
be a very plump bird, measuring fifteen feet from tip to tip of his
outspread wings. By an unfortunate misunderstanding on the part of one
of the sailors, my capture was thrown overboard before I had set up
the skeleton; the only use that was made of it being the employment of
a few of the feathers to show the direction of the wind, or, as one of
our passengers with a poetical turn of mind put it:
“Oh! bid them beware of ships that go from London to the Indies,
Else they’ll be caught, and their feathers plucked to show which
way the wind is.”
By far the most graceful of the many other species of sea-birds that
were continually hovering about the ship were the stormy petrel, or,
as the superstitious sailors call them, “Mother Carey’s Chickens.”
Their wonderfully rapid flight, now in the hollow between two waves,
anon on the foaming crest of another, really looks more like walking
on the water; and I understand that petrel is only a corruption of
Peter. Among the sailors they have a bad reputation, and are regarded
as birds of ill omen, a superstition which, on the principle of “give a
dog a bad name,” &c., has clung to them, but which is in reality quite
undeserved. Ignorance and tradition have, in fact, placed the cart
before the horse: the stormy petrel follows storms, but cannot possibly
foretell them.
By a modification of my albatross line, I managed to capture several
of them; a proceeding, however, which had to be conducted with great
secrecy; as, had the sailors got wind of it, and a storm followed by
coincidence, I should probably have figured as the hero in a repetition
of Jonah’s history—minus the “great fish”; and I am by no means sure
whether even that important detail would have been wanting.
About this time we fell in with an emigrant ship; signals were
exchanged under Marriott’s Code, and it was intimated that the presence
of our captain was wanted on board. Both ships accordingly hove to;
and in a weak moment of impulse I sought permission to occupy a place
in the captain’s gig. The request was readily acceded to, and, if
confession be at all desirable, I am quite prepared to confess to a
slight degree of nervousness, as the small craft rose and fell in the
most frolicsome manner, as if indeed she were glad to feel herself once
more in the water. All sorts of horrible fancies coursed through my
mind: what if the wind suddenly shifted, causing those flapping sails
to belly out and carry both the ships farther away! We were hundreds
of miles from land, and we had not so much as a biscuit or a drop of
fresh water in the gig. Then I reviewed mentally all the terrible
stages—casting lots, glaring at each other, &c., &c., and—we were
alongside. The captain disappeared below, but I of course stayed on
deck talking to the emigrants. How brave and sanguine they were; how
little they seemed to heed the dreary prospect of a far-off country
full of privations, where all would be up-hill work for many a long
year. They saw Hope pointing to the bright to-morrow, to fields ripe
with golden corn, the fruit of their labour, and homesteads made glad
with the merry laughter of children. I wonder how many realized the
vision! They crowded on deck, and their “Cheer, boys, cheer,” gradually
waxed fainter and fainter as we neared our own ship.
When standing once more amongst my fellow-passengers, who plied me with
all manner of questions, my thoughts reverted to those brave emigrants,
and I dwelt with almost selfish complacency on the great difference
between their prospects and our own.
Most of us were going out in the employ of a Company that reputedly
paid its servants handsomely, and treated them kindly; we were to be
enrolled as units in an administration never equalled in the world’s
history: where all grades performed their duty _con amore_, and
where officers were happy and contented, knit together by ties of
brotherhood.
I will not sigh for the old order of things: it would be unseemly in
one who has served under the new; but one cannot help remarking that it
was the Mutiny which swept away the old peaceful era, substituting one
of an opposite nature both in the European and the native elements. The
Company gauged and respected the prejudices of the community over which
it ruled; and, if it was not exactly loved, it was at least respected.
Now, however, Western ideas and Western methods of thought have, in
spite of protest, been forced upon the aborigines. Up to the end of
1858-9 their respect for us was as sincere as could be expected from
the people of a conquered country; but since that time the gulf has
gradually widened, till, if another Mutiny were to break out, the whole
of the population would be against us, instead of, as on the former
occasion, for us. Under the cloak of giving them a _quid pro quo_ for
all the incalculable benefits which they have, however involuntarily,
bestowed upon us, we continually force ourselves into places which
they hold most sacred, and add insult to injury by endeavouring to
propitiate them with dolls and other refuse of our fancy bazaars!
As to the Mutiny, the exciting cause was undoubtedly the manner in
which home influence and interference undermined the discipline of the
army: the annexation of Oude and the episode of the greased cartridges
were but handles to lay hold of. But of this more anon.
One evening a circumstance occurred which for the moment aroused the
monster envy, that had, for a time at least, slumbered peacefully,
and overthrew all our confidence in our captain and our pride in our
vessel. A bright light was reported astern, which rapidly loomed larger
and larger, bearing down upon us with most astounding speed. Some
thought it must be a pirate, and propounded ingenious and reassuring
questions as to the latest fashion in “walking the plank.”
Presently, two more lights were reported just above the horizon, which
gained upon us equally rapidly, and then it dawned upon the mind of one
of the passengers that the Cape route was to be essayed with a large
steamer, of which the first was the pioneer.
She came, she saw, she conquered; and we, who had hitherto regarded our
ship as a veritable hare, now discovered, to our intense chagrin, that
she was but a tortoise after all.
Added to this discomfiture, we had to listen to such banter as: “Can
we do anything for you in Calcutta, besides telling them that you’re
coming some day?”
Her lights soon vanished far ahead! Was it a phantom vessel, the
creature of a distempered brain?
For some time we maintained a significant silence round the cuddy;
after which, thanks to the genial influence of the _old_ system of
provisioning, tongues were loosened and opinions freely expressed.
For my own part, I was in no hurry for the voyage to draw to a close;
not only did the dangers of being at sea appear to me no greater
than those with which we are beset on land, but I looked upon it as a
respite from the pestilence that was ever strutting about the land for
which we were bound.
What if the steamer did arrive many days before us; would it make
any practical difference in the life ahead? Others, I regret to
say, thought differently; they fretted and fumed, vilified sailing
vessels in general, ours in particular, and made themselves generally
miserable, frowning whenever their eye fell on the unoffending sails,
and sneering at the “run,” which, seeing that it kept a steady ten or
twelve miles an hour, was hardly to be grumbled at.
Man is a strange creature, and he exhibits himself under a variety
of phases; but nowhere, perhaps, so remarkably as during a long
sea-voyage.
We had now reached our southernmost point, and were steering in a
north-easterly course.
The only break in the monotony of this part of the voyage was made
by our passing the extremities of these deserted volcanic islets, St.
Paul’s and Amsterdam, of which I attempted a sketch, which occasioned
no little amusement.
These dreary oases of fused rock are said to contain two springs in
juxtaposition, one of boiling and the other of cold water. These might,
as I reflected, afford invaluable assistance to a shipwrecked mariner,
who could possibly boil a fish or a stray gull’s egg in the former,
while the latter would supply the means of performing his ablutions and
quenching his thirst. The only geographical interest attaching to these
spots is that they are equidistant from the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon,
and Tasmania.
Meanwhile the ship was rapidly approaching her destination; the days
of the voyage were already numbered, and it was resolved to give a
grand fancy dress ball on the first evening that we should spend at
anchor in the river. From the difference in the colour of the water, it
soon became apparent that the remainder of the voyage might be counted
by hours; the Gangetic delta was pouring forth its mud from many
gaping mouths; and the water grew more and more uninviting, till we
at last passed the Pilot Brig, and anon came in sight of a low-lying,
muddy-looking coast, fringed with cocoanut trees. In an hour or so
we were in the Hooghly; and I cannot say that either the river or its
banks impressed me very favourably.
We were now in the month of December, which, being the coolest season
of the year, is the favourite time of arrival for all sorts and
conditions of ships; and it was probably in consequence of this that no
steam tug was at first available to tow us the remaining hundred miles.
Very reluctantly, therefore, we had to let go the anchor only a short
distance from the mouth of the river.
That night we were to have enjoyed the fancy dress ball for which so
much preparation had been made, when an untoward accident put an end to
all our merriment. A young middy, a promising lad and a great favourite
on board, fell from the mizen-top—
“To die! to sleep:
To sleep! perchance to dream.”
Such is fate! William III, whose diseased and emaciated form had
survived the thickest of a dozen frays, dies through his horse
stumbling on a mole-hill in his own park; a great African explorer is
killed by the accidental explosion of his own gun; so, too, our poor
little middy, after having many a time helped furl a sail in mid-ocean,
with the billows raging in their fury, and the lightning playing about
the yards, must needs fall here, with the vessel riding at anchor in
a very duck-pond! He was probably a victim to sunstroke. Never shall
I forget the thud that brought me up from below, caused by his head
being shattered against the deck. One of the ship’s boats conveyed
his remains to a small European cemetery not far from the shore, where
others of his countrymen had preceded him—a lonely spot, around which
the jackal yelled and the tiger prowled.
As the tug could not be with us till the following day, I seized the
opportunity of going ashore in one of the native craft with which
European ships are invariably beset on entering an Eastern river.
I proceeded on foot through a small village, very clean and regularly
built, composed of well-thatched, one-storied houses. Something—I
suppose it was the manner in which the men were lolling about and
smoking, while the women did all the work—reminded me of small villages
that I had seen in Ireland.
But what first attracted my attention was the ubiquitous sparrow, just
as impudent and pugnacious-looking as ever. I now came to a tract of
dried-up rice-fields, as hard as brick-bats, where the trees were few
and far between, and were for the most part alive with parroquets of
gorgeous plumage, chattering and jabbering, as if, forsooth, they had
to settle the affairs of the whole country. I therefore varied the
monotony of the walk by shooting an occasional bird, which, however,
proved quite useless for culinary purposes. As it grew late in the day,
I turned back towards the shore; and it appeared to me a favourable
opportunity for returning the kindness of the junior officers, at whose
hospitable mess I had discussed many a leathery piece of salt pork
and weevil-eaten biscuit, washed down with rum and water. By means of
a great deal of gesticulating—for I knew not a word of the language—I
became the proud possessor of a goodly store of live fowls, eggs, and
plantains, for what I afterwards discovered to be about three times
the correct price. I was received with thanks on board, and, from my
doubtless grotesque appearance, armed with a gun and umbrella, and
surrounded by my provisions, was forthwith dubbed “Robinson Crusoe.”
While anchored in the lower reaches of the river, we experienced
a slight foretaste of some of the pleasures that awaited us in the
land we were about to reside in; our night’s rest was ever and anon
disturbed by the weird and startling cry of a jackal; and the dermic
irritation caused by mosquito-bites was a source of great pain to
novices.
At last the tug arrived, and we once more got under weigh, rapidly
bridging over the remaining part of the voyage, and perhaps, too,
the most dangerous, on account of the St. James and Mary shoals,
and many others almost equally hazardous. But these were passed in
safety; the river became narrower and narrower—crowded, too, with all
manner of small craft freighted _en route_ to market. The whole scene
was certainly striking, rendered, indeed, still more picturesque by
the setting sun; so that, as we passed up that suburb of Calcutta so
appropriately called “Garden Reach,” the entire bank was bathed in a
flood of light, while our ears were assailed by the chants of natives
pulling at their oars—chants not devoid of a weird kind of beauty.
Not far above this we dropped anchor, and the ship swung round with
the tide. All was bustle and excitement; and with a shake of the
hand, and a hurried “Good-bye; mind you call on us soon,” &c., &c.,
the passengers dropped one by one over the side; and in this wise the
voyage of those days came to an end.