We reached the Keelings late in April, having taken no whales since
leaving Desolation. Captain Nelson found that the Bartholomew Gosnold
had left a few hours before we arrived. This was unfortunate. I have
no doubt that the fact made the captain regret more than ever that he
had stopped to lower for the blind whale. He had had a boat stove,
Captain Coffin had been laid up, he had missed the Gosnold, and he
did not get the whale. Still, probably he would do the same thing
again under the same circumstances, and probably he ought to. I was
especially sorry that we had missed the Gosnold, for she was going
directly home and would have taken letters. It was some months since
I had written home, and I had a large instalment of my journal ready
to send; but I could send it from Batavia.
For the few days that we were at the Keelings we had exceptionally
good weather, and we visited North Keeling Island, which is not often
possible. The island is uninhabited except by birds and some other
things, among which is a monstrous land crab which climbs trees and
feeds on coconuts. Between the coconut palms and ironwood trees there
is a dense forest covering the island, which is only about a mile
long. We saw literally myriads of frigate-birds, boobies, terns, and
other sea-birds, all of which nest there. I was especially interested
in the frigate-birds and their nests. The birds would rise from their
nests and sail in spirals to great heights, apparently very angry,
inflating the red pouches on their necks as they rose. I was for
seeing whether I could not find a few good eggs for my collection,
but Peter dissuaded me. He thought that the birds would not take it
well. As for my collection of eggs, {283} I had not begun it yet,
but I thought that frigate-birds’ eggs would be a good thing to begin
with.
I still think so, and regret my failure to get an egg or two. No
doubt, if I had got them, they would now be adorning the loft of my
barn, where various collections of my son’s ornament the walls, in
various stages of desiccation or decay. There are a collection of
eggs, some of them rare; a collection of seaweeds and mosses, dried
and mounted on cards, and lettered very beautifully; shells of crabs,
likewise mounted on cards, among which are two or three shells of
young horseshoe crabs about an inch or two long, very delicate and
perfect; a collection of wild-flowers, dried, pressed, and mounted; a
collection of lichens; and collections of various other kinds, which
I forget at this moment. These collections represent different phases
in my son’s development which he very promptly forgot as soon as they
were past, but each of which was absorbing while it lasted. I do not
look at them often, but I would not have them touched, and neither
would Ann McKim.
I should have been glad to stay longer, but the voyage was neither
for my health, which was disgustingly rugged, nor for my pleasure,
and Captain Nelson sailed for Sunda Strait without consulting me. It
is not a long stretch from the Keelings to the Strait, but we were
delayed and turned aside by whales, of which we saved two, both of
which lay fin out within an hour from lowering. They were fairly
large, and made more than one hundred and fifty barrels, and raised
our stock of sperm oil on board to about twelve hundred barrels.
We finished our trying-out late one afternoon, and kept off for Sunda
Strait, making a beginning at our scrubbing of the ship. We were
directly in the track of sailing vessels bound through the Strait to
China and Japan, and very nearly in the track of steamers both ways.
Sunda Strait is the narrow throat of the highway between the Indian
Ocean and all the seas and ports to the east, and it is almost busy
enough to need a traffic policeman. {284}
That night was a very dark night; pitch-black, moonless and clouded
over, so that there was not even the little light from the stars. The
blackness of the night seemed thick, oppressive. I could not catch
even a gleam from the water, and it is very rarely the case that you
cannot see the water now and then, even on a dark night. It seems
much lighter at sea than it does on shore. Everybody aft had turned
in, and there was no light showing from the stern ports, for I looked
over the stern to see. I could not bring myself to turn in, for I was
half afraid, to tell the whole truth, although I do not know what I
was afraid of. The thick blackness of the night seemed ominous.
I stood at the stern, looking out over the wake—which glowed dully
with swirling phosphorescence—for a long time. Then I wandered
forward, and stood under the fore rigging, on the weather side.
The wind was fresh, and I heard the noise the Clearchus made going
through the water, with an occasional muffled cluck of a block, the
regular slatting of some slack rope against a sail, or perhaps the
reef points. I looked along the deck, or where the deck ought to be,
and I could see nothing. I felt as I used to feel on the infrequent
occasions when my mother had shut me in a closet, except that there
was no paroxysm of temper to make me forget the darkness, and that
there was a feeling of utter loneliness, as though I were perched
on nothing, all alone in the midst of a sea of blackness. I became
almost afraid to move my feet for fear that there would be nothing
under them. When Peter and the Prince spoke to me gently, at my
shoulder, I very nearly cried out.
If I had not heard the Prince I should not have known he was there.
I could see no sign of him. Peter’s face was but a dim blur, and
nothing of his body was visible. Your true whaleman does not go about
his business clad in a natty white duck suit, like a navy sailorman,
and with a teacup of a white hat perched upon his head; but he {285}
wears old civilian clothes, which look—by daylight—as though they
had been boiled in oil, and then, while still wet with it, had been
dragged through all the dust of the wharves. Such clothes make him
practically invisible on an ordinarily dark night.
In a very low voice that was scarcely more than a whisper,
Peter remarked that it was a black night. I agreed with him
enthusiastically, and the Prince grunted his assent. We stood there
by the fore rigging for some time in silence. None of us seemed to
feel like talking, or to know what to say.
“You can hardly see the fo’c’s’le lamp,” Peter observed at last. “It
looks as if it was in a thick cloud of smoke. It won’t burn bright,
whatever we do to it, and there ’s some that say there ’s a sort of
halo around the flame, like the halos they put around the heads of
their saints—like a sort of sun-dog. It may be so, though I did n’t
see it. Something ’s going to happen, I ’m thinking. I never saw a
darker night.”
I tried to reply lightly, but I could not, and did not reply at all.
The Prince said nothing, and in a few minutes they had faded away
into the darkness. I went back to the stern, and stood there for a
long time, peering out, but seeing nothing. The silent man at the
wheel was some comfort, and once in a while Mr. Tilton, who had that
watch, looked in. There was the faint bubbling of the wake, and the
same noises as before, but largely cut off by the roof of the house.
I had glanced at the compass, which was swung just inside the cabin
skylight instead of in a binnacle, and had seen that we were heading
due north. That was not sailing very close, but the Clearchus really
made more if she was not held too close to the wind. I was getting
drowsy in spite of my uneasiness, and was just making up my mind to
turn in. In fact I had taken my elbows from the taffrail, on which I
had been leaning, and raised my eyes. {286}
Suddenly, without my being conscious of it, there broke from my
throat a yell that would have waked the dead; and there loomed out
of the blackness, just at our stern, the flying jibboom of a ship.
It was high over my head, and I could just dimly make out jibs
rising from it which seemed to reach to the heavens. I had no time
to think, but I know I had the impression that our stern was sure
to be cut off, and I yelled again. If I had taken time to think I
should have realized that that other ship was bound for the Strait,
as we were, but sailing a couple of points closer; and that, even
if she was going three knots to our one, our chances of escape were
good. Hindsight is easy; and when I saw the end of the spritsail yard
and some stays within reach of my hand I grabbed them—probably the
flying-jib guys—and hauled myself up and landed in her nettings. I
was still there when the two vessels came together. The yards of the
ship I was on were braced well around, or the damage would have been
greater. As it was, the Clearchus had her spanker carried away, and a
spare boat brushed off the roof of her after house, and she was given
a gentle push on her course. Then she vanished quickly into the night.
The strange ship had apparently put her helm down as soon as it was
known that there was danger of a collision, but was just beginning
to feel it. A big ship—this ship turned out to be about twice the
size of the Clearchus—a big ship like that does not mind her helm
instantly, and she had come up perhaps half a point or less when the
moment had passed, and the helm was put up again, bringing her back
to her course. I do not believe she would have come up much more in
any case, for a moment later showed me that she had everything set,
even to studding-sails on the weather side; and having all those
sails taken suddenly aback in the breeze that was blowing might have
resulted in greater damage—to her, at least—than an actual collision.
{287}
I say that a moment later I saw that she had everything set. I was
just getting to my feet to feel my way aft, when there was a blinding
glare of lightning which illuminated the sea for miles around. It was
brighter than day; and the picture of the Clearchus, pegging along on
our lee quarter, as though nothing had happened, and of the cloud of
sail carried by the ship which carried me, was etched upon my mind
with a precision and permanence which permitted examination at my
leisure. I found that the Clearchus was unhurt; men at work taking in
her spanker, and brailing it, the gaff broken. A spare boat gone, and
some splintered woodwork on the starboard corner of the after house
were the only evidences.
No burst of rain followed that single flash of lightning, but a crash
of thunder, and the giants seemed to be bowling over my head. Then,
after a little, threads of lightning began to chase each other over
the sky, and soon the sky was covered with an interlacing network,
the lines moving incessantly, accompanied by a continuous crackling,
like the cracklings in a gigantic frying-pan. The wind had dropped
almost instantly, and we lay there, rolling gently in the swell, and
flapping that enormous spread of canvas in a flat calm.
It was light enough to see easily where I was going, and I made my
way inboard, where I was met by the lookout. He sent me aft to see
the officer of the watch, who questioned me briefly. I wanted him to
send me aboard the Clearchus at once, but he refused, saying that the
breeze might start up again at any moment, and that, with all that
spread of sail, they would inevitably leave their boat behind; and
that he would not call all hands to reduce sail for anybody. He said
that I had come on his ship of my own accord, and if I did not like
it I could leave. He would not keep me from going; or a boat could be
sent for me from my own ship without much trouble. That was true. I
wondered why they did not send for me, for I {288} thought that the
man at the wheel had seen me go; but I found out afterward that the
man at the wheel had been so completely taken up with other things
that he had not noticed my departure, and they had not yet found that
I was missing.
While I stood talking with the officer the breeze began to come in
again from the same quarter as before. The sails filled gradually,
and the ship heeled a little, and began to forge ahead. He would not
bother with me any longer, and sent me to the steerage, where there
was a spare bunk. By the time I had turned in the breeze had become
strong again, the lightning had withdrawn below the eastern horizon,
the clouds were breaking, and the ship was doing a good fourteen
knots and something to spare.
The ship was the Virginia of London, Marshall, master, last from
Mauritius, bound for Hongkong and Canton. I saw Marshall, master,
in the morning. Captain Marshall was a man between thirty-five and
forty, clean-shaven when that was less the fashion than it is now;
and a man who would take the trouble to shave himself every morning,
at sea, would take a great deal more trouble about more important
matters. He was a well-set man of above the medium height, with brown
hair just beginning to turn gray. I noticed him particularly because
he looked enough like Smith to be his brother, except that his eyes
were not of that opaque china-blue, but a gray that was alive, and
hinted at kindness beneath his crust of silence and sternness. I
wondered whether, by any strange chance, he was Smith’s brother, and
whether he would care to know that we had left his brother sinking
into the ooze off Amsterdam.
I did not tell him. He was not a man who invited confidences, but a
wonderful master of a ship, if I was any judge. He seemed to know
all about me, and about the Clearchus, but that, I suppose, was only
inference and good guessing. He told me that I might consider myself
a {289} passenger on his ship for two or three days, as he had a
full crew; and he told me very particularly what a passenger might do
and what he might not. He would land me at Anjer or at Batavia, as
I preferred; and he would see my captain, if the Clearchus arrived
before he left, and pay for any damage she had suffered. If he did
not see Captain Nelson, I was to tell him that the owners of the
Virginia would be happy to pay for his repairs if he would send them
a bill. Then I was dismissed courteously. I had not said a word
during the interview.
I spent the whole of that day on deck, taking a very simple but an
exquisite pleasure in just watching the ship sail. She did it so
beautifully! There was a smashing breeze from the southeast, but the
Virginia had everything set that she could stand up under,—a cloud
of white canvas reaching up and up, apparently without end; she was
heeled to her channels, and she _sailed_. It was a revelation to me;
the speed, the discipline, which was like that on a war vessel, the
continuous attention to little things like trimming in a sheet six
inches, the haul on bowlines, until each sail drew without a tremor,
pulling and hauling or slacking off a brace by inches, to make the
angle exactly what the officer of the deck thought it should be.
In the minute attention given to details it was like a continuous
yacht race of to-day, but of ten or twelve thousand miles instead of
thirty. The men were alive every minute of the time; they jumped at
an order, and were satisfied and willing and proud of their ship.
Anybody could see that, but who would not be? I had no doubt that
there had been many and many a heartbreaking day of setting up and
tarring down rigging, slushing masts, reeving ropes, and bending
sails,—there must have been, on a ship driven as the Virginia was
driven,—but I saw none of it that day. She was almost into port, and
it was all done until the next time. The discipline was strict, but
sailormen do not object to that. I think that, in their hearts, they
like it. {290} They had a man of iron for master, but they had good
quarters, good food, and good treatment. There would be no desertions
at the next port. And the officers were all proud of the ship and
put their best into her. As for Marshall, master, he loved the ship;
loved her so well that he could not bear to see her not looking her
best and doing her best.
Until late that afternoon I hung over the weather rail, in the space
to which passengers were limited, to use Captain Marshall’s words,
in a condition of unalloyed bliss. I revelled in the breeze, in the
sight of the marching, sunny sea, in the way the ship cut cleanly
through the seas, keeping her bows wet with spray, in the crisp
commands and the way the men responded to them, in the noises of a
ship and the sound of the water, and in the silence. Now and then I
lifted my eyes to the towering pyramid of canvas, and I could not
help echoing the thought of the sailor quoted by Dana: “How quietly
they do their work!”
Captain Marshall was on deck nearly all day, pacing the deck by the
weather rail, but I did not hear him give an order. He scarcely
spoke. I think that he was in much the same condition as I. He
watched the sea and the sky and the sails, and occasionally he smiled
as if he was half ashamed of doing so, but could not help it. On one
of these occasions I spoke to him impulsively.
“Captain Marshall,” I said, “I must thank you for giving me this day.
It has been as happy a day as I ever spent.”
He was puzzled at this outburst, and he hardened. “Just what,” he
began coldly, “do you—”
“The ship,” I interrupted; “she sails so beautifully! I never
expected to have such an experience—never knew there was such to be
had.”
He smiled again at that. “Oh, yes,” he said, “the ship. She ’s a
sweet sailer—a sweet sailer.” He turned on his heel, still murmuring
“sweet sailer.” {291}
I looked out over the water again, and saw Java Head just rising
above the horizon.
Late that night we came to anchor before Anjer, the fourth bay on the
right as you go through the Strait from the Indian Ocean. The captain
went ashore in the morning, but I did not go with him. I would go on
to Batavia. It was just around the corner.
{292}