captain denounced to his satisfaction. His voice had been growing
louder and more vehement, with more and more small oaths intermingled,
and when I interrupted him he was talking with a force that almost
shook the galley, so that I felt that it was going to rise up and blow
away any minute. I think he would have gone on until supper if I
hadn’t interrupted.
He soon began again. “So you thought he was a nice old fellow, did you?
Well, I’m surprised. Couldn’t you see by the look in the face of him
what he was like?”
“Why, no. It struck me he was a very good-looking old fellow--very kind
and quiet.”
“Well, if you had lived as long as I have, you would know,” he went on
savagely. “And, I tell you, I seen a fellow that the owner wanted to
enlist for a voyage some time back, with Captain Avery for skipper,
and the fellow had it all arranged; but when he seen the look in the
face of that man, he backed out right off, and said: ‘Not me, thanks!
Why, to look at that man, I wouldn’t sail along of him for a hundred
dollars!’ and he didn’t, neither.”
♦ _Consequences of Deafness_ ♦
So here was the key to that hatred in the face of the cook whenever he
looked at the captain! And immediately we began to see Captain Avery in
a new light. We didn’t really believe all that had been said about him,
but we began to open our ears and eyes and look about us more sharply.
We began to hear things which the crew said about him; and we noticed
a small, shrill cry, like the peep of a bird, which the bo’s’n uttered
now and then. At first we had supposed this to be the bo’s’n’s giggle,
but we soon discovered that he was mocking the captain. And, listening
closely, we could make out the words of this mockery. Whenever the
captain gave an order, the mate, usually in the forward part of the
vessel, would repeat it, and then would come this shrill, small,
mocking voice of the bo’s’n, croaking out the order--echoing word for
word everything the skipper had said.
Captain Avery would stand on deck, with his head thrust forward, his
back hunched up, and his mouth open. And his voice seemed uglier and
harsher than ever to us. Also, he was slightly deaf, and he had an
annoying habit of saying “Hey?” every time anyone spoke to him, whether
he had really heard or not. This used to amuse us, because when he said
that word “Hey?” he would drawl it out into space, squeezing the last
drop out of it; but now it began to annoy us a great deal. We formed a
habit of waiting when he said “Hey?” until sure whether he had really
heard us or not. Often after “Hey?” he would answer what had been asked
him.
* * * * *
Sad to relate, the wind died down soon before dinner. The sails went
through the same noisy tactics as during the afternoon of the first
day. I couldn’t believe that anything could be noisier than the way
they had banged about at that time, but it was nothing to this. We
could hardly hear ourselves think, and the inside of the cabin was
pandemonium. The doors were banging, dishes were jingling, the whole
cabin was swinging back and forth crazily. Through it all the cook
was standing very firmly on his two legs, getting dinner ready. If I
wanted to stand up for a moment, I had to brace my feet far apart;
but the cook was standing at ease, his body yielding gracefully to
every motion, while pots and pans were swinging about on the walls,
and the tea slopping every which way. As the cook said, I hadn’t got
my “sea legs on yit.” I didn’t feel one speck seasick, though the crew
redoubled their efforts to irritate me by teasing; and I went dancing
down to dinner. But--something about the hotness and stuffiness down
below, and the unsteady way in which the chairs were tipping about,
and the way the table rose and fell, and the smell--the greasy, fat
gravy smell which always saturated the cook’s cooking--turned me
almost inside out; and, though I ate dinner, I found, just as I was
almost through, that I must get out into the open air--there was not
a moment to lose! I grabbed the piece of bread and butter which I had
been eating, and raced up the stairs without one word of apology or
explanation.
♦ _Acquiring Sea Legs_ ♦
The fresh air braced me right up. I didn’t get over my weak and dizzy
feeling for two or three days, and I ate nothing but oranges and
crackers, and those out on deck; but I was never actually sick. I
hardened myself during those two or three days; and when the real
weather came I minded it no more than dirt. What I did when I began to
feel qualmy was to lie down cautiously on top of the deckhouse, in the
cool shadow of the sails, and sleep it off. Then I would feel myself
for two or three hours; then do the same thing again. In this way I
found some very delightful places for naps. My favorite was on the
spanker boom--right on the broad saddle of the boom, of course on the
windward side of the sail. But this was impossible except in weather
when there was enough breeze to hold the sail steady. In calm weather
I was often jerked and flapped right off by the sudden reverse motion
of the sail, or by the endless tugging and pulling of the boom, or by
the way it lifted whenever the sail filled, and then let down with a
jerk when the sail emptied. It was fun enough for a short time; but it
quickly grew tiring, and I would find a more comfortable place to sleep.
My dizziness gradually wore off, even during the course of that day,
and, especially when I did something about the decks, I forgot all
about it. The only trouble was that I couldn’t go into the galley
to dry the dishes for my friend the old cook. As soon as I sniffed
the smell of greasy gravy--So I sat in the doorway, poking my head
in now and then to talk, and then breathing out into the fresh air
again. I have forgotten to say that early that morning the captain had
complimented us on our endurance, saying that he had thought we should
both be turning our toes up by morning, because of the rolling we had
had on the first afternoon.
* * * * *
Just after dinner, as I emerged from the cabin in that mad dash of
mine, we saw far off on the horizon a beautiful four-masted schooner
coming down from the northeast. What small wind there was was behind
us, and it was a head wind for her. She was on the starboard tack. Now,
I hadn’t realized that at sea there is a definite system of traffic
laws among ships. Being on the starboard tack, she had right of way of
us, and she crossed our bows very near us, but not so near that we had
to heave to. She managed it very neatly, shaving right across clean as
an arrow. I was surprised at the progress we were making, in spite of
what seemed like the total absence of wind; we approached each other
quite fast, and had passed before long. It struck me that the breeze
might be coming up a little. Yes, evidently it was, for the sails
weren’t making so much racket, and the surface of the murmuring ocean
seemed bluer and more restless.
♦ _Weather Prophecy_ ♦
The lofty four-master passed us, and we could see that her sails were
rippling and banging about like our own. I watched and watched her
until she disappeared. If we looked as lovely as she did to us, we must
have been a beautiful sight. I noticed that both her helmsman and ours
turned their heads and looked at each other.
Bill and I got to talking again about the weather. It struck me that
this was a pretty poor apology for the northeast gale which he had
promised, and I told him so. He only chuckled, shrugged his shoulders
meaningly, and said: “You wait! We’ll have a little breeze-o’-wind
yet.” That phrase, “breeze-o’-wind,” somehow always delighted me. Then
he added, as a tiny bluish squall, a kitten’s-paw, swept over the quiet
silver sea: “See! There comes that breeze-o’-wind now!”
The breeze, what there was, swung around gradually into the northeast;
but it was light and variable, and it was really hard to tell where
it was coming from. We beat and floundered about all the afternoon,
making attempts at tacking, though we hardly moved. We kept seeing
the same shore line, only it changed its location in a very puzzling
way. Sometimes it would be on our larboard bow, sometimes on our
starboard, while the ship appeared to be standing still. Sometime
during the afternoon a two-topmaster hove in sight and beat about
for an interminable length of time, doing as puzzling things as the
land--appearing here, and then rising up mysteriously in the other
hemisphere, showing now her beam and now her slender bow.
We gave up in despair and dropped anchor. At this I was rather nervous,
for the mate had told me how many a sailor who had never been seasick
before in his life was likely to succumb when anchor was dropped in
a swell. Afterwards the mate told me that he was very sorry for me
when he heard that we were going to drop anchor. We rolled about like
a bottle. But it didn’t bother me. Already I was remarkably on the
improve.
♦ _Man the Capstan!_ ♦
Then it struck the captain that the wind seemed to be coming up
and swinging around to its former position. After a few hours of
lying there we started the engine and hauled up the mudhook. I was
interested to see how this was done, and I went forward to watch. The
mate leaned far over the side, watching the cable like a cat--giving
orders, and stopping the winch every time the chain managed to get
fouled, or when anything else went wrong. The head of the anchor slowly
appeared through the sea, as that huge rusty chain inched up slowly,
disappearing into the cable-hole. Then the head of the anchor lifted
its uncanny, sea-ghostlike arms out of the water, dripping, and looking
like the risen skeleton of a drowned pirate. Then the whole great
mudhook rose up, accompanied by the roaring of the engine, until the
head of it reached the mysterious cable-hole. At that the mate gave a
signal and stopped the winch. Then a very interesting thing happened:
They dragged the great cat block (a block and tackle attached near
the crosstrees of the foremast) over to the side of the ship, slipped
around the tail of the anchor a great hook with a link in the end of
it, and caught the hook of the cat block into that link. The tackle was
wound around the winch, which was again started, and thus the tail of
the anchor was lifted up until the upper fluke slid into place in the
anchor plate. There it was made fast, and that operation was over.
* * * * *
When we had dropped anchor we had not taken down the sails--they could
hardly be any trouble in such a calm--and we got under way again
easily and quickly. Now, for the first time, on looking down into the
water beside the ship, I noticed huge herds of what the crew called
“sunfish”--really a kind of jellyfish. I can give no better description
of them than that they looked a good deal like exceptionally juicy and
delicious fried eggs, each with a round orange or yellow lump in the
center, surrounded by a fancy frill of whitish. But they had what
fried eggs have not: long and very elegant _tails_, bunches of long,
long streamers, waving behind them, whitish in color, very narrow and
very numerous--perhaps fifteen or twenty trailing behind one fried egg.
These streamers are waved about in a curious way, and the white of the
egg, also, is expanded and then contracted like a mysterious umbrella
opening and shutting.
♦ _The Fried-egg Tribe_ ♦
They drifted along in great shoals and herds, seemingly unable to move
except by the motion of the waves and tides. I had a great deal of
pleasure in watching them. I leaned over the side of the ship and gazed
and gazed at them. I so far forgot my dizziness that I almost began
to hanker for some nice, juicy, delicious fried eggs. Those jellyfish
made my mouth actually water. Every single one of them was slightly
different from every other. At first they seemed all alike, but after
you had watched them closely for a while you could see the differences
right off. To begin with, there was a great variation in size. Some
were as much as eight inches in diameter when spread out, others no
more than three. Some looked as though they had been off to war, and
appeared rather ragged and shabby. And then there was a great variation
in color, in brilliance. The white part was just about the same in all
of them, except that some seemed to be much more elegantly and fancily
frilled. But the yolk of the egg varied from pale yellow to a fiery
scarlet. Some had small and insignificant yolks and very fine whites;
others seemed nothing but yolk with a tiny edging, a frilled collar.
The ones with both large yolks and fancy whites were, of course, the
finest.
And these curious creatures certainly had expression in their faces.
Some looked as though they were in a great hurry--as though they were
gathering up their robes of state around them and hastening on; others
were small, dainty, modest, and very scornful of the more splendid
ones; some went sailing by, looking, for all the world, as though they
were lost in a remote dream. These had far-away, vacant expressions.
Others went by with an extremely haughty, self-conscious air; and
some, usually the most gorgeous, drifted past with a bland smile of
self-satisfaction. These fried-egg creatures certainly are a race by
themselves, different from anything else on land or sea, and with their
own characters and personalities. I am sure they have characters and
personalities!
The wind was coming up slightly, and, though the roll was increasing
steadily as we drew nearer to the open sea, we thought the sails
didn’t flap or the booms swing and groan quite so much as before. We
had high hopes of getting out of the shoals by dark. We passed more
and more lightships, and buoys of all kinds; and since we were now, on
account of the changing tide and the high swell from the open sea,
making leeway very fast, it was often quite tricky work to dodge them.
Captain Avery took the wheel a good deal, and was constantly changing
the sails, especially the important spanker, in order to get every
bit of breeze--to get more steerageway on and diminish the leeway.
This constant changing of the great spanker was quite a joke among the
crew. I would say: “Why, it’s a long time since you’ve done anything
to the spanker!” and they would laugh. But I didn’t want to appear as
though I didn’t know why they did this and that to the sails--as a
matter of fact, I quite surprised myself with my comprehension of their
tactics--and I hope I didn’t overdo the matter.
* * * * *
♦ _Too Much Leeway_ ♦
When it was almost dark we could see, not far ahead, the exit from
the dreaded shoals, and beyond that the wild, free ocean, a gleam of
gray-blue. When I looked off across our part of it, I could see how
it heaved and throbbed. It was like watching a human heart beating.
It seemed strange to look away over it, and, instead of seeing it
steady, firm, fretted with ripples, to find it rising high and then
mysteriously subsiding again--sinking back down. One could not
distinguish between the swells, or even detect their summits or their
valleys. Only, when I saw the sea rise near the side of the schooner,
I would know that the schooner, too, would rise in an instant, and
instinctively I learned to prepare myself for the rise, and then
for the sinking into the hollow. In that way I began, gradually and
painfully, to get my sea legs on, and with a little practice (which
I took walking about the ship) I learned to walk in the midst of it
without staggering and stumbling and clutching the taffrail too much. I
would win the respect of the cook, yet! I didn’t blame him in the least
for being amused at the antics of a landlubber.
Our exit from the shoals was exciting. It was a difficult bit of
navigation, especially in such a slight breeze, with so much swell and
tide and leeway. Here the captain, in spite of his nervousness and his
habit of becoming hectic if anything went the least wrong, showed his
real skill. But we had a narrow escape if ever there was one. We looked
ahead at the narrow opening, beyond which rose and fell the sea. What
a sense of isolation and solitude! I know nothing comparable to it,
except possibly being mist-bound, alone, on a mountain-top. It gives
you just about the same spellbound feeling. And we weren’t really out
in the open sea yet: we could only see it, stretching away, boundless,
ahead. Yet we were already beginning to feel the edges of that solitary
spell, fanning our cheeks, as it were, and wrapping the little
schooner in its fringes.
The exit was dotted with buoys and lightships. Whistling buoys droned
and roared. Somehow the uncanny sound of them is like a knell bidding
drowned mariners rise from the sea; and in the midst of that spell
and that quiet I half expected to see ghosts rising, folded in their
shrouds. The bell buoys are strange, too. Some of the bells are harsh
and realistic, but others have a soft, mellow ring, like an unearthly
deep church bell. Immediately they recalled to me the far-away church
bells sounding through the sea from the above-world in Arnold’s
“Forsaken Merman.”
The captain knows the passage of the shoals very thoroughly, and on
which side to sail of every single buoy. He guided the _Norman D._
among them very deftly and surely, in spite of the adverse weather
conditions.
Flocks of foam-white gulls swooped, uttering their uncanny cries. In
spite of the amount which I wrote about sea gulls in _The House Without
Windows_, I had never until now realized what their call is like. It
is a shrill, shrill _mew_, like that of a cat when it cries faintly--a
forlorn note to hear from a swift bird in flight.
♦ _Encounter with a Dragon_ ♦
Now we could see the huge surf booming on the sand bars at the exit,
where the high swells would come pounding in, wholly different from
the quiet, even monsters they are farther out. We could see the long
crests of surf where the waves broke, then, champing, galloped up the
bar and settled back once more. We were near enough to hear their
roaring.
There was a large bell buoy just before the exit. We were to go to
starboard of it. We headed as far to starboard as we could without
sailing on the wrong side of other buoys. But not quite enough room
was allowed for leeway. With the tide sweeping us down, we were washed
toward that buoy alarmingly fast. The nearer we came, the huger and
more sinister it looked, while the boom of its swinging bell became
more and more like howling. Now it loomed like some dark red dragon
from the midst of those mysterious swells. Every billow carried us
toward it; the breeze failed us when we needed it most; we could see
with half an eye that it was unlikely we should clear. Happily, the
constant swinging and banging of the sails helped; at every roll, and
every time they filled with a spurt, the schooner was carried on a
little. But still we simply went skidding across the sea sideways.
I believe we could have sailed to Nova Scotia quicker side-on than
head-on! Faster and faster we glided toward the buoy, which became
more and more uncanny as the high, round swells half buried it and
then uncovered it again. Finally we were within six feet of it--and,
on a forward roll, we cleared it, _just_; it slid mysteriously beneath
our davits. A close shave! Probably, if we had hit it, it would have
done us more damage than we did it. Those buoys are made to stand the
wildest weather. They are strong, though rather unsteady monsters.
A few moments afterward we had slid neatly out the exit, and were now
in the open sea. There was no appreciable difference except that the
roll was steadily increasing; the sea gave it more room to increase.
Now that the hot sun of midday had set, the roll seemed only pleasant
to me.
We turned in a good deal earlier that night; there was nothing in
particular to stay up for. The roll was fairly heavy, and when I lay
down in my hard bunk it was like sleeping in a treetop all night during
a high wind, or in a cradle; but it was more delightful than a cradle,
because we were riding upon the heart of the sea. It was strange to
feel the roll so heavy that there was a strain on first one side and
then the other, and if I relaxed entirely my head rocked from side to
side.
♦ _Infinity_ ♦
In the morning I had to be waked up; the roll had made me sleep more
soundly than I ever slept in my life. When I went on to the throbbing
deck there was nothing but blue, blue ocean around me, stretching
out to the thirty-two horizons; stretching away, a vast, boundless
space--stretching away--away--forever. What isolation, what terrible
isolation!
The weather conditions were monotonous all day. There was no wind--no
wind at all--and one could not have told that we were moving. We
were in the midst of space; we might have been marooned on the cold,
desolate moon. Of course the sails flapped, the booms creaked; and
somehow I felt myself trying to hold back that sound. It was as if I
hardly dared breathe or speak myself; as though _nothing_ should make
a sound in the midst of the silence and the space that surrounded us.
Oh! then was the sea like a living creature--cold, but with a mighty,
throbbing heart. I was walking on the heart of the sea; I was sleeping
on it; and I could always, night and day, feel it beating beneath my
feet, or beneath my back. Or perhaps it was the life, the heart, of the
ship that I felt. For now I knew that our schooner was superbly alive.
She carried, amid the snow of her sails, a living heart and soul.
* * * * *
My shipmate was returning from a visit to the galley. I accosted him:
“Well, how does the cook seem this morning?”
“Oh, the cook is getting wonderfully rabid! He talks about busting the
captain’s jaw--and not only his jaw, but his blankety-blank jaw. And
holds he could do it, and would if a chance offered!”
Exciting! It looked as though a real mutiny might start at any moment
now, with the cook as ringleader. I did so wish there would be a
mutiny--a little of the piratical on this seemingly peaceful schooner!
I went forward to have a yarn or two with him, hoping that I should
get the edges of this sudden burst of violence. I was not in the least
disappointed. Evidently the cook made no difference between ladies and
anyone else; he went swearing right along. And I never could get over
my surprise at the way he swore, his whole character seemed so very,
very inconsistent. In appearance he was a delightful little old man,
gentle and kind as a lamb, not hurting a fly. Yet, when you knew him,
there was the most wonderful spark of temper, of pride, of malice. He
had the sad face of an old monkey, and his apron strings flopped behind
him, and he wore suspenders--but _how he could swear_! I used to think
that I could feel the galley shake around me, and I felt that at any
moment the ship might blow up or burst into flames.
“Well, mate,” said I, when I approached him, “good morning to you!”
♦ _Disrespectful_ ♦
“Good morning.” A deep sigh; profound silence. He was sitting in the
galley door, as usual, with his back against the starboard side of
the doorway. He was smoking, and looking altogether so harmless and
peaceful!
“Well,” said I, “and how’s life treating you, mate?”
“Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” said he. “Captain Avery--I’d like to bust his
mildewed old jaw for him--and I could do it, too!”
Apparently he was repeating exactly what he had said before. How
delightful to get this explosion from that embodiment of all
peacefulness!
“Why, what’s the matter, steward? What’s the skipper done to you now?”
“Well, he says he don’t like my grub. How kin he expect any man to cook
when there’s nothing to cook with? Now, look a’ this old stove, and
this rotten old oven. Why, when I bake my bread, I’ve got to keep it in
hours longer than it ought to be in, in order to get it done at all.
I haven’t a drop of flavoring extract on board this ship; I haven’t a
bit of anything to make nice things out of; I can’t make cakes, I can’t
make good pastry with what I’ve got here; I have no jams or jellies of
any kind--how can he expect me to do any cooking for him? That’s what
I’d like to know!”
And again this sad little old man seemed to sink down into himself.
* * * * *
All day long I walked around the decks, talking to the sailors,
spinning yarns with Bill and Bob, and even with Captain Avery. We felt,
to be sure, a little distant from the skipper. His attitude suggested
that he was getting tired of his passengers. He always seemed to draw
off by himself in a corner of the deck; or he would study his charts,
down in the dark of the cabin, spreading them out flat on the floor,
and getting down on top of them on his knees and elbows; or else he
would come around and interfere in other persons’ conversation, by
saying “Hey?” in the middle of sentences not addressed to him at all.
Sometimes he would come around where we were talking and “jine in” very
freely, without asking permission. Then, of course, the conversation
would be entirely transferred to his side; for when he got going there
was no hope for anyone else to talk unless, by mistake, the old man
asked a question. On and on he would go, taking up the talk just where
we had left off, and continuing it in his own way, strangely distorting
it. Moreover, we began to see truth as well as exaggeration in the
cook’s statements. We had begun, too, to become more interested in
the crew than in the skipper. But, in spite of all this, the captain
was the captain; and he was very amusing and entertaining as well as
boring, if you looked at him in the right light.
♦ _All as it Should Be_ ♦
Somehow, in spite of the calm and the tides, we were making headway. I
didn’t understand it at all--especially as the sails did nothing but
flap and apparently carried us backwards as much as forwards. But the
captain said we were off Cape Cod, though we didn’t go in sight of
it. There were a few jellyfish about; not nearly so many as there had
been during our passage through the shoals, for apparently those queer
creatures stick to the shallower water. I couldn’t help wishing for a
wind. But I was on a ship; and, after all, that was enough. Moreover,
at this rate I had the prospect of being on a ship for several days to
come. Here I was, leading the life I had madly wanted, living with the
sailors, forming a companionship with them, gazing upon the expanse
of the shuddering, boundless sea, watching the sails shaking above
me--studying the tactics and the working of a _sailing_ vessel.
And here I was, chinning in an extremely familiar way with my friend
Mate Bill, who had somehow or other become quite intimate with me.
I mocked him considerably about his “breeze-o’-wind.” “Where’s that
‘breeze-o’-wind’ you promised us, mate?” “Coming! You wait and
see.” The length of time which we could spend talking about that
“breeze-o’-wind” was extraordinary. The mate maintained, more in
joke than seriously, that there was going to be a northeast gale.
And I laughed, not because I disagreed with him, for I believed him
perfectly, but because it did seem so fantastic that this silence,
this terrible calmness, could change into a ripping northeaster. The
mate understood this feeling of mine perfectly. He chuckled his sly,
mysterious, piratical chuckle and said that the wind was coming; he
wouldn’t be at all surprised if it came the next day, and he was sure
it would come the day after that, at latest.
* * * * *
♦ _Economy in Paint_ ♦
A trifle more about our skipper. By this time we were winning the great
favor of the crew, and especially of the mate, with whom both of us
talked for hours at a stretch. The _Norman D._ badly needed a coat or
two of paint. The skipper was most desirous to have the painting done
during the voyage, and this very calm, lazy weather seemed the ideal
time. Two or three of the crew were usually at work; also, my shipmate
made the time go by painting. The captain’s desire was to have the
whole inside of the ship painted by the time we reached Bridgewater,
but he seemed doubtful that it would be possible to do this. “You
wait,” said he to us--“you’ll see how much painting there’ll be done!”
But Mate Bill would come over and say to me: “It’s his own fault if we
don’t get the vessel painted by the time we get down to Nova Scotia.
’Cause we could do it perfectly well; a three-years’ child could do it
if only he could be let alone! But here’s the old man bothering us and
looking over our shoulders at every stroke. What does he know about
painting? Lord! He paints worse than any of us. I tell you, if he had
the chance he’d make one can of paint go for the whole vessel! He takes
a brush, and dips it, and then daubs--a daub here, a daub there, and
not enough anywheres. Look a’ that bit of the taffrail he painted. A
cat could do it better! Then, after he’s done three inches of that, he
goes forrard, daubing all the time, till he gits to the fo’c’sle; and
then he puts a daub on that, and a daub on this!”
“I think, mate, it makes the cook mad to see him come forward at all.”
“Certainly it does! It makes any sailor mad! What’s he got to do
forrard? That ain’t his place. His place is aft, and I wish to
brimstone he’d stay there. He ain’t supposed to come off that poop
deck. He ain’t supposed to come no further ’n them steps. Forrard’s
_my_ place--there’s no sense in both of us there. ’N’ if he comes
forrard, I go aft. Forrard’s my place. I’m supposed to do the work
there, and see that the work gets done. The old man’s supposed to tell
me anything he wants done, and then I’m to see that it gets done. But
I can’t, and I lay ’tain’t my fault. Why, anyone comin’ aboard this
vessel--if the owner come aboard and saw a little paint here, ’n’ a
little there, he’d ask the captain: ‘Who’s your mate aboard here?’ ’n’
the old man’d say: ‘Bill McLeod.’ ‘Well, he’s a shockin’ poor mate!’
There, you see! all the blame gets round on to me again. If he’d only
let us alone, we’d get the whole ship done. We’d get it done within
three days, if this calm weather keeps up.”
Bill was right. He had described the tactics of the “old man”
perfectly. (He used to make a great to-do, Bill did, about that phrase,
“old man.” “I dunno why it is,” he would say, “but I allus called any
cap’n I ever had ‘old man’; whether he’s young or old, it’s all the
same--he’s allus the ‘old man.’”)
“I don’t think the cook cares much about Captain Avery.”
“Oh, the cook hates him!” Again Bill chuckled, and his wicked black
eyes twinkled. “He hates ’im like bitter p’ison!”
“I think it’s very funny, the way Bob mocks at him so much.”
♦ _High Words in a Crisis_ ♦
“Yes, it’s funny. But you get tired of it. Now, Bob is young, and he’s
awful fresh and careless; everythin’s a game to him. He has a lot of
fun mocking the old fellow that way. But I wouldn’t do it; not me!
One thing I was always taught, ’n’ that was to respect people older’n
myself. Now Cap’n Avery’s old, and he’s a meddlin’ old cat, but I niver
sass him; not me! I’ve niver sassed him but once in me life, ’n’ I’ve
sailed with him a lot, too. I’ve sailed with him a lot, ’n’ he’s got to
know me good, so he sometimes calls me Bill.”
“When was it that you sassed him, mate?”
“Oh, that was a couple o’ years ago, on another voyage I took with him.”
“And what did Captain Avery do that made you sass him?”
“Well, it was in the evenin’, and a terrible squall come up, and we
had to get down the sails in a hurry. He orders us to take down the
jibs first, and we was just gettin’ the jibs down when somethin’ went
wrong with the tackle. The old man see what was the matter, and he come
runnin’ up forrard, giving orders and shouting. He was awful nervous.
He allus was a nervous old cat. Well, somehow I didn’t stop to think,
and it made me kind of mad to see him come runnin’ up forrard, shouting
that way, and I sassed him back, ’n’ I said: ‘I wish to Beelzebub you’d
get aft to your own place!’ Well, the old man went. But a’terwards I
see the tears runnin’ down the poor old fellow’s cheeks, he was so
excited. Well, I niver, niver sassed him back again. But sometimes it
riles me, the things he does. I think that’s why he likes me, ’cause I
am respec’ful to him. So it sometimes does rile me, the way Bob mocks
him, and I talk to Bob a lot. But it niver does no good.”
“And is Captain Avery a good man, supposing you get into a gale?”
“Oh, yes, he’s a skillful old fellow. But anyone that’s been to sea
as long as he has _ought_ to be skillful. He is clever and quick, but
awful nervous, and he shouts and calls a lot. One good thing about
Captain Avery is this: he has a good loud voice. You never have to come
aft to ask what he says!” And Bill’s eyes sparkled again.
“Do you think he ever has happened to hear when Bob mocks at him?”
“Well, I dunno. Bob does sometimes mock awful loud--but then, the old
man is good and deef. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
♦ _Halcyon Days_ ♦
Indeed, Bob seemed to be growing steadily more daring. He used often to
mock, even when the old man hadn’t given an order, just for the sake
of amusing the rest of the crew. It _was_ amusing to hear the captain
call the crew “boys.” If he wanted anything done, it was always “Here,
boys! Here, boys!” until someone came to execute his orders. (It rather
disappointed me that he didn’t call them “mates,” or “my hearties,”
or “my bullies,” in true piratical fashion. But one can’t expect too
much!) And Bob would stretch out his neck, and lift up his head like
a bird about to sing, and screech, quite as loudly as the skipper
himself: “Here, boys! Here, boys!” You could see his bronze throat
quivering when he called, just like that of a bird. And then he would
lower his head into himself and chuckle.
Bob was especially good-looking in a bright red sweater. He used to
wear this sweater whenever it was the least bit chilly, and then he was
usually so busy, or perhaps so lazy, that he never seemed to have a
chance to take it off, even when it grew warm. Of him, more later.
During those calm days there was a great deal of warm weather. I went
about, in my old blue shirt with a sailor collar and my old black
pants, very gaily indeed, feeling sailorly and wanting to show the
crew that I didn’t put on airs or try to be superior to them. In fact,
I admitted my inferiority by asking them questions about ropes, their
names and uses. The ropes on a schooner are surely the most complicated
things on earth, except those of a square-rigger, which both Mr.
Rasmussen and our cook told me were a thousand times more complicated.
As for the schooner, there was only about one rope which I could always
be sure of--the fore-topsail clew line. That particular rope had
broken, and the mate had run in a brand-new one--a bright rope, white
among the dark, weather-beaten, dirty ones. I could always tell it by a
glance--until it began to get dirty, too.
Again we turned in early. We had discovered that it was really much
simpler to do so, because we had neglected bringing a flashlight. There
were no lights on the ship except lamps, and there was no lamp in the
“bathroom,” and consequently no way to find the water bucket without
lighting a match. (I had overturned it two or three times in the
rolling.) The ship’s lamps, by the way, were arranged in little rings
of brass which projected on arms from the wall, and as the ship rolled
crazily the lamps, too, would swing about, but keeping themselves
upright in the gimbals.
* * * * *
♦ _Suspended Weather_ ♦
The next day the weather conditions were annoyingly the same. There was
no wind; there was nothing but that steady roll, which I now began to
enjoy quite a lot, though it did wear on one. I would look up at the
horizon as the bow of the ship plunged down, and I would see it away up
in the sky above me somewhere. Then, as the bow swung back, the horizon
would vanish beneath the forefoot of the schooner. When the bow swung
down, how far above it we, on the poop deck, seemed! and then how
formidably the bow would loom above us on the return roll!
I joked more than ever with Bill about his “breeze-o’-wind.” But he
only chuckled and told me that I wanted to get there too fast, and that
we should have the wind yet, and plenty of it, too. I would look out
over the restless ocean and see where a tiny breath of air made blue
ripples on the silver-gray, and I would nudge Bill and say: “Well, the
breeze seems to be coming up a little now!” And Bill would reply: “Yes,
we’ll have that wind in no time now!” And the breath of air would die
down, and again there would be nothing to break the monotony of the sea.
But, aside from the weather, the day turned out to be a remarkably
exciting one for me. For one thing, I had been forbidden by my strict
family to do anything whatsoever without the consent of Captain Avery.
“Just because you’re not told _not_ to do anything,” they said, “you’re
not to assume that you can do it. You have to _ask_ first.” “Oh, that’s
easily managed,” I replied. I must ask every time I wanted to go up in
the rigging (though, on account of my dizziness, I had not as yet gone
up); I should certainly have to ask before going out on the jibboom; I
should not be allowed to steer, even though I knew the points of the
compass. The most I could do was to ask the names and uses of things.
For this I usually sought out Mate Bill. When he was off duty, the two
of us would sit together in some concealed corner behind the fo’c’sle,
or on the fo’c’sle deck, or on the other side of the after deckhouse
from where Captain Avery was at that time; and then we would have “a go
of it.” I would ask him questions, and he would take them seriously.
He didn’t joke over it, and he didn’t laugh because I didn’t know. He
would say: “Now, I approve of answering questions that anyone asks me,
if so I can. The steward here, he’d fool you half the time.”
♦ “_Take the Wheel!_” ♦
But I wanted my privileges! I decided that I would begin to acquire
them again. I climbed up on the spanker boom often; I had been told
that that was all right. I used to walk out on it, leaning against the
sail and walking on the windward side of it, until I came almost to
where the boom overhung the water. Then, feeling a slight disgust at
the strictness of everything, I would stop. Of course I could do this
only when the breeze held the sails steady. (Two or three times during
that day this happened.) Otherwise I should be flapped off the boom.
I used to go by myself on the fo’c’sle deck a good deal, and I would
climb around and sit on the forward capstan or on the staysail boom or
on the very forward part of the bow, as near the tip as I could. Then
I would have a longing upon me to go out on the jibboom. But when I
saw those frail footropes, overhanging the open sea itself, and the
whole jibboom waving up and down, I decided that, even if I were given
permission, it was a little precarious for me. But I said I should come
around to it sooner or later--and, after all, it was only my first
voyage--and, after all, I could climb better than Richardson--and,
after all, I was really doing very well for such an amateur!
I did long to steer, though. How I wished someone would give me a hint
or two! I was a little worried about asking anyone save my friend the
mate. I resolved that, sometime when he had the wheel, I would ask him.
But I found that the mate, because of his rank, hardly ever took the
wheel. Sometimes he would take it for a while, during Bob’s trick, so
that Bob could go down to dinner; that would be after he had had his
own. But I had an itch on me to steer that day. It was after dinner
when I felt the itch; they were constantly tampering with the sails,
and it was, as usual, Bob’s trick (it seemed to me as though it were
almost always Bob’s trick), and Bob had just left the wheel to help
close-haul the spanker. I came walking slowly aft at that moment, and
Bob called out to me: “Here, take the wheel while I fix this bally
sail.”
To be requested to steer!
“Do you know the points?” he shouted.
“Yes!”
“East by north.”
“East by north, bo’s’n!”
A moment afterwards I had picked out the point, and, with the feeling
of those hand-worn wooden spokes in my palms, I guided the lubber line
about and kept the schooner at east by north. I found it was not so
hard; I could really do it! The only thing about it that puzzled me
was that, when the ship swung off her course by a tiny eighth of a
point, it took a very generous motion of the tiller to bring her back.
But oh, how like a sailor I felt! And when Bob left close-hauling the
sail, with Roy to help him, and came back to his trick, and saw that
the lubber line was still on the dot of east by north, he certainly
was pleased. He said: “I’ll have to stand with you, ’cause if I don’t
the old man won’t like it. But you’ll get to steer good before long.
Now I’m going to do something up forrard. If the old man asks you why
you’re steerin’, you tell him I said you could.”
“Can you trust me with her all right?”
“Oh, sure! You’re gettin’ to steer good!”
♦ “_East by North, Bo’s’n!_” ♦
Well, the old man didn’t happen to pass by at that particular
moment--perhaps he was down in the cabin--but I certainly did feel a
huge sense of responsibility. There I stood, holding the ship to her
course very neatly. And, though it took all my concentration at first
to keep that tiny black line on that tiny black point, I grew more and
more used to it, and before long I got so that I didn’t mind it at all.
The bo’s’n came back after a little and looked anxiously at the compass
in the binnacle. But it was still all right, and he grinned. Presently
the old man really did come by, and he saw that I had the wheel all to
myself, and that Bob was standing doing nothing behind me, but watching
like a cat. He, too, looked at the compass, and then at me, and then
at the compass again. I grinned at him. He looked rather anxiously
at Bob, and I heard him whisper: “Don’t let her keep it too long.
Do look out for her!” And then I heard Bob’s careless voice reply:
“Oh, sure! _She’s_ all right. She steers better than Richardson now.”
But, evidently to please the captain, he took the wheel, too. It was
companionable to steer with another; yet I liked the feeling of having
it alone. I steered more and more accurately all the time, and I got so
that I could see when the schooner was about to slide off her point,
and would head her off with the wheel.
I had the wheel for the second half of Bob’s trick, and for the first
half of Roy’s. That made a whole trick; and the time went like foam.
But toward the end of that time my eyes, unused to the strain, grew
rather blurred. I could no longer see the line or the point very well,
and, afraid of mistakes, I stopped. But I was becoming a sailor! My
first voyage, and here I was “jining in” with the crew and the work
like anything!
* * * * *
♦ _Tussle with the Spanker_ ♦
That morning, before the steering, I had had a rather amusing and
exciting experience. The breeze seemed to be coming up a little, but it
was just a whim. The sails were steady for a moment, and the captain
wanted the spanker close-hauled. They were always doing something or
other with that spanker; I never knew anything like it. Well, the
captain decided, there was such a very light breeze, that he could do
it himself. He loosed the sheet from the belaying pin on the starboard
side of the schooner, leaving only one turn of the rope around the
pin, and began to haul, letting all the strain go on to the pin--the
true nautical way of close-hauling a sail when you want to do it
alone. But the captain, as Bill often said, was “weaker’n a cat,” and
to see him leaning back on the rope, clasping his horny hands around
it desperately, and yet with the strength of that mighty sail all the
time pulling him back toward the belaying pin, was comical. He raised
his head, and I could see that at any moment he would begin his call
of “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!” I wanted to be helpful as a
sailor, and I immediately took hold of the sheet above the belaying pin
and hauled and hauled, with the desperate strength which I always had
when I wanted to be sailor-like, or wanted to show the crew and the
skipper that I _was_ sailor-like. I hauled while Captain Avery took up
the slack which I made, by hauling it taut around the belaying pin.
The two of us could just hold the sail and close-haul it half-inch by
half-inch; but we weren’t making very rapid progress, and the skipper
was getting tired of it. And, after all and after all, he began to sing
out: “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!”
The bo’s’n came aft in a bound or two, and, with a look of disgust at
me to show that he was sick of that infernal “Here, boys!” he, too,
began to haul. He took the sheet close under the block, I took it a
little farther down, and the captain still stood on the other side of
the belaying pin, making frantic gestures and taking up the slack. But
evidently the sheet had been working towards the top of the belaying
pin, for in a little spurt of wind it crept up to the top and over.
The captain started shouting. The boom was too much for Bob and me
without that extra turn around the pin, and both Bob and I were dragged
rapidly, roughly, and resistingly across the deck. We went fast,
because of the savage pull of the boom, but I had time to think quite a
lot. I thought that it would pull me overboard; I thought of letting
go; then I thought that I _mustn’t_ let go, I must just hang on like
grim death and show them that I was sailorly. I felt myself come into a
bit too sudden contact with the after capstan, and heard the bo’s’n say
“Let go, quick!” Then I saw that he had let go. And, next, everything
was a blurred whirling. At last, as I neared the port taffrail, I
let go, and the boom went wandering gently out until it was at right
angles to the rail. I fell on my knees just against the rail; then, in
spite of my jarring encounter with that capstan, I got up briskly and
laughed. With Roy helping, all of us hauled the boom in again and made
it fast.
* * * * *
In the afternoon the crew, having less than nothing to do, all gathered
on deck, sitting on hatches between the poop and the fo’c’sle, in the
sun of the mid-afternoon, to talk. They all came out with the exception
of Richardson and another Bill--an Irish Bill. There were the mate, the
bo’s’n, Roy, the cook, and I. It was the first time the crew had really
shown signs of being friendly with one another. Not that they had
quarrelled, but they never seemed to have anything much to say; they
were gloomy and silent.
♦ _In Conference_ ♦
We carried a spare gaff on the starboard side, under the bulwarks ’way
forrard. It seemed to be a favorite place to sit. The mate and I sat
down on this gaff, side by side, while the bo’s’n and Roy, who seemed
to be great pals, sat on a forward hatch-cover, facing us. I began
joking Bill about his “breeze-o’-wind.” “When _is_ it coming, mate?”
said I. “Oh, sometime next month!” “We’ll have to publish that,” said
I--“‘Bill predicts a breeze-o’-wind for next month.’” “But you wait,”
says Bill. “It’s a-comin’ yet, sometime tomorrow!” “That’s far better,”
said I.
Then I subsided entirely and let the crew rattle on in their own way.
Richardson had now come out of the fo’c’sle and was very feebly and
painstakingly splitting up pieces of wood with the steward’s little
hatchet. He was doing it slowly, though neatly, and it looked as though
he were not accustomed to it. The mate saw him, and I could tell at
once, by the way his black eyes began to sparkle so maliciously,
that he was going to say something to Richardson. And he said, in
that solemn way of his, yet with a downward twist to the corners of
his mouth: “Hey, Dick, don’t hurry too much over that!” Richardson
is very pleasant, no matter what is said to him, and he replied only
with chuckles--rather gloomy ones. Then he fell to work sawing up some
boards which had been left over from the lumber cargo; he brought out a
small sawhorse and a saw and fell to work. But it went no better. Every
stroke seemed to be painful, and he made very slow progress. Again the
mate struck in, and said: “Don’t kill yourself over that, Dick!”
The mate began to tell about various incidents of his career, which
seems, on the whole, to have been a fairly interesting one. He has
stuck to the sea for fifteen years, with hankerings now and then to do
landsman’s work, but always sooner or later returning to sailor life.
He said: “Once they wanted me to go as mate on a schooner, fer seventy
a month. I was workin’ ashore then, an’ I didn’t want to go. But I was
wanted badly enough--somehow, it seems I never had no trouble gettin’ a
berth as mate--”
“Well, no wonder,” interposed Richardson from his sawhorse. “If you
resigned up there at Bridgewater, I would too, by heaven! I wouldn’t
stand bein’ hazed by the old man; not I! Why, Bill, it’s you as keeps
this crew together at all.”
♦ _In the Old Days_ ♦
“Well,” continued Bill (it seems customary for them to begin everything
with a “well”; even I do it, more or less), “the owner of that vessel
offered me seventy-five. But ’twas no better. I didn’t want to go. I
said I wouldn’t, no matter how much he give me. ‘Not for eighty?’ says
he. ‘No, sir!’ says I. ‘Eighty-five?’ ‘No,’ says I, ‘’N’ you might as
well make up your mind to it, sir! I’m not goin’ to do a sailor’s work
no more.’ ‘Wouldn’t you go fer ninety, Bill?’ ‘No. Don’t you coax no
more. I’m not goin’!’ But he kep’ on arguin’, and he riz five dollars
every time he opened his mouth, and, by thunder, I went, fer a hundred
and ten. That’s how bad I’m wanted! And here I am with Cap’n Avery, fer
sixty flat, and a row over that, too!”
The cook had now come out of his galley, and he stood listening, his
apron tied behind him, and a curious expression of scorn and disdain
on his face. Said he: “You think ye’re so badly off, don’t you? Why,
when I used to sail in the old square-riggers, we used to get thirteen
dollars a month, flat--no more. And the mate--he didn’t get no more
than seventeen. You think the work is so awful hard here, don’t you?
Why, listen to me! Every single morning all hands was called on deck at
four o’clock; some ships had it half-past three. Then we had to wash,
and scrub, and sooge,[1] and sand, and holystone, and squeegee the
decks, forrard and aft. ’N’ when that was done we had to go aloft and
polish up all the brass work, ’n’ the brass along the bulwarks, and the
cook had to polish his kids and pans, and put them in the front of the
galley for the old man to examine when he come forrard in the morning.
It took till breakfast t’ get all that done. Why, you sluggards would
take all day over the work that we used t’ do in an hour! And do you
know what? Listen to me--”
But here an interruption came in the shape of an incident which made
the crew laugh a great deal. The cook decided that he would come and
mingle with us; he would sit on the gaff and swing his legs around,
and be chummy. So he walked robustly over to the spare gaff, his hands
up under his apron in front. But somehow or other, nimble though the
little man is, he missed his aim, as it were, and, instead of sitting
_on_ the gaff, he sat down _behind_ it, with his knees over it. By that
small miscue the dignity of the little old cook was suddenly spilled,
turned upside down. But he pulled himself together again, hitched
forward on to the gaff, blinking in the sun, and rocked himself back
and forth. Then he began again where he had left off:
“Listen to me a minute. You talked about being hazed by the old man:
you listen, and if you call this hazin’, what you’re havin’, I eat rats
fer dinner! When our old man used to come on deck, at eight bells,
after everythin’ aboard was all fixed up tidy as tidy, ’n’ the deck
holystoned ’ntil it was white as chalk all over, he used to bring his
glass and come forrard and look away up at the riggin’, t’ see ’f the
brass work was shining enough. And if we hadn’t polished it to suit
him, he would make us go up aloft and do it all over agin.”
♦ _Peppery Suggestion_ ♦
All this time the cook had an imaginary glass in his hand, and was
peering aloft through it, to see if the brass work were polished. He
would peer and peer up at the mizzen-mast, and peer and peer at the
mainmast, and then peer and peer indefinitely at the foremast. And very
queer he looked, peering and peering that way through his imaginary
glass.
“’N’ then,” he went on, “after he had looked at that a while, he would
come to the door of the galley and look at all the cook’s tin pans and
kids, that was spread out in the sun. ’N’ if _they_ wasn’t polished to
suit him, they would have t’ be done over, ’n’ the cook would get a
good callin’ down, too.--Fer the love o’ Mike, what you laughin’ at,
bo’s’n?”
The bo’s’n had been chuckling and giggling, and now he was absolutely
bursting with restrained merriment. “I was thinkin’,” said he, “someone
ought to have put pepper in the old man’s eyeglass. Then, when he come
along and tipped it ’way back to look up, he’d go around howlin’ and
howlin’ and stampin’ and swearin’, and be a fine show--and then, if the
fust mate ast him what was the matter, he wouldn’t dare say, ’n’ he’d
say that the brass was polished so poor it made him curse!” The bo’s’n
delivered this strange harangue in the craziest voice you ever heard in
your life, all the time chuckling as though about to burst.
“Well,” returned the cook, vehemently, yet very solemnly--“I guess you
nor no one else, neither, would dare to do anythin’ like that. He’d
regret it all his life, let me tell you! And you wouldn’t do anything
about the grub, neither. I suppose all you fellows think you’re in a
awful bad way with food. Do you want me to tell you what _we_ used
to have to live on? We had salt pork ’n’ hard tack. ’N’ that’s about
all. We used to have what we called ‘duff’ on Sundays, but that wasn’t
so good as the grub you have all the time. And they didn’t even have
potaters! Now, you shrimps git potaters all the time. Then, they on’y
had ’em aft! Once we had a great hunk o’ salt beef. It got all soaked
up with salt water, but the cook made us eat it. It was hard as a rock,
’n’ it lasted fer days and days, ’cause no one would eat it. ’n’ it
kept cropping up, and cropping up, and we couldn’t get rid of it nohow.
But we had to keep on chewin’ it (’n’ it was jist like leather), ’ntil
every bit of it was gone. Why, we used to have food that cats and dogs
wouldn’t ’a’ touched, ’n’ that turkey-buzzards wouldn’t ’a’ picked up.”
“Well!” said the bo’s’n, in a voice of careless scorn, “blamed if I’d
eat it, if ’twas as bad as all that.”
“Now, my young man,” said the cook, very severely, “you’d do exactly
what everyone else did, you would.”
♦ _Dietetic Argument_ ♦
“Wither me if I would! I’d fire it overboard. Why didn’t you fire it
overboard?”
“It was different then,” said the cook--“very different. Sailors
couldn’t get fresh and flip then, by thunder. Why, every man of them
would be fired and flogged, if they did that.”
“Well,” said the bo’s’n, “why didn’t they come aft and complain?
Strikes me it ain’t up to them to eat what’s fit for hounds.”
“Of course it wasn’t up to them!” said the cook, “but they had to do ’t
all the same. I tell you, sailors weren’t treated as men at all, then;
they weren’t so good as dogs! You think ye’re so hard off, don’t you?
I’d like to have seen you in them times. Yes, by thunder, I would!”
“Well, but,” said the bo’s’n, whose careless brain was still working
on the meat, “I’d take it out of the fo’c’sle with me, a little piece
at a time, every time it come round--and then, when the old man or the
steward wasn’t around, I’d fire it over. That’s what I’d do.”
“No you wouldn’t. You’d do what everyone else did--eat it ’ntil it was
gone!”
“Well now,” I interposed, “I think the bo’s’n made an intelligent
remark then. It would have been simple enough to do that--a little
piece at a time.”
“Sure it would!” said the bo’s’n, evidently glad to have someone agree
with him. “’Twould be the easiest thing in the world. I’m surprised
none o’ you thought of it.”
“Huh!” said the cook--and that was all of that subject.
“Speakin’ o’ dogs and cats,” said the mate, evidently deciding that
it was about his turn--“once I was second mate in a schooner, ’n’ the
old man had a cat. He was fond o’ that animal, I tell you! But the
boys, they got kind o’ mischievous ’bout it ’n’ decided they’d play a
trick on the skipper and get rid o’ that cat. So, one time when we was
gettin’ a tug out o’ the harbor, one o’ the boys picked up the cat by
the tail and threw him down into the tug. Gee! I’ll niver ferget how
surprised the boys in the tug looked, to see a cat come flyin’ down.
An’ I’ll niver ferget the skipper. He didn’t know what had happened to
the beast; he niver did know. ’Cause he’d ’a’ been powerful mad if he’d
found out--but he niver did find out what happened to his cat.”
♦ _Analysis of a Lubber_ ♦
There was a silence, as the old man emerged from the cabin door, walked
over to the port taffrail, and peered over at us, with a strange look
of meddlesome curiosity on his visage, and an ugly, trembling glare.
Everyone looked at him, and the bo’s’n said: “Here, boys! Here, boys!
Here, boys!” in his mocking voice. “You wait!” he added. “He’ll be
hollering in a minute.” As a matter of fact, the skipper didn’t start
calling; he only looked forrard as though he would like to eat us. I
suppose it enraged him to see me preferring the crew’s company to his;
and perhaps it also enraged him to see the crew lying all over the
deck, so “’xcruciating idle.” Then he went to see about the steering.
“Well,” began the mate, “last night I tried again to beat the points of
the compass into Richardson’s head.” This was to me, the crew having
dispersed momentarily. “But he can’t learn, and he won’t learn. I never
seen a dumber lad.”
“He can’t box the compass, mate?”
“Indeed he can’t! He can’t remember them points for a minute. And he
does make the dumbest mistakes, too. Why, early this mornin’, when
’twas his trick, he almost steered us right into a small fisherman
crossin’ our bow. The boat got swept towards us, on account o’ leeway,
and Richardson held us right to our course ’n’ didn’t know enough to
heave to. And the lad was goin’ t’ keep right on goin’ ’ntil we hit the
fisherman, but I see what was happenin’, and I come aft and took the
wheel out of his hands and hove us to. But he’s dumb!”
“I’m getting so I can steer pretty easily, mate.”
“Oh, you can steer good. A few more tries at it, and you’ll be steerin’
as good as anybody. You steer a good sight better ’n Dick, now.”
How I did love the mate’s flattery of my seamanship!
At this point something occurred which sent a mighty roar of laughter
from the crew and gathered them together again for more yarns.
Richardson had been steering for a long time. Most of his trick was
over, and he was listening impatiently for the welcome sound of eight
bells from the ship’s clock below. The clock struck after a few
seconds--seven bells. But Richardson was so elated with the idea that
his trick was over, and that the watch would now be changed, that he
never stopped to wait until the bells had finished striking; he took it
for granted that it was eight, and pulled the cord of the after bell
(on the deckhouse just over the binnacle, within reach of the helmsman)
eight times. First the crew looked puzzled, and then, amid shouts
of laughter, Bob yelled out: “Hey there, Dick! What you strikin’?”
Richardson looked foolish for a moment. But he quickly recovered his
good nature, and said, blushing: “Wasn’t that eight bells?” This time
the crew was too convulsed to reply. Only the cook remained solemn.
He gave one disgusted look from the galley door. He felt that it was
altogether beneath his dignity to laugh. _He_ wouldn’t condescend even
to smile.
♦ _Interlude on a Grisly Theme_ ♦
The boys were now back again, sprawled over the hatchways and the deck.
But the cook, evidently rather disgusted, as always, with the freshness
and the greenness of our crew, went back into his galley, muttering:
“Oh, Lordy, Lordy!” and we didn’t see him again that afternoon.
The conversation of the crew changed to an extraordinary subject:
teeth. (I won’t repeat all the gory, gory details.) The mate began by
saying: “Well, I think when I get to Bridgewater, I’ll have all my
teeth pulled out, and get me a set of false ones.”
“Well,” said the bo’s’n, “I imagine that would be a good plan. Does it
hurt?”
“What do you want to know for?”
“Well, I think some day I’ll do the same. Is’t ’xpensive?”
“Some is and some isn’t. A couple o’ years ago I wanted to have a tooth
pulled out, and I see in the paper where a dentist pulled teeth fer
twenty-five cents apiece. So I says: ‘That’s the place fer you, Bill,’
’n’ off I went. Well, when I got there, I had a tooth pulled. ‘How much
is it?’ says I. ‘Fifty cents,’ says he. ‘But I see in the paper where
you pull teeth fer a quarter!’ ’so I do,’ says he, ’when you have more
than one pulled. Fifty cents fer one. A quarter fer each tooth, if you
have more than one pulled.’ ‘All right,’ says I, ‘go ahead!’ And he
went on pullin’ and pullin’, and he took out nine teeth. I’ve only got
seven in my upper jaw now.”
“But,” said the bo’s’n, “does it hoit?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ve got a couple o’ teeth that I’ll have pulled. What do you
say we go somewheres in Bridgewater?”
“All right with me,” said mate.
“You have yours pulled first, and see if it hoits, and then I’ll have
mine pulled.”
“Agreed.”
“And say, Roy,” went on the bo’s’n, “if you’ll pay fer mine I’ll have
three pulled.”
“Agreed,” replied Roy, and that was the end of that. I was rather glad.
Enough is enough.
* * * * *
Through the rest of that day the weather was monotonous, but very
beautiful. The sea heaved and throbbed endlessly--dappled waves
of silver-gray, constantly shifting shadows, pools of dark blue.
The sky was clear all day, and the weather was very warm--in fact,
uncomfortably so during the early afternoon. The sails stayed white
with sunlight, and there were always sun-sparkles on the sea. Of course
I had to have my little joke with Bill about the “breeze-o’-wind.”
He said that if it didn’t come tomorrow he would never attempt a
weather-prophecy again, but that he was almost sure it would come.
♦ _Mate and Bo’s’n_ ♦
And that leads me to say more of Bill. He is the best of mates; at
least, in these modern times. In the days of the old clippers he
would have needed a great deal of hardening down before he would be
acceptable as an officer. But now he is just about as perfect as
the mate of a lumber schooner could be. He is unutterably patient,
and more willing to work than the men before the mast. In fact,
he has a paintbrush in his hand as much as anyone. Of course this
attitude--especially his willingness to do small jobs about the
deck--wins the crew to him. You remember what Richardson said about
his holding the crew together? Well, that’s a fact; he does. They were
all dissatisfied with Captain Avery; if it weren’t for Mate Bill, they
would certainly resign. And his willingness to work keeps them at work.
None of his orders are slighted--except possibly by Bob, the bo’s’n,
who, being his brother, is naturally very careless.
I asked Bill if he didn’t like to have Bob for his bo’s’n. He replied
that it was nice in some ways to sail with part of the family, but that
at the same time he wished that Bob weren’t the bo’s’n, but only a man
before the mast, because, being his brother, he was often careless
about important orders. And the mate said that Bob often used to sass
him back. “Once,” he said, “just the other day, I ast Bob to get to
work painting the bulwarks, and I give him the can and the paintbrush
and everything. Then Bob says: ‘Aw, drop yerself overboard! I’ve done
enough paintin’ t’day!’ Well, I didn’t say nothing; I jist turned
around and left him. If I’d done what I ought to have done, I would
have heaved him overboard. But I’m not made that way--I have a tender
heart. And that’s the trouble with me as a mate: I’m not hard enough.”
Bill had pronounced his one fault--tender-heartedness. But when I
looked at him, so brawny, and strong, and brown, and piratical,
it seemed rather ridiculous to define him of all persons as
tender-hearted. I should rather have liked to see him heave Bob
overboard--and then hoist him on deck again by the throat halyards! I
imagine that the mate really did have hard times getting things done,
with Bob as bo’s’n. Bill used to say that any of the rest of the crew,
even Richardson, would probably have made a better bo’s’n than Bob;
though Bob was all right, he said, when he didn’t have Bill for mate.
* * * * *
♦ _Steerageway at Last_ ♦
Bill’s weather-prophecies, however belated their fulfillment may be,
certainly are _true_, and no joke. When I went on deck the next (and
fifth) morning, after a hard sleep and another waking-up by force,
the sea was agitated, the sails were full and steady, and the proud
_Norman D._ was leaning a very little. The man at the helm seemed to
have an easier time of it, now that steerageway was on her. And the
whole atmosphere of everything had changed somewhat. Instead of the
gloomy, drowsy atmosphere, everything was gay, alert, alive. And yet
the sea was not really boisterous, either--only playful and laughing.
The sun was out brilliantly, and the whitecapped waves danced. I could
feel the wind all through me, and the sails could feel it, and the
schooner loved it--loved it. It was not yet so strong as it had been
for that short time on the afternoon of the first day; but as it came
up, I could feel the schooner leaning more and more, and, though still
it was only a playful breeze, there was something ominous in the sound
of it. The waves pounded the side of the ship, breaking and breaking;
the wings of foam rushed and roared, louder and louder. And then--what
did I hear aloft? It was a gentle, high, shrill singing--an unearthly,
indescribable sound which for a moment I could not identify. Then I
knew: it was the song of the wind through the sails.
For long I have read and heard about that magic sound; but I was
beginning to think that it was just part of the poet’s imagination,
and that he really meant the dashing of the foam or other sea noises.
But no, it is quite true: the wind seeps out between the threads of
the sailcloth and sings and sings, and the sound grows louder and more
magical as the wind rises. This was sailing, as I had always dreamed of
it.
Early in the morning we passed the loveliest small schooner I have
ever seen, a small fisherman. She could not have been more than half
our size, but in every detail she was as perfect as we. She carried
foresail, mainsail, staysail, jib, and flying jib, and those long,
pointed sails stretched out in front, full of wind, looked like the
white wings of sea gulls. Keeled over on the port tack, she passed
close under our stern. We could see the white bone she had in her small
white teeth, and we could see that beautiful roundness of full sails. A
sea gull--a white albatross sailing by--or, simply, a whitecap upon the
waves!
We were off Cape Sable, the most southerly point of Nova Scotia. All
day long the breeze rose, keeling us over more and more. The sails
were watched as a cat watches a bird, in case a sudden squall should
necessitate letting them out, or even reefing them. How I wished that
we might have to reef!
♦ _Table Racks_ ♦
The sea rose and rose in all its foaming greenness, until it had
reached the point where it had been on the first day; but it did
not stop there. It kept on coming up until, to me, it began to look
actually raging. When night shut down, the sea was in a tumult;
and the effect of the darkness on that raging water seemed to me to
intensify its anger. When, for the first time, we ate with table racks,
it was marvellously exciting. On previous days there had been enough
roll to slop the tea about considerably; but the cook seemed to think
that this long, steady, deep cant needed the racks more than a crazy
rolling.
Bill thought the worst wasn’t over yet; and since the seas were still
becoming angrier and angrier, I believed him, and hoped that it was
true. That night I went to sleep in a crazily tilted bunk. I slept as
soundly as ever, and had to have another waking in the morning.
I consider that fifth day, the first of wind, as the beginning of the
second half of the trip. Somehow, things changed on that day, and we
began to see everything in a brighter, even a more piratical light.
I forgot to say that on that day we had seen our first blackfish. Bob
was at the wheel, and his keen sailor’s eyes had made out the fountain
which, like whales, they blow up. This fish was near the schooner,
and playing leisurely about, always blowing. Every now and then we
would see its black, shiny back looming up out of the sea like a dark
boulder, or the forked, Y-shaped tail. The water which it spouted was
so like a whitecap, or a wave throwing up foam, that I didn’t see it
nearly so many times as the trained eyes of Bob.
* * * * *
In the way of weather, the next day was without doubt the most exciting
of the whole glorious trip. There was not so much talk with the crew,
but the weather quite made up for that, and it, after all, was the
greatest thing. When I woke up I had a sudden fancy that the ship had
turned over, and was sailing upside down. Indeed, when I put my feet
on the floor, it slid out from under me, as it were, and I had to be
thoroughly awake before I could stand up, even dizzily. The leeward
rail was almost buried, and later I discovered the sea spraying in
through the scuppers.
♦ _The “Gale-o’-Wind”_ ♦
When I thrust my head out of the cabin door, I was immediately blinded
by the force of the wind, and I couldn’t hear my own thoughts for the
howling and rushing. A marvellous summer gale, dead from the northeast.
Then I thought of Bill. It was just as he had said. I would never
doubt or make light of his prophecies again. The sea was a raging wild
whirlpool. The great green waves burst up and up, crested with roaring
foam, breaking and breaking against the side of the ship, throwing
their foam on to the deck. To me it seemed a typhoon. To them it was a
summer gale.
I cannot describe the awesome howling and raging of it. The sea swirled
wildly, dark green, foaming. The sky was overcast, and that made
everything seem more sinister. The sails were close-hauled, but not yet
reefed; we were on the starboard tack, and making ten knots--a very
satisfactory speed. And I heard again that singing sound aloft in the
sails, still more loud and unearthly than the day before.
The sea was nothing but a mad rush of flying foam. Everything seemed
one with it--even the wind, even the _Norman D._ herself. Two storm
petrels--Mother Carey’s chickens--were blown like clots of dark foam
across the sea; they had long, slender, dark wings, and they held them
motionless and were scudded across. How I should have loved to see an
albatross! Or a whale!
I could barely turn my face to the wind, and this fact helped to create
my awed impression of it. When I wanted to walk forward I had to lower
my head and hand myself step by step along the deckhouse, staggering
even then. I saw some of the crew floundering. But the cook--not he! He
walked in a straight, sure, steady line from the galley aft, with his
heavy basket of food. When I asked Mate Bill whether this was a breeze,
or a wind, or a gale, he said that it was “blowin’ real hard. Yes, it
sure is. Any more than this would be uncomfortable--we might have to
reef.” And the captain didn’t scorn this either. At breakfast-time,
when the table racks were up, the table set, and the bell rung, he
came down into the cabin, his white hair blown with the wind, his
cheeks fresh and rosy, and said: “Say, folks, it’s blowin’ quite a
few up there!” It was. The only one who scorned that wind was--you
couldn’t guess. No, not with a hundred guesses! It was Richardson.
_Richardson!_ I asked him, just to compare a sailor’s notion of this
with a landsman’s, whether he thought it was breeze, wind, or gale. And
Richardson said: “Oh, I’d call this a little breeze.” And it was not a
joke! He was in dead earnest. He just wanted terribly to impress me.
When again I stuck my head out into that howling, again I was awed
speechless. The schooner now had her cutwater buried in foam. The
roaring mountains of it which we piled up left her traces for miles
upon the sea. I wish we could have seen her from farther off, as she
leaned there, like a sea gull flying, or a wisp of foam. Now the sails
were no longer so gently, evenly full of wind: they were stretched and
puffed out furiously, distorted by the strain into unnatural shapes. I
could see, looking at the canvas, how they were tugging at every squall.
♦ Wild Weather ♦
The only place I could think of to sit down on was the canted leeward
side of the deckhouse. I sat on the very edge of it, with my feet
braced firmly against the taffrail. If that part of the rail had gone,
I should have gone with it. But the old man came along, found me
sitting there, and decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to do _that_ any
longer. He told me that it was dangerous, and that I must get down.
Down I got. Then I decided that I would go up on the fo’c’sle deck, and
I asked Bill if that were all right. Bill replied that I oughtn’t to
do that, because the jib sheets were rather old and frayed, and with
that strain on them might give way at any moment, sending the blocks
banging about. He told me that he knew a man who had gone forrard on a
job in the middle of a gale, and a jib sheet had given way, and he had
been killed by a blow of the loose block. So I promised I wouldn’t go
there. Then all I could think of to keep myself warm was to run back
and forth on deck, and since I couldn’t do that aft, I went cautiously
down the poop deck steps and started tearing like a race horse back and
forth between the poop and the fo’c’sle, every now and then looking out
the scupper holes or over the bulwarks at the foam. The waves were no
longer great green hills crowned with their ivory castles: they were
furious volcanoes. The sea was hurling aloft thousands of mountains,
carving deep and terrifying valleys, and then ruthlessly destroying
them again.
It was a curious and difficult experience to run upon the deck.
Besides the deep cant to leeward, the ship was rolling head-on, not
on the waves of the gale, but simply on the tidal swell; and this
roll seemed so much part of the cant that you didn’t notice it until
you began to have trouble managing your feet. It _seemed_ as though
the schooner were steady and firm. Yet, when you ran to the fo’c’sle,
you were running first up a very steep hill which tired your legs
dreadfully, then down so steep a hill that you almost fell on your
face. Sometimes when I would put my foot down, the deck had slid out
from beneath me and was ’way down at the bottom of the sea somewhere,
and at the next step the deck was there long before I was, so that I
would stumble over it, as it were.
When the cook saw me dashing so madly up and down the deck, he was
amused, and shouted from the galley door: “What you doin’? Practisin’
for a relay team?”
“Oh, just keeping warm,” I replied.
“What do you think of the breeze?”
“Breeze!” said I. “I should rather call it a gale.”
“Oh, yes,” said he, “it’s a pretty little wind for this time o’ year. I
didn’t expect nothin’ like this.”
♦ _Beating to Windward_ ♦
Again I was so awed by the sinister look of it that I could not speak.
It was that way with me every time I looked at the overcast, gloomy
sky, the raging sea, the strangely gleaming foam, the howling wind,
the singing sails, the mountains of foam which we pushed up in great
billows.
* * * * *
How the day went, I never did know; it went like the wind. Most of the
time I was either running up and down the deck or standing on the poop
deck, just gazing and gazing out to sea; or else I was watching the
tactics of the _Norman D._ Of course, since the wind was coming from
northeast, we had to tack. It was just as I had hoped, for I had always
rather wanted to see how the schooner would tack in a good gale. I was
disappointed, however, in the way she didn’t lie close to the wind. She
would run no nearer it than four points. The captain said that this was
partly because she was light. “She’s light-headed,” he explained; “that
means she won’t tack. She lay within three p’ints coming down, loaded.”
We would sail for some two hours on one tack; then the old man would
take the wheel, in order to have all hands free for the sails. He would
steer “by the wind”--that is, not taking any particular compass-line,
but keeping an eye on the sails and sailing as near the wind as
possible--and when everything was ready forward, he would roar out
in his croaking, harsh old voice; “Ha-a-a-ard a-lee-e-e-ee!” And then
the mate, usually on the fo’c’sle deck, would answer out in his more
hearty voice: “Hard alee, sir!” And then you would be sure to hear the
bo’s’n, from some nook or cranny of the vessel, echoing: “Hard alee,
sir!” The ship would swing over until she lay on the other side of the
wind--though it always seemed as if the wind, not she, had changed.
They tacked neatly, though a little frantically. But the cook disdained
their performance, and spent a long time telling me how lazy and slow
and ignorant they were, and how much more complicated it was to tack a
square-rigged ship, when there were more than ten times as many sails
and ropes, each one to be adjusted.
♦ _Darkness_ ♦
As I said, the day went very fast. There was nothing but the gale,
the foam, the waves--now and then penetrated by one of the skipper’s
terrible whoops. (His voice seemed always on the point of cracking in
two; he used to yell out that “Hard alee!” so loudly that his voice
would vanish entirely into the air.) I shall never forget the strange,
wild, melancholy feeling which that overcast and howling day gave me.
I would sit for hours on the corner of the deckhouse, and watch it,
and face up into it, and yield to it, and cower before it. It was even
more sinister than mountain-tops with the wind droning about them;
more so even than the night in which Daddy and I were on the top of
Moosilauke--that night of the great gale, with the biting mist and the
stinging sleet. We went out together that night, wrapped in blankets,
braving it. I remember the mountain feeling which spellbound us, and
the loneliness of it--and the way IT glowered at us out of the fog.
This was like it. Every trace of that gay, piratical feeling left me.
There was nothing but the gale. And, though it was all piratical and
sailor-like, it crowded all feelings out of you except the feeling of
its awesome self.
But the darkness, when it began to shut down, was the most overwhelming
of all. To see the storm growing dark, and the foam still gleaming
ghostlike, and to feel the wind howling in a way which it has at
night--we almost trembled. The sailors didn’t like it so well as we.
They wished that it weren’t from the northeast; anywhere but northeast!
said they. The captain was heard to say something about anchoring,
and the mate to say something about sailing a hundred miles that day
without making an inch of progress to the northeast. While everything
was vague rumor, and no one seemed to know much about anything, Bill
came aft and was heard to say to the old man: “Are you going to anchor,
sir?”
“Yes, I’m goin’ t’ get that mudhook down, Bill, if I can,” said he. We
made our way in pretty close to land somewhere off Cape Sable. Down
with the sails, and down with the mudhook. And then, through the midst
of the gale, with the howling above us all night, and the tossing of
the ship, and the noise and confusion down in the cabin, we slept and
rolled.
* * * * *
Here I must say a little something about the captain’s curious method
of sleeping. We took two bunks aft, of course, and one of them had been
the captain’s. The skipper himself slept in the chartroom on an old
couch, and he was always so sleepy when he went to bed for a snooze
that he would tumble asleep with everything in the world piled on top
of him. The afternoon of the first day, taking advantage of a chance
to sleep a bit, he tumbled on to that couch, where we, innocently
enough, had put a great deal of our luggage. We saw him sleeping there
with bags of oranges, suitcases, and everything you ever heard of
piled on top of him, as well as a tangle of blankets. Since then he
had complained more or less about that couch, and how difficult it was
to sleep on. It seemed to account for part of his decided nonchalance
towards his passengers.
♦ _The Square-rigged Cook_ ♦
Our crude meals were getting to be terribly awkward now. There was
a decided withdrawal from the captain, shared by everybody. The
meals had their amusing aspects, though, and sometimes I would come
near laughing aloud. The captain immediately started talking in his
long-winded way about something which he didn’t know the first thing
about. The cook stood there, arms folded, glowering with solemn
dignity, and the mate and I sat silently, now and then winking at each
other. The only trouble was that we couldn’t laugh aloud as we always
wanted to.
Then there was the cook’s feeling of superiority to the crew, in
addition to his hatred of the skipper. There was a little sliding door
which opened from the galley into the fo’c’sle--a door which the cook
would open for a few seconds while he passed the crew’s food through.
He would pass the food through scornfully, as if throwing it to dogs.
And then the way he would slam that little sliding door! a slam of pure
disgust. Once, when a dish of mixed grub was sent through, our friend
Richardson ventured to say mockingly: “What’s that?” But it wouldn’t
pass with the cook; no indeed! He said, with a mild oath: “You’d better
shut your jaw, or you won’t get no more”; and _slam!_ went the sliding
door.
The cook showed in many ways what a real sailor he had been, and in
what real sailing days he had lived. Sometimes, when three or four of
the crew were struggling with some difficult job, clewing a topsail,
close-hauling a sail in a breeze, or unfurling the topsails, he would
come out, with his apron tucked up before him in a business-like way,
and with the strings always flopping behind, and he would stand by
and watch their efforts a little disdainfully. Then he would begin to
shout and encourage them, in the true square-rigged style. And every
time they brought their weight down upon the rope, he would sing
out a different phrase: “_Haul_ away! _Now_, boys! _All_ together!
_Well_, then! _Heave_ away! _Heave_ ’n’ raise the dead!” It really did
encourage them, too. I used to feel that he would break into a chantey,
next.
♦ _Fo’c’sle Entertainment_ ♦
For two or three days I was mightily teased by the crew. They had
discovered, much to my relief, that I wasn’t seasick, and in all
probability shouldn’t be. So they had let up on that subject. But there
was another possibility, which they noticed in a flash. It was the
thought that I might be irritated if they accused me of being homesick.
In vain I turned upon them. Even the mate, even the cook himself,
shared the fun. If I were discovered looking down into the water, or up
at the constantly swinging reef points; even if I sat on the saddle of
the spanker boom and looked out over the sea, one of them would come
along and tap me meaningly on the shoulder, saying: “Well, Barbara,
gettin’ homesick?” Once the cook made me almost furious. I was sitting
on his galley doorstep, silent for a moment, and suddenly he launched
this remark at me: “Ye’re gettin’ terrible homesick, ain’t you?” I had
discovered the futility of trying to prevent these taunts. I simply
said: “I never get homesick, and I’m not now.” But when, after a little
talk, I started to walk aft, the cook said: “You don’t need t’ go away
mad!” “Mad?” said I. “What under the sun should I be mad about?” And
then: “It’s just a saying,” said he.
It was the same if I expressed a desire for a little more wind, like
what we had had before. Then I was accused of “wantin’ to get there too
quick.” And even when, as we approached the entrance to the harbor a
few days afterwards, I said something about how beautiful it was, they
immediately asserted that I was eager “to be gettin’ ashore.” But I
refused to be more than secretly irritated at the teasing of the crew I
had so longed to sail with.
Roy had a harmonica. There was a great deal of merrymaking in the
fo’c’sle with it. Oftentimes the bo’s’n, whose place is aft, and who
is not supposed to join in with the crew too freely, would go into
the fo’c’sle and ask Roy to play this tune or that. I used to ask Roy
what were some of the things which he played--such things as “Oh,
Katherina!” “’Twas three o’clock in the morning,” and “The Rosewood
Casket.” He really managed his little harmonica very well, using a
cup for a sounding-post. Sometimes Richardson played it; he was even
more brilliant, but not so careful. Oftentimes Roy would play it out on
deck, sitting on the covers of the hatchways; or he would play it from
within the fo’c’sle.
Once when I was in the galley with the cook I heard music from the
fo’c’sle, and on opening the little sliding door I beheld Roy, with his
harmonica, playing a brisk waltz and waltzing gaily around the fo’c’sle
to his own music[2]--
[Music]
all in a space about the size of an ordinary dining-table. He was
turning round and round, taking tiny steps. This was one of the most
amusing things I saw among the crew.
♦ _Dismal Weather_ ♦
He grinned rather sheepishly when he saw that I was watching him, and
there followed quite a parley about dancing of one kind and another.
This led to a gathering of the crew, and everyone got to talking about
it. I happened, though somewhat in jest, to ask Bill if he could dance
a sailor’s hornpipe. But Bill rather sadly shook his head, and Bob
struck in scornfully, and said: “Oh, him! He couldn’t dance a cow’s
hornpipe.”
“No,” said Bill, “none o’ the family are much good as dancers!”
“Dick’s a good dancer.”
“Yes, and a good waltzer, too.”
The difference between a dancer and a waltzer I never did find out. But
I have always wished that Bill _could_ dance the sailor’s hornpipe.
* * * * *
The next day (the seventh out) the breeze was dying down. There was
none of the whitecapped fierceness of the day before; nothing but a
gentle, easy wash--a pretty good sailing breeze if only it had been
from a different direction. But it was holding to northeast like grim
death. It was a dull, sad day. Early, there was a curtain, a thick
veil, of white sea fog over the coast, so that we couldn’t see it and
didn’t know how near it was. This rather disturbed the old man, and
he was afraid to pick up anchor. It was slightly warmer than the day
before, because there was so much less wind. Later, the fog lifted,
and we saw the long, low, very black and dismal shore line of Cape
Sable, farther off than we had suspected, lying under the fog. There
were large islands about, and the captain was kept at work for some
time with his charts, finding out exactly where we were. He finally
discovered that we were in what is called Pubnico Harbor. I didn’t feel
that it was much of a harbor: we were exposed to the full force of
nearly all weathers.
Dinner that day started out to be as awkward and uncomfortable as ever,
what with the cook’s hatred and the mate’s and my embarrassment. The
ship was still at anchor; indeed, the captain had definitely agreed
with the mate that we should not get under way without the wind’s
changing. But the captain seemed to be blissfully unconscious of
all the awkwardness, and he sat there smiling away and rattling on
endlessly. He was just saying: “When I came back from Florida--” and
then he suddenly decided that he should like a cigarette to go with his
strong black tea. He left us abruptly to get one. While he was gone,
the cook had an opportunity of which he was not slow to take advantage.
He leaned ’way over toward us from his sentinel’s post and said in a
hoarse whisper: “Come back from Floridy, did he? Hm! It’s a wonder the
turkey buzzards didn’t get him.” He said this in such a deep, ominous
voice that I felt myself almost shivering. What a piratical little old
man!
♦ “_But I Gest it will be Talk_” ♦
That was not the last of it. The captain returned, and we fell to
talking about wolves. I don’t know what he knew about them, but
he seemed to find plenty to say about anything at all, and a lot
left over. The meal was shortly over, and again the cook bent down
and whispered to us: “Hm! I guess the wolves wouldn’t want _him_
much--nothin’ there but bones.” Mutiny!
I’m sure that a mutiny would really have risen if we had had a crew of
any spirit at all. I can readily imagine the cook standing up on top
of a keg of rum, addressing the crew as ringleader, and I can imagine
his carrying them with him--oh, how he would carry them!--and I can
see them all drawing their cutlasses, flashing them aloft, and crying
out: “All hail to the steward!” But it was a dull crew--a gloomy, sad,
dejected, rather too good-natured crew, usually. Such things would not
go with them. They were quite content to _talk_ about the old man, to
criticize him in every way that they could think of.
* * * * *
I had a good talk with the mate that afternoon--or, rather, a good
listening to the mate. The bo’s’n had been painting up the engine-room;
he had painted the machinery red, black, and green. Very gay it looked,
and he was rather proud of his work, and took me in to see it. I told
him it was a fine job, and we had a minute of conversation, Bob
telling me something about the machinery, with a sprinkling of talk
concerning the old man. Then I went to see Bill, who was off duty at
that moment. I asked him if he didn’t think Bob had done a good job in
the engine-room. And this was his reply:
“Oh, yes, pretty good for Bob. But it’s nothin’ compared to the job
I done once, when I was bo’s’n on a four-masted schooner. I allus
did have a craze for neatness, everythin’ in _order_. Well, that
engine-room o’ theirs was a _mess_ when they enlisted me as bo’s’n. I
niver seen a worse mess. ’N’ I went right to work, ’n’ I scraped the
floor, ’n’ the walls, ’n’ the ceiling, ’n’ I painted all the wheels and
the engine all over agin, ’n’ I varnished the floor, ’n’ I scrubbed it
all up spick and span as could be. Well, the skipper knowed that I was
forrard, workin’ there, ’n’ one day he come forrard to see about it.
Well, I had that place so clean that you could go in there in a clean
white shirt ’n’ run the engine ’n’ niver get a speck of dirt or grease
on it. Well, the skipper was awful pleased, ’n’ he said: ‘Bo’s’n, I’m
proud o’ that job--I niver had a engine-room lookin’ so good as that.’
Well, I was a young man then, and I was proud, I tell you!”
♦ _A Fantasy in Fog_ ♦
That day proved, except for the wonderful remarks of the cook, to be
quite monotonous. If we had been sailing, with the mudhook lifted, it
really wouldn’t have made much difference, in that gloom and fog. The
sea was very mysterious. The wild gale had vanished, but there was
quite a swash left over. We stayed there all day, and rolled.
And we rolled in our bunks all night, to a jingling of bottles in the
medicine-cabinet, the banging of doors, and the yelling of Bill as he
strove to wake up Bob every four hours. The next day, waking up to find
the schooner still rolling crazily about, we went out on deck, very
curious to find out what the weather was doing. It gave us a cold, cold
reception. The first thing I saw was the crazy motion of the deck,
and next I saw the sea where the sky ought to be, and then the sky
where the sea ought to be. The fog had gathered around us thickly and
menacingly, saturating the air with brine, dismal and wet to breathe.
It curled around us in weird and fantastic shapes, like mountain mist,
but not so white and beautiful.
We could just see the bow of the vessel from where we were, aft, and we
could clearly see that thick fog wafting across through the jibs, above
the bowsprit. The schooner was in a mysterious little world of her
own--a world of about a hundred feet on all sides; beyond it, blankness
and silence. It was tangible space; you could see nothing--the
nothingness--so clearly. The ghostly ocean had turned to a silver-gray,
and it slipped away beneath us and fell back, then rose and rose
again, slidingly, mingling with the sky. We could not distinguish
between the swells even so much as when it was clear. I would be
looking steadfastly at what used to be the sky: then, suddenly, I would
see nothing but those shifting waters there, and then they would fall
back, and down, and again there was a wheeling sky of fog.
* * * * *
While I was still down in the cabin, early that morning, a strange
sound had startled me--a roaring drone, very sinister and terrible.
At first, alarmed, I had wondered in vain what it was. But when I
went on deck and saw that fog I knew immediately: the ship’s foghorn.
Do you know what I thought of when I first recognized it? I thought
of Billy Bones, who used to blow through his nose “like a foghorn.”
I was curious to see how it was worked, but there wasn’t time before
breakfast. I went down with a hearty appetite, encouraged by that
strong briny smell.
♦ _The Skipper’s Pet Month_ ♦
I don’t know when I had been amused by the old captain so much as I
was just after the meal, when, as we all started to go out on deck
together, he began to explain. We went up the steep, small steps before
him, but he followed us. He began down in the cabin to ejaculate:
“Well, folks, this is a mull! A regular mull. It’s a June mull! A
regular June mull.” And then, following us out on to the deck, he kept
on in a low monotone: “Yes, folks, it certainly is a mull--a regular
mull--a June mull--a regular June mull! We have these regular mulls
every June. Yes, folks, it’s just what I expected. A mull! That’s what
it is! A regular June mull!” (When I got home, after adventures yet to
be reported, I immediately went to my dictionary to look up the word
“mull.” It seems to have all meanings except that of a spell of foggy
weather. And I don’t at all know what was meant, if not that. Possibly
it was Captain Avery’s own invention--that word; and possibly that was
why he enjoyed saying it so much.)
Captain Avery had about ten thousand calendars in that after cabin;
calendars, apparently, from all parts of the world. They lined the
walls of every bunk compartment. (Actually, I think there were about
nineteen, or some odd number like that.) Of them all, there were a
very few of 1927, from which they reached back as far as 1922. I went
exploring among them, on the suggestion of my shipmate, to see in what
months they left off. And, strange to relate, I found only three which
got as far as December. A few left off in April, May, July; a large
majority stopped short in various _Junes_.
“I believe the old man’s been keeping count of June mulls!” said my
shipmate.
“It certainly looks so,” said I.
This was about the wettest day we had; certainly the wettest so far.
The sheets were dripping, and when, later, we got under way we found
them cold, stiff, and very hard to handle. As for the sails, it was
quite impossible to sit under or near them: they kept shedding icy
drops of concentrated sea fog down the back of one’s neck.
Two or three times we went into the galley to get warm. Its stove was
always roaring during this cold weather, and the door was kept shut,
seemingly to keep the gravy smell in as well as the heat. Always our
visits were made exciting by piratical remarks. Once I was sitting
on the galley doorstep with my head out in the fog; my shipmate was
farther back inside; and the cook was standing by the cupboards, making
dough. The remark was not intended for my ears, but I overheard it. He
had begun by saying, in all probability, profane things about Captain
Avery, crowning his talk with this: “’F you folks wasn’t aboard, I’d be
tempted to p’ison the food!” I was so stunned by this that I couldn’t
believe I had heard aright, and I turned upon the steward, saying:
“What was that, cook?” Then he felt abashed, I think; anyway, he said:
“Hm! I guess it’s as well you didn’t hear.”
♦ _Up with the Mudhook_ ♦
* * * * *
The old man sat still at anchor for a great part of the day. Then he
had an idea the wind was shifting slightly to the south. Really it was
just a little whim of the breeze, but the old man was evidently eager
to arrive at Bridgewater, and, without any _yoho_-ing from that gloomy
crew, the engine was started, and the mudhook came up through the
intense fog, looking more than ever like a ghostly skeleton.
Shortly after that the mate and I had a marvellous talk behind the
fo’c’sle, sitting side by side on the roof of it. The mate began by
saying what a blankety-blank fool he thought the old man was:
“Here we was, sitting comfortable at anchor, knowin’ where we was, in
Pubnico Harbor. Now here the breeze swings off a quarter point to sou’.
Well, the old man takes that too serious, specially when there ain’t no
wind nohow. So up with the mudhook, and up with the sails into the fog,
and off we starts. _Now_ look at us! There are the sails flappin’ and
flappin’, and here is we rollin’ and beatin’ around. The fool! He’ll
lose his reck’nin’, sure. I know he will! Well, if _I_ had anything to
say about it, I wouldn’t ’a’ tried it!
“Well, Barbara, how you feeling now?”
“Oh, I’m first-rate, mate!”
“Well, you’ve done fine. I thought sure you’d be sick.”
“Yes, and you acted kind of as though it would have been a grand joke
if I had been, too.”
“Oh, but I was just teasin’ you. I niver had a young sister to play
with, and now one comes along quite handy, and I can’t help it.”
“Yes, you were teasing, all right! But as for the cook, I think he’d
have been awfully glad if I had been moderately sick.”
“The steward? Sure, he’d ’a’ been glad enough to see you sick. But as
for me, I hoped you wouldn’t be--’cos, I’ll tell it to you before your
face or behind your back, you’re the smartest li’l girl I ever seen
aboard of a vessel yit. Ye’re not afraid t’ ask questions, an’ ye’re
not afraid t’ work, neither.”
“Well, mate, I’ve always wanted to go sailing, and now that I’m doing
it I might as well chip in and help, and learn.”
“Sure! Well, not everyone would.”
And then, after that gallant remark, the mate fell to telling me about
the state of affairs at home.
♦ _Bill in Private Life_ ♦
“You know, Barbara, when I got married, I was married on a Monday,
and I went off t’ sea agin Tuesday. I didn’t come back home fer six
months. ’n’ then I stayed home all day Monday, ’n’ went off t’ sea agin
Tuesday. Well, it did seem kind of tough at the time, but now I’m glad
I don’t see m’ wife very often. Y’ see, it keeps us from gettin’ tired
of each other. Now, when I go home, we have more fun! We’re just like a
couple o’ kids. We sit together and bicker and bicker all th’ time.
“Well, my wife does a great deal in the line of fancy ’mbroidery. She
can do all kinds of work of that kind, and she does love to do it. So
she sits at one end of the table, evenings, with some work of that
kind, and I sit at the other end, whittlin’ or carving with wood, and
we do have a good time.”
“Do you do much whittling and wood-carving, mate?”
“Yes, I do quite a bit. And I have a lot of fun doing it, too. I like
nothin’ better than to take a block of good wood, and a good knife
(only I never have one), and sit by the fire in the stove, to carve
something. I did a full-rigged ship model once--oh! I wish you could
’a’ seen her, Barbara; she was a beauty! It took me about two weeks
around Christmas-time to make her. Well, a friend of mine, a sea
captain, came t’ see me, ’n’ he asked if he could have her. ‘What’ll
you give for her?’ I says. ‘Well, shipmate, what do you ask?’ ‘Oh, you
can have her fer five dollars,’ I says. So he give me five dollars fer
her. Then, later, he told me that he had been offered sixty dollars for
that ship of mine, ’n’ that he had refused to sell her fer that!
“Yes, I seem to be gifted in that line. I did a violin once, from
a model of an old one that a friend o’ mine had. I worked on it all
summer, ’n’ another friend played on it fer a long time. I had a lot of
fun making it. But the hardest part was making the holes fer the pegs.
Y’ see, they are so much narrower on the inside than on the outside
that it’s very hard to get at them. Well, I strung her up, ’n’ she made
a good little violin.
“’N’ I do quite a little in the painting line, too. I used t’ do
water-color sketches of full-rigged ships, with the sky ’n’ the sea
all painted in, and painted good, too. I used t’ sell ’em fer a dollar
apiece. Yes, I had considerable thought of bein’ an artist. But there
wasn’t enough money, ’n’ I had t’ get out and earn, so I went t’ sea.
’N’ at sea I stayed, ’n’ I guess I always will. Y’ see, I can carve,
and I can paint, but here I am wasting my life with Cap’n Avery--sixty
per month. It seems hard. I think I’ll resign at Bridgewater. But, ye
see, I don’t want t’ do the old man any harm. I wouldn’t harm him fer
worlds; not me. ’N’ if I did resign, then the hull crew would. Didn’t
ye hear what Richardson said about me holdin’ the crew together? Well,
that’s a fact.”
“How many are there in your family?”
♦ _Souvenir_ ♦
“Well, there was twenty births in the family, but there are only eight
now. Some o’ them died in the war, some o’ them died of sickness. I
have one little brother that I haven’t seen since he was five months
old. An’ when Mother died, there I was, th’ oldest of the family, with
a little sister ten years old, and another one only eight--an’ I tell
you, I felt powerful lonely. Well, I went right off to sea, and left
the young children with an aunt. Now they’s almost all married, and has
children of their own. As fer myself, I have three children--two sons
and a daughter.”
He picked up a little sliver from a board which was left over from
the lumber cargo, opened his knife, and carved away at it. (It is
funny about Bill’s knives. He told me he had about four around on the
schooner somewhere, and that they kept cropping up here and there and
then disappearing, and that Bob had two or three of them. Almost every
one is broken. It seems that Bill isn’t wealthy enough to buy real
knives, so he buys a thousand cheap tin affairs which last about five
minutes. I told him, partly in joke, that I should certainly buy him a
jackknife the first thing when I got back to New Haven, and send it up
to Bridgewater before the schooner sailed.) He carved that sliver, with
amazing speed, into a delightful little rowboat with a very accurate
keel and lovely lines along the gunwales. He tossed it over to me
immediately. I have that little boat now--just about my only tangible
remembrance of Mate Bill and the _Norman D._
It was Bill’s watch above, but he didn’t seem to have anything in
particular to do, and he was evidently glad to have someone to talk
to. The silence and gloom, with blasts from the foghorn every now and
then, struck home upon everyone’s senses. I began to ask Bill the
names of various things aboard. I learned, on that day, a lot of ropes
and blocks; he answered every question carefully and clearly. He was
probably glad to air his knowledge a little.
“By the way, mate,” said I, “I thought that when the booms and sails
are to starboard, then you’re on the port tack, and that when the booms
and sails are to port, then you’re on the starboard tack. Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, when I asked the cook this morning about the foghorn, he said
that there is one blast when you’re on the port tack, two when you’re
on the starboard tack, and three when you’re running. We’re on the port
tack now, according to you, but they are giving the horn two blasts.”
“No, the steward’s got you all twisted round. It’s one on the starboard
tack, two on the port, and three running.”
“Well, I wondered who was wrong.”
♦ _Deep Sea Clay_ ♦
“Now, I don’t like that at all,” said Bill. “That’s just like the
steward, to fool you that way. Now, I like to answer questions that are
asked me, as well as I know how. But him! No, you can never tell with
him. And, you see, he makes you disbelieve me, and then I get in wrong
there.”
“No, I didn’t disbelieve you, mate. I thought that, ten to one, the
cook was wrong.”
“Yes, he’s wrong. That is, I was always learned the way I told you.
That may not be right, but it’s the way I was learned.”
So we sat there in that ghostly fog, and discussed multitudinous little
subjects--about sailing vessels, mostly--and I began to think that I
had never known anyone more entertaining than Mate Bill. He was my idea
of a real sailor.
When we dropped anchor during that wild night, it had evidently been
over a clayey bottom; the anchor had three or four good-sized lumps of
sticky gray clay on it. I fell to scraping it off, and Bill scraped
some off, too. I started molding it in my hands until I had got it to
the right texture; then I showed Bill how I had been taught to make
pottery out of it, first making a smooth round of clay for the bottom,
then rolling out long slender coils of it, and coiling it on to that
bottom round, coil after coil, and in that way building up a jar or
bowl. I loved that clay, because it was full of little shells and
pebbles which had become stuck into it; I found some delightful ones.
Then I started making two blocks, absolutely smooth, and with sharp
corners. I put them down on the bulwarks beside the cathead to dry.
It was a secret between Bill and me that they were to heave at the old
man, when they dried and became hard, if he came forward interfering in
what was none of his business.
* * * * *
♦ _High Hopes_ ♦
Bill and I must have been talking and playing there on the fo’c’sle
well over an hour, when suddenly there came a whoop from aft.
Immediately everyone was excited. It was that infernal “Here, boys!
Here, boys! Here, boys!” Since it was the mate’s watch, or supposed
to be, and since it was probably growing upon Bill’s conscience that
he had been idling for longer than he should have, he left me with a
bound, crossed the rolling deck in three more leaps, and was beside the
skipper. As for me, I was eager to find out what the disturbance was,
and I started to climb down from the roof of the fo’c’sle to see for
myself. But I was unable to cross the deck with the speed and agility
of the mate; I walked slowly, though steadily, and climbed with some
difficulty up the poop deck stairs. I beheld a very amazing sight. The
captain had a boat hook down over the port side of the schooner, with
something hooked on to the end of it--a crate or box of some kind, as
it looked. Evidently, when he had once got it hooked, it had been too
heavy for him, and he had been unable to hold it, but, unwilling to
let go, on the chance that it might be something worth having, he had
started whooping for help. Now the whole crew had gathered there, and
they all had boat hooks down, and were hauling it up. It was a large,
heavy, mysterious box, and it rattled meaningly from within. _What_
could it be? Was it gold? Mightn’t it be treasure? Supposing it were!
Oh, how marvellously piratical! My imagination reigned supreme over my
common sense then.
But things were becoming confused now. There were so many of the crew
there, and so many boat hooks all struggling for a grasp on that one
box, that everyone was getting in everyone else’s way, and the captain,
as was his custom, was becoming terribly excited. The red spot was
glowing on his cheek, and his eyes were flustered and wild. The mate
was trying desperately to shove him out of the way, but he held on
to his boat hook stubbornly, and held the boat hook around the rope
with which the thing was tied, and, in resistance to the mate, he
was yelling out in a horrible voice: “Let go! Let go! Let go! Let me
go! Let go!”--followed by a furious cascade of oaths. But the mate
gently ushered the old man out of the way, where he sank back upon the
deckhouse, exhausted, still grasping the boat hook.
That helped a lot; there was much less confusion. And, although the
captain still gurgled out delicious oaths now and then, the crew kept
their heads pretty well, and brought the great box slowly over the
taffrail. What was within? I could hardly contain myself. By the wicked
glint in the old man’s eyes--a glint like that of an eagle’s or a
hawk’s--I knew that he had some avaricious hopes that it was a box of
gold.
The crew slid off the rope, and opened the crate. Was it gold? What
was it? Everyone peered over everyone else’s shoulders. _Was_ it
gold--gleaming gold? It was--