SAILORS’ SYMPATHY.
The “Jessie Maxwell” was bound for Sydney, New South Wales, freighted
with what is called a general cargo--pianos, nails, scents, and such
matters. She carried only one passenger, Mr. Sherman, whose cabin was
given him as a favour by Captain Duff, who partly owned the barque, and
who had a great friendship for the gentleman, whose house he visited
in Sydney. Mr. Sherman was a merchant, doing business in wool, tallow,
and other Australian exports, and had been visiting London and Glasgow
for agents and consignees, and also to benefit his health by a sea
voyage. He was one of the most humane men in the colony, very well to
do, but prosperous by his own efforts. He had a commanding figure,
a large, mild, intellectual eye, and the kindliest smile that ever
graced the human face. The strong benevolence of his character made his
manner singularly fascinating; and before Holdsworth had known him a
fortnight, he was bound to him by a feeling of affection, which, though
it might have owed something of its depth to gratitude, must have
existed in a complete form, without reference to the great kindness
that had been shown him.
The days passed quickly. In the equatorial latitudes the barque was
becalmed for two days; and then a gale rose, and drove her into the
south-east trade-winds.
If Mr. Sherman and Captain Duff had ever felt disposed to believe that
Holdsworth might have been a sailor, they considered that probability
entirely disposed of by his behaviour on the first day of the gale.
He was on deck when the wind was freshening, walking to and fro with
Mr. Sherman, whose arm he could now do without, having recovered as
much of his strength as it seemed likely he would ever get back. The
wind came up in a sudden squall, and took the barque on the starboard
beam. Her royals were set, but the yards fortunately were trimmed to
receive the breeze. The vessel heeled over under the great weight
of canvas, and there was some hurry amongst the men as they let go
the royal and topgallant halliards, though there was nothing in the
confusion to occasion the least alarm, even in a passenger who had
been a month at sea. But the effect of the squall upon Holdsworth was
extraordinary. As the vessel lay over, he grasped Mr. Sherman’s arm
with looks of terror in his face, and ran to windward, flinging fearful
glances at the sea on the lee side. Mr. Sherman offered to help him to
go below, but he declined to leave the deck, and clung to the weather
mizzen rigging, apparently speechless with alarm.
As it came on to blow heavily, the men reefed the topsails; and
Holdsworth literally trembled as the yards rushed down upon the caps,
and the canvas thundered as the helmsman luffed to enable the hands to
pick up the sails more easily.
“My dear friend,” exclaimed Mr. Sherman soothingly, “you must endeavour
to control yourself. There is no danger, indeed. This uproar will
cease presently. We encountered much worse weather than this in the
North Atlantic, shortly after leaving Glasgow.”
“Yes, I am ashamed of my weakness; my nerves are gone,” answered the
poor fellow. And then, seeing the men tumbling up aloft and laying out
upon the yards, he covered his face with his hands, saying he dared not
look, lest he should see them fall.
The ship was made snug presently; but the sea rose, and now and again
a shower of spray came flying over the forecastle and the main-deck,
which so violently agitated Holdsworth that he let go the rigging and
made for the companion. He walked like a paralysed man: his hands
outstretched, and his head turning about on his shoulders. He gained
his cabin and laid himself down in his bunk, exquisitely alive to his
pusillanimity, and weeping over his incapacity to control himself.
The skipper went up to Mr. Sherman.
“Our friend is no sailor. I think you can tell _that_, Mr. Sherman?”
“No; that is proved. The instincts of his old life, had he been a
sailor, would have kept up his courage without respect of his memory.
But let us bear in mind that his nervousness is the result of the
terrible experience he has gone through. If illness--if fever, for
instance--will rob us of our nerves, how much more the unspeakable
agony of hunger and thirst, and the deadly, hopeless captivity and
exposure in an open boat for days, and maybe for weeks! It would drive
me mad!”
“Ay, that is verra true. Understand me, I am not speaking
disrespectfully of the puir soul. I would only bid you obsairve by his
fear that he canna hae been a tarry-breeks. The auld speerit would live
in spite o’ his nerves, and would have risen to the cries of the men
and the bocking o’ the water. That’s my opeenion.”
Thus we may learn how some opinions, delivered in sound earnest, are
manufactured.
Not a tarry-breeks!
There had never sailed out of any port in Christendom a finer, a more
courageous sailor than Holdsworth. What would Captain Duff have thought
of his “opeenion,” had he been told that that same halting, crippled
figure, who had hastened to his cabin with movements full of fear,
had been, only a month before, an upright, handsome man, with an eye
full of light and spirit, with nerves and skill equal to occasions
which would have overwhelmed the honest Scotch skipper and left him
nowhere, with a heart as gentle as a maiden’s and manly as Nelson’s;
always foremost in the moment of danger, with the voice of a trumpet to
deliver unerring commands; a leader in measures of which the peril made
the stoutest-hearted tremble and stand still; scaling the dizzy heights
of whirling masts and spars, to whose summits he might have beckoned
in vain to those very seamen of the “Jessie Maxwell,” whose movements,
now in the weakness of his crushed and broken life, he dared not even
watch?
Of all sights, that of the strong and lion-hearted man, smitten down by
sickness, by misery, by misfortune to the feebleness of an infant, to
the timidity of a girl, is surely the most affecting. Such a man I have
seen--a sailor--entering the forecastle full of the courage that makes
heroes of men, and leaving it, after two months of confinement, with
nerves and health so shattered, that he has not dared to approach the
bulwarks of the ship for fear of falling overboard!
Give the full measure of your pity, kind reader, to such as these.
There is no form of human suffering whose pathos is more unqualified.
So Mr. Sherman, agreeing with Captain Duff, was confident that,
whatever else Holdsworth might have been, he was not a sailor. This
was, at all events, a negative discovery, which lopped off one of the
numerous conjectures with which the mystery of Holdsworth’s past was
considered. Strange it was to talk to the poor fellow, to hear his
rational language, his discussions, his sensible remarks, and to feel
that he was speaking, so to say, on this side of a curtain, behind
which were hidden all the true interests of his life. Once or twice
he staggered Captain Duff by a nautical question, the very nature of
which implied an intimate acquaintance with the sea; but his unaffected
timidity when the vessel rolled, or when the weather was squally,
always drove the skipper back upon his first conclusion, and made him
think that the knowledge of sails, ropes, yards, etc., which Holdsworth
displayed, had been picked up by him as a passenger, or even out of
books.
However, his marine allusions were few and far between. His horror of
the sea was remarkable, and he repeatedly inquired how long it would
be before they reached Sydney. Moreover, he was rendered taciturn by
his ceaseless struggles with memory; and would pass whole hours lost in
thought, during which, it was observed, no gleam ever entered his face
to indicate his recurrence to any action, phase, or condition of his
past.
Often, when the main-deck was clear, he would steal to the boat and
stand contemplating her with his hands locked, and his brow corrugated
with anxious thought. It was strange to see him running his eyes over
her, handling the yoke-lines, peering into the locker, and literally
groping for an inspiration.
Once, the boatswain of the vessel, a shrewd English seaman, who, as
well as every other soul on board the barque, knew of Holdsworth’s
total loss of memory, seeing him alone staring at the boat, came out of
his berth, and addressed him:
“They say, sir, that you don’t remember this boat?”
“I am trying to recollect,” answered Holdsworth, looking at him
with the expression of painful eagerness that was now almost a
characteristic of his face.
“See here, sir, when that there boat was sighted, there was only two
persons found aboard of her. You was one, and the other was the poor
fellow we buried. Now, what I’m always saying to my mates is this: this
here’s a ship’s quarter-boat, and more hands went in her than two when
she put off. Now, sir, try and think how many there was.”
“I remember nothing. I would to God I could!”
“But don’t you reck’let what your thoughts was when the bread got
soaked with the salt water?”
Holdsworth shook his head.
“Here,” continued the good-natured boatswain, “might be the bread,”
pointing to the locker. “Here,” he went on, pointing to the
stern-sheets, “might you be sitting, steering of her; when up comes a
sea and washes over you or the chap that has the yokes. Now, may be,
you notices this, but can only groan, having to keep her head well
before it--putting you for the man as steers. But you can think, for
all that; and it must ha’ scared the blood out of you to guess that
the little food that remained was all spoilt. Can’t you remember?”
Holdsworth, who had followed every syllable with trembling anxiety,
shook his head again.
“Many things have happened; something tells me that,” he answered; “but
I can remember nothing.”
“Would you like to step into the foks’le, sir? Perhaps you might see
something there as will help you,” said the boatswain, who was moved by
Holdsworth’s hopeless reply.
They descended through the fore-scuttle into the dim semicircular
abode, with huge beams across the upper deck, from which depended a
number of hammocks, and bunks all around, with their edges chipped and
hacked by the men, who used them for cutting tobacco upon; and on the
deck, sea-chests and bundles, and pannikins and tin dishes scattered
everywhere. The gloom was scarcely irradiated by a couple of lamps
resembling teapots with wicks in their spouts; and the faces of the
men glimmered over the sides of the hammocks or in the darkness of
the bunks. Up in a corner was a group of men, consisting of a portion
of the watch on deck, assembled around two sea-chests, on which were
seated a couple of ordinary seamen, fastened down by nails driven
through the seat of their breeches into the lids of the chests. Their
sleeves were tucked above the muscles of their arms, and they were
deciding, by means of their fists, an argument which had been commenced
half an hour before in the main-top. Being nailed very nearly at arm’s
length from each other, their efforts to deal each other blows threw
them into contortions irresistibly ridiculous; but the lookers-on,
having probably no very lively sense of the absurd, stood around with
grave faces, thoughtfully chewing tobacco, and now and then offering
the combatants a friendly suggestion where best to hit each other. Some
men lay in hammocks directly over the heads of the pugilists, but took
no further interest in the proceedings going on under their beds, than
now and again to pop a burnt and hairy face over the edge of the tight
canvas, and in polite and genteel terms recommend the youngsters not to
make too much noise if they didn’t want to be nailed fore and aft upon
the lids of the chests like bats.
“Now, sir,” said the boatswain, advancing a few steps into the
forecastle, but not even deigning to notice, much less offering to
interfere, between the combatants, “see if there ain’t nothing here to
give you an idea.”
There should have been many things; for the forecastle of a ship was
as familiar to Holdsworth as any part of her; and though, when he
had first gone to sea, he had slept in a cabin near his father’s, he
had spent the greater part of his time forward among the men, taking
instructions from them in all kinds of seafaring work, and never more
happy than when squatting on a chest, plying a marlin spike, and
listening to the yarns of the sailors around him.
The boatswain watched him with looks of interest, which faded into
disappointment.
“Is there nothing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Holdsworth gazing blankly around him.
“But you know those things are called hammocks?”
“Yes, I can tell you the names of everything that I see, but that don’t
help me.”
“Well I _am_ blowed!” muttered the boatswain, under his breath;
whereupon Holdsworth, thanking him for the trouble he had taken,
withdrew, pained by the glances and whispers of the men, and rendered
nervous and dispirited by the smells, the fight in the corner, and the
strong movement of the ship, felt here more than anywhere else.