WEYBRIDGE,
_Feb._ 24, 1864.
LETTER I
THE VOYAGE
Wednesday, 24th July.
Off the Scilly Isles, 6 P.M.
WHEN I wrote last Sunday, we put our pilot on shore, and went down
Channel. It soon came on to blow, and all night was squally and rough.
Captain on deck all night. Monday, I went on deck at eight. Lovely
weather, but the ship pitching as you never saw a ship pitch—bowsprit
under water. By two o’clock a gale came on; all ordered below. Captain
left dinner, and, about six, a sea struck us on the weather side, and
washed a good many unconsidered trifles overboard, and stove in three
windows on the poop; nurse and four children in fits; Mrs. T— and babies
afloat, but good-humoured as usual. Army-surgeon and I picked up
children and bullied nurse, and helped to bale cabin. Cuddy window stove
in, and we were wetted. Went to bed at nine; could not undress, it
pitched so, and had to call doctor to help me into cot; slept sound. The
gale continues. My cabin is water-tight as to big splashes, but damp and
dribbling. I am almost ashamed to like such miseries so much. The
forecastle is under water with every lurch, and the motion quite
incredible to one only acquainted with steamers. If one can sit this
ship, which bounds like a tiger, one should sit a leap over a haystack.
Evidently, I can never be sea-sick; but holding on is hard work, and
writing harder.
Life is thus:—Avery—my cuddy boy—brings tea for S—, and milk for me, at
six. S— turns out; when she is dressed, I turn out, and sing out for
Avery, who takes down my cot, and brings a bucket of salt water, in which
I wash with vast danger and difficulty; get dressed, and go on deck at
eight. Ladies not allowed there earlier. Breakfast solidly at nine.
Deck again; gossip; pretend to read. Beer and biscuit at twelve. The
faithful Avery brings mine on deck. Dinner at four. Do a little
carpentering in cabin, all the outfitters’ work having broken loose. I
am now in the captain’s cabin, writing. We have the wind as ever, dead
against us; and as soon as we get unpleasantly near Scilly, we shall tack
and stand back to the French coast, where we were last night. Three
soldiers able to answer roll-call, all the rest utterly sick; three
middies helpless. Several of crew, ditto. Passengers very fairly
plucky; but only I and one other woman, who never was at sea before,
well. The food on board our ship is good as to meat, bread, and beer;
everything else bad. Port and sherry of British manufacture, and the
water with an incredible _borachio_, essence of tar; so that tea and
coffee are but derisive names.
To-day, the air is quite saturated with wet, and I put on my clothes damp
when I dressed, and have felt so ever since. I am so glad I was not
persuaded out of my cot; it is the whole difference between rest, and
holding on for life. No one in a bunk slept at all on Monday night; but
then it blew as heavy a gale as it can blow, and we had the Cornish coast
under our lee. So we tacked and tumbled all night. The ship being new,
too, has the rigging all wrong; and the confusion and disorder are beyond
description. The ship’s officers are very good fellows. The mizen is
entirely worked by the ‘young gentlemen’; so we never see the sailors,
and, at present, are not allowed to go forward. All lights are put out
at half-past ten, and no food allowed in the cabin; but the latter
article my friend Avery makes light of, and brings me anything when I am
laid up. The young soldier-officers bawl for him with expletives; but he
says, with a snigger, to me, ‘They’ll just wait till their betters, the
ladies, is looked to.’ I will write again some day soon, and take the
chance of meeting a ship; you may be amused by a little scrawl, though it
will probably be very stupid and ill-written, for it is not easy to see
or to guide a pen while I hold on to the table with both legs and one
arm, and am first on my back and then on my nose. Adieu, till next time.
I have had a good taste of the humours of the Channel.
29_th_ _July_, 4 _Bells_, i.e. 2 _o’clock_, _p.m._—When I wrote last, I
thought we had had our share of contrary winds and foul weather. Ever
since, we have beaten about the bay with the variety of a favourable gale
one night for a few hours, and a dead calm yesterday, in which we almost
rolled our masts out of the ship. However, the sun was hot, and I sat
and basked on deck, and we had morning service. It was a striking sight,
with the sailors seated on oars and buckets, covered with signal flags,
and with their clean frocks and faces. To-day is so cold that I dare not
go on deck, and am writing in my black-hole of a cabin, in a green light,
with the sun blinking through the waves as they rush over my port and
scuttle. The captain is much vexed at the loss of time. I persist in
thinking it a very pleasant, but utterly lazy life. I sleep a great
deal, but don’t eat much, and my cough has been bad; but, considering the
real hardship of the life—damp, cold, queer food, and bad drink—I think I
am better. When we can get past Finisterre, I shall do very well, I
doubt not.
The children swarm on board, and cry unceasingly. A passenger-ship is no
place for children. Our poor ship will lose her character by the
weather, as she cannot fetch up ten days’ lost time. But she is
evidently a race-horse. We overhaul everything we see, at a wonderful
rate, and the speed is exciting and pleasant; but the next long voyage I
make, I’ll try for a good wholesome old ‘monthly’ tub, which will roll
along on the top of the water, instead of cutting through it, with the
waves curling in at the cuddy skylights. We tried to signal a barque
yesterday, and send home word ‘all well’; but the brutes understood
nothing but Russian, and excited our indignation by talking ‘gibberish ‘
to us; which we resented with true British spirit, as became us.
It is now blowing hard again, and we have just been taken right aback.
Luckily, I had lashed my desk to my washing-stand, or that would have
flown off, as I did off my chair. I don’t think I shall know what to
make of solid ground under my feet. The rolling and pitching of a ship
of this size, with such tall masts, is quite unlike the little niggling
sort of work on a steamer—it is the difference between grinding along a
bad road in a four-wheeler, and riding well to hounds in a close country
on a good hunter. I was horribly tired for about five days, but now I
rather like it, and never know whether it blows or not in the night, I
sleep so soundly. The noise is beyond all belief; the creaking,
trampling, shouting, clattering; it is an incessant storm. We have not
yet got our masts quite safe; the new wire-rigging stretches more than
was anticipated (of course), and our main-topmast is shaky. The crew
have very hard work, as incessant tacking is added to all the extra work
incident to a new ship. On Saturday morning, everybody was shouting for
the carpenter. My cabin was flooded by a leak, and I superintended the
baling and swabbing from my cot, and dressed sitting on my big box.
However, I got the leak stopped and cabin dried, and no harm done, as I
had put everything up off the floor the night before, suspicious of a
dribble which came in. Then my cot frame was broken by my cuddy boy and
I lurching over against S—’s bunk, in taking it down. The carpenter has
given me his own, and takes my broken one for himself. Board ship is a
famous place for tempers. Being easily satisfied, I get all I want, and
plenty of attention and kindness; but I cannot prevail on my cuddy boy to
refrain from violent tambourine-playing with a tin tray just at the ear
of a lady who worries him. The young soldier-officers, too, I hear
mentioned as ‘them lazy gunners’, and they struggle for water and tea in
the morning long after mine has come. We have now been ten days at sea,
and only three on which we could eat without the ‘fiddles’ (transverse
pieces of wood to prevent the dishes from falling off). Smooth water
will seem quite strange to me. I fear the poor people in the forecastle
must be very wet and miserable, as the sea is constantly over it, not in
spray, but in tons of green water.
3_d_ _Aug._—We had two days of dead calm, then one or two of a very
light, favourable breeze, and yesterday we ran 175 miles with the wind
right aft. We saw several ships, which signalled us, but we would not
answer, as we had our spars down for repairs and looked like a wreck, and
fancied it would be a pity to frighten you all with a report to that
effect.
Last night we got all right, and spread out immense studding-sails. We
are now bowling along, wind right aft, dipping our studding-sail booms
into the water at every roll. The weather is still surprisingly cold,
though very fine, and I have to come below quite early, out of the
evening air. The sun sets before seven o’clock. I still cough a good
deal, and the bad food and drink are trying. But the life is very
enjoyable; and as I have the run of the charts, and ask all sorts of
questions, I get plenty of amusement. S— is an excellent traveller; no
grumbling, and no gossiping, which, on board a ship like ours, is a great
merit, for there is _ad nauseam_ of both.
Mr. — is writing a charade, in which I have agreed to take a part, to
prevent squabbling. He wanted to start a daily paper, but the captain
wisely forbade it, as it must have led to personalities and quarrels, and
suggested a play instead. My little white Maltese goat is very well, and
gives plenty of milk, which is a great resource, as the tea and coffee
are abominable. Avery brings it me at six, in a tin pannikin, and again
in the evening. The chief officer is well-bred and agreeable, and,
indeed, all the young gentlemen are wonderfully good specimens of their
class. The captain is a burly foremast man in manner, with a heart of
wax and every feeling of a gentleman. He was in California, ‘_hide
droghing_’ with Dana, and he says every line of _Two Years before the
Mast_ is true. He went through it all himself. He says that I am a
great help to him, as a pattern of discipline and punctuality. People
are much inclined to miss meals, and then want things at odd hours, and
make the work quite impossible to the cook and servants. Of course, I
get all I want in double-quick time, as I try to save my man trouble; and
the carpenter leaves my scuttle open when no one else gets it, quite
willing to get up in his time of sleep to close it, if it comes on to
blow. A maid is really a superfluity on board ship, as the men rather
like being ‘_aux petits soins_’. The boatswain came the other day to say
that he had a nice carpet and a good pillow; did I want anything of the
sort? He would be proud that I should use anything of his. You would
delight in Avery, my cuddy man, who is as quick as ‘greased lightning’,
and full of fun. His misery is my want of appetite, and his efforts to
cram me are very droll. The days seem to slip away, one can’t tell how.
I sit on deck from breakfast at nine, till dinner at four, and then again
till it gets cold, and then to bed. We are now about 100 miles from
Madeira, and shall have to run inside it, as we were thrown so far out of
our course by the foul weather.
9_th_ _Aug._—Becalmed, under a vertical sun. Lat. 17°, or thereabouts.
We saw Madeira at a distance like a cloud; since then, we had about four
days trade wind, and then failing or contrary breezes. We have sailed so
near the African shore that we get little good out of the trades, and
suffer much from the African climate. Fancy a sky like a pale February
sky in London, no sun to be seen, and a heat coming, one can’t tell from
whence. To-day, the sun is vertical and invisible, the sea glassy and
heaving. I have been ill again, and obliged to lie still yesterday and
the day before in the captain’s cabin; to-day in my own, as we have the
ports open, and the maindeck is cooler than the upper. The men have just
been holystoning here, singing away lustily in chorus. Last night I got
leave to sling my cot under the main hatchway, as my cabin must have
killed me from suffocation when shut up. Most of the men stayed on deck,
but that is dangerous after sunset on this African coast, on account of
the heavy dew and fever. They tell me that the open sea is quite
different; certainly, nothing can look duller and dimmer than this
specimen of the tropics. The few days of trade wind were beautiful and
cold, with sparkling sea, and fresh air and bright sun; and we galloped
along merrily.
We are now close to the Cape de Verd Islands, and shall go inside them.
About lat. 4° N. we expect to catch the S.E. trade wind, when it will be
cold again. In lat. 24°, the day before we entered the tropics, I sat on
deck in a coat and cloak; the heat is quite sudden, and only lasts a week
or so. The sea to-day is littered all round the ship with our floating
rubbish, so we have not moved at all.
I constantly long for you to be here, though I am not sure you would like
the life as well as I do. All your ideas of it are wrong; the
confinement to the poop and the stringent regulations would bore you.
But then, sitting on deck in fine weather is pleasure enough, without
anything else. In a Queen’s ship, a yacht, or a merchantman with fewer
passengers, it must be a delightful existence.
17_th_ _Aug._—Since I wrote last, we got into the south-west monsoon for
one day, and I sat up by the steersman in intense enjoyment—a bright sun
and glittering blue sea; and we tore along, pitching and tossing the
water up like mad. It was glorious. At night, I was calmly reposing in
my cot, in the middle of the steerage, just behind the main hatchway,
when I heard a crashing of rigging and a violent noise and confusion on
deck. The captain screamed out orders which informed me that we were in
the thick of a collision—of course I lay still, and waited till the row,
or the ship, went down. I found myself next day looked upon as no better
than a heathen by all the women, because I had been cool, and declined to
get up and make a noise. Presently the officers came and told me that a
big ship had borne down on us—we were on the starboard tack, and all
right—carried off our flying jib-boom and whisker (the sort of yard to
the bowsprit). The captain says he was never in such imminent danger in
his life, as she threatened to swing round and to crush into our waist,
which would have been certain destruction. The little dandy
soldier-officer behaved capitally; he turned his men up in no time, and
had them all ready. He said, ‘Why, you know, I must see that my fellows
go down decently.’ S— was as cool as an icicle, offered me my
pea-jacket, &c., which I declined, as it would be of no use for me to go
off in boats, even supposing there were time, and I preferred going down
comfortably in my cot. Finding she was of no use to me, she took a
yelling maid in custody, and was thought a brute for begging her to hold
her noise. The first lieutenant, who looks on passengers as odious
cargo, has utterly mollified to me since this adventure. I heard him
report to the captain that I was ‘among ’em all, and never sung out, nor
asked a question the while’. This he called ‘beautiful’.
Next day we got light wind S.W. (which ought to be the S.E. trades), and
the weather has been, beyond all description, lovely ever since. Cool,
but soft, sunny and bright—in short, perfect; only the sky is so pale.
Last night the sunset was a vision of loveliness, a sort of Pompadour
paradise; the sky seemed full of rose-crowned _amorini_, and the moon
wore a rose-coloured veil of bright pink cloud, all so light, so airy, so
brilliant, and so fleeting, that it was a kind of intoxication. It is
far less grand than northern colour, but so lovely, so shiny. Then the
flying fish skimmed like silver swallows over the blue water. Such a
sight! Also, I saw a whale spout like a very tiny garden fountain. The
Southern Cross is a delusion, and the tropical moon no better than a
Parisian one, at present. We are now in lat. 31° about, and have been
driven halfway to Rio by this sweet southern breeze. I have never yet
sat on deck without a cloth jacket or shawl, and the evenings are chilly.
I no longer believe in tropical heat at sea. Even during the calm it was
not so hot as I have often felt it in England—and that, under a vertical
sun. The ship that nearly ran us and herself down, must have kept no
look-out, and refused to answer our hail. She is supposed to be from
Glasgow by her looks. We may speak a ship and send letters on board; so
excuse scrawl and confusion, it is so difficult to write at all.
30_th_ _August_.—About 25° S. lat. and very much to the west. We have
had all sorts of weather—some beautiful, some very rough, but always
contrary winds—and got within 200 miles of the coast of South America.
We now have a milder breeze from the _soft_ N.E., after a _bitter_ S.W.,
with Cape pigeons and mollymawks (a small albatross), not to compare with
our gulls. We had private theatricals last night—ill acted, but
beautifully got up as far as the sailors were concerned. I did not act,
as I did not feel well enough, but I put a bit for Neptune into the
Prologue and made the boatswain’s mate speak it, to make up for the
absence of any shaving at the Line, which the captain prohibited
altogether; I thought it hard the men should not get their ‘tips’. The
boatswain’s mate dressed and spoke it admirably; and the old carpenter
sang a famous comic song, dressed to perfection as a ploughboy.
I am disappointed in the tropics as to warmth. Our thermometer stood at
82° one day only, under the vertical sun, N. of the Line; _on_ the Line
at 74°; and at sea it _feels_ 10° colder than it is. I have never been
hot, except for two days 4° N. of the Line, and now it is very cold, but
it is very invigorating. All day long it looks and feels like early
morning; the sky is pale blue, with light broken clouds; the sea an
inconceivably pure opaque blue—lapis lazuli, but far brighter. I saw a
lovely dolphin three days ago; his body five feet long (some said more)
is of a _fiery_ blue-green, and his huge tail golden bronze. I was glad
he scorned the bait and escaped the hook; he was so beautiful. This is
the sea from which Venus rose in her youthful glory. All is young,
fresh, serene, beautiful, and cheerful.
We have not seen a sail for weeks. But the life at sea makes amends for
anything, to my mind. I am never tired of the calms, and I enjoy a stiff
gale like a Mother Carey’s chicken, so long as I can be on deck or in the
captain’s cabin. Between decks it is very close and suffocating in rough
weather, as all is shut up. We shall be still three weeks before we
reach the Cape; and now the sun sets with a sudden plunge before six, and
the evenings are growing too cold again for me to go on deck after
dinner. As long as I could, I spent fourteen hours out of the
twenty-four in my quiet corner by the wheel, basking in the tropical sun.
Never again will I believe in the tales of a burning sun; the vertical
sun just kept me warm—no more. In two days we shall be bitterly cold
again.
Immediately after writing the above it began to blow a gale (favourable,
indeed, but more furious than the captain had ever known in these
seas),—about lat. 34° S. and long. 25°. For three days we ran under
close-reefed (four reefs) topsails, before a sea. The gale in the Bay of
Biscay was a little shaking up in a puddle (a dirty one) compared to that
glorious South Atlantic in all its majestic fury. The intense blue
waves, crowned with fantastic crests of bright emeralds and with the
spray blowing about like wild dishevelled hair, came after us to swallow
us up at a mouthful, but took us up on their backs, and hurried us along
as if our ship were a cork. Then the gale slackened, and we had a dead
calm, during which the waves banged us about frightfully, and our masts
were in much jeopardy. Then a foul wind, S.E., increased into a gale,
lasting five days, during which orders were given in dumb show, as no
one’s voice could be heard; through it we fought and laboured and dipped
under water, and I only had my dry corner by the wheel, where the kind
pleasant little third officer lashed me tight. It was far more
formidable than the first gale, but less beautiful; and we made so much
lee-way that we lost ten days, and only arrived here yesterday. I
recommend a fortnight’s heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a cure for a
_blasé_ state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of
being hurled along without the smallest regard to ‘this side uppermost’;
the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of
sails and spars; the officer trying to ‘sing out’, quite in vain, and the
boatswain’s whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every
day for as long as I could bear it, and was enchanted.
Then the mortal perils of eating, drinking, moving, sitting, lying;
standing can’t be done, even by the sailors, without holding on. _The_
night of the gale, my cot twice touched the beams of the ship above me.
I asked the captain if I had dreamt it, but he said it was quite
possible; he had never seen a ship so completely on her beam ends come up
all right, masts and yards all sound.
There is a middy about half M—’s size, a very tiny ten-year-older, who
has been my delight; he is so completely ‘the officer and the gentleman’.
My maternal entrails turned like old Alvarez, when that baby lay out on
the very end of the cross-jack yard to reef, in the gale; it was quite
voluntary, and the other newcomers all declined. I always called him
‘Mr. —, sir’, and asked his leave gravely, or, on occasions, his
protection and assistance; and his little dignity was lovely. He is
polite to the ladies, and slightly distant to the passenger-boys, bigger
than himself, whom he orders off dangerous places; ‘Children, come out of
that; you’ll be overboard.’
A few days before landing I caught a bad cold, and kept my bed. I caught
this cold by ‘sleeping with a damp man in my cabin’, as some one said.
During the last gale, the cabin opposite mine was utterly swamped, and I
found the Irish soldier-servant of a little officer of eighteen in
despair; the poor lad had got ague, and eight inches of water in his bed,
and two feet in the cabin. I looked in and said, ‘He can’t stay
there—carry him into my cabin, and lay him in the bunk’; which he did,
with tears running down his honest old face. So we got the boy into S—’s
bed, and cured his fever and ague, caught under canvas in Romney Marsh.
Meantime S— had to sleep in a chair and to undress in the boy’s wet
cabin. As a token of gratitude, he sent me a poodle pup, born on board,
very handsome. The artillery officers were generally well-behaved; the
men, deserters and ruffians, sent out as drivers. We have had five
courts-martial and two floggings in eight weeks, among seventy men. They
were pampered with food and porter, and would not pull a rope, or get up
at six to air their quarters. The sailors are an excellent set of men.
When we parted, the first lieutenant said to me, ‘Weel, ye’ve a wonderful
idee of discipline for a leddy, I will say. You’ve never been reported
but once, and that was on sick leave, for your light, and all in order.’
Cape Town, Sept. 18.
We anchored yesterday morning, and Captain J—, the Port Captain, came off
with a most kind letter from Sir Baldwin Walker, his gig, and a boat and
crew for S— and the baggage. So I was whipped over the ship’s side in a
chair, and have come to a boarding house where the J—s live. I was tired
and dizzy and landsick, and lay down and went to sleep. After an hour or
so I woke, hearing a little _gazouillement_, like that of chimney
swallows. On opening my eyes I beheld four demons, ‘sons of the obedient
Jinn’, each bearing an article of furniture, and holding converse over me
in the language of Nephelecoecygia. Why has no one ever mentioned the
curious little soft voices of these coolies?—you can’t hear them with the
naked ear, three feet off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had
not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill
black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I
asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as,
being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, ‘Them
nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.’ So I asked the
black-lead demon, who demanded ‘two shilling each horse in waggon’, and a
dollar each ‘coolie man’. He then glided with fiendish noiselessness
about the room, arranged the furniture to his own taste, and finally
said, ‘Poor missus sick’; then more chirruping among themselves, and
finally a fearful gesture of incantation, accompanied by ‘God bless poor
missus. Soon well now’. The wrath of the cockney housemaid became
majestic: ‘There, ma’am; you see how saucy they have grown—a nasty black
heathen Mohamedan a blessing of a white Christian!’
These men are the Auvergnats of Africa. I was assured that bankers
entrust them with large sums in gold, which they carry some hundred and
twenty miles, by unknown tracks, for a small gratuity. The pretty,
graceful Malays are no honester than ourselves, but are excellent
workmen.
To-morrow, my linen will go to a ravine in the giant mountain at my back,
and there be scoured in a clear spring by brown women, bleached on the
mountain top, and carried back all those long miles on their heads, as it
went up.
My landlady is Dutch; the waiter is an Africander, half Dutch, half
Malay, very handsome, and exactly like a French gentleman, and as civil.
Enter ‘Africander’ lad with a nosegay; only one flower that I
know—heliotrope. The vegetation is lovely; the freshness of spring and
the richness of summer. The leaves on the trees are in all the beauty of
spring. Mrs. R— brought me a plate of oranges, ‘just gathered’, as soon
as I entered the house—and, oh! how good they were! better even than the
Maltese. They are going out, and _dear_ now—two a penny, very large and
delicious. I am wild to get out and see the glorious scenery and the
hideous people. To-day the wind has been a cold south-wester, and I have
not been out. My windows look N. and E. so I get all the sun and warmth.
The beauty of Table Bay is astounding. Fancy the Undercliff in the Isle
of Wight magnified a hundred-fold, with clouds floating halfway up the
mountain. The Hottentot mountains in the distance have a fantastic
jagged outline, which hardly looks real. The town is like those in the
south of Europe; flat roofs, and all unfinished; roads are simply
non-existent. At the doors sat brown women with black hair that shone
like metal, very handsome; they are Malays, and their men wear conical
hats a-top of turbans, and are the chief artisans. At the end of the
pier sat a Mozambique woman in white drapery and the most majestic
attitude, like a Roman matron; her features large and strong and harsh,
but fine; and her skin blacker than night.
I have got a couple of Cape pigeons (the storm-bird of the South
Atlantic) for J—’s hat. They followed us several thousand miles, and
were hooked for their pains. The albatrosses did not come within hail.
The little Maltese goat gave a pint of milk night and morning, and was a
great comfort to the cow. She did not like the land or the grass at
first, and is to be thrown out of milk now. She is much admired and
petted by the young Africander. My room is at least eighteen feet high,
and contains exactly a bedstead, one straw mattrass, one rickety table,
one wash-table, two chairs, and broken looking-glass; no carpet, and a
hiatus of three inches between the floor and the door, but all very
clean; and excellent food. I have not made a bargain yet, but I dare say
I shall stay here.
_Friday_.—I have just received your letter; where it has been hiding, I
can’t conceive. To-day is cold and foggy, like a baddish day in June
with you; no colder, if so cold. Still, I did not venture out, the fog
rolls so heavily over the mountain. Well, I must send off this yarn,
which is as interminable as the ‘sinnet’ and ‘foxes’ which I twisted with
the mids.