Life on Board--Calm--Boat Lowered--Snares and Traps--Land--Driven off
coast--Enter Port Lyttelton--Requisites for a Sea Voyage--Spirit of
Adventure aroused.
Before continuing the narrative of my voyage, I must turn to other
topics and give you some account of my life on board. My time has
passed very pleasantly: I have read a good deal; I have nearly finished
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, am studying Liebig's
Agricultural Chemistry, and learning the concertina on the instrument of
one of my fellow-passengers. Besides this, I have had the getting up
and management of our choir. We practise three or four times a week; we
chant the Venite, Glorias, and Te Deums, and sing one hymn. I have two
basses, two tenors, one alto, and lots of girls, and the singing
certainly is better than you would hear in nine country places out of
ten. I have been glad by this means to form the acquaintance of many of
the poorer passengers. My health has been very good all the voyage: I
have not had a day's sea-sickness. The provisions are not very first-
rate, and the day after to-morrow, being Christmas Day, we shall sigh
for the roast beef of Old England, as our dinner will be somewhat of the
meagrest. Never mind! On the whole I cannot see reason to find any
great fault. We have a good ship, a good captain, and victuals
sufficient in quantity. Everyone but myself abuses the owners like pick
pockets, but I rather fancy that some of them will find themselves worse
off in New Zealand. When I come back, if I live to do so (and I
sometimes amass a wonderful fortune in a very short time, and come back
fabulously rich, and do all sorts of things), I think I shall try the
overland route. Almost every evening four of us have a very pleasant
rubber, which never gets stale. So you will have gathered that, though
very anxious to get to our journey's end, which, with luck, we hope to
do in about three weeks' time, still the voyage has not proved at all
the unbearable thing that some of us imagined it would have been. One
great amusement I have forgotten to mention--that is, shuffle-board, a
game which consists in sending some round wooden platters along the deck
into squares chalked and numbered from one to ten. This game will
really keep one quite hot in the coldest weather if played with spirit.
During the month that has elapsed since writing the last sentence, we
have had strong gales and long, tedious calms. On one of these
occasions the captain lowered a boat, and a lot of us scrambled over the
ship's side and got in, taking it in turns to row. The first thing that
surprised us was the very much warmer temperature of the sea-level than
that on deck. The change was astonishing. I have suffered from a
severe cold ever since my return to the ship. On deck it was cold,
thermometer 46 degrees; on the sea-level it was deliciously warm. The
next thing that surprised us was the way in which the ship was pitching,
though it appeared a dead calm. Up she rose and down she fell upon a
great hummocky swell which came lazily up from the S.W., making our
horizon from the boat all uneven. On deck we had thought it a very
slight swell; in the boat we perceived what a heavy, humpy, ungainly
heap of waters kept rising and sinking all round us, sometimes blocking
out the whole ship, save the top of the main royal, in the strangest way
in the world. We pulled round the ship, thinking we had never in our
lives seen anything so beautiful as she then looked in the sunny
morning, when suddenly we saw a large ripple in the waters not far off.
At first the captain imagined it to have been caused by a whale, and was
rather alarmed, but by and by it turned out to be nothing but a shoal of
fish. Then we made for a large piece of seaweed which we had seen some
way astern. It extended some ten feet deep, and was a huge, tangled,
loose, floating mass; among it nestled little fishes innumerable, and as
we looked down amid its intricate branches through the sun-lit azure of
the water, the effect was beautiful. This mass we attached to the boat,
and with great labour and long time succeeded in getting it up to the
ship, the little fishes following behind the seaweed. It was impossible
to lift it on board, so we fastened it to the ship's side and came in to
luncheon. After lunch some ropes were arranged to hoist the ladies in a
chair over the ship's side and lower them into the boat--a process which
created much merriment. Into the boat we put half a dozen of champagne-
-a sight which gave courage to one or two to brave the descent who had
not previously ventured on such a feat. Then the ladies were pulled
round the ship, and, when about a mile ahead of her, we drank the
champagne and had a regular jollification. Returning to show them the
seaweed, the little fishes looked so good that someone thought of a
certain net wherewith the doctor catches ocean insects, porpytas, clios,
spinulas, etc. With this we caught in half an hour amid much screaming,
laughter, and unspeakable excitement, no less than 250 of them. They
were about five inches long--funny little blue fishes with wholesome-
looking scales. We ate them next day, and they were excellent. Some
expected that we should have swollen or suffered some bad effects, but
no evil happened to us: not but what these deep-sea fishes are
frequently poisonous, but I believe that scaly fishes are always
harmless. We returned by half-past three, after a most enjoyable day;
but, as proof of the heat being much greater in the boat, I may mention
that one of the party lost the skin from his face and arms, and that we
were all much sunburnt even in so short a time; yet one man who bathed
that day said he had never felt such cold water in his life.
We are now (January 21) in great hopes of sighting land in three or four
days, and are really beginning to feel near the end of our voyage: not
that I can realise this to myself; it seems as though I had always been
on board the ship, and was always going to be, and as if all my past
life had not been mine, but had belonged to somebody else, or as though
someone had taken mine and left me his by mistake. I expect, however,
that when the land actually comes in sight we shall have little
difficulty in realising the fact that the voyage has come to a close.
The weather has been much warmer since we have been off the coast of
Australia, even though Australia is some 100 north of our present
position. I have not, however, yet seen the thermometer higher than
since we passed the Cape. Now we are due south of the south point of
Van Diemen's Land, and consequently nearer land than we have been for
some time. We are making for the Snares, two high islets about sixty
miles south of Stewart's Island, the southernmost of the New Zealand
group. We sail immediately to the north of them, and then turn up
suddenly. The route we have to take passes between the Snares and the
Traps--two rather ominous-sounding names, but I believe more terrible in
name than in any other particular.
January 22.--Yesterday at midday I was sitting writing in my cabin, when
I heard the joyful cry of "Land!" and, rushing on deck, saw the swelling
and beautiful outline of the high land in Stewart's Island. We had
passed close by the Snares in the morning, but the weather was too thick
for us to see them, though the birds flocked therefrom in myriads. We
then passed between the Traps, which the captain saw distinctly, one on
each side of him, from the main topgallant yard. Land continued in
sight till sunset, but since then it has disappeared. To-day (Sunday)
we are speeding up the coast; the anchors are ready, and to-morrow by
early daylight we trust to drop them in the harbour of Lyttelton. We
have reason, from certain newspapers, to believe that the mails leave on
the 23rd of the month, in which case I shall have no time or means to
add a single syllable.
January 26.--Alas for the vanity of human speculation! After writing
the last paragraph the wind fell light, then sprung up foul, and so we
were slowly driven to the E.N.E. On Monday night it blew hard, and we
had close-reefed topsails. Tuesday morning at five it was lovely, and
the reefs were all shaken out; a light air sprang up, and the ship, at
10 o'clock, had come up to her course, when suddenly, without the
smallest warning, a gale came down upon us from the S.W. like a wall.
The men were luckily very smart in taking in canvas, but at one time the
captain thought he should have had to cut away the mizzenmast. We were
reduced literally to bare poles, and lay-to under a piece of tarpaulin,
six times doubled, and about two yards square, fastened up in the mizzen
rigging. All day and night we lay thus, drifting to leeward at three
knots an hour. In the twenty-four hours we had drifted sixty miles.
Next day the wind moderated; but at 12 we found that we were eighty
miles north of the peninsula and some 3 degrees east of it. So we set a
little sail, and commenced forereaching slowly on our course. Little
and little the wind died, and it soon fell dead calm. That evening
(Wednesday), some twenty albatrosses being congregated like a flock of
geese round the ship's stern, we succeeded in catching some of them, the
first we had caught on the voyage. We would have let them go again, but
the sailors think them good eating, and begged them of us, at the same
time prophesying two days' foul wind for every albatross taken. It was
then dead calm, but a light wind sprang up in the night, and on Thursday
we sighted Banks Peninsula. Again the wind fell tantalisingly light,
but we kept drawing slowly toward land. In the beautiful sunset sky,
crimson and gold, blue, silver, and purple, exquisite and
tranquillising, lay ridge behind ridge, outline behind outline, sunlight
behind shadow, shadow behind sunlight, gully and serrated ravine. Hot
puffs of wind kept coming from the land, and there were several fires
burning. I got my arm-chair on deck, and smoked a quiet pipe with the
intensest satisfaction. Little by little the night drew down, and then
we rounded the headlands. Strangely did the waves sound breaking
against the rocks of the harbour; strangely, too, looked the outlines of
the mountains through the night. Presently we saw a light ahead from a
ship: we drew slowly near, and as we passed you might have heard a pin
drop. "What ship's that?" said a strange voice.--The Roman Emperor,
said the captain. "Are you all well?"--"All well." Then the captain
asked, "Has the Robert Small arrived?"--"No," was the answer, "nor yet
the Burmah." {2} You may imagine what I felt. Then a rocket was sent
up, and the pilot came on board. He gave us a roaring republican speech
on the subject of India, China, etc. I rather admired him, especially
as he faithfully promised to send us some fresh beefsteaks and potatoes
for breakfast. A north-wester sprung up as soon as we had dropped
anchor: had it commenced a little sooner we should have had to put out
again to sea. That night I packed a knapsack to go on shore, but the
wind blew so hard that no boat could put off till one o'clock in the
day, at which hour I and one or two others landed, and, proceeding to
the post office, were told there were no letters for us. I afterwards
found mine had gone hundreds of miles away to a namesake--a cruel
disappointment.
A few words concerning the precautions advisable for anyone who is about
to take a long sea-voyage may perhaps be useful. First and foremost,
unless provided with a companion whom he well knows and can trust, he
must have a cabin to himself. There are many men with whom one can be
on excellent terms when not compelled to be perpetually with them, but
whom the propinquity of the same cabin would render simply intolerable.
It would not even be particularly agreeable to be awakened during a
hardly captured wink of sleep by the question "Is it not awful?" that,
however, would be a minor inconvenience. No one, I am sure, will repent
paying a few pounds more for a single cabin who has seen the
inconvenience that others have suffered from having a drunken or
disagreeable companion in so confined a space. It is not even like a
large room. He should have books in plenty, both light and solid. A
folding arm-chair is a great comfort, and a very cheap one. In the hot
weather I found mine invaluable, and, in the bush, it will still come in
usefully. He should have a little table and common chair: these are
real luxuries, as all who have tried to write, or seen others attempt
it, from a low arm-chair at a washing-stand will readily acknowledge.
A small disinfecting charcoal filter is very desirable. Ship's water is
often bad, and the ship's filter may be old and defective. Mine has
secured me and others during the voyage pure and sweet-tasting water,
when we could not drink that supplied us by the ship. A bottle or two
of raspberry vinegar will be found a luxury when near the line. By the
aid of these means and appliances I have succeeded in making myself
exceedingly comfortable. A small chest of drawers would have been
preferable to a couple of boxes for my clothes, and I should recommend
another to get one. A ten-pound note will suffice for all these things.
The bunk should not be too wide: one rolls so in rough weather; of
course it should not be athwartships, if avoidable. No one in his right
mind will go second class if he can, by any hook or crook, raise money
enough to go first.
On the whole, there are many advantageous results from a sea-voyage.
One's geography improves apace, and numberless incidents occur pregnant
with interest to a landsman; moreover, there are sure to be many on
board who have travelled far and wide, and one gains a great deal of
information about all sorts of races and places. One effect is,
perhaps, pernicious, but this will probably soon wear off on land. It
awakens an adventurous spirit, and kindles a strong desire to visit
almost every spot upon the face of the globe. The captain yarns about
California and the China seas--the doctor about Valparaiso and the
Andes--another raves about Hawaii and the islands of the Pacific--while
a fourth will compare nothing with Japan.
The world begins to feel very small when one finds one can get half
round it in three months; and one mentally determines to visit all these
places before coming back again, not to mention a good many more.
I search my diary in vain to find some pretermitted adventure wherewith
to give you a thrill, or, as good Mrs. B. calls it, "a feel"; but I can
find none. The mail is going; I will write again by the next.