ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF
“THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,” “AN OCEAN TRAGEDY,”
“ON THE FOK’S’LE HEAD,” ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
_A NEW EDITION_
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1893
These stories and sketches originally appeared in _The Daily Telegraph_.
No further preface to them is needed than this statement; for the title
under which they are collected will fitly express their character, if
the reader can imagine himself one of an audience, in a cold Dog Watch,
listening to the yarns of a man who has planted himself in the galley,
where he delivers his memories and notions to the little company who
have gathered round to listen.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DANCE AT SEA 1
GOING ALOFT 10
A TRICK AT THE WHEEL 22
THE BAILIFF AT SEA 31
OFF THE HORN 43
A STRANGE CHASE 54
A SALVAGE JOB 66
A CHANNEL INCIDENT 78
LOSS OF A SMACK’S CREW 88
FIRE AT SEA 98
SEA-SICKNESS 107
A LOG EXTRACT 118
IN AN OPEN BOAT 127
WAITING FOR A SHIP 138
SKIPPERS’ WIVES AT SEA 151
SEA SONGS 162
AN HOUR’S ROW 173
THE PLEASURES OF YACHTING 187
A DRUNKEN SHIP 196
A SAILOR’S CLUB 208
THE PERILS OF HUMANITY 221
SMACK APPRENTICES 232
GRAVESEND 245
A CHAT WITH A FISHERMAN 256
A FOURPENNY VOYAGE 266
POOR JACK 276
ON THE GOODWINS 288
THE STRANGERS’ HOME 298
ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE.
_A DANCE AT SEA._
A large Australian passenger ship, homeward bound from Sydney, New South
Wales, lay becalmed in about two degrees south of the line. She had
carried the trade-wind to that point, but it had failed her at daybreak,
and all day long she had hung upon the whitish-blue of the oil-smooth
sea, slightly leaning with the swell that ran through the bosom of the
deep with the regularity of a restful respiration, her white canvas
softly beating against the yellow masts, which were radiant with lines
of fire, and the water bubbling like a fountain under her counter, as
the stern of the great fabric was depressed by the heave of the swell
under the bows.
She was tolerably well crowded with human beings, carrying a large
number of passengers in the cuddy and steerage, and some thirty or forty
people in the ’tween decks. The poop was sheltered by an awning, and
under it, seated on chairs or lounging upon the skylights and the
hencoops, were such of the passengers as were privileged to use that
portion of the decks, reading, talking, smoking, casting languid eyes
upon the breathless ocean; ladies fanning themselves, gentlemen in the
airiest possible costumes, and at the extremity of the shadowed deck the
steersman grasping the wheel, his figure in the pouring vertical
sunshine rising and falling against the rich sapphire of the tropical
heavens with the swaying of the ship, and the brilliant brass of the
binnacle-hood flashing into flames as it slowly lifted and sank under
the eye of the burning luminary.
The quarter-deck was partially sheltered by the folds of the mainsail,
which hung from the great yard in the grip of the leechlines; and there,
wherever the shadows rested, congregated the steerage and ’tween-deck
passengers, lolling red-faced and open-breasted. In one place a knot of
women with children gathered about them, in another a number of men in
their shirt-sleeves sprawling in many postures, and, forward, glimpses
of Jack could be caught at work at some job in the waist, or on the
forecastle, or in the shadow of the break of his big parlour, or popping
his head through the scuttle with a sooty inverted pipe between his
teeth to have a look around him, or enjoying a wash-down, stripped to
the hips, in a bucket of salt water, screened from the passengers’ eyes
by the galley; while the live stock in the long boat filled the air that
way with rumbling and squeaking noises, which harmonized with the hoarse
pipes of the boatswain standing betwixt the knightheads and bawling
instructions to a couple of ordinary seamen on the foretopsail-yard.
The day passed with never so much as a shadow upon the sea to give the
officer on duty an excuse to sing out to the watch. But nobody could
reasonably complain. The ship had rushed grandly into this stagnant
ocean under topmast and topgallant studdingsails, and for days and days
the roar of foam speeding furiously past and the thunder of the
trade-wind sweeping into the spacious concavities of the gleaming
cloths had been familiar sounds. This calm was only like giving the ship
a little breathing-time. Besides, it would directly serve a very
pleasant purpose then in hand, which was simply this. It was the
birthday of the daughter of one of the passengers, a rich Australian
gentleman. The girl was pretty, charming in manners, and universally
liked; indeed, four gentlemen were seriously in love with her, and one
of these had suggested that they should celebrate the occasion by a
dance. The skipper came promptly into the scheme, and so did the rich
Australian papa, who merely stipulated that the dance should be general
from one end of the ship to the other, and that he should be at the
charge of enough wine to keep the heels of the forecastle and
’tween-decks nimble and up to the mark. They could dance in a calm like
this, and the light and regular swell would be rather a help than a
hindrance, as the heave of the deck should put additional alacrity into
the swing of a waltz or the stampede of a gallop round the hencoops and
hatchways. They could muster a little music: a flute, a concertina, and
two fiddles, and they also had the cuddy piano. So all that was needful
for a sea-ball was at hand, and in the second dog-watch, before the sun
went down, they began to prepare for the festivity. There would be a
bright moon, and the question whether they should dance in its light,
like the Buffalo girls, or keep the awning spread, had been earnestly
debated at luncheon and dinner. It was decided, however, to let the
awning stand--first, because it would keep the dew from the deck; and,
secondly, because the lanterns would show to advantage in its shadow.
At the appointed time, therefore, the sailors came along to rig up the
lanterns, as many as they had, sidelights, cabin-lamps, and the like.
Any departure from regular routine delights Jack, and his grin is never
broader nor his whispered jokes more explosive than at such times.
Besides, he was to dance presently, and he tumbled through the
preparations like a man in a hurry to enjoy himself. The sun went
down--a mass of glorious splendour--flinging up the glass-smooth water
until the western horizon all that way looked to be twenty leagues
distant, and shedding a haze of purple gold far to the eastward of the
zenith that tinted the mighty expanse of ocean with a delicate crimson
which yielded fast to the eager stride of the tropical night, though
darkness was in the east, and the large tremulous silver stars were
sparkling upon its deep ebony bosom, and the white snow-like moon was
floating in the pure deep shadows in the south and whitening the water
with a slender stream of icy light, when the west was still ardent with
the fires of the vanished day-beam.
The cool of the night was immediately felt in the air, and now the
circling draughts thrown down upon the decks by every flap of the lower
canvas could be felt and enjoyed. With the row of lanterns along the
poop, here a red and there a green one, mingling with the yellow
radiance of the other lamps, the lustrous pearl of the moonlight on the
main deck and forecastle, and the drowsily-flapping sails lifting their
pale heights to the stars, the ship was a picturesque object indeed. The
musicians posted themselves against the rail at the break of the poop,
so that all hands could hear their strains and dance to them; and
everything being ready, they dashed into a waltz, keeping very good
time, and accompanied (after a fashion) by the piano in the cuddy, the
notes of which rose very clearly through the open sky-lights. Aft, of
course, there was the necessary decorum, ladies and gentlemen gliding
over the smooth planking and skimming along with great propriety, and
with a more or less tolerable exhibition of art. But on the main deck
and forecastle shore customs were not very strictly adhered to. Women
danced with women, men with men; the children hopped to and fro,
clapping their hands and getting in the way; here and there a sailor
would be showing off his paces in a lonely dance, slapping the deck with
his heels in a hornpipe without the least reference to the music, which,
so long as it kept going, was all the same to him, no matter what dances
it played. The steward and his mates bustled about with wine and
glasses; but the wine was light, and Jack, and many of the steerage and
’tween-deck passengers too, no doubt, were seasoned, and the mild
refreshment did no further mischief than impart a sense of festivity.
They say, and I can well believe, that a prettier sight was never seen
than all those people dancing, and laughing, and enjoying themselves on
the decks of that becalmed and sleeping Australian vessel. You must
figure yourself taking your stand on one of the poop-ladders, say, clear
of the awning, where, looking aft, you could see the row of lanterns and
the dancers shifting their colours as they swept round into the rays of
the green and red lamps, with little floods of moonlight here and there
upon the deck under the awning; and beyond, the man at the wheel,
standing there like a bronze figure, the binnacle lamp softly touching
his shape with light, and making his image clear against the stars which
slowly slided to and fro, past him; or where, looking forward, you
commanded the vessel to the very eyes of her, whence the great bowsprit
and long jibbooms forked into the gloom like a spear pointed by a giant,
on which the row of jibs glimmered as they soared into the pale
obscurity. On those decks the moonlight lay broad; but in places shone
a yellow light which, with the moonshine, threw twin-shadows upon the
silvered planks, and the shadows of the rigging were sharp and black,
and scored the sails as though they were ruled with lines of India ink.
The crowd of big spare booms over the galley, the outline of the huge
windlass barrel under the forecastle, the solid masts piercing the night
and bearing on high their vast stretches of symmetrical canvas, from
which an occasional shower of dew would fall when the sails came in to
the masts, loomed large and vague in the moonlight; there was something
of shadowiness, too, in the figures of the dancers as they swayed in
crowds between the bulwarks, and frollicked on the forecastle, with
frequent bursts of hearty laughter and loud calls, which were thrown
back in light echoes from the lofty sails.
The musicians varied the dances often, but it was all one to the sailors
and the steerage passengers, and whilst the cuddy people were staidly
stalking through quadrilles or decorously gyrating in waltzes or hopping
gravely through a mazurka, the company on the main deck kept steadily to
galops and polkas--this last, a beloved dance among sailors--floundering
against each other, capsizing over the children, spinning around the
main hatch and through the galley, and awaking the echoes of the
forecastle with their active toeing and heeling.
But it was impossible to look abroad upon the vast and vague distances
of the dark sea, upon whose horizon, down to the very water’s edge, the
stars were shining like fireflies, without a mingling of melancholy in
the thoughts. How small a speck that ship made in the midst of the
lonely leagues of ocean! how minute a theatre sufficed for the revelry
of near upon two hundred human souls! The contrast between the sounds in
the vessel and the deep silence upon the sea was defined to a degree
such as no pen could give expression to. The silence was like the night
itself, a near and impervious envelopment which absorbed the shouts and
laughter of the dancers as a stone flung at a mound of snow vanishes in
it. The water against the ship’s side looked thick and black and
sluggish as liquid pitch, but now and again the wash of the swell would
set it on fire with phosphorous, that poured away under the surface in
bright illuminated clouds, which sparkled and faded until they vanished
utterly and the water was black again. Once an exclamation from the
second mate, who was looking over the rail at the sea, brought several
dancers to his side, and, following the indication of his outstretched
finger, they perceived a fiery oval shape sneaking stealthily along
towards the bows of the ship. “Only a shark, ladies, hoping that some of
us may waltz ourselves overboard;” and, merrily laughing, the dancers
drew away and fell to their prancings afresh.
But presently, and in the midst of all this gaiety, the stream of
moonlight in the south-west sea--a reflection that had hung like a cone
of solid silver without a breath to tarnish the exquisite polish of its
surface--trembled, and the water on either hand of it took a deeper
shadow. Overhead the sails were silent, and a faint air streamed athwart
the poop under the awning. The skipper, a fine-looking, hearty seaman,
swung himself abreast of the officer in charge, with his arm still
clasping the waist of his partner, said something in a low voice, and
whisked off again. The officer walked to the break of the poop, and his
loud cry startled the dancers on the main deck for a moment.
“Trim sail, the watch! Lay aft some hands, and man the starboard main
braces. Wheel, there; how’s her head?”
“North-west by north, sir.”
And now some new strains were added to those produced by the musicians.
The rough voices of seamen rounding in the braces rose harshly, and the
measures of the dance music were somewhat perplexed by the sharp cries
of “Belay all that!” “Haul taut to wind’ard!” “Too much the royal yard.
Slacken a bit to leeward!” But the dancers, to whose ears those cries
were as familiar as their fingers were to their eyes, went on footing it
bravely. The decks grew steady and slightly inclined; the sails had
fallen asleep, and there was not a stir among the pallid folds; a
pleasant sound of tinkling water came up from the ship’s side, and under
the counter a narrow wake of green fire crawled away, with little eddies
of foam twinkling among the ghastly sparkles of the phosphorus.
But the musicians began to slacken; the piano had given over, and Jack
had lighted his pipe forward, and was beginning to remember that his
watch below would be up in two hours. By-and-by a bell was rung in the
cuddy, and those who looked through the skylight saw that the grog and
the biscuits were on the table. The music ended suddenly, and the
fiddlers and the others gathered around the cuddy door, where they were
received by the steward, who handed them each a glass of liquor. In twos
and threes the steerage and ’tween-deck passengers went below, and in
half an hour the ship’s decks were deserted save by the steersman, the
pacing officer of the watch, and some dark figures leaning over the
head-rail, visible from the poop under the arched foot of the foresail.
Up through the booby and main hatches would come fitfully the sound of a
child crying, or a woman’s voice talking low, or the growling hum of
men; otherwise the silence was profound, the ship like a phantom in the
moonlight, and nothing audible aloft but the moan of the tropical night
breeze in the rigging, with now and again the creak of a sheave as the
light swing of the swell hove the great ship very gently to windward,
and brought an extra strain upon the taut sheets.
_GOING ALOFT._
Some time ago, when the Queen was at Osborne, her Majesty visited a
troopship in her yacht the _Alberta_. Her Majesty’s ship _Hector_, lying
in Cowes Roads, manned yards in honour of the royal presence. One of the
men got as high as the main truck and stood upon it. The main truck is a
small circular platform--varying in diameter, of course, according to
the size of the ship--fixed on the royal masthead, the highest point of
the mast. Sometimes it has holes in it, through which halliards are rove
for hoisting flags. The trucks of the _Hector_, I was told, are
furnished with iron staffs, so that the sailor who stood on the main
truck had something to lay hold of. But this diminishes nothing of the
wonder of the feat. The nerve required coolly to stand upon a small
circumference at a prodigious elevation is one thing; the more
extraordinary feature of that achievement lies, it would strike a
landsman, in the man’s getting over and on to the truck, and then
kneeling and swinging himself off it and down upon the royal rigging. In
the fine old song of the “Leap for Life,” the skipper’s son gets upon
the main truck and stands there, holding on with his eyelids. To save
his life he is ordered to jump, and the dog follows him overboard and
picks him up. The order to that boy was a sensible one, for though it
is perfectly true that he had managed to get upon the truck, it was
really impossible that he should get off it without falling.
In truth, going aloft is one of the hardest parts of the sea-life at the
first start. Seamen who were active, courageous men enough, have told me
that it took them months to vanquish their nervousness; and many a young
fellow has given up the sea after the first voyage simply because he
never could overcome the purely physical infirmity of giddiness the
moment he had his feet in the ratlines. In “Redburn,” one of Herman
Merivale’s delightful sea tales, this weakness is illustrated in an
incident narrated with wonderful power. A young man, named Harry Bolton,
ships for the return voyage from Liverpool. He is rated as an ordinary
seaman, but his friend notices that when any work has to be done aloft,
Harry is always busy about the belaying pins, making fast the clewlines,
etc. At last he candidly owns to his friend that he has made a private
trial of it, and that he cannot go aloft; that his nerves would not
allow of it. But this does not save him. One day the mate ordered him to
mount to the main truck and unreeve the short signal halliards. Where
the ends of the halliards came is not stated, but one might think that
the royal yard would have been high enough for the unfortunate young man
to have clambered, even if the crosstrees would not have done. Be this
as it may, Harry Bolton hesitates, is rope’s-ended by the mate, finally
springs into the main-rigging and gets as high as the maintop. When
there he looks down, and his heart instantly fails him. The pitiless
mate thereupon orders a Dutch sailor to follow and help him up, which
the Dutchman does with his head, batting at the base of his back and
hoisting him along in that way. “Needs must,” continues the narrator,
“when the devil drives; and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at
every step, went my unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal
yard, and the thin signal halliards--scarcely bigger than common
twine--were flying in the wind. ‘Unreeve,’ cried the mate; I saw Harry’s
arm stretched out--his legs seemed shaking in the rigging, even to us
down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done. He came down
pale as death, with bloodshot eyes and every limb quivering.”
Sailors will know there is no exaggeration in all this. Some beginners
will run up aloft like monkeys, others will get into the shrouds and
stand there, hanging back and looking up, and holding on as if they
meant, to use an old sea phrase, to squeeze all the tar out of the
ropes. There is not, perhaps, any worse cruelty practised on board ship
than that of driving a nervous lad aloft. In former times there was a
custom called pricking--a sailor got behind a boy and forced him up by
digging into him with a pin or a “pricker.” It is, perhaps, scarcely
worth while, nowadays, to speak of such things--the sailing ship is
dying out, and the steamer gives but little work to do aloft; but there
are few men who have followed the sea who cannot recall cases of
exquisite suffering in nervous boys hurried and pricked and thrust up
the rigging. One instance I remember--that of a lad of thirteen, who was
shipped in an Australian port. He was ordered on to the foreroyal yard
along with another youngster. It was his first journey up the masts, and
when he was half-way up the shrouds he came to a dead stop. The
boatswain sung out to him to look alive and go on. The poor little chap,
with shaking hands and a face like the foam alongside, footed it as high
as the futtock shrouds, where he halted, looking up at the overhanging
platform of the top. “Over you go,” shouted the boatswain from the
forecastle. “I can’t, sir; indeed I can’t, sir!” cried the little fellow
piteously. “We’ll see about that,” said the boatswain, and called to an
ordinary seaman to help him up. This youth was a brute, and when he
reached the clinging boy he began to pinch him in the legs, and pulled
out his sheath-knife and threatened to stab him if he did not go over
the top. It was a big top, the angle of the mast--the wind being abaft
the beam--was a small one, and the futtock shrouds stretched away from
the boy like the ribs of an open umbrella from the stick. The miserable
little fellow, terrified by the sight of the knife behind him, laid hold
of the long irons and made a swing with his legs at the ratlines, missed
them, vibrated a moment or two like a pendulum, and then dropped past
the outstretched hand of the sailor below him like a flash, striking the
shrouds, and rebounding as a ball might overboard. He was drowned, of
course.
But as steamers multiply and the number of sailing ships decreases,
going aloft will become the least and most infrequent of sea duties.
Practical seamanship, in the old sense, is bound to die out, because
there is no need to preserve it. It was only the other day that an old
skipper assured me that he was acquainted with the mate of a steamer who
did not know what a harness-cask was, “and, worst of all, sir,” cried my
friend, “he’s not ashamed of his ignorance.” It is true that
harness-casks have not much to do with seamanship; but one may excuse a
shipmaster of the old school for taking a very gloomy view of the
contemporary marine when he meets a man holding a master mariner’s
certificate, ignorant of the receptacle in which Jack’s salt horse is
kept when he is at sea. Most of the steamers nowadays are monkey-rigged,
many of them with pole-masts, which are useful mainly as derricks upon
which a little bit of fore and aft canvas will be hoisted to steady the
vessels. What should men who serve in such ships know about going aloft?
Even a landsman may comprehend the emotion excited in a seaman who has
passed his life in sailing ships when he sees sailors without any spars
or rigging to attend to, and with nothing to do but to wash decks down.
Nearly all the work of the traditional mariner lies aloft, and to
reflect upon Jack without dead-eyes to turn in, chafing gear to look
after, reef-points to knot, rigging to tar, masts to stay, studdingsail
gear to reeve, and the like, is almost as confounding as to think of him
sleeping aft, eating fresh meat throughout the run, and going to the
steward for a can of filtered water, instead of to the capstan for his
eight bells caulker of fiery black rum. No doubt things are pleasanter
as they are. It must be nice to turn in with the certainty of having the
whole of your watch below, instead of going to bed in your sea-boots in
readiness for the thundering of a handspike, and the cruel roar of “All
hands shorten sail!” And yet, to the true sailor, going aloft is so much
the part of his life, it is so complete a condition of his vocation,
that when such a man finds himself aboard a steamer with nothing to take
notice of above his head, it may be supposed that at the first going off
he is as fully bewildered as a steamer’s man--that is, a man who has
never served in anything but steamers--would be among the ropes of a
full-rigged ship, taken aback with her studding sails abroad. He will
miss the old songs at the reef tackles, the flapping of canvas, the thud
of coils of halliards and clew-lines flung down on deck, the springing
into the shrouds, the helter-skelter for the weather earing, or the
ascent of the topgallant mast that jumps to the flogging of the
clewed-up sails.
There is a touch of wild excitement in going aloft in heavy weather,
which no seaman can be insensible to; just as in a calm day or night a
man may find a strange pleasure in lingering a few moments aloft after
he has done his work, and looking down. The labour of reefing has been
greatly diminished by the double topsail yards, which halve the great
sails, so that when the halliards of the upper yards are let go, the
ship is under close-reefed topsails. Moreover, there is only half the
weight of the sail to handle in reefing or stowing. This valuable
contrivance makes the task of shortening sail light in comparison with
what the labour was in the days of the whole topsail. Old seamen will
remember what that kind of canvas involved in a ship of fourteen or
fifteen hundred tons, manned by about eighteen or twenty men, capable of
doing sailors’ work aloft.
It is the second dog watch. The royals and mizzen-topgallant sail have
been furled, but the wind comes in freshening puffs, the sky has a
menacing look away out on the starboard beam, and at eight bells all
hands are kept on deck to roll up the mainsail and topgallant sails, and
tie a single reef in the fore and mizzen topsails. The sea washes
noisily against the weather bow, and the night settles down as black as
a pocket; but the ship is tolerably snug, there is no great weight of
wind as yet, and the watch below are dismissed to the forecastle. They
have been an hour in their hammocks or bunks, when, on a sudden, the
scuttle is rudely flung open, and a loud cry summons them on deck. They
are up in a moment, scarcely waiting to pull on their jackets, for the
instant they are awake they perceive that the vessel is on her beam
ends, and they can hear the thunder of a gale of wind raging overhead.
All three topsail halliards have been let go, and the watch are yelling
out at the reef-tackles, the skipper shouting at the mizzen-rigging, the
chief mate bawling from the break of the poop, and the second mate and
boatswain roaring in the waist and on the forecastle. The sea is flying
heavily over the weather rail of the prostrate ship, and adding its
peculiar bursting noise to the din of the furiously-shaken canvas, to
the deafening booming of the wind, and the hoarse long-drawn cries of
the sailors hauling upon the ropes. You can barely see the weather
shrouds, though to leeward their black lines are plain enough against
the washing heights of foam which swell up as high as the rail of the
bulwarks. You do not feel the force of the gale until you are in the
rigging, and then for a spell the iron-hard pressure of it pins you
against the shrouds as if you had been made a spread-eagle. The rain
drives along in slashing horizontal lines, and you see the sparkle of
the deluge over the skylight where the light of the cabin lamp is
shining; or, maybe, the gale is charged with sleet and hail, and the
cold so tautens your fingers that you can scarcely curl them to the
shape of the rope you grasp. Over the top you swarm in company with the
rest of your watch, perhaps getting a blow on the head from the heel of
some fellow above you as you lay yourself backwards to swing over the
futtock shrouds; and then, finding the weather side of the topsail yard
with as many hands on it as are needed, you pass over to leeward, where
you find the boatswain or third mate astride of the yard-arm, ready for
the cry of “Haul out to leeward,” to pass the earing. At such a time as
this a man has too much to do to look about him; the ship is brought
close to shake the sail, that the men may get the reef-bands against
the yard, otherwise the canvas stands out to the force of the gale in a
surface as round as St. Paul’s dome, and so hard and tense that it would
serve as a platform for a ball-room.
In the whole-topsail days I have seen half a dozen men standing upon the
canvas in the slings and quarters trying to stamp the sail down to bring
the reef points within reach without so much as dinting the wind-swollen
convexity. Still it is possible to knot a reef-point, and take a look
round and below. It is a wonderful scene; no landsman can conceive of
its wild and awful majesty. The ship surges heavily through the black
heavings, and with every headlong plunge fills a wide circumference of
the far-down ebony waters with a furious swirling of foam, in the midst
of which her long narrow shape is distinctly visible. Overhead is a dim
vision of naked spars and yards, reeling in the boisterous void in whose
gloom it is just possible to trace the outline of huge black clouds
rushing past like folds of swiftly-carried smoke. The yard on which you
stand is at an angle of thirty or thirty-five degrees, and every
lean-down of the slender fabric that supports the immense superstructure
of masts threatens to submerge the point of it, astride of which--riding
it as a horse--sits the seaman who takes the lee-earing; and his figure
and that of the fellow beneath swinging on the flemish-horse, and those
of the row of men who overhang the yard, and who chorus with a kind of
shriek that rings athwart the yelling of the gale to the cry from the
weather yard-arm of “Light over to windward!” are marked like
pen-and-ink drawings upon white paper against the snow of the seas which
stretch from the ship’s side into the darkness.
But this is only one aspect of “going aloft.” Another--if the bowsprit
and jibbooms may be included under the head of the word “aloft”--is that
of laying out to furl, let me say the outer jib, when it has come on to
blow hard enough to make the stowing of that sail necessary. From the
masthead you see the ship under you; you can watch her hull flying
through the sea, mark the glorious white of the foam that bursts from
her bows and races in a broad band astern, and behold the ship in her
noble solitude amid the tenantless world of waters whose pale green
skirts lean against the hazy azure of the remote heavens. But on the
jibboom you have the ship rushing at you, as it were; her cutwater seems
to bear right down upon you; you see her coppered forefoot gleaming with
a greenish tinge through the glass-clear water whose surface it divides
into two feather-shaped fountains, whose seething and hissing and
prismatic summits arch away from the glossy bends. And now, as she dips
with a glorious rush into the hollow over whose yawning gloom you are
poised as you overhang the jibboom, the half-buried bows break the sea
into smoke, and yeast, and snow; the white and hissing mass, splendid
with sunshine or rendered more vivid yet by the dark green of the seas
along which it is sent rolling, roars and runs ahead of the ship as far
as the flying jibboom, where its impetus fails and the soaring vessel
swings over it, rising almost noiselessly over the thick froth, and in a
breath it is passed, whilst you look down along the sloping deck from
the forked-up boom and mark how like a creature of instinct the noble
ship seems to be gathering herself together for the next headlong jump,
her copper shining to windward, her black sides lustrous as a curried
hide with the whirling spray, her leaning masts full of thunder on high,
the white sails hard and still as carven marble, no sound reaching you
but the regular wash of the spurned and trampled waters under the bows,
the rude and clear moaning of the wind in the rigging, and the
complaining of massive timbers as the stem of the ship lengthens in a
steady upheaval, and then crushes down until the torn and sobbing
billows of foam are flashing their white feathers over the head-boards.
Or jump aloft to loose, let us say, the mizzen royal after the tropical
squall has gone away to leeward, and left the clear moon shining in a
purified heaven of indigo, and striking a cone of silver glory in the
dark sea whose northern waters are studded with flakes of light from the
great stars. It is the middle watch; you have overhauled your clewlines,
the yard has been hoisted over your head, you come down the topgallant
rigging into the crosstrees, and linger there a few moments. All is
silent on deck; the helmsman stands motionless at the wheel; you hear
the faint jar of the tiller chains; you mark the delicate nimbus of
light round the binnacle hood. Nowhere is the mystery wrought by the
magical beams of the moon felt so much as at sea. The pearl-like
radiance steeps the fabric of the ship in an atmosphere of soft light as
illusive as the clouds of phosphorescent fires which break from her
sides as she leans with the swell. The movements of the sails are like
the flapping of phantom wings; and not a sigh of air, not a sound of
chafing rope, not a voice calling suddenly from the distant deck, but
seems to take from the moonlight and the measureless and impenetrable
spaces of the deep, and the immense and enfolding silence of those
far-off waters, a character of unreality that makes them seem the very
phantasm and mockery of the things they veritably are.
A man might linger a long hour at the altitude of the crosstrees among
the shadows of the moonlit, placid ocean night without weariness.
Better than the loftiest and loneliest cliff is the mast head of a ship
for the surveyal of the sublime and mighty surface on which she floats,
for you rock in unison with the breathings of the deep; you are upon her
great heart, and every beat of it is marked by a stately motion of the
towering masts against the stars; phosphoric outlines of huge fish haunt
the sluggish wake; or a sound as of a long, deep-drawn respiration
denotes the neighbourhood of a leviathan whose vast proportions, as they
heave in the broad silver stream of moonlight, resemble the hull of a
ship keel up, driven to the surface by some hidden power and slowly
settling downwards again.
These are some of the excitements and some of the quiet pleasures of
“going aloft.” It is, no doubt, a highly sentimental view of the duty,
and sailors who have had to let go the reef points, and beat their hands
against the yards to drive life enough into their fingers to enable them
to hold on, may consider that a very different representation of that
kind of work would recommend itself a good deal more than this to their
experience. Very possibly. But retrospection is apt to make us tender;
and since “going aloft” must in the course of time--unless the
shipbuilders change their minds--become a thing of the past, it is worth
while spending a few minutes in trying to discover what there was of
poetry and the picturesque in that old obligation of the marine life in
the discharge of which the English sailor has always proved a shining
example to all mariners. Even now--in these days when the steam-engine
has so eaten into our maritime habits that a sailing-ship is looked upon
as a kind of wonder of other times--do we not find Jack doing honour to
his Queen by standing erect upon the main truck? But, oh! master
mariners, mates, boatswains, and able seamen, all you who have
youngsters under your charge or among you as shipmates, have mercy upon
the timid lad, give him time to feel his way aloft, show him the
lubber’s hole, and remember that many a first-rate sailor has faltered
at the outset, and gazed with horror and despair at those giddy heights
whose summits seemed to his boyish gaze to pierce the sky.
_A TRICK AT THE WHEEL._
I remember a seaman, who had served for years both in sailing and
steamships, telling me that never in all his life did he remember the
like of the impression produced upon him one night when he was at the
helm of a large ocean passenger steamer. He described the darkness; the
occasional scattering of red sparks blown low down upon the sea on the
lee beam; the glimmer of white water here and there out in the windy
gloom; the silence aboard the vessel, disturbed only by the muffled
beating of the engines and the seething of water washing in snow from
under the bows; and he told me how all these things, combined with the
thought that under his feet there lay sleeping a whole crowd of men and
women, made him feel as though he and the ship and the great wind-swept
shadow through which she was speeding, were portions of a phantom world,
and that nothing was real and sentient but the compass, whose
illuminated card stood out upon the gloom like a composant at a ship’s
yard-arm.
I can conceive of many a strange, fanciful thought coming into a
sailor’s mind as he stands grasping the wheel in the lonely night watch,
and I say this with a plentiful knowledge of the seaman’s prosaic and
unsentimental character. A man must be but a very short way removed from
a four-footed animal not to feel at times the wonderful and subduing
spell which the ocean will fling over the human soul; and being at the
wheel will give him the best chance of yielding to the nameless
witchery, for at such a time--in most cases--he is alone, no one accosts
him, the gloom falls down and blots out the figure of the officer of the
watch, and completes the deep sense of solitude that is to be got from a
spell at the helm on a dark and quiet night at sea. I cannot but think
that the spirit of the deep is brought, at such a time, nearer to you
aboard a sailing than aboard a steamship. The onward-rushing fabric that
is impelled by engines demands incessant vigilance; she may be off her
course even in the time that a man takes to lift his eyes to mark a
flying meteor; there are no moments of rest. But in a sailing-ship you
have the moonlit night and burnished swell heaving up in lines of ebony
out of the visionary horizon, where the stars are wanly winking, until
it rolls in billows of sparkling quicksilver under the wake of the bland
and beautiful luminary; there is not a breath of air aloft, though
little creepings of wind circle softly about the decks as the pallid
surfaces of canvas swing in and out with the leaning of the ship; the
moonlight lies in pools of light upon the planks, and every shadow cast
upon those pearl-like surfaces is as black and sharp and clear as a
tracing in ink; the after portions of the sails are dark as bronze, but
looking at them forward they rise into the air like pieces of white
satin, soaring into a stately edifice full of delicate hurrying shadows
which resemble the streaky lustre on the inside of an oyster-shell as
the cloths swell out or hollow in with the drowsy motion, and crowned
with the little royals, which seem to melt even as the eye watches them
like summer clouds upon the heaven of stars.
Moments of such repose as this you will get in a sailing-ship. Who that
has stood at the wheel at such a time but remembers the soft patter of
reef-points upon the canvas, the frosty twinkling of the dew upon the
skylights and rail, the hollow sob of the swell under the counter as the
ship heaves her stern, and the tiller-chains rattle, and the wheel jumps
to the echo of the groan of the rudder-head? It is the middle watch;
eight bells were struck a quarter of an hour since; the watch on deck
are forward, coiled away anywhere, and nothing stirs on the forecastle;
the officer on duty walks the starboard side of the deck, for the yards
are braced to port, and that makes a weather deck where the mate is
pacing, sleepily scratching the back of his head, and casting drowsy
glances aloft and at the sea. The moon is low in the west, and has
changed her silver into copper, and will be gone soon. The calm is
wonderfully expressed by the reflection she drops; the mirrored radiance
streams towards you like a river of pallid gold, narrow at the horizon
and broadening, fan-shaped, until it seems within a biscuit’s throw of
the ship, where it vanishes in a fine haze; but on either hand of it the
water is as black as ink, while the lustre of the moon has quenched the
stars all about her, and left the sky in which she hangs as dark as the
ocean.
The setting orb carries the mind with it. The eye will seek the light,
and it is a kind of instinct that makes a man watch the sinking of the
moon at sea, when there is a deep repose in the air and nothing to
hinder his thoughts from following the downward-sailing orb. Many a time
have I watched her, and thought of the old home she would be shining
upon; the loved scenes she would be making beautiful with her holy
light. There is nothing in life that gives one such a sense of
distance, of infinite remoteness, as the setting of the sun or moon at
sea. It defines the immeasurable leagues of water which separate you
from those you love with a sharpness that is scarcely felt at other
times. It is the only mark upon the circle of the ocean, and courts you
into a reckoning which there is something too vague in the bare and
infinite horizon to invite. As one bell strikes the moon rests her lower
limb upon the horizon, and her reflection shortens away from the ship’s
side as the red fragment of disc sinks behind the black water-line. In a
few seconds nothing but a speck of light that glows like a live ember is
visible; and when that is quenched the faint saffron tinge that hung
about the sky when the moon was setting dies out and the whole
circumference of the ocean is full of the blackness of night.
The ship makes but a ghostly shape. The stars are there, but a haze
floats like a veil under them; the diamond-dust that glittered in the
hollow caverns of the firmament is eclipsed, and the planets are rayless
and sickly in their defined and blueish-coloured forms. A fold of deeper
darkness seems to have swept along in the wake of the vanished moon, and
the officer of the watch coming up to the binnacle takes a brief look at
the card, and then goes to the quarter and stands there softly
whistling, while the canvas aloft echoes with a louder note, and the
rolling of the ship breaks the water under her counter into foam that
seethes sharply and expires quickly. Black as the water is out on the
starboard bow you notice a shadow upon it that gives a fresh shade, a
further profundity, to the jetty obscurity, and in a few moments the
sails aloft fall asleep as though the wand of a magician had been waved
over the swaying spars and a soft air comes blowing over the rail.
“All aback forrards!” rings out a hoarse voice, and the cry finds an
echo in the hollow canvas. The mate runs along the deck bawling out
orders to flatten in the head-sheets and square the after yards, and so
forth; the men come out of a dozen corners, coils of rigging are flung
down, songs are raised, sheaves squeal as the yards are swung, topsail
sheets rattle, and all is bustle and hurry. Meanwhile the wind freshens
with a moan in the gathering gust, and the ship leans under it as her
headsails fill, and she pays off. Presently the yards are braced round,
the vessel brought to her course, and the wind is found to be a point
free. The decks are still full of life, tacks have to be boarded, “small
pulls” are wanted here and there, and the running gear has to be coiled
away; the light from the binnacle lamp puzzles your eye, and when you
lift your gaze from the illuminated card the darkness seems to stand
around you like a wall; but the compass is there to tell you that the
ship heads her course. You would know with your eyes blindfolded, by the
mere feel of the helm, that everything is drawing, and amidst the calls
of the mate and the songs of the sailors you can hear the sloppy sound
of flat falls of water under the weather bow, and the hiss of exploding
bubbles, and the faint wash of froth churned up by the rudder below you.
Two bells are struck, and all is quiet once more. The skipper has been
on deck, talked with the mate, pushed his bronzed face betwixt you and
the binnacle, and after a few turns and several prolonged looks aloft
and around the sea, has gone below again. The wind has steadily
freshened, and the ship, under all plain sail, heels amid the darkness
like a leaning column of white vapour. So softly she sweeps through the
snow with which she girdles her shapely length, curtseying with queenly
grace as she runs over the long-drawn undulations out of whose inky
coils the wind is striking phosphoric sparks, that she steers herself;
you have nothing to do but keep hold of the spokes, and let the breeze
blow the noble fabric along. The deep gloom is full of strange sounds
now that the seamen are forward, and all is silent aft.
A spirit-like minstrelsy echoes down from the glimmering inclined
heights like a far-off chorus of human voices; the wind is full of the
mysterious sound. It does not appear to come from the ship, but from a
group of invisible ghostly creatures sailing through the air over the
mastheads, and setting the moaning voices and sobbing wash of the ocean
to melodies which may easily seem to make this darkness belong to the
night of a world peopled by phantoms and creatures without similitude in
human knowledge. Hark! how plaintive is the song of the bow-wave that
falls in an arch of green fire from the shearing stem, and rolls aft in
a white swirl, interlaced with fitful and sullen flashes of phosphoric
light! But the breeze freshens yet; you cannot count a dozen stars in
the void of gloom overhead, the music aloft takes a clearer note,
straining sounds are audible as the passing swell rolls the ship to
windward, the white water under the main sheet rises closer to the
scuppers and flashes fast and far from under the counter into the
blackness over the stern. An order is sharply bawled out, and some hands
come tumbling aft and jump into the mizzen rigging to roll up the
cross-jack. A hoarse song reaches you from the forecastle as the flying
jib downhaul is manned, and at the same moment the fore and mizzen royal
halliards are let go. You hear this canvas flapping in the gloom amid
the chorus of the men on the crossjack yard as they trice up the bunt.
There must be no more wool-gathering with you now. The wheel is giving
you as much work as you want; every now and again a smart kick stiffens
your arms into iron, and you begin to feel that your jacket will have to
come off soon.
For some time nothing more is done, but the watch keep on their feet and
stand about ready for the next call, which they know will not be long
delayed. The sea to windward is full of white glancings, and the
breaking heads make a vague light of their own which gives you a sight
of the water for some distance. The canvas that has been taken off the
ship counts for nothing; the main royal is still on her, and she is
heeling over like a racing yacht, striking the bow swell with a stem
that hisses like red-hot iron, and shattering the coils of liquid jet
into foam, which widens out on either hand of her into a storm of snow,
in the midst of which the flying hull of the vessel is as clearly traced
as were the shadows of her rigging in the moonlight, while her iron-hard
distended canvas is full of the low thunder of the pouring blast, and
her forecastle is dark with flying spray that sweeps over the rail and
strikes the deck like a hail storm. It is noble sailing, and this
booming and hooting ocean night wind is something to be made the most of
while it lasts; but it gives you at the wheel as much occupation as you
relish. It is like drawing teeth to “meet her” as the swell sweeps the
ship round; and at last the captain, who is again on deck, and who has
been standing at the binnacle for five minutes, sings out for another
hand to come aft to the wheel. A figure tumbles along in a hurry and
stations himself to leeward of you; and thereupon your work, though it
is by no means half as easy again, becomes considerably lighter than it
was. “Hold on a minute, Bill,” says your mate, and he feels over his
pocket for a chew of tobacco. The quid found and properly stowed away in
his cheek, your companion resumes his grasp of the wheel, and in the
haze of the binnacle lamp you may see his leathern jaws working like an
old cow chewing the cud as he mumbles over the black fragment, sometimes
directing a doleful squint at the compass, sometimes looking astern,
while he helps you to put the wheel up or down, that you may keep the
course swinging fair with the lubber’s mark.
But the ship is being overdriven. At one bell it was a dead calm; it is
not three bells yet, and here is the sea white with wind, and the vessel
roaring through the smother with the blast thundering like a hurricane
in the sails.
“In main royal and mizzen topgallant sail.”