clewlines are manned, and whilst furling it the foretopgallant halliards
are let go. What other sails are taken in you do not know, for the ship
wants much clever watching, and the skipper is at hand to bring you up
with a round turn if the vessel should be a quarter of a point off her
course. Being eased, she steers more comfortably, but whole topsails and
courses and main-topgallant sail are rushing her through it fiercely;
the water on her lee quarter is pretty nearly as high as her main brace
bumpkin, and the billow there goes along with her as if it were a part
of the vessel; the main tack groans under the tearing and rending pull
of the huge convex surface of canvas; now and again the blow of the
swell which the racing vessel hits laterally makes her tremble fore and
aft like a house under a clap of thunder. But she is to have all she can
bear; the spell of dead calm is to be atoned for; and so on through the
shrilling and echoing darkness rushes the great fabric, sweeping her
pallid canvas through the folds of gloom like the pinions of some vast
spirit of the deep, making the water roar past her as she goes, breaking
the dark swell into fire and foam as she rushes through the liquid
acclivities with her powerful stem, with notes of mad laughter and
lamentable wailing in her rigging, and with streaming decks which
hollowly echo the fall of the solid bodies of water which shoot up just
before the weather fore-rigging, and roll in a rush of creaming white
into the lee scuppers as far aft as the break of the poop.
At last you hear the welcome sound of four bells; your trick is up, the
wheel is relieved, and catching your jacket off the grating abaft the
helm you walk forward, wiping the perspiration from your forehead; and,
dropping down the fore scuttle, grope about for your pipe, which you
light at the slush lamp that swings from a grimy beam, and returning on
deck squat somewhere out of the way of the wind and wet, earnestly
hoping that if it is to be a case of “reef topsails” there will be time
for you to have your smoke out before the order is thundered forth.
_THE BAILIFF AT SEA._
Some time ago I heard that a bailiff had been carried off to sea whilst
in the execution of his duty. Anxious to learn the nature of his voyage,
how he fared, and what condition he was in, mentally and physically,
when restored to his anxious relatives, I made inquiries, and my
diligence was at last rewarded by meeting the mate of the vessel that
had sailed away with the man. Truth obliges me to own that this mate was
not what might be considered a very gentlemanly person. It was not his
velvet waistcoat, nor a rather vicious squint, nor a striking-looking
bald head ringed with a layer of red hair like a grummet of rope yarns;
the want of genteelness was noticeable in his abundant use of what is
called “langwidge.” “If I were a bailiff,” thought I, as I glanced at
his immense hands and huge arms which swelled out his coat-sleeves like
the wind in a sailor’s smallcloths drying in a strong breeze on the
forestay, “I should not like to be put ‘in possession’ of a house
occupied by _you_, my hearty.”
I took a seat opposite him and said, “So you’re the mate of the vessel
that stole away the county court man?”
“Right,” said he looking at me, without a move in his face; “but don’t
you go and say that I’m the mate as gave him up again. If I’d had my
way he’d be in charge o’ any goods he might have come across in the
inside of a whale by this time. I’d ha’ chucked him overboard, as sure
as that there hand’s on this table,” and down came a very leg-of-mutton
of a fist with a blow that jerked his tumbler into the air. It was as
good as a hint that the glass wanted filling; and when this was done, my
companion opened the top buttons of his warm and tight velvet waistcoat,
and composed himself into a posture for conversation.
“How,” asked I, “came your skipper to have a bailiff aboard his vessel?”
“You may ask how,” he growled; “what I say is, what right had he to
come? I’ve got nothing to say against the law as it works for them as
lives ashore--for them as are in fixed houses, and can’t sail away with
any blooming old rag of a chap, in a greasy coat, as come in with a bit
of paper, and takes a cheer, and says, ‘Here I sit, mates, till I’m paid
off.’ But what has the likes of such scowbanks got to do with sailor men
when once they’re aboard? What I say is, that when a man’s on the water,
his chest stowed away, articles signed, all the law that consarns him is
in the cabin. The capt’n’s the law; and not only the law, but judge,
magistrate, bailiff, husher, registrar, high chancellor, and Lord Mayor
o’ London on top of it; and my argument is that any man as takes the
liberty to walk over a wessel’s side and order the captain about, and
sing out contrairy orders, and threaten to have him purged (I heard that
very word. ‘Ye’ll have to purge for this,’ says the bailiff. Did ye ever
hear such language applied to a captain?)--any man, I say, as takes such
a liberty as that ought to be dropped overboard without asking ‘by your
leave,’ and, as I said before, left to take possession of any goods he
come across in the inside of a fish or at the bottom of the ocean.”
I waited until he had partially quenched his excitement by a long pull
at his tumbler, and then asked him again how it happened that his vessel
had been boarded by a bailiff.
“I’ll tell you,” he answered. “The wessel was a brig of 300 tons. Coming
home she plumped into a schooner. It was the schooner’s fault; we sung
out to her to get out of the road; instead of doing which she ported her
helm as if to provoke us, and in we went, doing her a deal of damage and
carrying away our own jibboom. Well, we arrived in port and discharged,
and then filled up again with coal. It was Toosday afternoon, the sky
middling dirty, and a fresh breeze of wind blowing. We hauled out and
lay at a mooring buoy, waiting for the tide to serve. I was talking to
the captain when I took notice of a boat coming along, rowed by a couple
o’ watermen, and a chap in a chimbley-pot hat sitting in the starn
sheets.
“‘Is that boat for us?’ says the captain, looking.
“‘Why,’ I says, ‘it looks as if she meant to run us down. Is it a wager?
Bust me if hever I saw watermen pull like that afore!’
“They were dragging on their oars as if they would spring ’em, lying
back until nothing but their noses was to be seen above the gunwale, and
making the water fly in clouds over the cove in the starn as if prompt
drowning was too good for him, and he was to be smothered slow. They
dashed alongside, hooked on, and the fellow in the chimbley-pot hat
comes scraping over the rail, shaking himself free o’ the water as he
tumbled on to the deck like a Newfoundland dog.
“‘Just in time, captain,’ says he, with an impudent kind o’ smile,
rummaging in his side-pocket; and with that he houts with a sort of
dockiment, and hands it to the skipper.
“‘What’s this?’ says the skipper, smelling round the paper as it might
be, but never offering to touch it.
“‘Only a horder for you to return to the bosom of your family,’ he says,
‘as the date o’ your sailing’s not yet fixed.’
“‘Isn’t it?’ says the captain, breathing short. ‘Who are you, and what
d’ye want?’
“‘I’m a bailiff,’ says the man; ‘and I’m here to take charge o’ this
wessel, pending the haction that’s been entered against her in the
Hadmiralty side o’ the County Court by the schooner as ye was in
collision with.’
“‘Can ye swim?’ asks the captain.
“‘Never you mind whether I can or not,’ says the bailiff, looking round
at us, for all hands was collected and listening their hardest.
“‘Because,’ says the captain, ‘if you can’t swim you’d better turn to
and hail that boat to come back again and put ye ashore.’
“‘No, no,’ says the bailiff, ‘I’m not going ashore, my friend. I’m here
to take charge o’ this brig and stop her from going to sea.’
“Had the captain chosen then and there to give orders for that bailiff
to be dropped overboard, I believe I’m the man as would have executed
the command. Taking the temper I was then in, I don’t know anything that
would ha’ given me more satisfaction to perform. The aggravation of
being stopped when we were all ready to get away was the least part of
it: it was the bailiff’s cool grins, the impudence in his eyes as he
looked round, as much as to say, ‘All what I see is mine,’ his taking
the skipper’s place and saying ye shan’t do this, and I won’t allow
that, that made me want to lay hands upon him. The captain stared at him
a bit, as if considering what he should do; then turning to me, he asked
me the time. I told him.
“‘In another quarter of an hour,’ says he, ‘loose the torpsails and make
ready to get away.’
“‘You’d better not,’ says the bailiff; ‘it’ll be gross contempt of court
if you do.’
“‘Court!’ says the skipper, ‘Court! there is no court here, Mr. Bailiff.
This is a brig, not a court. Don’t talk of courts to me. The gross
contempt is of your committing. How dare you stand there ordering of
me?’
“‘Rest assured,’ says the bailiff, ‘you’ll be punished if you don’t do
what I say. You’ll have to purge in open court, and that’s a job that
may cost ye enough to lay you up in the union for the rest of your
natural days.’
“‘Stow that,’ says I, doubling up my fist and stepping close to the
fellow; ‘if the captain stands that kind o’ jaw, _I_ won’t.’
“‘I’m here in the hexecution of my duty,’ says the bailiff, dropping his
confident grins, and beginning to grow whitish. ‘Whatever you do
contrairy to my orders you’ll do at your peril.’
“And so saying he walks right aft, and sits on the taffrail with his
arms folded.
“Never was any quarter of an hour longer than that which the captain
told me to wait. I had my watch in my hand, and all the time I was
afraid the skipper would change his mind and give in to the bailiff, who
sat aft with his hat over his ears, looking at the shore with his little
eyes.
“‘Time’s up, sir!’ I bawled to the captain.
“‘Loose the torpsails,’ he sings out, and in a moment all hands were
running about, sheeting home, and yelling out at the ropes, being as
much afeard as I was that if we were not quick the sight of the dogged
bailiff ’ud operate upon the skipper’s hintellect and stop our just
rewenge upon that funkshonary’s audacity. The bailiff seeing the men at
work, tumbles off the taffrail and comes running forrards.
“‘D’ye mean to say you don’t intend to obey the law?’ he shouts out,
holding on to his chimbley-pot.
“‘Out of the ways!’ answers the skipper, ‘there’s no room for law here.
We’re full up, mate; and since ye’re bound for a voyage, blow your nose
and wave your hand to them as ye’re a parting from!’ and, as he says
this, the wessel, catching the wind that was coming strong enough to
make nothing above our topsails necessary, lays down to it, and we heads
for the open water.
“I saw the bailiff staring wildly around him, as if he really _would_
jump overboard, and it was worth a month’s pay to see him looking like
that, and holding his hat on.
“‘Why, man,’ he shouts to the captain, ‘you’re never in earnest: d’ye
know what you’re a doing of?’ and, finding that the skipper took no
notice, he calls out to the men, ‘You’ll work this vessel at your peril
if you obey your captain. My orders are to stop this brig, and if you
don’t allow me to execute my duty----’ But just as he came to this the
wessel met the first of the seas which were rolling outside the
harbour--stiff seas they wos, for it was blowing half a gale o’ wind;
she put her nose into it, and then rolled over, fit to bring her lower
yardarms into the water; away flew the bailiff’s chimbley-pot hat clean
overboard, and ye may boil me alive if I didn’t think he meant to follow
it; for the send o’ the wessel tripped him over the weather hatch
coamings, and he seemed to shoot--ay, as neatly as if he’d been kicked
by one of them giants I used to read about when I was a little
’un--clean into the lee scuppers, where he lay stunned as I thought,
until all on a sudden he jumped up and went clawing along till he come
to the lee o’ the after deck house, where he squatted down, looking with
his yaller face and blowing hair like a Madagascar monkey recovering
from a fit of intoxication.”
Here my companion broke into a loud laugh, which he repeated again and
again, as if the thoughts awakened in his mind were of too exquisite a
kind to be dismissed with a single guffaw.
“I don’t know,” he continued, after a bit, wiping his eyes, and then
fixing his dismal and malignant squint upon me, “whether on the whole we
should ha’ done better by dropping him overboard. The brig was as deep
as pretty nigh twice her tonnage in coal could make her; she was a wet
boat at any time; but now she tumbled about as if she had made up her
mind to drown herself. I reckon she knew she had a bailiff aboard. Every
dip forrards threw the water over her head in oceans; she’d roll to
wind’ard almost as heavily as to leeward, so that the decks was all
awash, and I was looking and hoping all the time to see the bailiff
fetch away. But there was enough law left in him to keep him holding on.
I was standing to wind’ard of the house--the skipper being aft agin the
wheel--when Mr. Bailiff comes staggering round, his breeches clinging to
his legs like wet brown paper, and his shoes full o’ water.
“‘Hallo, shipmate!’ I sings out, seeing him making for the cabin door,
‘where are you bound to? Aren’t you happy where you are?’
“‘I’m going to lie down on one of the lockers,’ says he. ‘I feel half
froze, and I shall be sick presently.’
“‘You may be half froze and sick too,’ says I, ‘but smother me, Mr.
Bailiff, if you shall use the cabin.’
“‘Not use the cabin?’ says he, gaping at me, and talking as if there was
something in his swaller; ‘d’ye mean to keep me on deck all night?’
“‘Don’t ask no questions,’ says I. ‘You’re here by French leave. Nobody
wants you. If I had my way you’d be towing astern, with your neck in a
bowline; and if all the rest o’ your tribe and the blooming ’tornies you
sarve were tailed on in your wake, I’d be willing to woyage round the
world, and never grumble if we took years in reaching home.’
“I was in a passion, which rose my woice, and the skipper, hearing me,
comes over.
“‘Hallo, bailiff!’ says he, cheerfully; ‘not drowned yet, my lad? What
d’ye think o’ the weather?’
“‘Captain,’ says the man, ‘you’ve carried me away by force. D’ye mean to
freeze me to death by keeping me on deck all night? Your mate here says
I’m not to use the cabin.’
“‘Why should he use it, capt’n?’ says I. ‘Could a sailor man sit with
the likes of him? I’ve messed afore now with Chaneymen; I’ve slept along
with Peruvian beachcombers when the air’s been that thick with the smell
of onions ye might have leant agin it; but ye may boil me, skipper,’
says I, ‘if ever I occupied a cabin along with a bailiff afore, and if
he’s to share that crib along with us, I’ll sleep forrards.’
“‘You hear that, bailiff,’ says the skipper. ‘I can’t let my mate live
forrards to oblige you. If you’re cold I dare say the cook ’ll let you
warm yourself in the galley. But nobody wanted you here. You were not
invited, consequently it’s not for you to grumble if you don’t find
yourself perfectly comfortable and happy.’
“But as he says this, Nature fell to manhandling the bailiff as if she’d
taken his own trade upon herself, and making one rush he lay over the
lee rail so ill that I never saw the equal of it, even in a Frenchman;
he twisted himself about just as if he’d been revolving on a corkscrew;
the water blowing over the forward weather rail hit him neatly, and he
was like a streaming rag in five minutes.
“We left him enjoying himself and went on with our work. It was falling
dark, and not only blowing hard, but there was the look of a whole gale
of wind in the south-west sky. The brig was making desperate bad weather
of it under lower torpsails and reefed foresail, taking in the water fit
to wash every movable thing overboard, and shoving through it very
slowly with a surprising sag to leeward. The skipper went below for some
supper, and after a bit he calls me in.
“‘Where’s the bailiff?’ says he.
“‘Don’t know exactly,’ I says. ‘To leeward somewheres. There’s a figure
half over the rail just abaft the fore rigging, if that’s him.’
“‘I’ve been tarning it over in my mind,’ says the skipper, ‘and I’ve got
a notion, William,’ says he, ‘that we’d ha’ done better not to bring
that bailiff along with us.’
“‘But he wouldn’t go ashore when you told him,’ says I.
“‘Quite true,’ says the captain; ‘but that won’t make it better for us.
After all, the law’s not a thing ye can take liberties with, and there’s
something in his threat of making me purge in open court, William,’ says
he, ‘which mightn’t matter if I knew what it meant; but, being ignorant,
I’m willing to think it alarming.’
“‘Pooh,’ says I, ‘it’s only a lawyer’s word. There’s nothing in it.
They use onintelligible words to scare plain men; but there can’t be
anything more terrifying in language ye don’t understand than in
language ye do.’
“‘I wish I had some book aboard that ’ud explain that word,’ says he.
‘The bailiff’ll know; but I’ll not ask him for fear he should think me
afraid. But we can’t let him starve. Better send him here and let him
get something to eat.’
“I was going to argue, but he wouldn’t listen.
“‘No, no,’ says he, ‘send him here;’ and I knew by that that the fear o’
the law was beginning to master him.
“Well, it was my duty to obey, so I went on deck, and after rummaging
about I found the bailiff sitting up to his hips in water against the
scuttle-butt abreast of the galley.
“‘Come along,’ says I, ‘supper’s in the cabin, and the captain wants you
there.’
“He stood up, but was so cramped in his timbers that he could scarcely
shuffle along, and I had to drag him by the collar. When the captain saw
by the lamplight the plight the fellow was in, his heart failed him
altogether. There was no more proper dignified scorn.
“‘Why,’ says he, looking at him, ‘I didn’t think it was such a bad job
as that,’ and he jumped up and fetched him a suit of dry clothes, and
then poured out a dose of brandy. This was regular knuckling under. He
had gone on con-sidering and con-sidering until he was in an out-and-out
funk. There was no use in my saying anything. The bailiff had growd on a
sudden to become the strongest man aboard that brig, though as for me,
when I tell you that had I been the captain I’d have sent the fellow
aloft, and kept him there all night, as a hint to leave sailor men
alone on future occasions, ye’ll allow that _my_ caving in wur only
because I wasn’t skipper, and that’s all. Well, sir, to cut this yarn
short, luck turned in favour of that bailiff with a wengeance. At
midnight it was blowing a hurricane, and the skipper said there was no
good going on facing it, he must put back.
“‘There’s a handier port,’ says I, naming it, ‘than the one we’re from
to make for.’
“‘Ay,’ says he, ‘but since we’re bound to up keeleg it’ll look better to
carry the bailiff slick home than to give him a railway journey.’
“It would have made a hangel growl to hear the captain, all through
fear, placing this bailiff afore the werry hurricane that was blowing,
and thinking of him only whom he’d ha’ gladly drownded a few hours
earlier, instead of the wessel and the lives aboard her. But reasoning
was out of the question. The brig was just a smother of froth, the gale
roaring like thunder, the seas as high as our maintop, and the old
hooker shivering with every upward heave, as if she must leave all the
lower part of her behind her. It was a job to get the vessel round, but
we managed it, and at half-past five o’clock in the morning we fetched
the harbour we had started from and brought up, nothing having carried
away but the bailiff’s chimbley-pot.”
“And what was the result of all this?” said I.
“Why,” said he, with a loud rumbling laugh, “the skipper had to find out
what purging in hopen court means. He was brought up afore an old
gentleman, who lectured him for about half an hour, said that the law
was meant to be respected and that it would be a bad job for any man as
sneered at it; and after having talked out all that lay in his mind, he
up and fines the captain ten pounds and fifty shillings costs. It
served him right. He’d no business to bring that bailiff back. But he
was hoperated on by the fear o’ words, and depend upon it the man who
allows that sort of alarm to wisit him is not a fit person to carry a
bailiff to sea.”
_OFF THE HORN._
The passage of the Horn has long ceased to be a thing to boast about.
Time was when a man who had doubled that formidable iron headland
reckoned he had performed a feat that entitled him to a good deal of
respect. This is characteristically shown in “Two Years before the
Mast,” the author of which dwells at great length upon the struggles of
the _Alert_ among the ice in latitude 58 deg. South, as though he
considered that part of the voyage to be something proper to hand on to
posterity in a bulky form. Not so much notice is taken of the
achievement nowadays. It still confers privileges; it qualifies a man to
“spit to windward,” for instance, and no doubt it inspires many a
youthful midshipman or apprentice with much big talk and nautical airs
in the presence of lads who have yet to see with their own eyes what an
Antarctic iceberg is like.
But the passage of the Horn is much too common an occurrence in these
days to inflate anything but a boy. In Dana’s time a ship was a
wonderful object down there; it seemed almost a deserted ocean; nothing
was to be met but an old “spouter” jogging along with stump
topgallant-masts, and her sides full of boats; or a cargo-ship, with a
freight of “notions,” bound to the Peruvian or Mexican ports. Now, if it
is not so full as the Atlantic, it is pretty nearly as busy; for since
those days Australia has grown a mighty and populous continent; towns
have sprung up as if by magic along the western seaboard of the
Americas; even the little remote South Sea Islands have lent a hand in
the thronging of the great Cape Horn highway; and the most desolate,
sterile region in the world--such a harsh, forbidding, icebound piece of
coast as no man who has passed within sight of it can ever forget--is
skirted, week after week and year after year, by scores and scores of
great steamers and sailing ships, bound west, and east, and north, if
never south. The Panama Canal threatens the famous old route; and should
that waterway ever be completed, the Horn will probably fall even more
out of date than the Cape of Good Hope has. It is not to be expected,
however, that even the most ancient mariners will be found to mourn over
the desuetude. There are many uncomfortable spots to be encountered in a
voyage round the world; but a turn off the Horn, in the months which we
call summer here, probably beats anything in the shape of marine
discomforts to be found on the ocean. Of course this is speaking of it
as sailors find it--as it is experienced by the men who have to remain
on deck, go aloft, stand at the wheel, and whose shelter is a forecastle
with the scuttle closed, and not a dry stitch of clothes to be found by
groping.
For it is off the Horn where the galley-fire gets washed out, and where,
therefore, the streaming and hungry watch below have nothing to eat but
what they may find in the bread-barge; where the tears freeze in a man’s
eyes faster than the most pitying angel of a woman living could wipe
them away; where one is glad to keep one’s sea-boots on for fear that
one’s toes may go as well as the boots when they are hauled off; where
everything is like sheet and bar iron aloft; where the very cockroaches
turn in to wait for the Equator, and the hardiest rats are so put to it
with frost that they watch in the gloom until a man goes to bed and
falls asleep, in the hope of getting a meal off his nose. Unhappily the
Horn does not improve. It blows and snows as hard there now as it did
when the old _Wager_ rounded it, and when Drake or Anson was rolling
among its stupendous combers. Other places are more tractable. For
instance, Dana, twenty-four years after he made his memorable voyage,
found that the climate off Point Conception had altered, that the
south-easters were no longer the curse of the coast, and that vessels
anchored inside at Santa Barbaro and San Pedro all the year round. No
one could have told him this of the Horn. Had he chosen to beat to the
eastward or westward a second time in the months when the attempt was
made by the _Pilgrim_ and the _Alert_ he would have found the same
blinding snow-storms, the same hurling seas, the same sunless,
melancholy sky, the same plunging, washing, straining, roaring
tumblification he recorded forty-two years ago. Let the story of a brig
of 300 tons’ register bear witness to this.