lay steady. Hour after hour went by, but no flame showed itself, though
there was a gradual thickening of the smoke from the deck, and the
seamen could observe it hanging in a shadow over the mastheads of the
vessel and to leeward of her. Gazing at her as she stood like a marble
carving upon the dark sea, it was difficult for the men to realize that
her hold was a concealed furnace; that by taking off one of the hatches
and looking down they could have beheld an incandescent interior, a
red-hot surface like a lake of fire, with blue and green flames crawling
over it, and masses of smoke, repelled or consumed by the intense heat
of the central spaces. But for the shadow overhanging her glimmering
heights, there were no signs that anything was amiss with the ship.
Surveyed from the low level of the boats, she looked a majestic fabric
out there, a brave sight in the faint, fine starlight. It was a long,
weary, and bitter vigil for the poor fellows to keep. They would not
leave the neighbourhood of the vessel while she remained afloat. They
could not tell what might happen. If she burst into flames the light she
made might bring them help. Or the fire might die out and so give them
their home to return to. Whilst she was there, she was, in a manner,
something to hold on to; for it was a fearful thing to look away from
her into the mystery of the darkness around, and to think of being left
to struggle amid that black and fathomless desert of water in open
boats, which brought the mighty deep within reach of their hands.
Slowly the long hours went by, and then the dawn came, and the sun
uprose. With the first of the grey light every eye was turned upon the
ship. They could see the shroud of smoke that overhung her, yet not a
spark of fire had been visible throughout the night, and this, now that
the sunshine was on the sea, begot a hope in the men that, though to be
sure the smoke crawled thickly from the ship, the fire was not so bad as
they had feared, and that a long and resolute struggle might enable
them to conquer it. Accordingly the oars were thrown over, and the boats
headed for the vessel. The boat occupied by the captain was the first to
get alongside. He jumped on board, and was followed by others; but the
heat of the decks striking through his boots made him put his hand to
the planks. It was like touching hot iron. He walked to the cabin, but
on feeling the door he withdrew his fingers with a groan. The whole
fabric was full of fiery heat; whatever touched the flesh gave it pain;
the very ropes which lay coiled over the belaying pins were too hot to
handle; the pitch was bubbling in the seams; the air between the
bulwarks resembled the atmosphere of a furnace; in the haze of the heat
every object seemed to revolve like a corkscrew; and the men in the
boats said that feeling her side, even to the level of the water-line,
was as bad as putting the hand upon a boiler full of steam.
A cry from one of the seamen who had come over the side in bare feet,
raised a kind of panic among those already aboard. “Over with you,” was
the shout, “before she bursts into a blaze!” and in mad haste the poor
fellows dropped over the bulwarks, seized their oars, and resumed the
same distance from the ship that they had occupied all night.
Soon after this a small breeze of wind arose. It seemed to penetrate the
vessel, for with the draught there soared up a thick body of smoke. Her
passage to leeward was perceptible in the short, oil-smooth wake to
windward of her; but the drift of the boats was the same as hers, so
that the men had no need to use their oars to maintain their distance.
There was now weight enough in the wind to blow the smoke clear of the
decks before it rose a foot above the bulwarks, so that the picture of
that full-rigged ship remained there in its completeness. As the time
passed the men would see a fountain of sparks hove up occasionally in
the smoke. It was dismal work sitting and watching that fine ship
smouldering. All that the men possessed was left aboard of her; they had
come away, most of them, in their shirts and trousers, many without
shoes, and there in those three boats they sat looking at the burning
vessel, silent in the main, often glancing around them on the look-out
for a sail, and holding on to the thwarts or gunwales as the boats
jerked and toppled sharply about on the bit of a sea that the wind had
raised. A little before noon those who had their eyes on the ship
perceived the mizzenmast to sway to and fro a moment; then suddenly it
fell with a crash; a rush of smoke, like a monstrous balloon, hovered
over the quarter-deck and concealed the ruin; but it soared into the
air, and sailed away on the wind under a sudden furious discharge of
sparks, which resembled the explosion of a mass of rockets, and when the
vapour had settled down it was seen that the mizzenmast was over the
side, the vessel a wreck aft, whilst forward the sails were dusky and
red, as though iron-stained, with the blowing of the sooty coils and the
fire of the glowing sparks.
Until the night came down no further alteration took place in the
appearance of the vessel. During all those long hours the men sat
crouched in their boats, watching their burning ship and searching the
sea for the help that did not come. The second night rolled down dark,
with windy clouds drifting across the skies. Here and there the
phosphorus shone in the curl of a breaking surge. The half-clad men
shivered under the fresh night wind; but the ship whilst she stayed
there was a beacon. If they quitted her, what was there to do? She was a
dreadful signal upon the dark sea, and might yet bring succour, and so
they stayed. But the darkness had not gathered an hour when a tongue of
red flame darted out of the deck abaft the mainmast. It threw out a
great light, like the flash of a big gun, and the men could see one
another’s faces in it. It sank and seemed to expire, and then there
rushed up a body of crimson sparks which clearly defined the dense and
swelling volume of smoke that blotted out the heavens in the south-east;
but speedily the flame swept aloft again like a serpent, wreathing
itself around the mainmast; then forward and apparently out of the fore
hatch sprang up another pillar of fire, and presently there were tongues
and lances of flame crawling and hissing all over the doomed vessel,
gliding in serpentine convolutions along her bulwarks, over her stern,
around her bows, limning the configuration of her hull with burning
pencils, filling whole leagues of the darkness with light. The stays,
the shrouds, all the gear connected with the bowsprit and jibbooms,
caught fire; the yards were kindled; the whole outline of the vessel was
scored in fire upon the night; every detail of the standing masts and
yards and sails, the crosstrees, outriggers, and tops--all the furniture
of the ship’s decks, the boat-davits, the catheads, the martingale, the
spritsail yard, were expressed in flame. It was like the picture of a
ship drawn in fire upon a black curtain. Not a sound came from the men
in the boats. They watched breathless, full of amazement, thoughts of
their serious position being overwhelmed by the dreadful but magnificent
sight of that noble ship. When suddenly the burning vessel opened, a
flame such as might go up from Vesuvius soared into the air, making a
roaring noise upon the wind; there was a sound of the falling of the
burning masts and yards; and then, in a breath, the whole terrific
picture vanished; it disappeared as you might blow out a candle; the
boom of an explosion came dully up against the wind, and there was
nothing but the stars and the black sea and a dense shadow in the
south-east where the smoke from the foundered ship was heavily sailing
away.
If ever loneliness was felt at sea it was felt by those men when that
great light went out, and left them in darkness and dread and
uncertainty. But enough if I say that after tossing about for two days
and nights, they sighted a sail to the westward, which they chased until
they were sufficiently near for her people to see them. She proved to be
the London barque _Paracca_, whose captain gladly received the poor
fellows and treated them with the utmost humanity.
_SEA-SICKNESS._
Many will remember the terrible description of Mr. Aaron Bang’s pangs of
sea-sickness in “Tom Cringle.” It is fortunate that everybody whilst
suffering from nausea is not so demonstrative as the West Indian
planter. The horrors of a rough passage between Calais and Dover would
be fearfully increased were the prostrate passengers to bewail amid
their throes the wines and dishes which old Neptune exacts from them.
And yet one has only to consider what kind of heaving sea it was that
set the West Indian howling for brandy-and-water to commiserate the poor
old epicure’s noisy anguish. Sailors will appreciate the affect upon a
passenger’s stomach of a heavy gale of wind dropping as if by magic and
leaving the sailing vessel--for Tom Cringle flourished before the days
of steam--rolling upon a tremendous swell. A steamer whose screw or
paddles are revolving and driving the hull through the water will not,
amidst the heaviest sea, give you the same sensation you get from a
vessel tumbling about on a strong, fine-weather swell, not a breath of
air to steady her or give her way. The steamer in a measure escapes the
worst of the seas by sliding out of them; her bows are lifting clear of
the washing coil whilst her lee sponsons are buried, and she half jumps
the intervening hollow as her paddles thrust her from the summit of the
surge. Often have I watched this behaviour in swift steamers, and seen
them take a bow or beam sea as a horse takes a hurdle.
But the motion of a vessel becalmed amid a heavy swell is one of the
most uncomfortable of all sea-experiences. Let the merest relic of
nausea linger in the human breast, and this movement shall make a
full-blown anguish of it. I have heard of stewards, men who have made a
dozen voyages round the world--whose stomachs were as immovable in a
gale of wind as the ship’s figurehead;--I have heard of such men, I say,
in a heavy breathless swell, tumbling down among their dishes too sick
to stand, rolling about among the crockery and echoing with their groans
the spasmodic gurgling of the water as it sobbed in the scupper-holes or
washed up full, green, and sickening over the glass of the scuttles or
the cabin windows.
This sort of tumblefication is fast becoming a thing of the past among
passengers, very few of whom nowadays make their voyages in sailing
ships, although it is by no means yet an extinct feature of the
emigrant’s progress from the old world to Australia and New Zealand. At
such times as this the ship is as sea-sick as any of the yellow and
haggard sufferers who moan in her cabins; squeaks and cries and the
rumbling of a disordered internal organization resound in her hold. Over
she leans like a fainting creature, and the bubbling wash of water
alongside delivers a note full of nauseating suggestion; the beating of
the canvas against the masts sends a shiver through the hull; down drops
her counter amid a swirl of gurgling eddies, the stern-post complains,
the rudder jars, the wheel chains harshly strain; and then up, slowly
and giddily, mounts the after end of the staggering fabric, making the
pale and helpless holder-on there feel that his brains are descending
into his boots, and that his bowels are rising to fill the emptiness of
his skull, whilst sharp reports of crashing crockery break out through
the skylights, the cask that has broken adrift on the main-deck rolls to
and fro and defies the pursuit of the three or four seamen who dodge
about after it and go sprawling over one another into the scuppers, the
pigs under the long-boat scuffle and snort, chests and boxes fetch away
in the cabins, the sailors flounder over the cable range as they stagger
out of the galley with hook pots of tea in their hands, and the
sea-blessings showered out by the cook as he chases his dishes and pans
and burns his fingers in his efforts to save the cuddy dinner, can be
heard by the man at the wheel and the youngster who is shifting the
dog-vane at the main-royal masthead.
This, I say, was an old experience; but it was a time to try the stomach
whilst it lasted. Think of three or four days and three or four nights
of it! In these days if you are sea-sick you at least have the
satisfaction of knowing that the ship is always going ahead, and that
the day, if not the hour, when your nausea will have terminated may be
pretty accurately fixed. And yet what man hanging over the side or
prostrate on his back and execrating existence can get satisfaction out
of the thought that, bad as his sufferings are, they might be worse by
being protracted? I believe there are some people who, when once their
heads are fairly over the rail, or when what Thackeray calls the
“expectaroon” is between their knees, are inspired by such a loathing
for life that they are not to be moved by the wildest threats of
destruction. Once, in crossing from Calais to Dover, I noticed a vast
pile of luggage, unsecured by a single lashing, heaped up on the
fore-deck. All was well until we got clear of the French coast, when a
small beam sea set the vessel rolling. In a few minutes the bulwarks,
from the sponsons to the eyes, were crowded with people of both sexes
and various nationalities, all engaged in raising their voices in the
most dismal manner, wiping their cheeks, and casting bloodshot glances
around them, only to direct their gaze again with hideous rapidity upon
the giddy white water that rushed in a spinning dance aft while they
exploded in loud roars. I looked with alarm at the nodding pile of
luggage, feeling sure that an extra lurch would tumble the whole over
and seriously injure the unhappy sick people on one side or other of the
vessel. I spoke to a French sailor--they were all Frenchmen aboard that
steamer--and advised him to secure the luggage. He merely shrugged his
shoulders and made off. I addressed another, who could not or would not
understand me. Thereupon I went up to the sea-sick people, and touching
first one and then another, I pointed to the tower of luggage and
advised them to go further aft, out of the way of the boxes, lest they
should tumble upon them. They must have seen their danger as plainly as
I, but not one of them offered to move. They kept a tight hold of the
rail, merely turning their lacklustre eyes upon me with an expression in
them, half imploring, half savage, as much as to say, “Let the boxes
come! Let us be crushed! What stops the boxes from falling?” Fortunately
the second sailor I accosted perceived by this time that if the luggage
was not secured the top boxes bade fair to go overboard when the
stronger sea of the mid-channel was reached; and so among them the
Frenchmen bound the boxes to the deck by ropes, and by so doing, in my
humble opinion, saved several valuable sea-sick lives.
In this same journey I was amused by an aspect of sea-sickness, or let
me say a condition of it, that will be familiar to many who make short
passages by water. Going forward of the funnel, where smoking is not
prohibited, I took notice of a gentleman wearing an eye-glass. He was
clad in a yachting coat, embellished with brass buttons, and he was
smoking a large cigar. A very stout Frenchman was asking him some
questions in broken English--I heard the gentleman with the eye-glass
say that he believed there was a pretty middling sea on outside, but “if
you’re afraid of being sick, mounseer, you should smoke, sir. You should
do as I do. Nothing like tobacco for settling the stomach;” and he gave
a horribly confident laugh. The corpulent Frenchman withdrew with a
groan, and lodged himself in the gloom under the bridge near the
engines, the vibration of which caused his immense body to quiver like a
jelly on a supper-table when people are dancing overhead, and there he
lay so clamorously ill that the firemen dropped their shovels below to
come up and look at him.
Meanwhile I kept my eye on the gentleman who believed in tobacco, and
when the steamer took the first of the seas I saw him seize hold of a
shroud or a funnel stay and set his legs wide apart. He continued
puffing at his cigar for some time but the intervals between removing
and lifting it to his mouth grew longer and longer; presently it went
out, but he took no notice. He had his glass in his eye and his face
looked forward; he was deplorably pale, and I never could have believed
that such a trifling thing as a brass button and so prosaic an object as
a nautically-cut coat could become, on occasion, more cuttingly ironical
than anything a man’s friend could say of him. The eye-glass gave this
gentleman an unusually glaring expression; he never shifted his gaze--I
should say that he never winked. There he stood with his legs wide
apart, the extinguished cigar in one hand and the other supporting him
with a death-grip, staring with horrible intensity at nothing. I knew
perfectly well that if that man were made to shift his posture or speak
he would rush to the rail.
It was a brave fight; but it could not last. A young coloured gentleman,
the ashiness of nausea visible in his dark skin, suddenly jumped up from
under the pile of luggage, where he had been screening himself from the
wind, and, bolting to the side, expended himself in a howl full of the
deep throaty noise that is peculiar to negroes. It was irresistible; the
man with the eye-glass let go, and staggered away, with his cigar gone
and his hands extended. I feared that he would find no room, for the
bulwark was lined with sufferers; but, with the selfishness of acute
suffering, he plumped with all his might between a couple of Frenchmen,
squeezed the aperture between them open with his elbows, and fixed
himself there; and there he remained until the water grew smooth near
the English cliffs, and the steamer went forward on a steady keel.
It is difficult to understand why people should find anything diverting
in sea-sickness, than which surely nothing can cause more suffering. Of
course, if a man will give himself airs ashore or on smooth water, use
nautical words, and deride the misgivings others are honest enough to
confess to, then, indeed, if we find that marine gentleman with his head
in a basin, or with his face over the side and his hat gone, we have
some excuse to laugh at him. There are people who never will own that
they are sick at sea, just as there are people who deny with indignation
that they snore in their sleep. Such folks deserve our ridicule. For
what is there to be ashamed of? I have known old sea-captains quit ships
newly arrived from around the world and be ill on a voyage from London
Bridge to Hull. If such men can shout for the steward without blushing,
it is hard to know why Jones, of the Middle Temple, or Smith, of the
Stock Exchange, or Snooks, the celebrated novelist, should sneak to the
side and feel humbled if his fellow-sufferers see him blue in the face
with his pocket-handkerchief half-way down his throat. It may be that
people laugh at sea-sick sufferers because of the enormously and by
consequence absurdly levelling character of the malady. One might be the
most compassionate creature living and yet find it impossible to stop
laughing at the debasement of the high and mighty personage who, when he
came aboard, people whispered was the Right Honourable So-and-so, or the
acute and famous Mr. Justice Somebody Else. He sits aloof, he is full of
dignity, he scarcely raises even a condescending eye from the book or
paper in his hand to glance at the other passengers, who sit doggedly,
if humbly, waiting for the wheels to go round, inside and outside. I say
that a man must be more than human if he can help laughing when the high
and mighty personage changes colour, when he puts his paper down and
rolls his eyes about, when nothing seems to keep his head on but his
shirt-collar, and when an invincible horror of life gleams in that gaze
which has grown hollow with surprising rapidity. Alas! no amount of
reputation, no social importance, no eloquence, which in other places
might affect the heart and even improve the understanding, can save him.
Yonder in the bows is a poor little cockney, a second-class passenger,
in a shabby coat and his trousers half-way up his legs, sick beyond the
power of description; there is no bench long enough on that vessel to
furnish room for him and the great man at once if the water were smooth;
but Nausea has waved her wand, and the humble little cockney and the
high and mighty personage are brothers and equals, fellow-sufferers,
with all distinctions vanished between them as, with yellow faces, the
cockney forward, the great man aft, they overhang the rushing foam with
open mouths, the tears pouring from their eyes, and anguish inimitably
expressed in the curve of their backs and the occasional kick-up
delivered by their legs.
More pathetic, perhaps, is the newly-married couple, though many a cruel
laugh and jeer have been directed even at them. But nothing is sacred at
sea. Sentiment that is full of poetry in drawing-rooms, among flowers,
under the moonshine, among hedges, takes another character among rough
waters.
I remember once crossing fifty miles of sea in company with a young
gentleman and his bride. They were returning, I took it, from their
honeymoon. They sat together upon a small, uncomfortable bench fixed
against the inside of the paddle-box, whence they commanded a fine view
of the action of the engines, and where the smell of the oil-cans hung
steadily in the wind. They both knew they were going to be sick, and sat
with hands locked, two devoted hearts bent on suffering together. The
steward--a pale, large, sandy-haired man--considerately anticipated
their wants by placing a couple of basins at their feet. The dismal
implements made but a melancholy foreground for the impassioned pair,
and I wondered how they would like to have had their photographs taken
in that posture. A quarter of an hour sufficed to make the picture
tragical. The wife leaned across the husband and the husband held on to
her. His heroic devotion was immense; I could hear him in guttural
accents pouring consolation into her deaf ears amid the intervals of his
own convulsions, and when an unusually heavy roll to leeward caused both
basins to slide away out of sight under the bench, I never beheld
anything more touching than his struggles to replace them without
letting go of his wife.
Happily, however, the heart is occasionally steeled against such objects
of misery as this by spectacles of selfishness and fear in the last
degree contemptible. I particularly recall a gaunt Frenchman with a
spiked moustache, who, long before nausea afflicted him, refused to stir
from his seat to help his miserable, prostrate wife, and who answered
her murmurs to Emile to put something under her head and something over
her feet, by fierce commands to her to hold her tongue. This wretched
man was himself seized with nausea, and so great was his fear--either
excited by the somewhat heavy sea that washed alongside the vessel or by
his sufferings, which to judge from the noise he made, must have led him
to suppose that, bit by bit, the whole of him was going overboard--that
after every explosion I could hear him shrieking, “Maman! maman!” like a
girl.
What is the remedy for sea-sickness? I wish I knew--most cheerfully
would I impart the secret. There are many prescriptions, from the ice of
Dr. Chapman to Jack’s lump of fat pork attached to a ropeyarn; but
nothing seems to answer the end designed. Nor is it very remarkable that
the wonderful vessels which were to put an end to nausea should still
leave the “expectaroon,” even on their own decks, the useful piece of
furniture passengers have for generations found it; for whilst clever
gentlemen have shown us how the effect of the rolling and pitching
movement of a ship upon the head or stomach may be overcome by pivoted
saloons and swinging accommodations, they have entirely failed to
produce any kind of mechanism to obviate the consequences of those
movements of a vessel in a seaway which are alone responsible for
sickness; I mean the heave up and the swoop down. If a ship oscillated
on an immutable basis, a cot or a balanced chair would effectually stop
nausea; like a wineglass on a swinging tray, the passenger could always
maintain a posture perpendicular with the horizon. But what is to
qualify the sensations which follow the swoop down into the hollows and
the roaring heave up on to the summits of the seas? Everything in the
ship must accompany her in her falls and in her risings; and it is this
motion which sends people rushing to the side, which sets them roaring
for the steward, which causes them to loathe life and to lie with their
heads anywhere and their feet anyhow.