was but small, we had an ideal day’s enjoyment, and the fun we got
out of Ancient William, the patriarch, was great. We had him tame
in two days, and trying butting matches with the Kanakas; in spite
of his age I don’t know what we didn’t teach him that a goat could
learn. Nanny presented us with a charming little pet in the shape
of a kid two days after her arrival on board, but to the grief of
all hands her milk dried up almost immediately afterwards, so that
to save the little creature from starvation, as there was not even a
drop of condensed milk on board, we were compelled to kill it. The
Kanakas ate it, and pronounced it very good. Then William the Ripe,
in charging a Kanaka, who dodged him by leaping over the fo’c’s’le
scuttle, hurled himself headlong below, breaking both his fore legs.
We could have mended him up all right, but he seemed to resent
getting better, refused tobacco and all such little luxuries that we
tried to tempt him with, and died. _I_ think he was broken-hearted
at the idea that a mountaineer like himself, who for goodness knows
how many generations had scaled in safety the precipitous cliffs of
Sunday Island, should fall down a stuffy hole on board ship, only
about eight feet deep, and break himself all up.
VI
Some delightfully interesting articles on the ancient sport of
“hawking,” or falconry, whichever is the correct term to use, in
_Country Life_ have vividly recalled to me a quaint and unusual
experience in that line, which fell to my lot while the vessel of
whose crew I was a very minor portion was slowly making her way
homewards from a port at the extreme western limit of the Gulf of
Mexico. We were absolutely without live stock of any kind on board
the _Investigator_, unless such small deer as rats and cockroaches
might be classed under that head. And, as so often happens at sea
when that is the case, the men were very discontented at the absence
of any dumb animals to make pets of, and often lamented what they
considered to be the lonely condition of a ship without even a cat.
But we had not been out of port many days when, to our delight as
well as amazement, we saw one sunny morning hopping contentedly about
the fo’c’s’le a sweet little blue and yellow bird about the bigness
(or littleness) of a robin. Being well out of sight of land, no one
could imagine whence he came, neither did anybody see him arrive. He
just materialised as it were in our midst, and made himself at home
forthwith, as though he had been born and bred among men and fear of
them was unknown to him. We had hardly got over the feeling of almost
childish delight this pretty, fearless wanderer gave us when another
appeared, much the same size, but totally different in colour. It
was quite as tame as the first arrival, and did not quarrel with
the first-comer. Together they explored most amicably the recesses
of the fo’c’s’le, apparently much delighted with the cockroaches,
which swarmed everywhere. And before long many others came and joined
them, all much about the same size, but of all the hues imaginable.
They were all alike in their tameness, and it really was one of the
most pleasant sights I ever witnessed to see those tiny, brilliant
birds fluttering about our dingy fo’c’s’le, or, tired out, roosting
on such queer perches as the edge of the bread-barge or the shelves
in our bunks. Their presence had a most elevating influence upon
the roughest of us--we went softly and spoke gently, for fear of
startling these delicate little visitors who were so unafraid of
the giants among whom they had voluntarily taken up their abode. At
meal-times they hopped about the fo’c’s’le deck picking up crumbs
and behaving generally as if they were in the beautiful glades and
aromatic forests whence they had undoubtedly come. For it is hardly
necessary to say that they were all land birds; and when during a
calm one day one of them, stooping too near the sea, got wet, and
was unable to rise again, August McManus, as tough a citizen as ever
painted the Highway red, leapt overboard after it, and, with a touch
as gentle as the enwrapping of lint, rescued it from its imminent
peril.
This strange development of sea-life went on for a week, the weather
being exceedingly fine, with light winds and calms. And then we
became suddenly aware that some large birds had arrived and taken
up positions upon the upper yards, where they sat motionless,
occasionally giving vent to a shrill cry. What they were none of
us knew, until shortly after we had first noticed them one of our
little messmates flew out from the ship’s side into the sunshine.
There was a sudden swish of wings, like the lash of a cane through
the air, and downward like a brown shadow came one of the watchers
from aloft, snatching in a pair of cruel-looking talons the tiny
truant from our midst. Then the dullest of us realised that in some
mysterious way these rapacious birds, a species of falcon, had become
aware that around our ship might be found some of their natural food.
Now we were not less than 200 miles from the coast at the time, and
to my mind it was one of the strangest things conceivable how those
hawks should have known that around a solitary ship far out at sea
would be found a number of little birds suitable to their needs.
The presence of the small birds might easily be explained by their
having been blown off the land, as high winds had prevailed for some
little time previous to their appearance, but as the hawks did not
come till a week afterwards, during the whole of which time we had
never experienced even a four-knot breeze, I am convinced that the
same theory would not account for their arrival. It may have been a
coincidence, but if so it was a very remarkable one; and in any case
what were these essentially land birds of powerful flight doing of
their own free will so far from land? Unless, of course, they were a
little band migrating, and even then the coincidence of their meeting
our ship was a most strange one.
We, however, troubled ourselves but little with these speculations.
The one thing patent to us was that our little pets were exposed to
the most deadly peril, that these ravenous birds were carrying them
off one by one, and we were apparently powerless to protect them. We
could not cage them, although the absence of cages would have been no
obstacle, as we should soon have manufactured efficient substitutes;
but they were so happy in their freedom that we felt we could not
deprive them of it. But we organised a raid among those bloodthirsty
pirates, as we called them, forgetting that they were merely obeying
the law of their being, and the first dark hour saw us silently
creeping aloft to where they had taken their roost. Two were caught,
but in both cases the captors had something to remember their
encounter by. Grasping at the shadowy birds in the darkness with
only one free hand, they were unable to prevent the fierce creatures
defending themselves with beak and talons, and one man came down
with his prize’s claws driven so far into his hand that the wounds
took many days to heal. When we had secured them we couldn’t bring
ourselves to kill them, they were such handsome, graceful birds,
but had they been given a choice in the matter I make no doubt they
would have preferred a speedy death rather than the lingering pain
of starvation which befell them. For they refused all food, and sat
moping on their perches, only rousing when any one came near, and
glaring unsubdued with their bold, fierce eyes, bright and fearless
until they glazed in death. We were never able to catch any more of
them, although they remained with us until our captain managed to
allow the vessel to run ashore upon one of the enormous coral reefs
that crop up here and there in the Gulf of Mexico. The tiny spot
of dry land that appeared at the summit of this great mountain of
coral was barren of all vegetation except a little creeping plant, a
kind of _arenaria_, so that it would have afforded no satisfactory
abiding-place for our little shipmates, even if any of them could
escape the watchful eyes of their enemies aloft. So that I suppose
after we abandoned the ship they remained on board until she broke
up altogether, and then fell an easy prey to the falcons.
This was the only occasion upon which I have known a vessel at sea to
be visited by so varied a collection of small birds, and certainly
the only case I have ever heard of where land birds have flown on
board and made themselves at home. When I say at sea, of course I do
not mean in a narrow strait like the Channel, where passing vessels
must often be visited by migrants crossing to or from the Continent.
But when well out in the North Atlantic, certainly to the westward
of the Azores, and out of sight of them, I have several times known
a number of swallows to fly on board and cling almost like bats to
whatever projections they first happened to reach. Exhausted with
their long battle against the overmastering winds, faint with hunger
and thirst, they had at last reached a resting-place, only to find
it so unsuited to all their needs that nothing remained for them to
do but die. Earnest attempts were made to induce them to live, but
unsuccessfully; and as they never regained strength sufficient to
resume their weary journey, they provided a sumptuous meal for the
ship’s cat. Even had they been able to make a fresh start, it is hard
to imagine that the sense of direction which guides them in their
long flight from or to their winter haunts would have enabled them
to shape a course from such an utterly unknown base as a ship at sea
must necessarily be to them.
While making a passage up the China Sea vessels are often boarded
by strange bird visitors, and some of them may be induced to live
upon such scanty fare as can be found for them on shipboard. I once
witnessed with intense interest a gallant attempt made by a crane to
find a rest for her weary wings on board of an old barque in which
I was an able seaman. We were two days out from Hong-Kong, bound to
Manila, through a strong south-west monsoon. The direction of the
wind almost enabled us to lay our course, and therefore the “old
man” was cracking on, all the sail being set that she would stagger
under close-hauled. Being in ballast, she lay over at an angle that
would have alarmed anybody but a yachtsman; but she was a staunch,
weatherly old ship, and hung well to windward. It was my wheel from
six to eight in the evening, and as I wrestled with it in the attempt
to keep the old barky up to her work, I suddenly caught sight of the
gaunt form of a crane flapping her heavy wings in dogged fashion
to come up with us from to leeward, we making at the time about
eight knots an hour. After a long fight the brave bird succeeded
in reaching us, and coasted along the lee side, turning her long
neck anxiously from side to side as if searching for a favourable
spot whereon to alight. Just as she seemed to have made up her mind
to come inboard abaft the foresail, a gust of back-draught caught
her wide pinions and whirled her away to leeward, about a hundred
fathoms at one sweep, while it was evident that she had the utmost
difficulty in maintaining her balance. Another long struggle ensued
as the gloom of the coming night deepened, and the steady, strenuous
wind pressed us onward through the turbulent sea. The weary pilgrim
at last succeeded in fetching up to us again, and with a feeling
of the keenest satisfaction I saw her work her way to windward, as
if instinct warned her that in that way alone she would succeed in
reaching a place of rest. Backward and forward along our weather
side she sailed twice, searching with anxious eye the whole of our
decks, but fearing to trust herself thereon, where so many men were
apparently awaiting to entrap her. No, she would not venture, and
quite a pang of disappointment and sympathy shot through me as I
saw her drift away astern and renew her hopeless efforts to board
us on the lee side. At last she came up so closely that I could see
the laboured heaving of her breast muscles, and I declare that the
expression in her full, dark eyes was almost human in its pathos of
despair. She poised herself almost above the rail, the vessel gave
a great lee lurch, and down the slopes of the mizen came pouring an
eddy of baffled wind. It caught the doomed bird, whirled her over and
over as she fought vainly to regain her balance, and at last bore her
down so closely to the seething tumult beneath her that a breaking
wave lapped her up and she disappeared. All hands had witnessed her
brave battle with fate, and quite a buzz of sympathy went up for her
in her sad defeat.
That same evening one of the lads found a strange bird nestling
under one of the boats. None of us knew what it was, for none of us
ever remembered seeing so queer a creature before. Nor will this
be wondered at when I say that it was a goat-sucker, as I learned
long afterwards by seeing a plate of one in a Natural History I was
reading. But the curious speculations that its appearance gave rise
to in the fo’c’s’le were most amusing. The wide gape of its mouth,
so unexpected when it was shut, was a source of the greatest wonder,
while the downy fluff of its feathers made one man say it reminded
him of a “nowl” that a skipper of a ship he was in once caught and
kept alive for a long time as a pet.
Of the few visitors that board a ship in mid-ocean none are more
difficult to account for than butterflies. I have seen the common
white butterfly fluttering about a ship in the North Atlantic when
she was certainly over 500 miles from the nearest land. And in
various parts of the world butterflies and moths will suddenly appear
as if out of space, although the nearest land be several hundreds
of miles distant. I have heard the theory advanced that their
chrysalides must have been on board the ship, and they have just
been hatched out when seen. It may be so, although I think unlikely;
but yet it is hard to imagine that so fragile a creature, associated
only in the mind with sunny gardens or scented hillsides, could brave
successfully the stern rigour of a flight extending over several
hundred miles of sea. All that is certain about the matter is that
they _do_ visit the ships at such distances from land, and disappear
as if disheartened at the unsuitability of their environment. Lying
in Sant’ Ana, Mexico, once, loading mahogany, I witnessed the labours
of an unbidden guest that made me incline somewhat to the chrysalis
theory about the butterflies. Our anchorage was some three miles off
shore in the open roadstead, where the rafts of great mahogany logs
tossed and tumbled about ceaselessly alongside. They had all been a
long time in the water before they reached us, and were consequently
well coated with slime, which made them an exceedingly precarious
footing for the unfortunate slingsman, who was as often in the water
as he was on the raft. One evening as I lay in my bunk reading by
the light of a smuggled candle, I was much worried by a persistent
buzz that sounded very near, and far too loud to be the voice of
any mosquito that I had ever been unfortunate enough to be attended
by. Several times I looked for this noisy insect without success,
and at last gave up the task and went on deck, feeling sure there
wasn’t room in the bunk for the possessor of that voice and myself.
Next day after dinner I was again lying in my bunk, resting during
the remainder of the dinner hour, when to my amazement I saw what I
took to be an overgrown wasp or hornet suddenly alight upon a beam
overhead, walk into a corner, and begin the music that had so worried
me overnight. I watched him keenly, but could hardly make out his
little game, until he suddenly flew away. Then getting a light, for
the corner was rather dark, I discovered a row of snug apartments
much like acorn-cups, only deeper, all neatly cemented together, and
as smooth inside as a thimble. Presently along came Mr. Wasp, or
Hornet, or whatever he was, again, and set to work, while I watched
him as closely as I dared without giving him offence, noticing that
he carried his material in a little blob on his chest between his
fore legs. It looked like mud; but where could he get mud from? I
could swear there was none on board under that fierce sun, and I
couldn’t imagine him going six miles in five minutes, which he must
needs have done had he gone ashore for it. So I watched his flight as
well as I could, but it was two days before I discovered my gentleman
on one of the logs alongside, scraping up a supply of slime, and
skipping nimbly into the air each time the sea washed over his
alighting-place. That mystery was solved at any rate. I kept careful
watch over that row of dwellings thereafter, determined to suppress
the whole block at the first sign of a brood of wasps making their
appearance. None ever did, and at last I took down the cells with
the greatest care, finding them perfectly empty. So I came to the
conclusion that my ingenious and industrious guest had been building
for the love of the thing, or for amusement, or to keep his hand in,
or perhaps something warned him in time that the site he had selected
for his eligible row of residences was liable to sudden serious
vicissitudes of climate. At any rate, he abandoned them, much to my
comfort.
“THE WAY OF A SHIP”
Solomon had, among the many mighty qualities of mind which have
secured his high eminence as the wisest man of the world, an
attribute which does not always accompany abundant knowledge. He was
prompt to admit his limitations, as far as he knew them, frankly
and fully. And among them he confesses an inability to understand
“the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.” It may be urged that
there was little to wonder at in this, since the exigencies of his
position must have precluded his gaining more than the slightest
actual experience of seafaring. Yet it is marvellous that he should
have mentioned this thing, seemingly simple to a shore-dweller,
which is to all mariners a mystery past finding out. No matter how
long a sailor may have sailed the seas in one ship, or how deeply
he may have studied the ways of that ship under apparently all
combinations of wind and sea, he will never be found to assert
thoughtfully that he _knows_ her altogether. Much more, then, are
the myriad idiosyncrasies of all ships unknowable. Kipling has done
more, perhaps, than any other living writer to point out how certain
fabrics of man’s construction become invested with individuality of
an unmistakable kind, and of course so acute an observer could not
fail to notice how pre-eminently is this the case with ships.
Now, in what follows I seek as best I may to show, by a niggardly
handful of instances in my own experience, how the “personality” of
ships expresses itself, and how incomprehensible these manifestations
are to the men whose business it is to study them. Even before the
ship has quitted the place of her birth, yea, while she is yet
a-building, something of this may be noted. One man will study
deepest mathematical problems, will perfectly apply his formulæ,
and see them accurately embodied in steel or timber, so that by all
ordinary laws of cause and effect the resultant vessel should be a
marvel of speed, stability, and strength. And yet she is a failure.
She has all the vices that the sailor knows and dreads: crank, slow,
leewardly, hanging in stays, impossible to steer satisfactorily.
Every man who ever sails in her carries in his tenacious sea-memory,
to the day of his death, vengeful recollections of her perversities,
and often in the dog-watch holds forth to his shipmates in eloquent
denunciation of her manifold iniquities long after one would have
thought her very name would be forgotten. Another shipbuilder,
innocent of a scintilla of mathematics, impatient of diagrams, will
begin apparently without preparation, adding timber to timber, and
breast-hook to stem, until out of the dumb cavern of his mind a ship
is evolved, his inexpressible idea manifested in graceful yet massive
shape. And that ship will be all that the other is not. As if the
spirit of her builder had somehow been wrought into her frame, she
behaves with intelligence, and becomes the delight, the pride, of
those fortunate enough to sail in her.
Such a vessel it was once my good fortune to join in London for a
winter passage across to Nova Scotia. Up to that time my experience
had been confined to large vessels and long voyages, and it was
not without the stern compulsion of want that I shipped in the
_Wanderer_. She was a brigantine of two hundred and forty tons
register, built in some little out-of-the-way harbour in Nova Scotia
by one of the amphibious sailor-farmers of that ungenerous coast, in
just such a rule-of-thumb manner as I have spoken of. When I got on
board I pitied myself greatly. I felt cramped for room; I dreaded
the colossal waves of the Atlantic at that stormy winter season, in
what I considered to be a weakly built craft fit only for creeping
closely along-shore. We worked down the river, also a new departure
to me, always accustomed hitherto to be towed down to Beachy Head
by a strenuous tug. The delicate way in which she responded to all
the calls we made on her astonished our pilot, who was loud in his
praises of her “handiness,” one of the most praiseworthy qualities
a ship can have in a seaman’s eyes. Nevertheless, I still looked
anxiously forward to our meeting with the Atlantic, although day by
day, as we zigzagged down Channel, I felt more and more amazed at
the sympathy she showed with her crew. At last we emerged upon the
wide, open ocean, clear of even the idea of shelter from any land;
and as if to show conclusively how groundless were my fears, it blew
a bitter north-west gale. Never have I known such keen delight in
watching a vessel’s behaviour as I knew then. As if she were one of
the sea-people, such as the foam-like gulls or wheeling petrels,
next of kin to the waves themselves, she sported with the tumultuous
elements, her motion as easy as the sway of the seaweed and as light
as a bubble. And even when the strength of the storm-wind forbade
us to show more than the tiniest square of canvas, she answered the
touch of her helm, as sensitive to its gentle suasion as Hiawatha’s
Cheemaun to the voice of her master. Never a wave broke on deck,
although she had so little free-board that a bucket of water could
almost be dipped without the aid of a lanyard. That gale taught me a
lesson I have never been able to forget. It was, never to judge of
the seaworthy qualities of a ship by her appearance at anchor, but to
wait until she had an opportunity of telling me in her own language
what she could do.
Then came a spell of favourable weather--for the season, that
is--when we could carry plenty of sail and make good use of our time.
Another characteristic now revealed itself in her--her steerability.
Once steady on her course under all canvas, one turn of a spoke, or
at most of two spokes, of the wheel was sufficient to keep her so;
and for an hour I have walked back and forth before the wheel, with
both hands in my pockets, while she sped along at ten knots an hour,
as straight as an arrow in its flight. But when any sail was taken
off her, no matter which, she would no longer steer herself, as if
the just and perfect balance of her sail area had been disturbed;
but she was easier to steer then than any vessel I have ever known.
Lastly, a strong gale tested her powers of running before it, the
last touch of excellence in any ship being that she shall run safely
dead before a gale. During its height we _passed_ the Anchor liner
_California_, a huge steamship some twenty times our bulk. From end
to end of that mighty ship the frolicsome waves leaped and tumbled;
from every scupper and swinging-port spouted a briny flood. Every
sea, meeting her mass in its way, just climbed on board and spread
itself, so that she looked, as sailors say, like a half-tide rock.
From her towering hurricane-deck our little craft must have appeared
a forlorn little object--just a waif of the sea, existing only by a
succession of miracles. Yet even her muffled-up passengers, gazing
down upon the white dryness of our decks, looked as if they could
dimly understand that the comfort which was unmistakably absent from
their own wallowing monster was cosily present with us.