"Hullo, steady there--belay that!" exclaimed Captain Billings, half-way
up the poop ladder, which he was ascending hastily, two steps at a time,
"Mr--Mr Macdougall--Martin Leigh! What's this disgraceful row about?"
I had quickly picked up a handspike when I saw that I had missed my aim
with the snatch-block, while my antagonist--who, to do him justice, had
plenty of pluck, and had only been startled for the moment by the heavy
missile hurtling through the air close to his projecting nose--was
advancing to attack me again with his fists clenched, a savage look the
while on his face, as if he meant to settle me this time; but, on this
interruption from the skipper, we both relinquished our hostile
attitudes, Mr Macdougall slinking towards the binnacle, as if
innocently engaged in studying the bearings of the compass there, and I
dropping the handspike incontinently.
There was a ringing tone of command in the skipper's voice which meant
that he intended to be obeyed; but mixed with this, beyond a slight
suspicion of surprise at the unexpected scene which met his gaze, there
was a good deal of subdued irritation, which really was not to be
wondered at.
He had been having an afternoon nap in his cabin, which was situated
immediately below the deck where the mate and I had been rehearsing the
little drama I have just detailed; and the noise we had made with "the
movements of the piece," to speak theatrically, having very
unceremoniously disturbed his slumbers before the period he generally
allowed himself for his "forty winks" had expired, his temper was not
sweetened thereby beforehand, only just needing the unseemly _fracas_
which he noticed on coming on the poop to send it up to fever-heat.
I had never seen Captain Billings so angry since I had been on board the
_Esmeralda_; his blue eyes fairly flashed forth fire!
He took no notice of me at first, advancing towards the chief mate.
"Mr Macdougall," said he, sharply, "I call upon you for an explanation
of this--this--discreditable affair!"
"Yon dratted loon, Capting, sought me life!" replied the other, glibly.
"He hove a snatch-block at me, and takkin' the pairt of my ain defeence
I was gangin' to poonish him a wee when ye came on deck."
"And did you give him no occasion for behaving so insubordinately, sir?"
asked the skipper, looking Mr Macdougall straight in the face with a
piercing glance, as if defying him to answer him untruthfully.
But the mate was too old a hand at "spinning a yarn," as sailors term
dealing in fictitious statements. He could utter a falsehood without
winking once!
"Nae, sir," said he, as cool as a cucumber, making no reference to the
fact of his having twice knocked me down before I retaliated on him, "I
did naething to the loon, naething at a'! I only joost reprovit him a
wee for his bad language and inseelance, ye ken, an' he oops wi' yon
block an' heaves at me puir head. It's joost a marcy o' Proveedence he
did nae knockit me brains oot!"
Fortunately for the Scotsman, his good or bad angel was in the ascendant
at this moment, substantiating this incomplete account he gave as to
what had happened. As luck would have it, too, Captain Billings had
only got up the poop ladder in time to take heed of the latter part of
the fray, and thus the evidence of his own eyesight corroborated
apparently the mate's assertion, that I had made a most unjustifiable
assault on him.
Greatly incensed, therefore, he now turned on me.
"I saw the assault myself, Mr Macdougall; so I don't merely take your
word alone for it. What have you got to say, Leigh, in excuse for your
outrageous behaviour? It's--it's scandalous; I could thrash you
myself!"
My pride, however, was roused by the fact of his having accepted the
mate's explanation without asking me for any explanation first, and so
condemning me unheard; consequently, without taking into consideration
the thought that it was only proper that Captain Billings should support
the authority of his chief officer unhesitatingly, I answered him rather
pertly, only feeling my own wrong, and not considering what was the
skipper's obvious duty.
"If you believe Mr Macdougall," I replied, in a rude, off-hand way,
"there's nothing for me to say."
"You ungrateful young hound!" cried out the skipper, who, if angry
before, was now as mad as a hatter at my impudence. "That's the thanks
I get, is it, for favouring you and promoting you out of your station!
Listen; consider yourself disrated from this instant--do you hear?"
"Yes, I hear, Captain Billings," said I, in a sullen voice.
"Then, heed sharply, my lad," he retorted. "Get off this deck and go
forward. Your place, henceforth, sir, will be in the fo'c's'le, along
with the other hands; and the sooner you lug that chest of yours out of
the spare bunk I gave you amidships, the better!"
This was a terrible downfall; but, of course, there was no use my
arguing against the skipper's decision, the master of a merchant ship
being lord paramount on board his own vessel, and having the power to
make and unmake his officers, like a nautical Warwick, the whilom
creator of kings!
So, much chapfallen, I withdrew from the poop; and, abandoning all my
dignities as acting second mate and first-class apprentice, proceeded to
make myself at home with the crew forward--much against the grain, I
confess, although the men received me cordially, and took my part, not
only from their liking for me personally, but from their hatred of the
chief mate as well.
Mr Macdougall, I could plainly see, was cock-a-hoop at my disgrace,
from the malicious grin on his freckled face.
His triumph, however, was not very long-lived.
On making me relinquish my functions on the quarter-deck, the skipper
had sent for Jorrocks, telling him that he would have to take charge of
Mr Ohlsen's watch in my place.
"But I doesn't know nothing o' navigation, Cap'," said the boatswain,
who felt keenly my abasement, and was loth to "step into my shoes," as
it were.
"Oh, never mind that," replied the skipper. "Mr Macdougall will give
you the courses to steer; and, if anything particular happens--which I
don't expect, with the wind we have now and us in the open sea--why, you
can call me."
"Aye, aye, sir," answered Jorrocks, being thus foiled in his attempt at
getting me reinstated, which he thought might have been the case on his
pleading his inability to con the ship; and so, when Macdougall went
below with the starboard watch at eight bells in the afternoon, the
boatswain took charge of the deck with the relief hands--the mate
telling him still to keep to the same west-sou'-west course which I had
suggested to Mr Macdougall, a couple of hours or so before, should be
altered to a more southerly one, and the controversy about which had
caused that "little unpleasantness" between us, which had terminated so
disastrously for myself.
To explain this matter properly, I should mention that, when, on our
thirteenth day out, after the cessation of the north-westerly gale that
had driven us to the south of the Canaries, Captain Billings discovered
that we were so near in to the African coast, in taking advantage of the
wind off the land he had perhaps committed an error of judgment in
making an attempt to recover our lost westing, instead of pursuing a
course more directly to the southwards; for, in the early part of the
northern summer, the Equatorial Current begins to run with greater
rapidity towards the west, causing vessels to lose much of their true
direction, and the most experienced navigators recommend crossing this
stream at right angles, if possible, so as to get beyond its influence
as speedily as circumstances will permit, at least at that time of year,
when an easterly passage of the equator is advisable.
However, the skipper acted for the best, wishing to get well to the
windward of Cape Blanco and the contrary currents and variable breezes
generally encountered in that vicinity; and so, the _Esmeralda_ had
therefore continued on a diagonal course across the equatorial stream
even after we had picked up the regular north-east Trades, until we had
reached the meridian of 25 degrees West, when we had run as far south as
8 degrees 15 minutes North.
Here, we lost the Trades that had blown us so far on our route, entering
into the second great belt of calms met with in the Atlantic to perplex
the mariner when essaying to pass either to the north or south of the
equator--a zone of torpidity, known popularly under the name of the
"Doldrums," which was originally derived most probably from the old
Portuguese phrase _dolorio_, "tormenting."
This belt of calms separates the two wind zones of the north-east and
south-west Trades, which meeting here, their opposing forces are
neutralised, and the air they bring with them from the colder regions of
the north and south, becoming rarified by the heat of the equator,
passes up into the higher atmosphere, producing a stagnation of the wind
currents; and hence ensue calms that vary in duration according to the
position of the sun, whether north or south of the Line, calms that are
sometimes accompanied by tremendous rain showers, and sometimes varied
with frequent squalls and thunder and lightning, followed sometimes by
thick fogs hanging on the surface of the water.
The belt of the Doldrums has an average width of some six degrees, or
about five hundred miles of latitude, roughly speaking; and in crossing
it we were not much more favoured than most navigators, having to knock
about for seven days under a sweltering tropical sun--taking advantage
of whatever little breeze we could get that aided our progress to the
equator, until we emerged from the retarding influence of this zone of
inactivity, some three degrees to the northward of the Line, when we
fortunately succeeded in sailing into the south-east Trades almost
before we expected.
We had, however, lost some little way eastwards through the sweep of the
Guinea current, a stream which seems strangely enough to take its rise
in the middle of the ocean, and makes a sudden set thence towards the
Bight of Benin; so, Captain Billings, who appeared to be prejudiced on
the subject of the western passage of the equator, instead of now trying
again to shape a true south course towards our point of destination,
Cape Horn, directed a parallel so as to fetch the Brazilian coast. The
ship, consequently, after leaving the Doldrums was steered south-west
and by west, a direction which, if preserved, would have run us on in a
straight line to the Rocas, a dangerous reef stretching out into the sea
off the westward peak of the island of Fernando Noronha, some eighty-
four miles out from the mainland to the northward of Cape Saint Roque.
This was on our thirtieth day out from the Bristol Channel, two days
before the first mate and I had come to loggerheads; and since then the
vessel had kept on in the same course, closing with the equator each
hour under the steady south-easterly breeze which we had with us, on the
port tack, and speeding even more rapidly to the west than our skipper
imagined--for, through the set of some current to the northward and
westwards, our dead reckoning showed a wide discrepancy from the
position of the ship by observation, as I made it on the day of the
row--when, as I've stated, the skipper, feeling indisposed, had left me
to take the sun, knowing that the mate would check my calculations.
But, as things turned out, the altercation which occurred completely
took off the attention of Captain Billings from the subject; and, as I
left the chart which I had been using on the top of the cabin sky-light
when he ordered me to quit the poop without informing him of the serious
error I had discovered, and Mr Macdougall, wise in his own conceit and
confident that he and the dead reckoning were both right, did not hint
of the ship's course being wrong, on we went, with all our canvas
spread, racing into the teeth of a danger which the skipper never dreamt
of our being near.
The weather was now beautifully fine, the breeze tempering the heat of
the sun, and flying fish and albicore playing around the vessel as we
neared the equator; while, occasionally, a school of whales would spout
to windward, or a shoal of porpoises, having a game of high jinks as
they leaped out of the water in their graceful curves one after the
other, would cross our bows backwards and forwards in sport, apparently
mocking our comparatively slow progress through the sea in contrast to
their own rapid and graceful movements, and showing how easily they
could outstrip us when they so pleased.
I was standing on the fo'c's'le head, sadly looking out over the bows,
while the light lasted, at the moving panorama of Nature around me; the
dancing waves curled up on either side of the catheads as the vessel
plunged her forefoot down, and streaming aft in a long wake to leeward;
the cloudless sky above; the vast solitary expanse of the horizon; the
leaping fish and spouting whales--keenly alive to everything and yet my
mind full of all my grievances, being especially wrathful with the
skipper for accepting Mr Macdougall's statement against me, without
first allowing me to utter a word in my own defence.
It was worse than tyranny, I thought, this arbitrary conduct in
disrating me unjustly!
I remained here till I heard one bell strike soon after the second dog-
watch commenced; for I was waiting for Jorrocks to be relieved, as I
wished to speak to him in order to get him to put in a word for me with
Captain Billings, when he had calmed down and could listen to reason.
While I was waiting, the evening closed in, the sun having not long set;
for, in the tropics, night succeeds day with startling rapidity, there
being no twilight to temper the transition between bright sunshine and
darkness--the one ensuing almost immediately after the other without any
"toning down," as painters express it, to lessen the effect of the
change.
Hearing, as I fancied, a whale spouting nearer than usual--these
monsters of the deep making a noise as they eject the water through the
spout-holes on top of their heads in a fountain of spray, after drawing
it with their gills, like surf breaking on a distant shore--the sound
somehow or other took back my thoughts to the chart, and I suddenly
remembered what I had told the mate about the danger of the ship
approaching the Islets of Saint Paul.
These are a cluster of rocks, called by the early Portuguese navigators
the Penedo de Saint Pedro, lying almost in mid-ocean, close to the
equator, in latitude zero degrees 55 minutes 30 seconds North, and
longitude 29 degrees 22 minutes West; and, from the water being beyond
soundings in their immediate neighbourhood, they must form the peak of
some submarine mountain range. They are only about sixty feet or so in
height clear above the level of the sea; and, consequently, being only
visible at a comparatively short distance off--not more than a couple of
leagues at the outside, even in broad daylight--and situated as the
shoal is in the direct track of the trade wind, the rocks form a source
of great peril to mariners traversing their bearings, especially at
night time, nothing existing to give warning of their proximity until a
vessel may be right on to them, as it were.
Thinking of all this, which I had read in the "Sailing Directions for
the North Atlantic," a book which the skipper had lent me to study, in
order to perfect me in navigation, I felt a sudden fear lest the ship
should be wrecked on the reef, making up my mind to tell Jorrocks about
the error I had discovered in our position on the chart, which I
determined to ask him to fetch for me, so as to show it to Captain
Billings.
Jorrocks, however, was a long time coming forwards after being relieved
from charge of the deck by Mr Macdougall, remaining some little time
talking to him on the poop; so that it was nearly two bells, and quite
dusky, when he made his way to where I was standing looking out for him,
I having asked one of the hands to say that I wanted to speak with him.
"Well, Mister Leigh," he said, on making his appearance, "here I am at
last; better late nor never, as the old folks say! But that blessed
Scotchman would have a long yarn with me, about goodness knows what!"
"I'm glad you've come," I replied; and then I went on to tell him about
my fears of peril to the ship from our vicinity to the Rocks of Saint
Paul, which I was certain we were approaching every mile we ran further
west.
But the boatswain was almost as incredulous of our being near the shoal
as the first mate had been in the afternoon.
"Bless you, Mister Leigh, we're miles to windward of that place," said
he with a laugh. "But it's allers the way with your young navigators as
is full chock up to the bung with book larnin' and hasn't had no real
'sperience o' the sea yet! They allers fancy all sorts o' dangers that
your old seamen who've been a v'yage or two never thinks o' reckonin'
on!"
However, the good-natured fellow, seeing how earnest I was in the
matter, promised to take the chart to the skipper, who was lying down in
his cabin again, feeling far from well of late, as, indeed, his looks
lately showed--and we were all afraid he had caught the same sort of low
fever like Mr Ohlsen, the second mate.
"An; I'll tell him as mildly as I can, Mister Leigh, of this here mare's
nest as you've found out, so as not to make him angry with you again."
"Thank you, Jorrocks," I replied heartily; but, just at that moment,
hearing the whales making a noise quite close to the ship's side as I
thought--although I could not see them within the limited circle of
dusky light to which the surrounding gloom narrowed my vision, I said,
"What a row those whales are making, are they not? They're quite near,
and yet, although it's not dark enough yet to hide them from our gaze,
there's not a trace of one in sight!"
Jorrocks cocked his head on one side and listened; but in an instant
there was a striking alteration in the quizzical look with which he had
at first regarded me, under the evident idea that I had discovered
another "mare's nest."
"By Jingo, Mister Leigh, you're right after all!" he exclaimed, his face
turning pale as if with sudden fright.
"What, do you think we're running on the rocks I spoke about?" I asked,
anxiously.
"Aye, not a doubt of it," he answered, in the same quick way, bending
his head again to listen over the side. "Either them identical ones, or
else we're on the Rocas off the Brazilian coast."
In another moment, however, if in doubt previously, his suspicions were
apparently confirmed; for, springing up again, and rushing aft as if he
were suddenly possessed, Jorrocks roared out at the pitch of his voice--
the words ringing like a trumpet note through the ship--
"Breakers ahead on the weather bow! Hard up with the helm--hard!"