KIT BECOMES A SUPERCARGO.
To have another run out to Huntington when the _North Cape_
returned from Nassau, was something that Kit had been looking forward
to. Not for a week this time, for he could not expect to have a week’s
holiday at the end of every voyage; but for two nights and a day,
perhaps; long enough to see the familiar faces and the old place.
But three days, four days, passed, and he was still acting as steward;
and he could not ask for leave of absence while he had that work to
do. And whether he ought to ask for the place permanently or not, he
could hardly make up his mind. He felt the need, more than ever before,
of some one to go to for advice and counsel. Tom Haines was a good
friend, but Tom could hardly advise him in such a matter; and to apply
to the Captain was out of the question. So he did not know whether to
feel glad or sorry when on the fourth day Captain Griffith brought a
stranger into the cabin and introduced him as the new steward.
“You know the lay of the land in the pantry, Christopher,” he said,
“so you can show him where things are kept.”
And that was the end of his dream of becoming steward of the _North
Cape_!
“I think I am rather glad than sorry,” he soon said to himself; “but if
I had really wanted the place, this would really serve me just right
for not making up my mind about it. Chances don’t wait for a fellow
if he does not seize them when they offer. So I am still the cabin
boy, and will still have a chance to copy the manifests and go ashore
to check off cargo. And maybe this will give me a chance for my visit
home.”
That evening he walked the deck a little in the cold moonlight,
deliberating whether he should ask for a furlough or not; and he had
no sooner made up his mind to do it than he started for the Captain’s
room, having seen enough of the dangers of delay. But before he reached
the head of the companionway the Captain’s bell rang for him.
“Come in and shut the door, Christopher,” Captain Griffith said. “I
have something to say to you.” Then when the door was closed, he
continued, “How old did you tell me you are?”
“I am past seventeen now, sir,” Kit answered.
“You have done very good work for me, Christopher,” the Captain went
on, “but still I am going to take your name off the crew list. I shall
have to have a new cabin boy.”
“I hope not, sir!” Kit answered; “I have tried to give you
satisfaction.”
“You have done very well, I must admit,” the Captain said; “but you are
not exactly fitted to the place. You are too bright for a cabin boy,
and there is no better berth in the crew that I can give you.”
So saying, he took out the book in which he kept the crew list and the
wages account, ran his finger down to Kit’s name, and took up his pen.
“I see there is seven dollars and a half due you,” he went on, “but we
will call it ten dollars on account of the extra work you have been
doing. So now I erase your name, and you are no longer a member of the
crew;” and he ran his pen through Kit’s name with a big, broad mark.
For a moment Kit felt as if a flash of lightning had come into the
stateroom and struck him.
“I hope you will tell me what I have done, to be sent away, Captain,”
he said, in a voice that was not altogether steady.
“Well, sit down, Christopher, and I will tell you,” the Captain said,
swinging his chair around as Kit took a seat. “I could not well invite
my cabin boy to sit down here for a talk, but as you are my cabin boy
no longer, I can invite you now. I see you take it very much to heart,
so I will tell you in few words.”
It seemed to Kit at first as if a judge were about to pronounce
sentence upon him; but something in the Captain’s face gave him a
little hope.
“The _North Cape_ has been chartered by the big firm of Hunter &
Hitchley for a long voyage. She is to go first to Barbadoes with a
general cargo, there take on a cargo of sugar for London, and return
from London to New York with another general cargo. Such a voyage
requires a supercargo; and when the firm asked me to recommend one I
recommended Christopher Silburn. So it means that instead of being the
cabin boy you will be the supercargo as soon as you go over to Hunter &
Hitchley’s office and sign the contract.”
“Oh, Captain!” Kit exclaimed; he did not see how he could say anything
more at the moment.
“Your pay will be only eighteen dollars a month for the present, on
account of your youth; and that is small pay for supercargo; but it is
better than six dollars as a cabin boy.”
“I should think so, sir!” Kit declared; “and I don’t know how I can
ever thank you for such a kindness.”
“Never mind about that,” the Captain laughed. “And now, Mr. Supercargo,
you must leave me to my work, for I have a great deal to do to-night.
Do you think you could find me a good cabin boy to take your place?”
“Yes, sir, I think I could,” Kit answered; and he thought immediately
of Harry Leonard, of Huntington.
“Then I will leave that matter with you,” the Captain said, turning
again to his work.
Kit had to go on deck again for a little fresh air after this sudden
change in his fortunes, and in his rapid march to and fro he met Tom
Haines, and was on the point of telling him the news, but stopped
himself. “I must tell the folks at home first of all,” he thought; and
after a little chat with Tom about other matters, in which Kit hardly
knew what he was talking about, he went down to the cabin to write a
letter.
“I hoped to be with you in Huntington by this time,” he began, “but you
will have to put up with a ten-dollar note and a bit of good news.”
Then he told the story of his promotion as plainly as his excited mind
would permit, and added, “Don’t mind taking the money, for I have a
little more, and of course I will get an advance for a long voyage like
that. I shall need some new clothes; for what is good enough for a
cabin boy would hardly be decent for a supercargo.”
And at the end he sent a message for Vieve to take to Harry Leonard.
“If he’s not second mate of that bark yet, maybe he would like to be
cabin boy of the _North Cape_ at six dollars a month. I can get
him the place if he wants it, but he must come or let me know the very
day you get this, or it will be too late. And now for Barbadoes, folks,
and London! across the big ocean and back again! I was hoping for that,
you know. I’ll write again, of course, before we sail.”
Kit’s interview with Hunter & Hitchley next day was something of an
ordeal, for after the contract was signed they had endless instructions
to give him. A hundred things he must attend to with the greatest
care; and another hundred things he must avoid; and such and such firms
must be seen in New York, and so and so in Barbadoes, and in London.
“You are very young for this work,” Mr. Hitchley told him, “but Captain
Griffith has recommended you highly. We take you altogether on his
recommendation.”
“I will do my best to give satisfaction, sir,” Kit answered. He had
made the same promise on becoming a cabin boy, and kept it, and was
determined to keep it again.
His new position brought many minor changes that he had not had time to
think of yet. When the cabin dinner bell rang that day he did not quite
know what to do, so he wisely waited and did nothing, and in a few
minutes the Captain sent for him to come down to dinner.
“The supercargo eats with the Captain, Silburn,” Captain Griffith said.
“I neglected to tell you that. And he is always ‘Mister’ to the crew;
but for my part I shall call you Silburn, because you are so young.”
It was odd enough to be eating there with the Captain and first
officer at the table he had helped to wait on before, but he soon
grew accustomed to it, just as he did to being called Mr. Silburn by
everybody but the Captain. In a few days he appeared in a new suit of
dark blue cloth and a cap to match, with a single gilt button on each
side; a costume in which he looked as nautical and business-like as
any young supercargo could desire.
Doing the clerical work in getting together and loading the cargo was
mere routine business for him now, thanks to the experience he had had
in former voyages; and by the time the _North Cape_ was ready
for sea again he felt considerable confidence in himself in his new
position. The non-arrival of Harry Leonard made him a little uneasy,
for it would not do to fail to have a cabin boy ready on sailing day.
Harry had written that he would be on at once, but nearly a week had
passed. He arrived, however, just as Kit was thinking of looking for
another boy.
“Oh, say, what a swell you are, Kit!” he exclaimed, “in that uniform. I
must have one like that some day. But I’ll take a shy at your old place
first, for a voyage or two. That’s good enough to begin on, I suppose.
Say, what does a fellow get promoted to from there? Does supercargo
come next?”
“Not always,” Kit answered. He could not help seeing that Harry’s ideas
were up too near the top-masts, and would have to come down nearer the
keel before long. “But it’s very pleasant work in the cabin of the
_North Cape_, as long as you don’t give the Captain any occasion
to use his rope’s-end on you.” Kit did not believe much in teasing the
new boys on board, but Harry was so full of his own importance that he
could not resist the temptation to frighten him a little.
“No! say, does he though?” Harry asked, in alarm. “Does he whack you
very hard?”
“Oh, not so very!” Kit laughed; “anyhow, you don’t mind it much after
you get used to it. Come down to the cabin; he told me to bring you
down to him when you came.”
“This is the boy I spoke to you about, sir,” Kit said to the Captain.
“His name is Harry Leonard.”
“I tried to come as soon as I got Kit’s letter,” Harry broke in, “but I
had to have some clothes made.”
“What’s that!” Captain Griffith exclaimed, looking at the new boy
sharply. “If you mean the supercargo, his name is Mr. Silburn. Don’t
forget that. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Harry answered quite meekly; and Kit thought that a good
time for him to withdraw, when the interesting process of training a
willing but conceited boy was beginning.
There was a large streak of good nature in Harry, however, as well as a
stock of humor; and he felt that he had wiped out this rebuff when he
went up to Kit on deck on the third day out, and, touching his hat very
formally, said:--
“Mr. Silburn, the Captain wishes to see you below, sir, if you please;”
then drew his left eye down into a wink that was big enough for a dozen
winks, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and strutted off whistling
“Yankee Doodle.”
Every day Kit was busy for some hours with his manifests, which he
worked at in the afternoons now instead of the evenings. And it was
fortunate for him that he wasted no time at the start; for on the
eighth day, when they were expecting every moment to sight Sombrero
Key, the first land since leaving New York, they ran into a little
tropical hurricane that tossed up a tremendous sea, and kept Captain
Griffith on the bridge for nearly ten hours without rest. He did not
stop his writing when the confusion on deck told him that they were
preparing the ship for rough weather; but in a few minutes his head
began to ache, and he closed his eyes to rest them. Then a chilly
feeling ran down the back of his neck; he felt as if he must have taken
a mixture of chicken salad, mince pie, ice cream, and soda water for
dinner, and began to wonder whether a siege of illness was coming on.
A minute later, however, Harry Leonard ran out of the pantry, holding
both hands against his stomach.
“Oh, Kit!” he cried, “or Mr. Silburn, or Supercargo, or whatever your
blessed name is, I’m so sick! oh, I wish you’d let me stay at home!”
and he threw himself on one of the sofas and lay moaning.
That told Kit what was the matter with him; it was no tropical fever
coming on, but a plain case of sea-sickness! On his third voyage, when
he had risen to be a supercargo, he was desperately seasick for the
first time, simply because it was the first really rough weather he had
encountered.
The heavy rolling and pitching of the ship in that howling wind and
tremendous sea, the incessant rattling and breaking of dishes in the
pantry, the creaking of joiner work, the shouting of orders on deck,
the men running to and fro to execute them, the whir and jar of the
screw when a lunge of the bow raised it out of the water, combined to
give Kit his first real idea of bad weather at sea. He went on deck,
and the fresh air made him feel better; and he exercised his privilege
as supercargo and went up on the bridge, where he instantly saw by the
anxious faces of the Captain and first officer that they were worried.
He knew that the storm alone was not sufficient to put the ship in
danger; but they were in the neighborhood of Sombrero and other small
islands of that group, night was coming on, and as there was no sun
that day for an observation they were not sure of their position, and
the outlook was not encouraging.
No supper was prepared in the cabin that evening, for neither the
Captain nor his mate had time to eat; but sandwiches and hot coffee
were put on the table; and when the Captain came down to swallow a cup
of coffee in haste he merely shook his head in reply to Kit’s questions.
Late in the evening Harry still lay groaning on the sofa, and Kit was
in and out, for neither of the boys felt inclined to turn in. About
eleven o’clock a terrible pounding began on deck. It sounded almost as
if one of the iron masts had fallen and was rolling about the deck.
First there was a thumping from port to starboard that seemed enough
to crush in the deck, followed by a moment of quiet, and then, as the
ship rolled again, the rolling went from starboard to port. Harry
sprang up in alarm.
“Kit, we’re goners!” he exclaimed; “the ship’s going down!”
“I don’t believe it,” Kit answered, “but something has carried away.”
They both ran for the companionway and scrambled on deck, where the
terrific wind almost tore them off their feet. Everything was dark as
pitch except for the light of a solitary lantern, and by that faint
light they saw that in the heavy rolling one of the winches had broken
loose and was rolling from side to side of the deck, to the imminent
danger of both deck and rail; and men were trying to lasso it with
heavy ropes, for no one could approach it without risking his life.
While they watched, the winch was caught and secured, and they returned
to the cabin.
About two o’clock Captain Griffith came down with the relieved look of
a man who had just rid himself of an aching tooth. “We’re all right,”
he said, as the steward brought him another cup of coffee. “We’ve just
sighted Sombrero light, so we’ll not visit Davy Jones’s locker just
yet. It’s time for you to turn in, Henry.”
Harry started off for his berth, and Kit and the Captain had a little
chat over their coffee.
“I don’t like being off a rocky coast on a bad night,” the Captain
said. “The _North Cape_ is good for any kind of weather, but the
ship has not been built yet that will stand a night’s pounding on the
rocks. Now by afternoon we should be off St. Kitts, and from that
all the way down to Barbadoes you will see some of the finest sights
you ever saw in your life. I have seen the Alps and most of the best
scenery in Europe, but never anything to equal these beautiful islands
we will soon pass--St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Martinique, Dominica,
and several more. Most of them are mountain peaks rising from the sea
and touching the clouds. Barbadoes itself is flat and uninteresting,
except for being the most thickly populated bit of land on the globe.
It contains only about forty square miles, and has forty thousand
inhabitants, or a thousand to a square mile, mostly negroes. But you
will soon see for yourself. I feel quite ready for a sleep. Good-night,
Silburn.”
“Good-night, sir,” Kit answered; and he made his way across the
unsteady cabin by holding on to the backs of seats, and was soon in his
own berth.
By the middle of the afternoon the young supercargo learned another of
the advantages of being in his new position. They were then skirting
the coast of the British island of St. Kitts, having left the storm and
the worst of the rough sea in their wake. Instead of taking a hurried
look at the shore over the rail, with both ears open for the Captain’s
bell, as the cabin boy must generally do, he could go up on the bridge
and take a good look through the Captain’s glasses; and he was soon
convinced that Captain Griffith had not at all exaggerated the beauty
of the scenery. He was used to high hills, for Huntington is surrounded
by them, but not hills like these.
“To think of a mountain coming right up out of the water,” he said to
himself, “and going on up and up till the peak is in the clouds, and
looking as green and smooth as the grass in a park--though I know it’s
not grass, for the Captain says it is fields of sugarcane below, and
trees toward the top. And the way those clouds gather around the peak!
It seems to catch them as they float by, and they grow thicker and
blacker every minute till there is more water than they can hold, and
it comes down without warning in a deluge of rain, and then the sun
shines again! I never saw anything like it.”
Then the next day he was equally enthusiastic over the French island
of Martinique, which is much larger and has many peaks instead of a
single one; and soon afterward the British Dominica, with scarcely
any inhabitants in its high mountains but the fragments of the
once-powerful race of Caribs, who live now by making baskets so tight
that they will hold water and are used for trunks. As they passed
the little port of Roseau, the capital of Dominica, they saw a large
steamer lying at anchor, which Kit learned was the New York mail
steamer the _Trinidad_, bound like themselves for Barbadoes; and
within the next hour she was under way and following in their wake.
In a longer race the _North Cape_ would have had little chance
against the speedier _Trinidad_; but the distance from Dominica
to the roadstead off Bridgetown, Barbadoes, is so small that the
two vessels dropped anchor there almost at the same moment, the
_North Cape_ as near to the breakwater as safety allowed, and the
_Trinidad_ farther out. As the day was about closing, Captain
Griffith was in no hurry to enter his ship at the Custom House, for
in any case he could not begin unloading until the next day; but it
was different with the other steamer, which had passengers on board
who were anxious to land. So it happened that the boat in which
Kit was set ashore to pay an early visit to his agent, reached the
landing-steps almost at the same moment as the boat that carried the
_Trinidad’s_ purser.
Kit was first up the steps, followed by the well-fed purser, who,
although not a tall man, weighed something over two hundred pounds.
“Just my luck!” the fat purser panted, as he looked about the large
open square. “If I--huh, ahuh, huh--if I didn’t want a--huh, huh--want
a carriage, the square would be full of them; but when I want one in
a--ah!--in a hurry, there’s none here. Here it’s four minutes to six;
and how’s a man of my--huh, huh--of my size going to get to the Custom
House before they close at six o’clock, I’d like to know!”
“Maybe I can be of use to you, sir,” Kit said, stepping up to him. “I
am supercargo of the _North Cape_, and I’m a pretty good runner.
I’ll take your papers up to the Custom House for you if you like.”
“Oh, thank you,” the purser panted, looking very much relieved. “I’ll
be a thousand times obliged to you. Here they are, then, all ready; all
you have to do is to shove them under the clerk’s nose.”
Kit made a hurried inquiry about the direction of the Custom House and
started on a run, and had the satisfaction of delivering the papers
just half a minute before business closed for the day. He next visited
his agent and arranged for lighters in the morning; and an hour later
he met the _Trinidad’s_ purser again, not quite so short-breathed
and red in the face this time.
“Here we are again, supercargo!” he exclaimed, seizing Kit’s hand. He
had a very jolly manner, and seemed as free with Kit as if they had
been acquainted for years. “You can’t miss anybody in this hole of a
place. They call it a town, but I call it a hole. I’m just going in
here to get something to cool me off, and I want you to come along.”
“I’m just as much obliged,” Kit answered; “but I suppose you mean
something to drink, and I never drink anything.”
“I suppose you’ve made a mistake, for the first time in your life,”
the purser rejoined, with a laugh that shook him all over. “I mean
something to eat; a big heaped-up plate of the coldest ice cream this
side of New York. We’re right in front of the ice-house, where I always
eat a lot of ice cream for the fun of hearing it sizzle as it goes
down. By the way, my name’s Clark; what’s yours?”
“Silburn,” Kit replied. “But the ice-house? This looks like a store.”
“So it is,” said the purser, as they climbed the stairs to a big
restaurant where scores of people were eating. “It’s store, restaurant,
ice-house, furniture-shop, a dozen things combined. I thought everybody
knew the Bridgetown ice-house. Ice is a government monopoly here, you
know, and these fellows buy the privilege of selling all that is used
on the island. Hello here, Snowflake” (to one of the black waiters; he
seemed to know every one in the place), “bring us two platters of your
best ice cream; platters, do you hear? Not saucers, or plates, but the
biggest platters you have.”
Kit found the ice cream excellent, and the purser a very entertaining
companion. He was full of good sea-stories, and knew how to tell them
in an interesting way. And he wanted to know all about the young
supercargo.
“You’re very young for such a place,” he said; “at your age I was
sweeping the cabin and brushing the Captain’s clothes.”
“So was I,” Kit laughed, “until this voyage;” and he had to tell how he
became a supercargo, after describing his rescue by Captain Griffith
from a Brooklyn policeman.
“Well, you’ll make your way, if you take care of yourself,” Mr. Clark
said, after Kit had finished his story and his ice cream together.
“Just you let drink alone and don’t get anything into your pockets
that belongs to some other fellow. It’s rum that spoils a good many
young fellows at sea, and you can’t keep too far away from it. I know
appearances are rather against me” (and his fat sides shook again);
“they tell me a man with my red face has no business to give temperance
lectures; but to tell the truth, I never drink any liquor, though I’ll
own up to being fond of good eating. Here, Snowflake, two more platters
of ice cream; and don’t stop to warm it.”
Kit soon found that notwithstanding his free-and easy manner and his
almost continual laughter, his new companion was a man of great sense
and good judgment, thoroughly acquainted with the work of both purser
and supercargo.
“I’m glad we ran across each other,” Mr. Clark said, as he shook the
young supercargo’s hand. “We’ll meet again sometime, certain sure.
Don’t forget me; and remember that when you need a friend you’ll always
find one in the purser of the _Trinidad_.”
That was another of the advantages of being a supercargo; he could
make friends and associate with people who would not have paid much
attention to a cabin boy. But he had more things to learn before
the day was over; for when he returned to the ship he found Captain
Griffith preparing to go ashore, and the Captain invited him to go
along and meet some of the merchants with whom he would have to do
business. They went to the Mercantile Club, where he found the latest
English and American newspapers, and news telegrams posted from London
and New York, and met some of the principal business men of Bridgetown,
and several large sugar planters who went “in to town” in the evenings
to hear what was going on in the big outside world. The conversation
was all about business and the price of sugar and the state of the
crops and the price of freights; and it did not take him long to
realize that with his new associations he was no longer a boy, but a
young man of affairs who must keep his eyes and ears open and inform
himself about a great many things that he had paid no attention to
before.
For nearly a week the young supercargo was so busy with getting his
cargo ashore and delivered that he had no further chance of seeing the
city or the island; but when it came to loading he had more time to
himself. The sugar came in slowly, and there were days when there was
not enough on the wharf to keep the lighters busy. On such days he had
several times to drive out to large plantations to hurry the work, and
the planters always treated him with the greatest hospitality. Every
night he had some new entry to make in the journal that he began to
keep when he became a supercargo--a journal that he refused to call
a diary, because he had no intention of writing in it regularly, but
only when he had something worth writing. Captain Griffith found
the little book lying on his desk one day and wrote on the fly-leaf,
“Kit Silburn, His Log”; and after that it was always known as “The
Supercargo’s Log.” Some of his entries tell in very few words the story
of part of his first long voyage.
“Feb. 12.--Still at Bridgetown, Barbadoes. Took in 146 hogsheads of
sugar to-day, with 12 lighters. The sugar is all done up in hogsheads,
weighing something over a ton each. It is black-looking stuff as it
comes from the mills, and has a sweet, sickish smell. The colored
people like to lie on the wharf in the sun and lick up the molasses
that leaks out of the casks. We have now 821 hogsheads on board.
“Feb. 13.--Still at Bridgetown. No lighters at work to-day, as there
was no sugar ready. Went out to three plantations to hurry things. At
the Sea View plantation Mr. Outerbridge took me all over the place, and
made me stay to dinner. (P.S. He has a beautiful young daughter, Miss
Blanche, and after dinner we had a pony race. She beat me.) They say
this sun would kill a white man in three months if he worked in the
cane-fields, but it does not hurt the negroes. Saw how they squeeze out
the cane-juice between big rollers, and then boil it down into sugar.
The planters promised me 150 hogsheads by to-morrow.
“Feb. 14.--Got 122 hogsheads sugar on board, and plenty promised for
to-morrow. Very curious thing happened to me to-day. When I came
aboard ship to supper, found a letter for me, though no mail steamer
in. Opened it, and found a handsome valentine. Can’t imagine who could
have sent it.
“Feb. 15.--Only 30 hogsheads loaded to-day, on account of heavy rain.
“Feb. 20.--Loaded 82 hogsheads. Have now 1455 on board. We hope to sail
for London on Saturday. Miss Blanche Outerbridge has invited me to a
lawn party at their plantation to-morrow. Half afraid to go, for never
was at a lawn party in my life.
“Feb. 21.--No sugar to-day. Went to the lawn party, and had splendid
time. The Governor was there, and Mr. Outerbridge introduced me to him.
“Feb. 23.--Loaded 160 hogsheads to-day. Sugar coming with a rush now.
“Feb. 25.--Sailed for London at two o’clock this afternoon, with 2415
hogsheads of sugar, making about $120,000 worth of cargo that I have to
look after. Must keep my eyes open. Will see no more land now till we
sight the Scilly Islands, off the English coast.
“March 15.--Expect to sight the Scillys to-morrow morning. Have had a
fairly good voyage so far, with some bad weather, but no hard gales. A
long stretch of water, this, from Barbadoes to England; but the seas
are no higher in the middle than along the coast. Cargo in good order.”