This is a yarn of the days when the clipper sailing-ship was at the
zenith of her glory and renown; when she was the recognised medium for
the transport of passengers--ay, and, very frequently, of mails between
Great Britain and the Colonies; and when steamers were, comparatively
speaking, rare objects on the high seas. True, a few of the great
steamship lines, such as the Cunard and the Peninsular and Oriental,
were already in existence; but their fleets were only just beginning to
compete, and with but a very limited measure of success, against the
superb specimens of marine architecture owned by the Black Ball and
other famous lines of sailing clippers. For the Suez Canal had not yet
been dug, and--apart from the overland journeys to India--travellers
bound to the East were compelled to go south-about round the Cape of
Good Hope, whether they journeyed by steamer or by sailing-ship; and it
was no very uncommon thing for the latter to beat the former on the
passage to India, China, or Australia. Moreover, the marine steam
engine was, at that period, a very expensive piece of machinery to
operate, developing only a very moderate amount of power upon an
exceedingly heavy consumption of coal; hence it was only the nabobs who
could afford to indulge in the then costly luxury of ocean travel by
steam.
The occurrence which I regard as the starting-point of my extraordinary
yarn happened on the 27th day of October, in the year of grace 18--; the
_Salamis_--which was the ship in which it originated--being, at noon of
that day, in latitude 30 degrees south, and longitude 23 degrees west,
or thereabout; thirty days out from London, on a voyage to Melbourne.
The _Salamis_, I may explain, was a full-rigged clipper ship of 1497
tons register, classed 100 A 1; being one of the crack vessels of the
celebrated Gold Star Line, outward bound to Melbourne, as I have said,
with a full complement of saloon and steerage passengers, and a general
cargo that, while it filled her to the hatches, was so largely composed
of light merchandise that it only sank her in the water to her very
finest sailing trim; of which circumstance Captain Martin, her
commander, was taking the fullest possible advantage, by "carrying on"
day and night, in the hope of making a record passage. I, Philip
Troubridge, was one of her midshipman-apprentices, of whom she carried
six, and I was seventeen years of age on the day when the occurrence
happened which I have alluded to above, and which I will now relate.
The _Salamis_ carried three mates: chief, second, and third; and the
accident happened in the first watch, when Mr Moore, the second mate,
had charge of the deck. The wind was out from about nor'-nor'-west, and
had been blowing very fresh all day, notwithstanding which the ship was
under all three royals, and fore and main topgallant studdingsails, her
course being south-east. There was a heavy and steep sea following the
ship on her port quarter, which not only made her motions exceedingly
uneasy, but also caused her to yaw wildly from time to time, despite the
utmost efforts of two men at the wheel to keep her true to her course.
It was during one of these wild sheers that the main topgallant
studdingsail-boom snapped short off by the boom-iron; and there was
immediately a tremendous hullabaloo aloft of madly slatting canvas and
threshing boom, as the studdingsail flapped furiously in the freshening
breeze, momentarily threatening to spring the topgallant yard, if,
indeed, it did not whip the topgallant-mast out of the ship. Then
something fouled aloft, rendering it impossible to take in the sail;
and, the skipper being on deck and manifesting some impatience at what
he conceived to be the clumsiness of the men who had gone up on the
topsail yard, Mr Moore, the second mate, sprang into the main rigging
and went aloft to lend a hand. Just precisely what happened nobody ever
knew; one of the men aloft said that the broken boom, in its wild
threshing, struck the mate and knocked him off the yard; but, be that as
it may, one thing certain is, that the poor fellow suddenly went
whirling down, and, without a cry, fell into the boiling smother raised
by the bow wave, and was never seen again! I happened to be on the poop
at the moment, and, despite the darkness, saw the falling body of the
mate just as it flashed down into the water, and guessed what had
happened even before the thrilling cry of "Man overboard!" came pealing-
down from aloft. I therefore made a dash for one of the lifebuoys that
were stopped to the poop rail, cut it adrift, and hove it, as nearly as
I could guess, at the spot where the mate had disappeared, while one of
the men on the forecastle, anticipating the skipper's order, called all
hands to shorten sail. The whole ship was of course instantly in a
tremendous commotion, fore and aft. The rest of the studdingsails were
taken in as quickly as possible, the royals and topgallantsails were
clewed up, a reef was taken in the topsails, and the ship was brought to
the wind and worked back, as nearly as could be, to the spot where the
accident had happened, and a boat was lowered. Although the skipper had
displayed such nice judgment in determining the precise spot where the
search should begin, that the crew of the boat dispatched to search for
the mate actually found and recovered the lifebuoy that I had thrown, no
sign of the lost man was ever discovered. The assumption was that he
had been stunned by the blow that had knocked him overboard, and had
sunk at once. This occurrence cast a gloom over the ship for several
days; for poor Moore was probably the most popular man in the ship,
highly esteemed by the passengers, and as nearly beloved by the crew as
one of the afterguard can ever reasonably hope to be. The skipper, in
particular, took the loss of this very promising officer deeply to
heart, not only because of the esteem in which he held him, but also, I
fancy, because he was worried by the conviction that the accident was
very largely due to his own propensity to "carry on" rather too
recklessly.
On the ninth day after this unfortunate occurrence, and on our thirty-
ninth day out from London, we found ourselves in the longitude of the
Cape of Good Hope, and in latitude 37 degrees 20 minutes south, with a
whole gale of wind chasing us, which blew us into latitude 39 degrees
south, and longitude 60 degrees east before it left us, ten days later,
stark becalmed. The calm, however, lasted but a few hours, and was
succeeded by a light northerly breeze, under the impulse of which, with
all plain sail set, the _Salamis_ could barely log six knots to the
hour. This lasted all night, and all the next day; but before that day
had sped, the second incident occurred, that resulted in plumping me
into the adventure which is the subject of this yarn.
The heavy sea which had been kicked up by the gale subsided with
extraordinary rapidity, and when I went on duty at eight bells (eight
o'clock) on this particular morning the weather was everything that the
most fastidious person could possibly desire, saving that the sun struck
along the weather side of the deck--when he squinted at us past the
weather leach of the mainsail as the ship rolled gently to the heave of
the swell--with a fierceness that threatened a roasting hot day, what
time he should have worked his way a point or two farther round to the
nor'ard. The swell which lingered, to remind us of the recent breeze,
was subsiding fast, and the ocean presented one vast surface of long,
solemn-sweeping undulations of the deepest, purest sapphire, gently
ruffled by the breathing of the languid breeze, and ablaze in the wake
of the sun with a dazzle that brought tears to the eye that attempted to
gaze upon it. The ship's morning toilet had been completed, and the
decks, darkened by the sluicing to which they had been lavishly
subjected by the acting second mate and his watch, were drying fast and
recovering their sand-white colour in the process. The brasswork,
freshly scoured and polished, and the glass of the skylights, shot out a
thousand flashes of white fire, where the sun's rays searched out the
glittering surfaces as the ship rolled. The awning had already been
spread upon the poop, in readiness for the advent of those energetic
occupants of the cuddy who made a point of promenading for half an hour
in order to generate an appetite for breakfast; the running gear had all
been bowsed taut and neatly coiled down; and the canvas, from which the
dew had already evaporated, soared aloft toward the deep, rich azure of
the zenith in great, gleaming, milk-white cloths of so soft, so tender,
so ethereal an aspect, that one would scarcely have been surprised to
see the skysails dissolve in vapour and go drifting away to leeward upon
the languid breeze. The main deck was lively with the coming and going
of the steerage passengers as they went to the galley to fetch their
breakfast; and there must have been between twenty and thirty children
chasing each other fore and aft, and dodging round their elders in their
play, filling the rich, sweet, morning air with the music of their
voices. There was a soft, seething sound over the side as the ship slid
gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of
the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in
the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at frequent
intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the bows and
go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a shower of
brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old Father
Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and a great
clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and the hum of lively
conversation, accompanied by sundry savoury odours, came floating up
through the open skylights, when the chief mate's eye happened to be
attracted toward a gasket, streaming loose like an Irish pennant from
the fore topgallant yard, and he sang out to one of the ordinary seamen
to jump aloft and put it right. The fellow made his way up the ratlines
with extreme deliberation--for, indeed, a journey aloft in such
scorching heat was no joke--made up the loose gasket, and was in the
very act of swinging himself off the yard when, happening to be watching
him, I saw him suddenly pause and stiffen into an attitude of attention
as, holding on to the jackstay with one hand, he flung the other up to
his forehead and peered ahead under the sharp of it. For a full minute
he stood thus; then, twisting his body until he faced aft, he hailed:
"On deck there!"
"Hillo!" answered the mate.
"There's a biggish ship away out yonder, sir," reported the man, "under
her three taups'ls and fore topmast staysail; and by the way that she
comes to and falls off again I'd say that she was hove-to."
"How far off is she?" demanded the mate.
"'Bout a dozen mile, I reckon, sir," answered the man.
"Um!" remarked the mate, as much to himself as to me, it seemed. "She
is probably a whaler on the lookout for `fish'. I believe they
sometimes meet with rare streaks of luck just about here. All right,"
he added, hailing the man aloft; "you can come down."
Shortly afterward we made out the stranger's upper spars from the deck;
and from the rapidity with which we raised them it soon became apparent
that, if she had really been hove-to when first seen, she had soon
filled away, and was now standing in our direction. By five bells she
was hull-up; and while the skipper and mate were standing together
eyeing her from the break of the poop--the latter with the ship's
telescope at his eye--I saw the ensign of the stranger float out over
her rail and go creeping up to her gaff-end.
"There goes her ensign, sir," I shouted to the mate, who responded by
remarking dryly:
"Yes; I see it." Then, turning to the skipper, he said:
"There's something wrong aboard that craft, sir; they've just hoisted
their ensign, jack downward!" This, it may be explained to the
uninitiated, is a signal of distress.
"The dickens they have!" exclaimed the skipper. "Just let me have a
look at her, Mr Bryce."
The mate handed over the telescope, and the skipper raised it to his
eye, adjusting the focus to his sight.
"Ay, you are quite right," he agreed, with his eye still peering through
the tube. "The jack's downward, right enough. Wonder what's wrong
aboard of her? her hull and spars seem to be all right, and I don't see
any water pouring from her scuppers, as there would be if she had sprung
a leak and the hands were working at the pumps. Well, we shall soon
know, I suppose. Let our own ensign be hoisted in acknowledgment, Mr
Bryce."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the mate. "Troubridge,"--to me--"jump aft and
run our ensign up to the peak, will ye?"
I went aft to the flag locker, drew out the big ensign, bent it on to
the halyards, and ran it up to the gaff-end, where there was just wind
enough to blow it out and make it distinguishable for what it was.
The news that the stranger in sight was flying a signal of distress soon
spread among the passengers, and in a few minutes every telescope in the
cuddy was upon the poop and being eagerly focused upon the approaching
vessel, which had by this time revealed herself as a full-rigged ship of
some 800 tons measurement, of wholesome, motherly build, but certainly
not a whaler, as could be seen by the model of the boats which she
carried, and by the absence of certain characteristics which proclaim
the whaler, and are apparent almost from the moment when she heaves into
full view. There was, naturally, a vast amount of speculation, not only
on the part of the skipper and mate, but also among our passengers, as
to the precise character of her distress; but probably not one of us
came anywhere near guessing at its extraordinary nature.
Approaching each other, as the two vessels were, it did not take us very
long to close with the stranger; and as we drew near to her it became
apparent that her people were preparing to lower a boat. At the proper
moment, therefore, our mainyard was laid aback, the stranger followed
suit, and a minute or two later the two craft came to a stand abreast of
each other, the stranger about a hundred fathoms to windward of us, near
enough, indeed, for us to read with the unaided eye the name _Mercury_
upon her head-boards. Then one of her two port quarter boats was
lowered and hauled to the gangway, and with three men pulling, and one
in the stern-sheets grasping the yoke lines, she shoved off and pulled
away towards us, the mate hailing them to come to the lee gangway, where
a side ladder had been dropped over for their use. Her main deck was
crowded with people--men and women--all hanging over the rail and
staring at us with that idle curiosity which is so characteristic of the
uneducated classes. Mr Bryce at once unhesitatingly pronounced them to
be emigrants, an opinion which the skipper as unhesitatingly endorsed.
The men in the approaching boat were all forecastle hands, the one
steering having the appearance of being either the boatswain or the
carpenter of the ship, and this it was that gave me--and no doubt the
skipper and mate also--the first specific hint of what was actually
wrong aboard the stranger. Nothing, however, was said; and presently,
when the boat came rounding under our stern, Captain Martin and Mr
Bryce descended to the main deck and awaited our visitors at the
gangway, our own steerage passengers, who had crowded the lee rail to
see the strange boat come alongside, respectfully making way for them.
One only of the boat's crew--the man in the stern-sheets--ventured to
come on deck, the other three staring up at the heads peering down at
them from our rail, without saying a word in reply to the multitude of
questions that were fired into them, beyond remarking that "the bo'sun
will tell your skipper all about it."
The boatswain of the _Mercury_--for such the newcomer proved to be--
passed through our gangway, pulled off the knitted woollen cap which
decorated his head, and at once addressed himself to the skipper.
"Mornin', sir," he remarked. "My name's Polson--James Polson, and I'm
bo'sun of the _Mercury_, which ship you see hove-to yonder,"--with a
flourish of his hand in the direction of the vessel named.
"Yes?" said the skipper enquiringly, as the man paused, apparently
waiting to be questioned after this introduction of himself. "I see you
have a signal of distress flying. What's wrong with you?"
"Well, the fact is, sir, as we've lost our cap'n and both mates--"
answered the man, when the skipper struck in amazedly:
"Lost your captain and both mates! How in the name of Fortune did that
happen?"
"Well, sir, you see it was this way," was the reply. "When we'd been
out about a week--we're from Liverpool, bound to Sydney, New South
Wales, with a general cargo and two hundred emigrants--ninety-seven days
out--when we'd been out about a week, or thereabouts--I ain't certain to
a day or two, but it's all wrote down in the log--Cap'n Somers were
found dead in his bunk by the steward what took him in a cup o' coffee
every mornin' at six bells; and Mr Townsend--that were our chief mate--
he took command o' the ship. Then nothin' partic'lar happened until we
was well this side o' the Line, when one day, when all hands of us was
shortenin' sail to a heavy squall as had bust upon us, Jim Tarbutt, a
hordinary seaman, comin' down off the main tops'l yard by way o' the
backstays, lets go his hold and drops slap on top o' Mr Townsend, what
happened to be standin' underneath, and, instead of hurtin' of hisself,
broke t'other man's neck and killed him dead on the spot! Then,"
continued Polson, regardless of the ejaculations of astonishment and
commiseration evoked by the recital of this extraordinary accident,
"then Mr Masterman, what were origin'lly our second mate, he up and
took charge, and navigated us to somewheres about where we are now. But
four nights ago come last night--yes, that's right, it were four nights
ago--'bout three bells in the middle watch, while it were blowin' hard
from the west'ard and we were runnin' under single-reefed topsails, with
a very heavy sea chasin' of us, the night bein' dark and thick with
rain, somebody comes rushin' out of the poop cabin yellin' like mad,
and, afore anybody could stop him, sprang on to the lee rail, just the
fore side of the main riggin', and takes a header overboard!" More
exclamations of astonishment from the listeners, amid which Polson
triumphantly concluded his gruesome narrative by adding: "Of course we
couldn't do nothin', and so the poor feller were lost. And when Chips
and I comed to investigate we found that the unfortunit man were Mr
Masterman, he bein' the only one that was missin'!"
"Well!" ejaculated the skipper, addressing himself to Mr Moore, our
chief mate; "I've heard a good many queer yarns in my time, of maritime
accident and disaster, but this one tops the lot. The captain and both
mates lost in the same voyage, and, so far as the two last are
concerned, by such queer accidents too! Did you,"--turning to
Polson--"find anything in Mr--what's his name!--Masterman's cabin to
account for his extraordinary behaviour in rushing out on deck and
jumping overboard in the middle of the night?"
"No, sir," answered Polson with much simplicity. "He'd been drinkin' a
goodish bit, and there were a half-empty bottle of rum under his piller;
but--"
"A-ah!" ejaculated the skipper with a whole world of emphasis; "that may
account for a good deal. Well, what happened next?"
"Oh, nothin' else haven't happened, thank God!" exclaimed the boatswain
piously. "But ain't that what I've already told ye quite enough, sir?
What's made it so terrible awk'ard for all hands of us is that we're now
without a navigator, and have lost our reckonin'. So, after Chips and I
had confabulated a bit, we comed to the conclusion that, knowin' as we
was well in the track of ships bound to the east'ard, the best thing we
could do was to heave-to and wait until somethin' comed along that could
spare us somebody to navigate the ship for us to Sydney. Chips and I
are men enough to take care of her--to know when to make and when to
shorten sail--but we don't know nothin' about navigation, ye see, sir."
"Ay, I see," answered the skipper. "Well, I think you acted very
wisely, boatswain, in heaving-to; I don't know that you could have done
anything better, under the circumstances. But, as to sparing an officer
to navigate you--I have had the misfortune to lose one of my own mates
this voyage, and,"--here his eye happened to fall on me, and he
considered me attentively for several seconds, as though he felt he had
seen me before somewhere, and was trying to remember who I was. Then
his countenance lit up as an idea seemed to strike him, and he addressed
me briskly:
"What d'ye say, Troubridge? You've heard this man's yarn, and
understand the fix that they're in aboard the ship yonder. You are a
perfectly reliable navigator, and a very fair seaman; moreover, the
boatswain says that he and the carpenter are seamen enough to take care
of the ship, which I do not for a moment doubt. Do you feel inclined to
undertake the job of navigating the _Mercury_ from here to Sydney? It
ought to be a very good thing for you, you know. I have no doubt that
the owners--"
I did not wait for him to finish; I knew enough to understand perfectly
well what a splendid thing it would be for me, from a professional point
of view, if I should succeed in safely navigating such a ship as the
_Mercury_ to Sydney; and I had no shadow of doubt of my ability to do
so; I therefore cut in by eagerly expressing my readiness to undertake
the task.
"Then that is all right," remarked the skipper.
Turning to Polson, he said: "This young gentleman is Mr Philip
Troubridge, one of my midshipman-apprentices. He has been with me for a
matter of three years; and he is, as you just now heard me say, an
excellent navigator, and a very good seaman. I have not the least doubt
that he will serve your purpose quite as well as anyone else that you
are at all likely to pick up; and if you care to have him I shall be
pleased to spare him to you. But that is the best that I can do for
you; as I told you, a little while ago, I have lost one of my mates--"
"Say no more, sir; say no more," interrupted Polson. "Your
recommendation's quite sufficient to satisfy me that Mr--er--
Troubridge'll do very well; an' since he's willin' to come with us we'll
have him most gratefully, sir, and with many thanks to you for sparin'
of him to us."
"Very well, then; that is settled," exclaimed the skipper briskly.
Then, turning to me, he said:
"Cut away at once, Troubridge, and get your chest over the side as
quickly as possible. If you are smart you may get aboard your new ship
in time to take an observation at noon and check your own reckoning by
ours." Then, as I rushed off to the after-house, where we apprentices
were berthed, he turned to Polson and proceeded to question him further
relative to the extraordinary series of fatalities that had occurred on
board the _Mercury_.