It took me less than ten minutes to bundle my traps into the waiting
boat alongside; and then, having already said goodbye to my shipmates in
the apprentices' berth, I stepped up to the skipper and chief mate to
say the same, and to thank the former for giving me this splendid
chance. He was very kind in bidding me farewell; told me I had given
him every satisfaction while I had been with him; gave me a few words of
caution and advice; and wound up by saying:
"The boatswain, here, tells me that the chronometer aboard the _Mercury_
has unfortunately been allowed to run down; when, therefore, you get
aboard, and have taken your meridian altitude, you had better wind the
chronometer and then set it to Greenwich time, which I will give you;
after which you should experience no difficulty in finding your way to
Sydney, to which port I wish you a prosperous and pleasant voyage. Of
course I quite reckon upon arriving two or three weeks ahead of you; but
unless you have an exceptionally protracted passage you ought to arrive
in good time to return home with us. Unless, therefore, the _Mercury's_
agent in Sydney wishes you to return to England in the ship, you had
better make your way to Melbourne as soon as you have settled up, and go
back with us."
I thanked him for the kindly send-off that he was giving me, and then,
after a final shake of the hand, followed Polson down the side, seated
myself in the stern-sheets, and--the boatswain pulling stroke while the
other three oarsmen shifted one thwart forward--shoved off, the crew and
passengers of the _Salamis_ giving me a little cheer to speed me on my
way. The cheer was at once vociferously responded to by the people
crowding the _Mercury's_ rail. No doubt they were greatly relieved at
the thought that there was to be no more aimless drifting about the
ocean for them, but that at last they were to find themselves again
heading intelligently toward their port of destination.
By the time that I had arrived alongside the _Mercury_ and mounted to
her deck it was getting so close toward noon, that I had only barely
time enough to get my traps out of the boat before the moment arrived
when I must get to work with my sextant to secure the sun's meridian
altitude, from which to deduce the ship's latitude. Then there was an
even more important job to be done, namely, to start and set the
chronometer; therefore, as soon as I had secured my meridian altitude
and made it noon aboard the _Mercury_, we wore ship, and coming up
alongside the _Salamis_--that lay patiently waiting for us with her main
topsail aback--obtained the correct Greenwich time and set our
chronometer to it. This done, Captain Martin swung his mainyard and
made sail, and we followed suit as quickly as we could. Then I worked
out my observations, pricked off the ship's position on the chart, wrote
up the log, and took possession of the late captain's stateroom, by
which time dinner was on the cabin table, and I sat down to my first
meal on board the _Mercury_. The food, of course, was not quite so
luxurious as that served up on the cuddy tables aboard the _Salamis_,
but it was a long way better than what I had been accustomed to get in
the apprentices' berth, and I appreciated the change accordingly.
At the conclusion of the meal, at which Polson joined me, uninvited,
while the carpenter stumped the poop as officer of the watch, I went on
deck to have a good look at my first command; and, on the whole, was
very pleased with her. She was a big ship for her tonnage, having
evidently been constructed with an eye to ample cargo stowage rather
than speed; consequently she was inclined to be bluff in the bows and
full in the run; yet when I looked ahead and saw that the _Salamis_ had
only drawn ahead of us by about a mile during the half-hour or so that I
had been below, I was by no means dissatisfied. She was evidently an
elderly ship, for everything about her in the way of fittings and
equipment was old-fashioned; but she was as strong as oak and iron could
make her, her scantling being nearly twice as heavy as that of the
_Salamis_. Her bulwarks were almost as high and solid as those of a
frigate, and she was pierced to mount seven guns of a side, but no
longer carried any artillery on her decks excepting two brass six-
pounders for the purpose of signalling. She was very loftily and
solidly rigged, and it did not take me long to ascertain that she had
been most liberally maintained, much of her rigging, both standing and
running, being new, while her ground tackle was ponderous enough to hold
a ship of double her size. "Not much chance," thought I, "of this old
barkie dragging her anchors home and driving ashore in anything short of
a hurricane!" She carried a full poop, the break of which came so far
forward that there was scarcely room to pass comfortably between the
foot of the poop ladders and the combing of the after hatch. The poop
cabin was a very spacious affair, extending, for the greater part of its
length, to the full width of the ship, and it was most comfortably
fitted up, although, as might be expected, it lacked the luxurious
finish of the _Salamis'_ cuddy. It looked as though it might at one
time have been fitted with staterooms on either side for the
accommodation of saloon passengers; but, if so, they had all been
removed, save two at the fore and two at the after end of the cabin.
And even these were now unoccupied, the boatswain and carpenter
occupying the staterooms at the fore end of the structure, in which the
chief and second mate had originally been berthed.
The captain's cabin was abaft the saloon, in the extreme after end of
the ship, and was an unusually commodious and airy apartment, extending
the entire width of the ship, and splendidly lighted and ventilated by a
whole range of large stern windows. There was a fine, roomy, standing
bed-place on the starboard side, with a splendid chest of drawers under
it; a washstand and dressing-table at the foot of it; a large and well-
stocked bookcase on the port side; a chart rack occupied the whole of
the fore bulkhead; the floor or deck of the cabin was covered with a
handsome Turkey carpet; and a mahogany table, big enough to accommodate
a large chart, stood in the middle of the apartment. This was where I
was to sleep, and to spend in privacy as much of my waking time as I
chose. "Truly," thought I, "this is an agreeable change from my cramped
quarters aboard the _Salamis_!"
Having completed the establishment of myself in this luxurious cabin, by
turning out my chest and hanging up such of my clothes as I was likely
to want immediately, and so on, I went on deck again, where the
carpenter, who told me that his name was Tudsbery--"Josiah Tudsbery,
your honour, sir,"--was on duty, and requested him to conduct me below
to the emigrants' quarters, which, I found, occupied the whole of the
'tween-decks. Here again the liberality of the ship's owners became
manifest, for the whole fitting up of the place was vastly superior to
what was at that time considered good enough accommodation for
emigrants; the married quarters consisting of a number of quite
comfortable and roomy cabins; while the spaces allotted to the
accommodation of the single men and women ensured to their occupants
such complete privacy as was deemed quite unnecessary in those days. I
found that it was the duty of the emigrants to keep their own quarters
clean, and this seemed to have been somewhat neglected of late. I
therefore gave orders that all hands should at once turn-to and give the
'tween-decks a thorough cleansing, in readiness for another inspection
by myself at eight bells in the afternoon watch.
The emigrants aboard the _Mercury_ numbered two hundred all told; namely
thirty-three married couples, twenty-eight unmarried women, forty-two
unmarried men, and sixty-four children, of whom one--a sweet, good-
tempered baby girl--had been born during the voyage. They, the
emigrants, seemed to be a very mixed lot, ranging from clod-hopping,
agricultural labourers, whose intelligence seemed insufficient to enable
them to appreciate the wonder of a flying-fish or the beauty of a
golden, crimson, and purple sunset, to individuals of so refined and
intellectual an appearance and so polished a behaviour, that the fact of
their being 'tween-deck passengers seemed nothing short of a grotesque
incongruity.
When I went below again, at eight bells, to inspect the emigrants'
quarters, I found them sweet, clean, and altogether very much more
wholesome than they had been upon the occasion of my first visit, and I
expressed my gratification at the change, hinting pretty strongly that I
should expect the place to be maintained in that condition for the
remainder of the voyage; at which remark one of the occupants--a pale,
delicate-looking girl--exclaimed:
"Oh, sir, I only hope that you will insist upon that! Some of the
people here--especially the men--are shockingly lazy, and would never do
a hand's turn of work if they were not made to."
"I am much obliged to you for the hint," said I. "I will find out the
identity of those especially lazy ones, and see if I cannot imbue them
with a good wholesome hatred of idleness before we arrive in the land,
where those who won't work must starve."
By sunset that night the _Salamis_ had slid so far ahead of us that only
the heads of her courses were visible above the horizon; and with
nightfall we saw the last of her that we were destined to see during
that voyage.
I suppose it was only natural that I, a lad of barely seventeen years of
age, should be full of business, and importance, and anxiety, for a few
hours at least, upon finding myself thus unexpectedly placed in a
position of such tremendous responsibility as was involved in the
navigation, and therefore, to a large extent, the safety of this fine,
wholesome old ship with her two hundred passengers, her crew of thirty,
and her valuable cargo. At all events, that was the condition of mind
in which I found myself as I paced the spacious poop, hour after hour,
sometimes accompanied by Polson, sometimes conversing with Tudsbery, and
occasionally alone. As I walked, my glances travelled, with the
regularity of clockwork, first to windward, then ahead, then aloft, and
finally--as I reached the binnacle--into the compass bowl; then away out
to windward again, and so on, _ad infinitum_, until I was fairly bone-
weary, and had completely walked off all my anxiety--to say nothing of
my importance--and had convinced myself that I really might venture to
leave the ship for a few hours to the care of the boatswain and the
carpenter.
I have mentioned that, when bidding me farewell prior to my change over
from the _Salamis_ to the _Mercury_, Captain Martin was kind enough to
give me a word or two of caution and advice; and one of the bits of
advice which he most forcibly impressed upon me was that I should make a
point of sighting either Saint Paul or Amsterdam island on my way to the
eastward, and thus verify my reckoning. I recognised this as being a
counsel of wisdom, and determined to shape a course that would enable me
to sight both, they being only about fifty miles apart, and both
standing high. I therefore very carefully laid off the compass course
upon the chart, and found it to be south-east by east three-quarters
east, the distance being eight hundred and forty miles; and this course
I gave to the helmsman as soon as I had pricked it off and very
carefully verified it, while he passed it on to his relief, and so on.
But when I turned out at six bells the next morning I found, to my
disgust, that the wind had drawn round from the eastward and broken us
some four points off our course; while, to add to my vexation, the
boatswain and the carpenter--both of them illiterate men--had entered up
the log slate in such an extraordinary manner that, so far as the dead
reckoning was concerned, the information was not of the slightest use to
me. Fortunately for my peace of mind the atmosphere was clear, and I
was able to get sights during the forenoon which gave me the ship's
longitude; while, a little later on, a meridian altitude of the sun
fixed our latitude for us. Then, for nearly thirty hours, we found
ourselves enveloped in one of the densest fogs I ever experienced, with
light, baffling variable winds that made of our wake a continual zigzag,
winding up with three days of thoroughly foul weather--a whole gale of
wind from the north-east--during the greater part of which we lay hove-
to under close-reefed fore and main topsails, with our head to the
south-east. Then the weather cleared and moderated; the wind gradually
worked round, first to east, and then to south-east; and at length I
found the ship laying up, close-hauled under all plain sail, for the
spot where, according to my reckoning, Saint Paul ought to be. I was
now especially anxious to make that island, for the weather of the past
three or four days had been of such a character as to baffle the most
experienced of navigators, and I confess that I was beginning to feel
rather more than a trifle nervous. The island, however, hove into view
at the precise moment and in the precise quarter that it ought to do if
my reckoning happened to be correct; and this test and verification of
the accuracy of my working served to completely re-establish my
confidence in myself, so that, from that time onward, I never
experienced the least anxiety. I felt that so long as I could get
tolerably regular sights of the sun, moon, or stars I was not at all
likely to go wrong.
But before the island of Saint Paul had climbed up over the horizon that
stretched athwart our bows, I had become aware of a certain matter that,
while it struck me as being somewhat peculiar, seemed to bear no further
significance for me.
One of the first persons among the emigrant passengers aboard the
_Mercury_ to attract my attention was a tall, thin, long-haired, sickly-
looking man, of about thirty years of age, clad in a suit of rusty
black, whose appearance and manner generally suggested to me the idea
that he must be by profession a schoolmaster. There was a certain air
of exaggerated earnestness of demeanour about him, and a wildness of
expression in his flashing coal-black eyes, that caused me to set him
down as being somewhat crack-brained. His name, I soon ascertained, was
Algernon Marcus Wilde, and he was among the first of the emigrants to
speak to me. He came to me, on the morning after I joined the ship,
with a complaint as to the quality and quantity of the food served out
to the occupants of the 'tween-decks; and I was as much struck by the
correctness of his speech, as by the excessive indignation which he
infused into his manner, when stating the nature of his alleged
grievance. I pointed out to him the fact that, whatever the quality of
the food might be, I was certainly not responsible for it, nor, in the
event of its proving to be unsuitable, could I remedy the matter away
out there in mid-ocean; but I promised to investigate the affair, and to
do what might be possible to remove the grievance, should I find such to
exist--of which I had my doubts after my brief but highly satisfactory
experience of the viands served up in the cabin.
I accordingly requested the steward to produce the dietary list which
formed the basis of the agreement between the owners and the emigrants;
and, upon going through it, was certainly unable to find any just cause
for complaint, so far as quantity was concerned. The question of
quality was of course a different matter; but here again, when, a day or
two later, I unexpectedly examined the food as it was being served out
at the galley, I was quite unable to discover any legitimate cause for
complaint. On the contrary, the food, although plain, was as good as it
was possible to obtain in those times aboard a ship that had been at sea
a hundred days; and it was excellently prepared. When I sent for Wilde,
and asked him to state specifically what he found wrong with the food
that I had just examined, all he could say was that it was not so good
or so varied in character as that which he had seen from time to time
carried aft for use in the cabin; and that in his opinion no distinction
whatever ought to be made in the treatment of persons occupying
different parts of the ship; also that he considered I ought to give
instructions for the emigrants to be fed henceforth from the stores
provided for cabin use; nor would he be satisfied, although I pointed
out that he was getting the food that the owners had undertaken to
provide him with in exchange for his passage money. Of course to
attempt to argue with so unreasonable an individual was obviously
absurd, and I therefore dismissed him and thought nothing more about his
complaints.
This, however, was not the matter of which I have spoken as gradually
obtruding itself upon my attention, although, had I only been able to
guess it, the two were not unconnected. What I noticed, almost from the
first moment of boarding the _Mercury_, without attaching any particular
importance to it, was that this man Wilde and a few of the other male
emigrants were in the habit of spending practically the whole of the
second dogwatch--which, in fine weather at all events, is usually a
period of idleness and recreation for a ship's crew--on the forecastle-
head, smoking and chatting animatedly with the forecastle hands; while
at other times the ex-schoolmaster--as Wilde actually proved to be--
seemed eternally engaged in earnest discussion with his fellow
emigrants. I often wondered idly what the man could possibly find to
talk about so incessantly; but usually found a sufficiently satisfactory
explanation in the reflection that, being a man of education, he would
naturally take pleasure in extracting the ideas of others, and also
probably in correcting them according to his own notions. He was
evidently very fond of talking; and I frequently amused myself by
watching the impassioned earnestness and the eloquent gestures with
which he would hold forth upon the subject--whatever it might be--that
happened to be under discussion. I soon found that Polson and Tudsbery,
the boatswain and carpenter of the ship, apparently found more pleasure
in spending the second dogwatch on the forecastle with their shipmates
and the emigrants than they did in promenading the poop with me; but
this was not surprising, for not only were they both very illiterate
men, but it quickly became apparent that they and I had scarcely a
single interest or idea in common, and we were consequently often hard
put to it to find a topic of congenial conversation; indeed, in the
course of a few days, without the slightest ill-feeling on either side,
our communications became almost exclusively restricted to matters
connected with the business of the ship.
Looking back, from the summit of a matured experience, as I now can,
upon that first fortnight aboard the _Mercury_, I often feel astonished
that I never, for a single instant, caught the faintest premonition of
what was looming ahead; for I can recall plenty of hints and
suggestions, had I only been keen-sighted enough to observe them and
smart enough to read their significance; but I believe the fact to be
that at that time I had no room in my mind for any other thought than
that of the navigation of the ship. It is true that for more than a
year it had been part of my daily duty, as a midshipman-apprentice
qualifying for the position of officer, to take observations of the
various heavenly bodies simultaneously with those of Captain Martin and
the mates, to work them out independently, and to submit my calculations
to the skipper--who examined and returned them with such written
comments as he deemed called for--with the result that I had long since
become proficient in the science of navigation. But this was a very
different thing. If on board the _Salamis_ I had chanced to make a
mistake, the worst that could have happened would have been a sharp
rebuke from the skipper for my carelessness, and an equally sharp
injunction to be more careful in future; whereas now, aboard the
_Mercury_, if I happened to make a miscalculation, there was nobody to
correct it; and although subsequent observations might reveal the error,
and no actual harm arise from its committal so long as the ship was in
mid-ocean, a comparatively trivial mistake committed when the ship
happened to be in the vicinity of rocks, or shoals, or approaching land,
might easily make all the difference between perfect safety and her
total loss, together with that of all hands. Hence, during those early
days, when the sense of grave responsibility lay heavy upon my young
shoulders, I could think of nothing but more or less abstruse
astronomical problems.