[Illustration: “He had my billy of water to his mouth and was pouring
it down his throat.” _Page 195_]
AT THE BACK OF THE WORLD
WANDERINGS OVER MANY LANDS AND SEAS
BY
GEORGE AND JENNIE PUGH
LONDON
LYNWOOD & CO., LTD.
12 PATERNOSTER ROW
1913
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I I GO TO SEA 7
II THE MAKING OF A SAILOR 21
III A BURNING SHIP 35
IV NEW FRIENDS 44
V STORMY WEATHER 50
VI THE SOUTHERN CROSS 69
VII THE STONE BEGINS TO ROLL 66
VIII VARIOUS KINDS OF STORMS 75
IX CHRISTMAS AT SEA AND GEORGE THE GREEK’S STORY 82
X ROUNDING CAPE HORN 98
XI CALLAO AND SAN LORENZO 108
XII THE CAPITAL OF PERU 121
XIII ON THE OROYA RAILWAY 129
XIV LIFE ON THE ANDES 139
XV THE COST OF LIQUOR AND MY RETURN TO LIMA 151
XVI I GO BACK TO THE SEA AGAIN 163
XVII “EASTWARD HO!” 170
XVIII LOST IN THE BUSH 186
XIX LIFE AT BELMONT--SHARKS AND FLYING FOXES 203
XX SNAKE STORIES--TWO BRAVE GIRLS 214
XXI WIDOW SMITH’S PIG, OR “BARKIS IS WILLIN’” 222
XXII A DANGEROUS ENTERPRISE 229
XXIII A LEAKY OLD TUB AND RETRIBUTION OR VILLAINY
REWARDED 241
XXIV OFF TO THE PALMER GOLDFIELDS 265
XXV WE RETURN TO COOKTOWN 284
XXVI A TRIP TO THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS AND CAPTAIN
BROWN’S STORY 294
XXVII HOMEWARD BOUND 310
At the Back of the World
CHAPTER I
I GO TO SEA
AS far back as I can remember the sea had a strange fascination for me,
and if, as is the custom with old people to ask a boy, however small,
what he is going to be when he is a man, I invariably answered “a
sailor of course.” At school the lessons I liked best were geography,
and the only books that interested me were those that told of travel
in foreign lands. Born in Liverpool, that city by the sea, and living,
for the first fourteen years of my life, within a mile of the docks,
it was no wonder that I was passionately fond of the water, and all my
spare time was spent at the docks talking to the sailors, amongst whom
I had heaps of friends. The tales they told me of what they had seen
in foreign lands, and the wonders of the deep made me long to grow up
as quickly as possible, but it was not until I was fourteen that the
opportunity came, and that in a curious way.
I had by that time become a great strong lad for my age, and was tired
of school, so one day another school companion and I played truant and
went down to the docks. After playing about for some time, we thought
we would swim across the Mersey and back. I was a capital swimmer,
and thought nothing of the feat, but my companion had not been across
before. However, we got across splendidly, and after resting a little
while we started back, following in the wake of one of the ferry
boats. I reached the Pier Head wall first, and turned round to look
for my companion--he was nowhere to be seen. I at once told the dock
policeman, who took me along to the River Police Office, and after
taking my name and address, and sending the men out with the boats to
search for my missing friend, he gave me a jolly good thrashing and
told me to get back into the water and look for the lad. I looked at
him in astonishment, for I was feeling tired, and the thrashing had not
refreshed me.
“Go along, now,” he said in stern tones, “and don’t you come back until
you find that boy.”
“But I shall be drowned if I do that, I’m tired, sir,” I said.
“A good job, too,” he replied, “and then you’ll find him safe enough.”
For a few minutes I stood looking at him as he sat at his desk writing,
and then he turned round as I walked slowly to the door.
“Come here,” he said sternly, looking me up and down until I felt fit
to creep into a mouse-hole.
I stood before him expecting another thrashing.
“Have you a father living?”
“No, sir,” I answered.
“A mother?” he asked, his voice a little less stern.
“Yes, sir, and two sisters.”
“Well, you go straight home from here. I have already sent your mother
word. I hope she will have sense enough to give you the best thrashing
you have ever had in your life, and tell her from me to send you to
sea. What you want is work, and plenty of it, and remember this--if
ever I catch you round these docks again I’ll lock you up.”
When I reached home I found a warm welcome awaiting me, but not the
same one as that given to the “Prodigal Son,” and I was glad enough to
escape to my bedroom, feeling that I had got more than I deserved.
The next morning my mother said I need not go to school any more.
“You shall go to sea,” she said, “so get your cap and take this note
to Captain Watson, he was an old friend of your father’s, and I
sincerely hope he will get you on a ship, or there will be nothing but
unpleasantness before you for a while, they have not found Harry Law’s
body and his people are in a dreadful state and blame you, which is
quite natural.”
I made no answer, knowing that it was true, and feeling quite
determined in my own mind that if Captain Watson could do nothing for
me I would go and ask on every ship in the docks until I was successful.
When I arrived at Captain Watson’s house at Seaforth, there was no
mistaking it, standing as it did in a small garden full of flowers,
with a tiny grass plat facing the river, a flagstaff from which a
Union Jack was fluttering in the breeze, and over the doorway in white
lettering “The Mariners’ Rest” was painted.
On my asking for the Captain I was at once taken to him. After reading
the letter the old sea-dog gazed at me out of the corner of his eye,
then he laid his long pipe on the table.
“And so you want to go to sea, do you, how old are you?”
“I am turned fourteen, Captain, I would rather go to sea than anything
else, would you tell me how to get a berth as apprentice?”
“I can tell you something about the life of an apprentice, my boy, and
when I’ve done I think you’ll give up that notion. Your mother in her
letter says you will have to depend on yourself, and a good job too,
and the sooner you are able to do this the better for both of you.
Most of the good firms, whose vessels sail out of Liverpool and London
require a premium with a boy--generally speaking it amounts to fifty
pounds, and this is paid back in wages during the four or five years’
apprenticeship. Half the boy’s time is spent in dancing attendance on
the master and mates, doing the meanest work on the ship, that is if
any work can be called mean, cleaning brasses, etc., and when his time
expires often he is unable to put two ends of a rope together in a
seamanlike manner.”
At this my heart sank, but the Captain went on:
“You must go in a small ship as an ordinary seaman where every man and
boy has to do his share of the work, and then you will soon learn your
business, and make a man of yourself. The premiums that are charged
for boys are a fraud imposed on the parents, and a gross injustice for
which there is no excuse.”
After a few puffs he resumed--“If anyone speaks to the ship-owner about
it, he replies, ‘Oh, he cannot earn his keep the first two years.’ But
that’s not true. They pay nothing for that boy, but if he were not on
board they would require another boy or man, and the owners would have
to pay port wages, so you see the fact of his being on board making up
the complement of the crew is a gain to the owner.”
“Another thing--the Board of Trade stipulate that a ship shall carry a
certain number of hands, but they do not say they must all be sailors,
neither do they specify their ages. Many a good ship has been lost
through having too many boys and too few men on board her. On these
big ships the seamen get all the real good sailor work to do, such as
knotting, splicing, strapping blocks, etc., and the dirty work falls to
the lot of the apprentices. The officers often, finding so few seamen
and so many duffers on board, vent their spleen on the boys, forgetting
that it is the owners’ and not the boys’ fault.” Captain Watson grew
warm on his subject, and it was pretty plain that he had suffered as an
apprentice in his younger days.
“I know a ship,” he continued, “a four-masted vessel that carries
nearly six thousand tons of cargo, a beautiful ship, heavily rigged,
which goes to sea with a crew all told of thirty-eight hands. A fairly
good number anyone would think! Yes, but notice how they are made
up”--here he ran them off his fingers--“Captain, two mates, carpenter,
sailmaker, boatswain, steward, cook, sixteen able seamen, and fourteen
apprentices. The first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sleep
in all night in ordinary times and weather, thus leaving one officer,
eight able seamen and seven apprentices to work the ship at night.
Ah, it’s shameful! But you meet me at noon at the ‘Mercantile Marine
Rooms,’ and I will see if I can get you a berth from some of my old
shipmates.”
While Captain Watson had been talking, my eyes had been roaming round
the room. It was a wonderful room, more like a museum than a living
room. Catching sight of my wandering eyes he laughed a big hearty
breezy laugh. “Ah, my boy,” he said, “these are some of the things
you’ll see in other lands. See that ship,” he said, pointing to a
picture of a full rigged ship in a seaway, “that was the first ship I
was master of, she was called the ‘North Star’ of Liverpool, a better
ship never sailed. These boxes of shells hanging on the wall came home
in her from the West Indies, the boxes of red and white coral are from
the East Indies, now look here, this is a case of flying fish, and what
people call sea horses; the flying fish came aboard, but the sea horses
were caught by one of the apprentices by hanging a piece of teased out
rope over the side, and the little things get caught in it, they don’t
live many minutes when they are taken out of the water as the air kills
them. Now this is a queer weapon,” he said, pointing to what looked
like a bone sword, “it’s the sword of a fish called by that name, and
was taken out of a whale that had been killed by that swordfish and
a thrasher, two sworn foes of the whale, and in the tussle the sword
had been broken off and left in the whale’s carcass, that was in the
tropics. That is a shark’s jaw on that black velvet mount, look at his
teeth, no work there for a dentist, he likes to sharpen them on the
good fat leg of a cow or pig, or a sailor who tumbles overboard through
not looking out where he can hold on in safety to the rigging. These
Indian spears, clubs, and bow came from Brazil, and this boomerang from
Australia. It is a deadly weapon in the hands of a native, and I have
seen one thrown in such a manner that it returned to the hand of the
one who threw it. These cedarwood boxes and inlaid trays and little
cabinet came from China and Japan, so you see my lad what you can
expect when you go to sea and have learnt your business. I always made
it a rule to bring some little thing from every foreign port I went to,
and as my wages grew so did my curiosities. There is one other thing I
want to show you, it is in the garden, it is the figurehead of another
old vessel I was in, ‘The Maori Chief,’ a fine figurehead for as fine a
ship as ever sailed on salt water.”
“And now my lad,” he said, when I had duly admired everything, both in
that wonderful room and in the garden, “give my respects to your good
mother, and tell her I will do my best to get you a ship, and after
that it rests with yourself.”
I thanked him heartily, and set off home with a light heart, and a mind
full of what I had seen and heard. I was overjoyed at the prospect of
seeing other lands and scenes, lands full of mystery and possibilities.
My mother was pleased at my success, and she and my sisters began at
once to get my clothes ready, while I told them of all the wonderful
things I had seen at Captain Watson’s.
There was little sleep for me that night--my mind was full of the
future and what it might hold for me. I got up early, and after a good
breakfast went to Water Street. Finding it was two hours off noon,
the time it was arranged for me to meet Captain Watson, I went over
to Prince’s Dock, and admired the vessels loading there, and wondered
if it would be my good fortune to get a berth on one of them, and
so passed the time until noon, when I went to the “Marine Society’s
Rooms,” and asked for Captain Watson. He was there waiting for me and
introduced me to Captain Crosbie of the barque “Bertie,” then loading
in the Salthouse Dock and bound for Wellington, New Zealand. He was a
smart, well-set man, one of the smartest men I have ever been with,
tall, alert, with not an ounce of spare flesh on him, hair as black as
night and a pair of eyes like gimlets that seemed to be looking both at
you and in you.
“Um, ah,” he said, “you want to go to sea, do you, what for?”
“I want to see foreign lands, sir,” I answered, “and I want to be a
sailor.”
“You want to be a sailor, um. You want to look for trouble evidently.
How old are you?”
“Turned fourteen, sir.”
“Well you’re big enough anyhow, and you look strong enough. Fond of
work, eh?”
“I’ll do my share, sir.”
“I’ve no doubt you’ll do that and a bit over, remember a sailor’s life
is not all sunshine and blue skies like you read of in books, there
are stormy nights and days, and times when you have to hold on by the
skin of your teeth. How would you like to be sent up aloft in a gale of
wind, eh? I expect you’d wish yourself back on shore, there’s no back
door at sea you know.”
“Well, sir, I’d have to do the same as the rest, and do the best I
could.”
“Yes, you would, and perhaps your best wouldn’t be thought much of and
you’d get a rope’s ending, or a kick or a cuff into the bargain, eh?”
I looked at him. “It seems to me, sir, that everybody thinks that all
boys are good for is to be kicked and cuffed, my old grandfather used
to say ‘when you meet a lad thrash him, if he doesn’t deserve it then
he soon will.’”
They both laughed heartily.
“Was he a sailor?” Captain Crosbie asked.
“No sir, he was a farmer.”
“Well he ought to have been, he understood human nature as regards
boys.”
I thought differently but said nothing.
After a few more questions Captain Crosbie engaged me as ordinary
seaman at twenty-five shillings per month, and I was to join the ship
the next morning. I thanked him heartily and wishing them both good day
left the room. What a man I felt as I wended my way home, what castles
I built in the air, I was to be a sailor and some day a captain, of
that I felt sure, so full of hope is youth, and it is well that it
should be so, for has not one of our poets said:--
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
“And the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts.”
When I reached home my mother was very pleased at my success, and that
night we had a long talk.
“My boy,” she said, “you are about to enter life’s battle on your own
account, and your future will largely depend on yourself. You have no
earthly father to give you wise counsel and advice; I have had to be,
as far as I have been able, father and mother to you and the girls. You
are starting with a bright prospect, but remember always that God sees
you at all times, never do anything you would be ashamed for Him to
see. You have chosen, and I have chosen for you, a sailor’s life; take
Lord Nelson as your pattern, the greatest sailor, and one of the best
Christians who ever lived, and all will be well. Do your work, however
hard it may seem, not only for man but for God, then nothing can really
harm you. Keep from the drink and bad companions. Never be ashamed of
your Bible, your prayers, or your God. Let us kneel together and ask
God’s blessing on your new life, for without that it is useless to
expect either health or prosperity. I shall look for your letters you
may be sure, and will do my best to let you have some in return.” We
knelt in prayer, and oft-times in later years the memory of that hour
came back to me with renewed help and comfort.
The following morning, after saying good-bye to my mother and sisters,
and hearing, just as I was leaving the house, that the body of Harry
Law had been found, which rather upset us all, I joined the “Bertie.”
She was a strongly built wooden barque of 1,500 tons, and was in
splendid condition. She was a perfect picture; all her yards to the
royals were crossed, the white lines of her sails harbour-stowed, and
each bunt tied up in fine style, all her running rigging was rove,
the red ensign languidly shook at the peak, while the blue Peter lay,
for want of air to expand it, like a streak of blue paint down the
fore-royal mast. I felt my heart swell with pride as I went on board
and realised that at last I was on the deck of a ship and that I was
one of the crew who were to help to take her across the ocean.
The first mate, Mr. McLean, “Old Barnacle” the sailors called him,
came forward and asked me what I wanted and seemed not ill-pleased at
my answer. He was a rough, hard-looking Glasgow man; he had commanded
several ships in his time, but the terrible curse of drink had pulled
him down like a good many before him. He had lost one ship and berth
after berth, until he was glad to take a first officer’s place. Once
at sea, and out of reach of the liquor, a better seaman could not be
found, and beneath that rough exterior a kind and loving heart beat.
The second mate, Mr. Weeler, was a splendid specimen of the British
seaman. Trained on the “Worcester,” that noble institution on the
Thames, from which so many of our gallant seamen have made their start,
he had just obtained his chief-mate’s certificate. He was a good friend
to me, and to any boy who came under his charge, an honest, upright,
good-living man. Our crew were mostly Scandinavians, and a quiet,
hard-working lot of men.
We sailed out from Liverpool that day, the 1st of July, 1870. As soon
as Captain Crosbie came on board preparations were made for leaving
the dock. It was a beautiful day, the sun shone brightly overhead, the
river Mersey lay calm and peaceful, leading out into the great unknown
sea beyond, everything was new and strange to me, and never shall I
forget the feelings that came over me as we left the docks behind us.
As I watched the sailors jumping to obey orders to let this or that
rope or sail go, I wondered how long it would take me to learn them
all, and how proud I was to answer to the call, “here boy, lend a
hand,” and did my best to be a help instead of a hindrance whilst we
were getting clear of the channel.
On the first day out I was seasick and felt pretty bad, when the chief
officer came along and saw me leaning against the ship’s side.
“Hello,” he said in his gruff way, “looking for New York, boy; had your
dinner?”
“No, sir, only I feel queer and don’t want any dinner.”
“What is the dinner forrard to-day?”
“Hash, sir.”
“Now look here, you just go along to the galley and ask cook for a good
basinful and bring it here to me.”
I did as I was told and brought it to him, and, to my surprise, he made
me eat it. I had no sooner got it down than I had to rush to the ship’s
side.
“Go and get another basinful,” he commanded, “and eat every bit, or
I’ll give you your first taste of a rope’s end, now go.”
I went, and never shall I forget the feeling of loathing with which I
ate that food. I started again for the ship’s side, when he caught hold
of me. “No you don’t,” he said, “sit there and keep it down, and you’ll
never be seasick again; if you don’t you’ll have to eat another lot.”
Manfully I tried to keep it down and succeeded, but for a few days I
felt squeamish, then it passed off, and I soon felt myself again.