‘No more deep water! I’ll try the coast. I’ve heard it’s good. No more
deep water; and, above all, no Cape Horn!’
He shipped on board a coaster, and went trips to Circular Head for
potatoes; got bar-bound for weeks in eastern rivers looking for maize
and fruit; sailed coal-laden, with pumps going clanketty-clank all
down the land, and finally, after some months of this sort of work,
found himself in Port Adelaide, penniless, and fresh from a gorgeous
spree. Here he fell in with an old deep-water shipmate belonging to
one of the vessels in harbour.
‘Come home with us, Jack,’ said his friend. ‘She ain’t so bad for a
limejuicer—patent reefs, watch an’ watch, an’ no stun’s’ls for’ard.
The mate’s a Horse. But the ole man’s right enough; an’ he wants a
couple o’ A.B.’s.’
‘No,’ said Jack Ashby, firmly, ‘I’ll never go deep water again. The
coast’s the ticket for this child. I’ve got reasons, Bill.’
And then he told his friend of the dream.
The latter did not appear at all surprised. Nor did he laugh. Sailors
attach more importance to such things than do landsmen. All he said
was,—
‘The _Dido’s_ a fine big ship. She’s a-goin’ home by Good Hope. Was
it a ship or a barque, now, as you was on in that dream?’
‘Can’t say for certain,’ replied Ashby, reflectively; ‘but, by the
size o’ her spars, I should reckon she’d be full-rigged. Howsomever,
if ever I clap eyes on his ugly mug again—which the Lord forbid—you
may bet your bottom dollar, Bill Baker, as I’ll swear to that, with
its big red beard, an’ the tip o’ the nose sliced clean off.’
‘A-a-a-h!’ said the other, staring for a minute, and then hastily
finishing his pint of ‘sheoak.’ And he pressed Ashby no more to go to
England in the _Dido_.
But the latter found it just then anything but easy to get another
berth in a coaster. Also he was in debt to his boarding-house; and,
altogether, it seemed as if presently he would have to take the very
first thing that offered, or be ‘chucked out.’
‘Two A.B.’s wanted for the _Dido_,’ roared the shipping master into a
knot of seamen at his office door one day shortly after Jack and his
old shipmate had foregathered at the ‘Lass o’ Gowrie.’ And the former,
feeling very uncomfortable, and as a man between the Devil and the
Deep Sea, signed articles.
His one solitary consolation was that the _Dido_ was not bound round
Cape Horn. He cared for none other of the world’s promontories. Also,
as he cheered up a little, it came into his mind that it would be
rather pleasant than otherwise once more to have a run down Ratcliffe
Highway, a lark with the girls in Tiger Bay, and a look-in at the old
penny gaff in Whitechapel. But the main point was that there was no
Cape Horn. Had not Bill Baker told him so? ‘Falmouth and the United
Kingdom,’ said the Articles. Certainly there was no particular route
mentioned. But who should know if Bill Baker did not?
But all too surely had the thing that men call Fate laid fast hold on
the Dreamer. And the boarding-house-keeper cashed his advance
note—returning nothing—and carted him to the _Dido_, and left him
stretched out on the fo’k’stle floor, not knowing or caring where he
was, or who he was, or where he was going, and oblivious of all things
under the sun.
Nor did he show on deck again until, in the grey of next morning, a
man with a great red beard and a flat nose looked into his bunk and
called him obscene names, and bade him jump aloft and loose the
fore-topsail, or he would let him know what shirking meant on board of
the _Dido_.
‘This is a bad beginning,’ thought Jack Ashby, as, with trembling body
and splitting head, he unsteadily climbed the rigging, listening as
one but yet half awake to the clank of the windlass pawls and the
roaring chorus of the men at the brakes. ‘That’s the feller, sure
enough!’ he gasped, as, winded, he dragged himself into the fore-top.
‘I’d swear to him anywhere. Thank the Lord we ain’t goin’ round the
Horn! I wonder if he knowed _me_? He’s the mate. An’ Bill was right;
he _is_ a Horse. Damn deep water!’
‘Now then, fore-top, there, shift your pins or I’ll _haze_ you,’ came
up in a bellow from the deck, making poor Jack jump again as he
stared ruefully down at the fierce upturned face, its red beard
forking out like a new swab.
‘Thank the Lord, we ain’t goin’ round the Horn!’ said Jack Ashby, as,
with tremulous fingers, he loosened the gaskets and let the stiff
folds of canvas fall, and sang out to sheet home.
Down the Gulf with a fair wind rattled the _Dido_, through
Investigator Straits and out into the Southern Ocean, whilst Jack cast
a regretful look at the lessening line of distant blue, and exclaimed
once more,—
‘Damn deep water!’
That evening the officers spin a coin, and proceed to pick their
respective watches.
To his disgust, Jack is the very first man chosen by the fierce chief
mate, who has won the toss, and who at once says,—
‘Go below the port watch!’—his own.
It is blowing a fresh breeze when he comes on deck again at eight
bells. It is his wheel. He finds his friend Bill Baker there.
‘East by sowthe,’ says Bill emphatically, giving him a pitying look,
and walking for’ard.
‘East by sowthe it is,’ replies Jack, mechanically.
Then, as he somewhat nervously, after the long absence, eyes the white
bobbing disc in the binnacle, and squints aloft at the dark piles of
canvas, it suddenly bursts upon him. Whilst he has been asleep the
wind has shifted into the west. It blows now as if it meant to stay
there. They are bound round Cape Horn after all.
‘Mind your hellum, you booby,’ roars the mate, just come on deck.
‘Where are you going to with the ship—back to Adelaide? I’ll keep an
eye on you, my lad,’ lurching aft, and glancing first at Jack’s face
and then at the compass.
Truth to tell, the latter had been so flustered that he had let the
_Dido_ come up two or three points off her course. But he soon got her
nose straight again, with, for the first time, a feeling of hot
satisfaction at his heart that, upon a day not far distant, he and the
man with the red beard, and tip off his nose might, if there was any
truth in dreams, be quits. Be sure that, by this Jack’s story was well
known for’ard of the foremast. Bill Baker’s tongue had not been idle,
and, although a few scoffed, more believed, and waited expectantly.
‘There’s more in dreams than most people thinks for,’ remarked an old
sailor in the starboard watch, shaking his head sagely. ‘The first
part o’ Jack’s has comed true. If I was Mister Horse I’d go a bit
easy, an’ not haze the chap about the way he’s a-doing of.’
But the chief officer seemed to have taken an unaccountable dislike to
Ashby from the moment he had first seen him. And this dislike he
showed in every conceivable way until he nearly drove the poor chap
frantic.
At sea an evil-minded man in authority can do things of this sort with
impunity. The process is called ‘hazing.’ The sufferer gets all the
dirtiest and most disagreeable of the many such jobs to be found on
shipboard. He is singled out from his fellows of the watch and sent
aloft with tarry wads to hang on to a stay by his eyelashes. Or he is
set to scraping masts, or greasing down, or slung outboard on a stage
scrubbing paintwork, where every roll submerges him neck high, whilst
his more fortunate companions are loafing about the decks.
If the hazed one openly rebels, and gives his persecutor a good
thrashing, he is promptly ‘logged,’ perhaps ironed, and at the end of
the passage loses his pay, holding himself lucky not to have got six
months in gaol for ‘mutiny on the high seas.’ There is another thing
that may and does happen; and every day the crew of the _Dido_ watched
placidly for the heavy iron-clad block, or marlingspike, sharp-pointed
and massive, that by pure accident should descend from some lofty nook
and brain or transfix their first officer—the Horse, as unmindful of
the qualities of that noble animal, they had named him. But Jack Ashby
never thought of such a thing. Nor did he take any notice of friendly
hints from his mates—also sufferers, but in a less degree—that the
best of spike lanyards would wear out by constant use, and that the
best-fitted block-strops would at times fail to hold.
Jack’s mind was far too much occupied by the approaching test to which
his dream was to be subjected to bother about compassing a lesser
revenge that might only end in maiming.
He, by this, fully believed things were going to turn out exactly as
he had seen them that night in Yamba men’s hut in the far-away
Australian Bush. Therefore he looked upon himself and his tyrant as
lost men.
At times, even, he caught himself regarding the first officer with an
emotion of curious pity, as one whose doom was so near and yet so
unexpected. And, by degrees, the men, recognising this attitude of
his, and sympathising heartily with it in different fashions, and
different degrees of credulity, forbore further advice, and waited
with what patience they might.
It was getting well on towards Christmas.
* * * * *
I no more wished to go to London _viâ_ Cape Horn than did John Ashby.
But my reasons were altogether different.
When I had engaged a saloon passage on the _Dido_ it was an understood
thing that she would take the other Cape for it. But a short four
hours’ fight against a westerly wind so sickened the captain that he
put his helm up, and squared his yards, and shaped a course that would
bring him closer to Staten Island than to Simon’s Bay.
It was some time before I had any conception of how things stood
for’ard, with respect at least to the subject of this story.
I saw, of course, that the chief officer was a bully, and that he was
heartily disliked by the men. But of Jack Ashby and his dream I knew
nothing. Nor, until my attention was especially drawn to it, did I
perceive that he was undergoing the hazing process.
As the only passenger, and one who had paid his footing liberally, I
was often on the fo’k’stle and in other parts of the ship supposed to
belong peculiarly to the men.
Thus, one night, happening to be having a smoke on the top-gallant
fo’k’stle, underneath which lay the quarters of the crew, I sat down
on the anchor stock, and watched the cold-looking seas rolling up from
the Antarctic Circle, and exchanging at intervals a word with the
look-out man as he stumped across from rail to rail.
Close beside me was a small scuttle, with the sliding-lid of it pushed
back.
I had scarcely lit my pipe when up through this, making me nearly drop
it from my mouth, came a long, sharp scream as one in dire agony.
‘What’s the matter down there?’ shouted my companion, falling on his
knees and craning his head over the coamings of the hatch.
Without waiting for an answer, we both bolted on to the main deck and
into the fo’k’stle, where could be heard broken murmurs and growlings
from the sleepy watch who filled the double tier of open bunks running
with the sheer of the ship right into the eyes of her.
And on one of these, as I struck a match and lit the swinging slush
lamp, and glanced around me, I saw a man sitting, his bare legs
dangling over the side. Down his pale face ran great drops of sweat,
and his eyes were staring, glassy, and fixed. One or two of his mates
tumbled out; others poked their heads over the bunk-boards and swore
that it couldn’t be eight bells already. But the man still gazed over
and beyond us with that horrible stare in his dilated eyes, and when I
laid my hand on him he was rigid. Then one who, in place of drinking
his ‘tot’ of rum that night, had treasured it up for another time,
produced it; and, laying the man back, and forcing open the clenched
teeth, we got some of it down his throat; and presently he came to
himself and sat up.