LIFE ON THE GOOD SHIP _OSPREY_.
It was a stormy day in the end of October when the good frigate
_Osprey_ got up steam and put out to sea.
Signals had been exchanged for an hour before this between the
admiral's office and the ship. The admiral thought it most imprudent
to sail on such a day.
Captain Leeward was persistent, however, and at last, like any other
wilful man, he had his way.
The wind was from the east-south-east, cold and bitter and high. The
air, too, was filled with sleet or snow.
When they passed the breakwater it caught her bows smartly, and slued
her for a few moments out of her course. But the helmsman quickly
put her up, and the strong paddles fought the water fiercely, and
successfully too.
Balked in its design of driving the _Osprey_ against the breakwater,
the wind did all sorts of ill-natured things. It cut the smoke of
the funnel clean off, and drove its dark wreaths to leeward; it
rattled the braces, it shook the rigging; it slammed the companion
doorways, swayed the hanging boats about, and dashed the spray
inboard with sometimes a green sea, till everybody who had to be on
deck and hadn't an oilskin on was drenched to the skin. A nasty,
disagreeable old wind!
The _Osprey_ didn't seem to mind it a bit. She had a broad beam of
her own, a strong bowsprit and jibboom, and she lifted her bows
slowly, and with a sturdy disdain that showed she cared for neither
wind nor sea.
Nor did the men either--every one of whom had been picked and chosen
by Captain Leeward himself, every one of whom was as hardy as the
vikings of old.
Before the ship was two miles from the Sound, and while standing
amidships talking to Grant,--the _Osprey's_ head being now turned to
west-and-south, so that spray no longer flew inboard,--Creggan said:
"Listen, doctor; what a grand singer!"
For up from the forehatch rose high above the roar of the wind a
manly voice, singing one of Dibdin's most favourite songs:--
"Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear
The mainmast by the board,
My heart with thoughts of thee, my dear,
And love well stor'd,
Shall brave all danger, scorn all fear;
The roaring winds, the raging sea;
In hopes on shore
To be once more
Safe moor'd with thee."
"Yes, he sings well. And do you know, that with the kindliest heart
that ever was in sailor's breast, Captain Leeward has his
peculiarities."
"Yes?"
"Yes. I've known him before, and sailed with him, always in a wooden
ship. He hates an iron-clad, and he must see canvas bellying out
aloft if there be a bit of wind at all. He is really an independent
man, and wouldn't take a ship at all unless he had all his own way.
So every man-jack is a jolly tar of the good old school, and his
officers too, are, I have always found, genuine fellows. He must
have somebody to dine with him every night, and it is just as often a
middie as a ward-room officer. As for myself, I have always a knife
and fork laid for me, and if I don't dine with Leeward I look in
after dessert, and many a yarn he spins me."
"So different from Flint."
"Oh, yes; but we must never say a word against the absent."
"No."
"Hark!" cried Grant; "didn't I tell you?"
The ship's head was kept away a point or two.
Next minute the bo's'n's shrill pipe was heard.
"_Eep--eep--peep--peep--ee--ee--ee!_ All hands make sail!"
Up rattle the watches below, and aloft they went right cheerily.
Creggan had never seen a ship's sails cast loose so speedily, nor so
quickly braced up.
"They are indeed good sailors, Dr. Grant."
"Yes, I told you. But look here, old fellow, just call me 'Grant',
and 'douse' the 'Dr.'."
"All right, Grant," said Creggan, laughing.
The fires were now let down and the paddles thrown out of gear, and
presently that old _Osprey_ was doing ten knots an hour on a beam
wind.
I suppose that Captain Leeward had some inkling of where he was going
to, else he would not have held this course.
But the sealed orders were opened next morning, and he found that the
_Osprey_ was on particular service, her first destination being
Venezuela.
He told his officers this, and that they might then look in at Rio
and open further orders there--probably.
If, reader mine, you knew the Service as well as I do, you would
remark that it was very good of the gallant Captain Leeward to be
thus explicit with his officers. Many men that I know, or have
known, would have shrouded themselves in their cold dignity, and to
any inquiry made by an officer as to their destination, would simply
have replied--
"Venezuela."
If asked, "And where next, sir?" such men would reply, "I really
can't tell you at present".
Well, lads who mean to join the glorious British Navy, and serve
either as young officers or boys under--
"'The flag that braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze',
must not expect their lives to be all sunshine, any more than they
need expect the sea around to be always blue, rippled by balmy winds,
and domed over with an azure sky, flecked with fleecy cloudlets, and
at night studded with silver-shining stars.
In some ships they will find that fighting the waves is not fun by
any means, because many of the best of our navy ships are sent to sea
defective. Machinery--and it is marvellously intricate nowadays--may
break down at an untimely moment, even in the midst of a terrible
storm, and having no serviceable sail, even the largest iron-clad
will then be at the mercy of the waves. Oh, how she rolls and yaws
and plunges and careens at such a time!
The best sailors on board cannot keep their feet, their heads swim
with the awful motion. Things break loose and play pitch-and-toss
about the deck, the ward-room furniture may be all one chaotic heap,
and all the while the seas are making a plaything of her, dashing
over her, high as the conning tower, and rushing in cataracts fore to
aft, or even vice versa. At such a time it seems as if the ocean
wished to show those poor wave-beleaguered sailors how small the
strongest works of man are, compared to those of God.
But independently of storms without or the breaking down of
machinery, the ship may not be a happy one as far as officers and men
are concerned. The crew, all told, may be a badly assorted one, and
I have been in ships, only for a short spell, thank goodness, that
were known on the station as "floating hells".
Much depends upon one's captain. If he is a kind-hearted, genuine
fellow he can do everything to keep things smooth fore and aft. The
ward-room officers take their cue from him, the gun-room follows the
example which the ward-room sets them on deck or below, the
midshipmen influence the warrant officers, and these in their turn
the able and ordinary seamen and the first and second class boys
themselves.
But I must heave ahead with my story, instead of hauling my fore-yard
aback or lying-to, in order to ruminate and preach. Oh, I know my
own faults, my lads; I have so much to say about sea and a life on
the ocean wave, that, with a pen in my hand, I want to say it or
write it all at once.
Well, Creggan hadn't been a day at sea before he found out that the
_Osprey_ was going to be a real happy ship.
They soon lost sight of land in the haze of the storm, though all day
long the beautiful gulls kept sailing around the ship, tack and
half-tack in the air. For these sea-gulls look upon ships as their
own, because from them they receive their main supply of food; so
they always follow them afar, trying, as it were, by their plaintive
calls, to get them to return.
It was dark enough at eight o'clock to-night, and the gulls had all
returned shorewards. The gale still raged, but the _Osprey_ was
under easy sail, and the motion was by no means disagreeable to a
sailor.
Creggan had been keeping the second dog-watch, but now went below.
There was first the fighting deck to pass through, where the great
port-holes were, and the black, shining guns, each with its
snow-white lanyard prettily coiled and lying on the breach. A fine
open breezy deck, the shot and shell neatly arranged in racks around
the hatchways, and the sick-bay far away forward yonder. Abaft here
was the captain's quarters or saloon, with a red-coated, armed sentry
walking near it, slowly fore and aft.
Then Creggan dived below. Aft again on this deck and right under the
captain's quarters, only coming more forward, was the well-lighted
ward-room, from which issued the sound of merry voices and laughing.
Turning forward and on the port side there was first a cabin or two,
and then the gun-room.
Below this was the orlop deck, where many hammocks were hung, and
which was lined with two rows of dingy, dark, though white-washed
cabins, lighted by day only by the round scuttle-hole, and at night
by a candle hung in jimbles. These cabins were told off to warrant
officers, bo's'n, carpenter, &c., &c., and to senior officers of the
gun-room. But really most of these preferred a hammock just outside,
for the sake of fresher air.
To-night, Creggan, to whom one of these cabins, and a good one too,
was allotted, had occasion to go below. He heard a sad moaning
proceeding from a hammock, and a white, white melancholy face hanging
half over the side.
"I say!"
"Yes, my lad."
"Are you the surgeon? I'm very dickey. I'm a a clerk, and I wish I
had never, never left the land."
"Well, I'm sub, and the second senior member of your mess. Don't
give way. I'll go and get the surgeon."
And so he did.
Kind-hearted Grant first gave him a doze of something, which I know
well but must not mention, then a tumblerful of good champagne, and
in five minutes' time poor little Mr. Todd was wrapt in dreamless
slumber.
There were two more of Neptune's young children who wanted seeing to.
Having done so, Grant went aloft again.
Then Creggan went to his quarters.
"Come along, sir," cried one of three bold middies who sat around the
gun-room table when Creggan drew back the curtain; "come along, and
have a hand at whist."
"Thank you, messmates, but I must feed first."
"Steward!"
"Ay ay, sorr," said an unmistakably Irish voice. "That's me, myself,
sorr;" and a tallish, smart fellow, with black buttons on his short
jacket, and a blue ground to his beardless face, entered the mess.
"Bring in the beef, and all kinds of fixings."
"Any dhrink, sorr?"
"No drink, thanks. What's your name?"
"M'Carthy, sorr, sure enough."
"Well, Mac, heave round."
"Be back afore ye could say knife, sorr."
Creggan made a capital supper. Then he had just one game to please
the youngsters.
"I'm dying with sleep, boys," he said, "so I'll turn in. Ta-ta, see
you all in the morning."
He departed, leaving them singing, and, turning in, was soon sound
and fast. And thus he slept till called to keep the morning watch.
It was a little cold, but Creggan had bent on his thickest pilot
jacket, and the second lieutenant soon came stumping up, and he also
had on his foul-weather gear.
But the wind had gone down considerably, and with it the sea. She
had lost way, too. So Mellor sent men aloft to loosen and shake out
sails. The effect was magical, and with the wind well abaft the beam
the _Osprey_ pulled herself together, threw off dull sloth and went
through the water like a thing of life. All along the top-gallant
bulwarks forward, the spray was sprinkled as the good ship spurned
the billows, but nothing came aft.
Mr. Mellor, the lieutenant, a round-faced, fair-haired young
Cornishman, strode up and down the deck talking, and smoking a short
clay. Creggan and he were swapping yarns--humorous yarns mostly--and
exchanging experiences, and were soon as well acquainted as if they
had known each other for years.
Soon after five bells, a light was seen gradually spreading over the
eastern horizon, getting higher and higher momentarily. It looked at
first like the reflection of a far-off city on a dark night.
But the light grew whiter and brighter.
It was gray dawn now. Then high up in the west a streak of a cloud
began to glow with orange and crimson beauty. Rolling clouds on the
horizon astern were lit up with a fringe of gold and carmine. Then
all the east became a glory of colour that was almost dazzling, but
very beautiful. The god of day was rising, and this
dazzlingly-painted orient formed the curtains of his couch.
Soon now, red and fiery, his beams spread in a path of blood across
the sea, and lo! it was day.
Both Creggan and Mellor spent that watch very pleasantly, and before
going below the latter held out his hand, and Creggan gladly grasped
it.
"Good-bye," said Mellor. "We're going to be friends, you know."