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UNDER SAIL
* * * * * *
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
* * * * * *
[Illustration: THE SHIP A. J. FULLER OF NEW YORK]
UNDER SAIL
by
FELIX RIESENBERG
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
New York
The Macmillan Company
1918
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1918
by the Macmillan Company
Set up and Electrotyped. Published, September, 1918
TO
MAUD
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
OUTWARD BOUND 12
THE OUTWARD PASSAGE 29
CHRISTMAS DAY ON THE HIGH SEAS 45
THE FIGHT 65
NEPTUNE COMES ON BOARD 77
LIFE IN THE FO'C'SLE 90
CAPE HORN 102
ROUNDING THE HORN 115
INTO THE PACIFIC 123
CABIN AND FO'C'SLE 133
CLEANING HOUSE AND A CELEBRATION 142
MAKING PORT 154
IN HONOLULU TOWN 168
UNLOADING--WITH A BIT OF POLITICS 179
HAWAIIAN HOSPITALITY 187
HONOLULU OF THE OLD DAYS 200
A DINNER ASHORE 212
BRITISH NEIGHBORS 223
THE MATE KEEPS US BUSY 233
THE LAND OF LANGUOR 245
LOADING SUGAR 253
GOOD-BYE TO HONOLULU 268
HOMEWARD BOUND 280
HAWAIIAN SHIPMATES 291
DRIVING SOUTHWARD 303
CAPE HORN AGAIN 318
MAN LOST OVERBOARD 332
AUSTRALIA'S STORY 342
STORMY DAYS 356
HEADED NORTH 366
FO'C'SLE DISCUSSIONS 377
THROUGH THE TRADES 388
APPROACHING HOME 399
THE END OF THE VOYAGE 408
THE LONG-LOOKED-FOR PAYDAY 420
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Old Smith 19
Frenchy 26
Deck Plan of Ship _A. J. Fuller_ 31
Jimmy Marshall 41
Fred 49
Joe 61
Skouse 70
Martin 108
Cape Horn 114
At Brewer's Wharf 175
Charlie Horse 196
Watching the Shore When In the Stream 235
Brenden Reading Letter 265
Jack Hitchen 270
Australia 343
Sketches of Diego Ramirez 357
Axel 382
Watching Shore at Delaware Breakwater 405
INTRODUCTION
THE SQUARE RIGGERS
America is again facing forward to the sea. The ancient thrill of the
wide salt spaces, of the broad horizon beyond which adventure beckons
us, appeals once more to the youth of America. We are living in times
when the great importance of the sea as a career comes home to us at
every turn. The sea is the great bulwark of our liberty, and by the
sea we must persevere or perish in the world struggle of Anglo-Saxon
democracy against the powers of autocratic might.
When America returns to her own, she builds upon foundations of
tradition that have their footings on the solid bed rock of the
republic. One glorious era of our sea history was followed by another,
and as times progressed the breed of seamen ever rose capable and
triumphant to the necessities that called them forth.
The Revolutionary sailors, and those of 1812, were followed by the
great commercial seamen of the clippers. The mighty fleets of the
Civil War astonished the world, and in the period just previous to our
seafaring decline of a score of years past, the great sailers flying
the Stars and Stripes spread their white cotton canvas on every sea.
Their story has never been adequately told. They are not to be measured
in terms of tonnage, or in the annals of swift passages from port to
port. Their contribution to the legends of the sea remains obscure.
They carried a tradition of hard driving, and were a phase of our sea
life that formed and forged the link between the old and the new,
between the last days of sail and the great new present of the America
of steam and steel.
Men who go to sea today in our merchant marine, in positions of
command, are, in many instances, graduates of the ships of these latter
days of sail.
Looking back, and as time goes it is not so very far away; we can,
in our mind's eye, see the great wood-built craft that lined the
waterfront of South Street. These were the last of the American sailing
ships, entering from, and clearing to, every sea port under heaven.
They were not the famous California clippers of an earlier day, or the
swift Western Ocean packet ships, or the storied tea ships of the China
trade, but they were their legitimate successors. The ships of this
last glorious burst of sail, under the Stars and Stripes, were larger
craft, vessels built for the long voyage haul, for the grain trade, for
the sugar trade, and as carriers of general cargo to the Orient and the
western coast of North America.
Most of these ships were laid down in the eighties, and left the yards
of Maine to find adventure and preferment in the longer routes of
commerce. The Horn and the Cape of Good Hope were their turning points,
and they smoked through the hum of the Roaring Forties, as they beat
from the Line to Liverpool, laden with California grain, or they ran
before the westerly winds, from Table Bay to Melbourne--_Running Their
Easting Down_--black hulled, white winged ships, with New York, Boston,
Baltimore, or Philadelphia standing out in golden letters on their
transoms.
Only the strongest and best found ships, and the most skilful and
daring seamen were fit to carry the flag across the world-long ocean
courses about the storm-swept Horn, and here again America more than
held her own in competition with the mariners of the old seafaring
nations of Europe.
Winthrop Lippitt Marvin in his valuable work, "The American Merchant
Marine,"[1] pictures this last Titanic struggle of the sea in stirring
fashion--
"It was a contest of truly Olympian dignity,--of the best ships of
many flags with each other and with the elements. Out through the
Golden Gate there rode every year in the later seventies and the
eighties, southward bound, the long lean iron models of Liverpool
and Glasgow, the broader waisted, wooden New Englanders, with their
fine Yankee sheer and tall, gleaming skysails, the sturdy, careful
Norwegian and German ships, often launched on the Penobscot or
Kennebec, and here and there a graceful Frenchman or Italian. The
British were the most numerous, because the total tonnage of their
merchant marine was by far the greatest. Next came the Americans. The
other flags looked small by comparison. In this splendid grain trade
there sailed from San Francisco for Europe in 1881-85, 761 British
iron ships and 418 American wooden ships. The Americans were the
largest vessels. Their average registered tonnage was 1,634 and of
the fourteen ships above 2,000 tons that sailed in 1880-1, twelve flew
the Stars and Stripes. The average tonnage of the British iron ships
was 1,356.
[1] Chas. Scribner & Sons, N. Y.
"The wooden yards of Maine had seen their opportunity and built
in quick succession many great ships and barks of from 1,400 to
2,400 tons, very strongly constructed on models happily combining
carrying capacity with speed, loftily sparred, and clothed with the
symmetrical, snow-white canvas for which Yankee sailmakers were famous
the world around. These new vessels were not strictly clippers, though
they were often called so. They were really medium clippers; that
is, they were less racer-like and more capacious than the celebrated
greyhounds of the decade before the Civil War. They could not compete
with steam; their owners knew it. But they were launched in confident
hope that they were adapted for the grain trade and for some other
forms of long-voyage, bulky carrying, and that they could find a
profitable occupation during their lifetime of fifteen or twenty
years. They were just as fine ships in their way as the extreme
clippers, and in all but speed they were more efficient. They were
framed with oak, and ceiled and planked with the hard pine of the
South. They were generously supplied with the new, approved devices in
rig and equipment."
In the last years of the nineties there were many survivors of this
noble fleet of American sailers still in the long voyage trade.
Ships like the _El Capitan_, the _Charmer_, the _A. J. Fuller_, the
_Roanoke_, and the _Shenandoah_, were clearing from New York for deep
water ports, and South Street was a thoroughfare of sailors, redolent
of tar, and familiar with the wide gossip of the seas, brought to the
string pieces of the street by men from the great sailing ships.
Then the crimp still throve in his repulsive power, and the Boarding
Masters' Association owned the right to parcel out, fleece and ship,
the deepwater seamen of the port. The Front Street House and a score
of others held the humble dunnage of the fo'c'sle sailor as security,
_cashed_ his "advance" and sent him out past the Hook with nothing
but a sparse kit of dog's wool and oakum slops, a sheath knife and a
donkey's breakfast.
Those were the hard days of _large_ ships and _small_ crews. In clipper
days, a flyer like the _Sovereign of the Seas_ carried a crew of
_eighty_ seamen, and most of them were as rated--A.B. The ship _A. J.
Fuller_, in the year 1897, left the port of New York, for the voyage
around Cape Horn to Honolulu with _eighteen_ seamen, counting the boy
and the carpenter, the _Fuller_ being a three skysail yard ship of
1,848 tons register.
It may be interesting to compare the size and crew of the _Sovereign of
the Seas_, as given by Captain Clark in his great book, "The Clipper
Ship Era,"[2] with the dimensions and crew of the ship _A. J. Fuller_.
_Ship_ Sovereign of the Seas A. J. Fuller
Length 258 ft. 229 ft.
Beam 44 ft. 41.5 ft.
Draft 23.5 ft. 18 ft.
Register Tonnage 2,421 tons 1,848 tons
Crew--
Master 1 Master 1
Mates 4 Mates 2
Boatswains 2 Carpenters 1
Carpenters 2 Able Seamen 16
Sailmakers 2 Boys 1
Able Seamen 80 ----
Boys 10 21
----
101
[2] G. P. Putnam and Sons.
This condition, of small crews and large ships, brought to the seven
seas a reputation for relentless driving and manhandling that has clung
to the minds of men as nothing else. The huge American ships were the
hardest afloat, and that remarkable booklet, "The Red Record," compiled
by the National Seamen's Union of America, in the middle nineties,
carries a tale of cruelty and abuse on the high seas that must forever
remain a blot upon the white escutcheon of sail.
These ships bred a sea officer peculiar to the time--the bucko mate of
fact as well as fiction. These were hard fisted men, good sailors and
excellent disciplinarians, though they lacked the polish acquired by
sea officers of an earlier day when the sailer was often a passenger
carrier, and intercourse with people of culture had its effect upon the
men of the after guard. Also, the sea had become less attractive as a
career. The boasted "high pay" of the American Merchant Marine, was $60
per month for the Chief Mate; $30 per month for the Second Mate, and
$18 per month for an A.B.--at least such were the magnificent wages
paid on the _A. J. Fuller_ of New York in the year 1897.
The mate, to earn his two dollars a day, and keep, had to be a seaman
of the highest attainments. His was a knowledge won only after a long
hard apprenticeship at sea. He had to have the force of character of a
top-notch executive, combined with ability and initiative. Then too,
he was supposed to be a navigator, a man having at least a speaking
acquaintance with nautical astronomy. In addition to this he might be
as rough and as foul mouthed as he saw fit, and some of them were very
liberal in this respect.
Then men still signed articles, voyage after voyage, for the long
drill around the Horn, or, to vary the monotony, if such it could be
called, made the voyage to Australia, or to China or Japan. In the
main, however, American ships clearing from New York carried cargoes to
the West Coast of the United States, or to the Hawaiian Islands, where
they came under the protective ruling of the coastwise shipping laws,
and were not compelled to meet the stringent insurance rates of Lloyd's
that barred American sailing bottoms from fair competition with the
British.
The sailor men of that day were still real seamen, at least a large
number of real seamen still clung to the remaining ships. They were
experts, able to turn in a dead eye in wire or hemp, and could cast
a lanyard knot in the stiff four-stranded stuff that was later on
replaced by screws and turn buckles when metal hulls succeeded those of
wood.
With the passing of the wooden ship--the wooden square rigged
sailer--went the American sailor, for comparatively few steel sailing
ships were built in the United States. With the sailor went the romance
of bulging canvas and of storm stripped humming bolt ropes. The
tragedy, and the hardships of the long voyages passed away, and with
that passing is gone much of the actual physical struggle with the wind
and sea that made the sailor what he was.
The square rigged breed of sailors, while not dead yet, for the
old salts die hard, has, by force of circumstances, failed to rear
a younger generation to take its place. But the old spirit of sea
adventure is as strong as ever; the ocean rages as loud, and lies as
calm, as in the days of departed glory. It is still the world route
to foreign trade, and a more ample domestic prosperity. Americans are
again turning toward the sea, are heeding its age old wisdom, and are
building and handling the newer craft of steam, and coal, and oil, with
as much skill and success as they did the sailing craft of old.
On the following pages is recorded for the seamen and landsmen of
today, a personal story of one of the last voyages around Cape Horn in
a wooden ship propelled by sail alone--a ship without a donkey engine,
a wooden Bath-built packet at her prime in point of age and upkeep.
The advance notes have been cashed by the boarding masters, who have
left the crew in tow of their crimps, and, after deducting for board
and slops, the last remaining dollars have been blown in on the Bowery
under the watchful eyes of the runners, who see to it that the men are
delivered on board.
Our ship is the _A. J. Fuller_ of New York, Captain Charles M. Nichols,
and she waits her crew, ready to cast off from her berth in the East
River at the turn of the tide, at daybreak on December 5, 1897, having
cleared for the port of Honolulu, capital of the Republic of Hawaii,
with a general cargo consigned to the old island house of Brewer and
Company.
CHAPTER I
OUTWARD BOUND
"Oh for a fair and gentle wind,"
I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the roaring breeze,
And white waves beating high;
And white waves beating high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free,
The world of waters is our own,
And merry men are we.
_Jacob Faithful._
"Cook!" bawled a deep voice from a door that burst open with a flood of
yellow light under the break of the poop, "serve a round of hot _cafay
nore_ to them passengers! And Mr. Stoddard," added the mate from whom
these orders issued, addressing the second officer who strode from the
edge of light toward the group of men tumbling on board, "turn all
hands to in five minutes! Stand by to cast off lines!"
Some of the shore crowd from the boarding houses helped to pass up the
chests and bags of dunnage, and the bundles of "donkey's breakfast"
as we clambered to the ice-encrusted deck of the ship _A. J. Fuller_,
lying at her wharf near the foot of Maiden Lane. A flickering light,
and the rattle of stove lids in the galley, as we passed forward to the
fo'c'sle, told us that the cook was stirring, and the snorting of a tug
under the starboard quarter gave notice of an early start.
It was dark when we came aboard; a cold December wind rippled the black
waters of the East River, chilling to the marrow those few stragglers
who walked the cobble stones of South Street at that early morning hour.
An odd lot of humanity dumped their few belongings on the fo'c'sle
deck; strangers all, excepting a few who had just deserted from the
British bark _Falls of Ettrick_, men jumbled together by strange fate,
and destined to long months of close companionship, of hard knocks, and
endless days and nights of unremitting labor.
No time was lost, however, in sentimental mooning; the chill morning
air was charged with activity, the "after guard" was all astir and an
ebb tide flowed, ready to help us on our way. Gulping down the "cafay
nore" that presently was passed forward in a bucket, all hands dipping
in with hook pots and pannikins, hastily dug from chest and bag, we
were barely able to stow away this refreshment before a heavy fist
thumped the fo'c'sle doors.
"Turn to! Turn to! This ain't a private yachting tour!" was the
sarcastic invitation that sent us scrambling to the deck.
"Here! You, I mean!" yelled the mate, "come forward!" for I had headed
aft, and, at this command, I found myself with some others hauling a
heavy water-soaked hawser aboard the fo'c'sle head.
"All clear?" came the query from aft.
"Aye, aye! All clear!"
A long whistle sounded from our tug, as we backed slowly from the
wharf; the escort of boarding house runners shivering on the string
piece of the dock, gave us a dismal cheer, and the voyage around Cape
Horn had fairly begun.
The first level rays of morning light began to filter over the house
tops on the Brooklyn side, the misty span of the bridge loomed above
the river, and a dozen bloodshot eyes among the crew forward cast their
farewell glances at the Tom and Jerry signs in the saloon windows on
historic South Street.
We were a lumbering lot, pushed and cuffed from station to station, our
best men acting like dolts, until the exercise and crisp morning air,
zipping above the river, wore off the effects of a last night spent at
the Atlantic Garden. South Street, at that day still a forest of spars,
with here and there a bald spot marking the advent of the coastwise
steamers, slid past us, Governor's Island, the Statue, the Narrows, and
the Hook, were passed unnoticed in the ceaseless hustle on our decks.
The running gear, left by the shore riggers in a hopeless tangle, had
to be put to rights, and the mates worked us like demons to get things
in some sort of shape before we should be called upon to work the
vessel under sail.
Gradually order of some sort issued from the chaos, and as the day wore
on we set our fores'l, all tops'ls, main t'gan'sl, jib and stays'ls,
before a stiff off-shore breeze that caused the towline to slacken, and
orders were given to cast off the tug.
The new steam pilot boat _New York_ rode the swell ahead of us, ready
to take off the pilot.
"Weather main braces!" came the order; the yards were braced aback,
a yawl from the _New York_ touched our side for an instant, as we
surged ahead slowly against the back push from the main, and the pilot,
hanging from a Jacob's ladder, dropped into his boat.
"See you in Liverpool!" shouted the pilot, standing in the yawl and
waving a final farewell to Captain Nichols.
"Brace up main yards, sir!" ordered the skipper, addressing the mate,
and we swung them around with a will.
The day was well advanced by then, a low bank of cloud over the land
shut in the sunset, and a spanking breeze from no'east by nor' brought
our port tacks to the deck. The _Fuller_ heeled easily beneath the
force of the wind. Off to leeward, and rapidly falling astern, was the
American ship _Tam O'Shanter_, bound for China; we heard afterward that
she was lost.
Up to the first dog watch all hands had labored without a moment's
rest, and at eight bells in the afternoon the courses and all plain
sail to royals were drawing nicely. As soon as the gear was shipshape
and coiled on the pins, all hands were mustered aft. There was a
feeling of uncertainty among the crew as we filed aft to the waist,
standing in an awkward group about the main fife rail, a nondescript,
hard-fisted, weatherbeaten lot of men.
Above towered the vast expanse of snowy canvas, looming out of all
proportion in the dark half light of the winter evening; beneath us
was the rolling, palpitating sweep of deck, yielding and swaying in
the constant balance 'tween the wind and sea. To windward, above the
line of bulwark, a ragged mackerel sky drove across the cloud rack of
scattered cirrus, touched with dull red from the high shafts of the
setting sun. The black backs of the shoreward rollers swept to leeward
and astern, passing us as if frightened by the lofty figure of the ship.
The watches were about to be chosen. The two mates came down into the
waist, and Captain Nichols stood at the break of the poop to observe
this time-honored ceremony of the sea. For better or for worse, in
sunshine or in storm, we were to be parceled off to our respective
task-masters for the long months of the voyage ahead. The fate of
friendships was to be decided, for watchmates are far closer than mere
shipmates, and a general desire to escape the clutches of the mate made
all of us anxious for the ordeal to be concluded. Most of the men were
in favor of the second mate, Mr. Stoddard. The mate, Mr. Zerk, was a
driver, a bully, and what not, but the second mate seemed to be easier,
in spite of the fact that he lost no opportunity to bawl out everyone
that came across his path.
"He'll be all right when we get outside," was the remark that voiced
the general opinion. Old Smith, perhaps the wisest of the real
sailor-men on board, came as near to hitting the relative values of the
mates as was possible. "I don't see no choice between them," he said.
"One may be easier, but give me the best sailor. A good sailor aft
saves work for his watch forward. See if I don't figger it right. Take
it any way you like, there's no choosing between them rotten apples
aft, and let it go at that."
Mr. Zerk, a man of about forty, medium in height, broad shouldered,
bull necked, with close cropped yellow hair--grey eyes set in a very
red, smooth-shaven face, except for a sweeping blond mustache, was a
native of Nova Scotia, brought up in "blue nose" ships. He eyed us with
the cold look of a surgeon about to amputate. Walking up to the group
just abaft of the mainmast, he made his first choice without a moment's
hesitation.
"Frenchy, come here," and Victor Mathes, of Dunkirk, went to the port
watch, chosen by the mate.
"Smith," was the laconic reply of Mr. Stoddard to the first choice of
the mate. Honors were even, for it was a toss up between the two men.
Brenden, a husky, well-set-up sailor, trained in the sailing ships out
of Hamburg, with plenty of beef and a good head, was the next choice of
the mate. [Illustration: Old Smith]
"Axel," said the second mate, scoring the first advantage in the
choosing of the watches. Axel proved to be one of the best men in the
crew, a big, boyish Swede, a sailor and a gentleman.
"Roth, come here," and John Roth, late of the opal mines in Australia,
one of the deserters from the _Falls of Ettrick_, and the artist of
the crew, went to port. We soon dubbed him "Australia." The mate sent
"Australia" to relieve the wheel, and the second mate paused a moment
weighing the merits of the remaining men.
"Tom," was his choice, and another sailor, Tom Morstad, also a deserter
from the _Ettrick_, went to starboard.
Things were fining down, and the remaining victims in this heartless
process of elimination were becoming increasingly apprehensive, while
those who had been chosen grinned at us with aggravating humor. The
mates were getting less and less sure of their choice as the pickings
became more and more undesirable. It was getting to be a question of
brains versus brawn. Husky young clodhoppers shipped as A.B. by the
greedy boarding masters; young mules with nothing but their thick
hides and an abundance of main strength and stupidity to recommend
them, placed in the balance with such old fellows as Jimmy Marshall and
Jack Hitchen. Jimmy, who claimed to be sixty-five, a wizened little old
sea-horse, but a wonderful "chantey man," won the next choice and was
taken by the mate.
Hitchen was called to starboard, and the honors still remained about
even in the contest of wit and experience, for both mates had studied
the paces of each individual with critical eyes during that eventful
day.
The next choice was a painful one. There was a short pause; it seemed
to us that "Charlie Horse," who had once been mate on a coaster in the
oyster trade, or Dago Tony, would surely be chosen next.
"Felix, come here," said the mate, running his eye over the Dago and
Charlie, and lighting on me. I stepped over to the boys lined up on the
lee side, a weight lifted from my mind, as Frenchy, destined to be my
chum, moved near me.
It was getting on by then. Chips went aft carrying the side lights, and
Captain Nichols was stumping the poop with some impatience, as a hint
to his officers to bring things to a close.
The second mate chose Charlie, and George Krug, or "Scouse" as we
called him, was taken by the mate. Dago Tony went to the second mate,
and Fred Erricson, a good sailor, also an _Ettrick_ deserter, went to
port.
Mike, the wood turner, went to starboard, and Joe Johnson, one time
a cobbler's apprentice, and general all round husky favorite of
misfortune, was taken by the mate.
The left-overs, Martin, and Peter the boy, were divided by the call
of Peter to the starboard watch, and Martin fell to the mate. Peter,
an American, ex-reporter on a Worcester paper, one time foreman in
a corset factory, and a bright, wideawake boy of something over
twenty-one, had shipped for eight dollars a month _and his health_. The
voyage netted him his payday many times over, for he was endowed with
brains and, starting out a wreck, he came back a toughhanded deepwater
man.
It was close to six bells by that time. Chips had set out the running
lights and was getting the big pump ready, having sounded the well and
reported a foot of water.
"Starboard watch below for tucker!" ordered the mate; and then turning
to the men of his watch, he ordered, "Man the pump!"
It was dark as we bent to the cranks of the big pump, and with the
hum of wind and the swish of water in our ears we realized that we
were truly at sea, insignificant mortals riding on the low deck of a
vast fabric of wood and canvas, venturing far from land on the mighty
stretches of the Western Ocean.
That first night at the pump, forerunner of many, many other nights,
our little band of watch mates toiled in silence, except for a few
monosyllables. Four men to each crank, two on a side, facing each
other, our tired arms and backs reciprocated to the action of rotation
like so many toy figures actuated by some hidden clockwork; the new
labor was almost a rest after the constant pulling and hauling of the
day. Finally the low, raucous wheezing of the valves told us we were
sucking air, and the mate, from the darkness of the poop, called out,
"Belay pump!"
It is the custom of the sea, handed down from time immemorial, that
"The captain takes her out and the mate brings her back." That is,
the first regular watch at sea is taken by the captain's watch on the
outward passage, and the same watch is taken by the port, or mate's
watch, on the start for home. Of course the second mate stands the
starboard watch, except in case of emergency.
Accordingly, at four bells, we went below, and after a hasty supper
we sought our bunks for a brief rest before turning out for the watch
from eight to midnight. We were tired--some of us, to the point of
utter exhaustion--and a few of the older men claimed that we were being
cheated out of our right to the first four-hour watch below, ours
having merely been a dog watch of 2 hours from 6 to 8. Anyhow, whatever
we thought about that, nothing was said above a mild growling in the
fo'c'sle, and as we tumbled out at eight bells, and both watches lined
up in the waist to muster, the chill wind cut through us, and a moment
later we were greeted by an order from aft.
"Hands aloft to overhaul the t'gallant and royal buntlines!"
Up I went on the mizzen, never caring to lag behind on an order to
lay aloft, a piece of twine in my pocket. The gear was overhauled and
stopped just below the blocks, so the buntlines would not chafe the
sails, and at the same time the stops of cotton twine were frail enough
to be easily broken. When at times they were not, some unlucky wight
would clamber aloft at the critical moment of taking in sail amid the
slatting of canvas and the most profuse showers of artistic abuse.
Coming down from this task, I was in time to witness a burst of
profanity on the part of the mate. "Keep moving, you beach-combing
---- ---- ----! Every lousy ---- ---- ---- ----! I won't have no 'lime
juice' sleeping on deck this voyage. D'ye hear that?" All heard, for
there was a shuffle of weary feet about the main hatch, where several
of the watch had perched comfortably in the dark, and, after a moment
of indecision, sprinkled with derogatory mutterings, we paired off in
little groups of twos, walking the swaying deck wherever we could find
places free from the back draft of the sails.
Frenchy was my first chum on the _Fuller_, and though for periods we
drifted apart, through sheer mutual exhaustion of our interchangeable
ideas, yet we always came together again. Somehow, on the very start of
the voyage, when the crimps and runners bade us that sad farewell from
the port of New York, we were drawn together. The night that we paired
off, on our first watch at sea, it seemed natural that Frenchy and I
should elect to stump the deck in company. We preempted a path from the
lee main pin rail to the after end of the forward house. "It's better
here than anywhere," remarked Frenchy, and I soon found he was right,
as we missed the draft from the mains'l and were partly sheltered by
the house on the forward leg of our walk.
[Illustration: Frenchy]
Frenchy was a heavy-whiskered, ruddy specimen, sporting the square-cut
beard of the French sailor. He was an ex-naval man, and one time prison
guard in the penal settlement of New Caledonia. Trained to the sea
since boyhood, in the fishing fleet of Dunkirk, for many years a rigger
in the naval yards at Brest, a sailor man on every type of craft from
the Mediterranean ybeck to a ship. Victor Mathes was one of the finest
types of the Gallic seaman.
His life was a vague and many folded nebula of romance. He was full of
stories of the life in New Caledonia, of the discipline on the outlying
islands, of punitive expeditions, and of the intrigues and jealousies
among the checkered lives that wear themselves away in those distant
places.
Night after night we paced the deck during the long, cold watches,
and between the calls to man this rope or that, and the horsing and
rustling about that was always indulged in, we swapped information of
all kinds, related all sorts of experiences, truthful and otherwise,
and each man explored his mental storehouse for the amusement and
benefit of his chum. For hours at a time Frenchy would talk of good
things to eat; this was a hobby, in fact a sort of passion, with him
and often drove me to the verge of distraction. He would go into the
minutest detail of how his sister Madeleine, back in Dunkirk, prepared
some particular dish, telling not only of the delightful flavor and
succulent qualities, but he would go into the subject of the way things
smelled, roast fowl, with all sorts of fancy stuffing. My mouth would
water at these cruel recitals and I know that Frenchy suffered as much
as I did at the poignant recollections of gastronomic joys long past.