HEADED NORTH
"Well, for one I am damn glad we are through with it," said Brenden
during a discussion of Cape Horn weather that went on forward as we
cleared out the damp fo'c'sle that wonderful Sunday following the
gales. "This makes five times around for me and I hope to God the last."
"How far to Pilladelpia?" chirped up Kahemuku, his face again
approaching its natural brown, though lean and worn beyond all
resemblance of his Honolulu poi-fed chubbiness.
"Ha! The Kanaka is coming to life!" kidded Australia. "Well, me brown
brother and fellow shipmate, if I do call you that, even though you are
not white, Pillerdelpia is a long way off yet. The walking is bad and
if I was you I would stay aboard a while longer. In fact you will have
to ride all the way with nothing to do but work, me hearty, work."
All hands were feeling good. Black Joe hung around the galley all
Sunday helping Chow and for supper that night he was rewarded by a
large sea pie, one of the bright-red confections made of the mysterious
"pie fruit." A chemist might analyze it as a composition of apple
peelings, glucose, acetic acid and aniline dye. My, but how good it did
taste! The human system demands its poison. Folks ashore prefer theirs
in the most expensive form, while we poor sailors on the ship _Fuller_,
on that memorable voyage in the year of the great war with Spain,
took our weevils, which are no worse than Roquefort, only larger, and
relished them. We ate many cockroaches browned in the cracker hash and
dandy funk, and drank their extract in the tea and coffee, beverages,
so called, for want of other names. As for the sea pie, it acted as a
corrective to the gingerbread. When Shakespeare asked, "What's in a
name?" he had certainly never experienced such a voyage as ours.
Following our dose of weather we entered upon a spell of work that
carried us well up to the latitude of Cape Frio. The gear had to be
overhauled in all of its details; whips of braces shifted end for end,
new chafing mats and battens seized on to the stays taking the place
of those worn through, and the slack standing rigging set up.
Our own gear, the clothing of the crew, was sadly in need of attention
and every dog watch found the fo'c'sle busy with thread and needle.
Frenchy was our top notch sailor man at sewing. He could ply a needle
with the best housewife that ever swapped a bit of scandal at a sewing
bee. He did not use a thimble, but handled a long coarse needle,
pushing it through with the calloused end of his thumb, a simple and
effective method for those gifted with the necessary toughness of
cuticle. I had always wanted a pair of real seagoing canvas pants such
as Robinson Crusoe must have worn, before he skinned the historic goat,
pants wide in the legs, and fashioned of well weathered stuff, soft and
comfortable. My good shipmate constructed them for me. They were not
beautiful, but being what was left of an old skysail, a veteran of many
voyages, a romantic piece of canvas that had swept the starry paths on
many a balmy night, dew-bleached and mellow, they meant much to me.
These pants were very homelike, and I never was able to wear them out.
In patching and sewing we managed to do wonders with old rags that at
first seemed beyond all hope of redemption. Also, owing to the near
approach of the payday, we begrudged the slop chest any further inroads
upon the accumulated wealth that was to belong to us; the sailor's pot
of gold, sitting so brightly, way beyond to the north, where our dream
rainbow ended in cynical old New York.
About this time Peter came in for a lot of joshing by the men of his
watch. He had an old long-tailed oilskin coat given him by Chips. Such
a garment is never worn by sailor-men who have to go aloft, it being
the sole prerogative of officers and idlers who never venture above the
sheer pole. However, with Second Mate Tom on deck, many strange things
happened in the starboard watch, and Peter, the stiff tails of his long
coat sticking out in the wind, would go up the rigging as unconcerned
as if it was the recognized and proper thing for a sailor-man to wear.
It happened that during a rain squall at the latter part of his watch
on deck, he was sent up to furl the main skysail, and we tumbled out
just in time to see him going up the weather rigging with his long
yellow tail sticking out above his legs for all the world like a huge
pale cockroach. At the same time First Mate Zerk stood aghast at the
unusual spectacle.
"Come down out of that! Hey you! _Lay down!_" Peter heard and obeyed.
"Lay aft!" "Yes, sir!" "Hey, Chips!" "Aye, aye, sir!" from Chips.
"Bring a knife aft. Cut the tail off of this. Now!" Chips had trimmed
a good two feet off of Peter. "That looks fine. Now take off another
foot, we want to have this fine fellow in style."
When Chips got through, after a lot of sarcastic criticism by the
mate, and laughter by all hands mustered in the waist, Peter looked
like a well trimmed bird. His jacket was so short that the drip from
its end went into the top of his trousers. He made a move to pick up
the discarded tail, no doubt thinking it would do to sew on as an
extension. "No, you don't!" shouted the mate. "Throw that overboard,
Chips! Now, go forward, watch below. No, you don't," to Peter; "you lay
aloft and furl that sail, my fine fellow, and show us what a starboard
watch hand can do."
Poor Peter lay up in a dismal manner and after a lot of shouting from
the deck, he came down and went below with a good half hour of his
watch gone, all on account of the offending garment, showing that even
at sea the correct thing in dress is essential; at least it was so in
those strict old days.
Officers in the old ships were very precise as a rule in matters of
this kind. A number of years after the coat incident, I was serving
under Captain Geo. D. Morrison, one of the old-time sailing-ship
masters. We were on the bridge of a fine steamer. Eight bells had just
been made and a quartermaster, an important little man, came up out
of the fo'c'sle where he had his quarters, and as he walked aft along
the forward well deck he drew a huge silver watch out of his pocket as
though to verify the correctness of the bells on the bridge.
"Great Scott!" exclaimed the skipper. "What in thunder are we coming to
with sailors carrying watches? I suppose they will carry walking sticks
next. But, sir," turning to me, "not on my ship! Send that man down to
the chart room!"
When Erricson, the quartermaster, arrived on the bridge, I sent him
down to the skipper. The old man closed the chart room door, he was a
very religious man, and after a short session, the quartermaster came
out looking much scared. When we got to San Francisco, he was paid off,
and Captain Morrison handed me an envelope to give to the man; this
contained a heavy turnip-like object that no doubt was the offensive
watch.
As soon as warm weather struck us, the last remnant of our potato
bin went bad, and some of them were thrown overboard. This ended a
duty that had helped to pass away many an hour for the farmers of
the watch when they were sent forward to pick the sprouts off of the
spuds and discard those that were too bad. Chow always picked out the
bad ones anyway, and for the most part we subsisted on concoctions of
half-rotten potatoes. Someone, Old Smith, I believe, said that raw
potatoes were good for the scurvy. We all tried eating them. Scouse and
the Kanakas were the only ones who could stomach the raw tubers. They
always picked out the best sound potatoes and seemed to relish them; at
any rate they robbed the cabin table of a good many messes of selected
spuds.
When the old potato bin was knocked down, we had a general clean up
under the fo'c'sle head, a scrubbing and overhauling of the bo'sun's
lockers, the paint locker, and the oil stores. The short half deck
forming the fo'c'sle head was not high enough for a man to stand
upright under it, the lockers being arranged along the sides up into
the bow. In the very nose, next to the hawse pipes, were the toilets
of the ship, that is, those for the crew. These were very wet and
uncomfortable in heavy weather. They were kept scrupulously clean,
however. Large oil tanks were provided above these, fitted with small
copper tubes leading into the sea alongside of the forefoot of the
ship. Small cocks provided for the release of oil in heavy weather.
The bo'sun's locker contained everything necessary for carrying on the
marling-spike work of the ship; fids, serving mallets, iron spikes,
and the like. The tar pots were strung along a beam in the top of the
locker and the shelves at the sides held the deck stores of small
stuff, _marline_, _spun yarn_, _rope yarn_, _houseline_, _hambroline_,
_roundline_, _ratline stuff_, etc. Several new coils of various sizes
of rope, untarred hemp and manila were always carried in the bo'sun's
locker against an emergency. Another compartment of the locker held the
deck tackles, the "handy billys" and all emergency gear. This locker
also carried the _straps_, rope circles used in attaching tackles to
spars and rigging. Of such straps we had hundreds, always in apple-pie
order. Small "_salvagees_" for clapping a fall onto a stay, large
three-inch rope straps for hooking the rolling tackles onto the mast
doublings. The compartment for blocks was also kept in fine shape, so
we could lay our hands on things in the darkest night. Great _snatch
blocks_ for carrying a tack or sheet to the main or fo'c'sle head
capstan, or for taking the fore or main tops'l halyards to the same;
_secret blocks_ for _bunt jiggers_, a small round block about the size
of a soup plate, with the sheave completely covered, the whip, for it
is a single block, reeving through small holes in the edge of the shell
to prevent the canvas fouling between the rope and the sheave as is
possible in an ordinary block. _Clump blocks_, small and "clumpy" like
a roly-poly baker's loaf. These are very strong blocks and are used at
the ends of the staysail and jib sheets for the reeving of the whips.
These sheets, as sailors know, are always in two branches and the clump
block makes it easy to haul the weather sheet, block and whip over the
stay without catching, as the lee sheet is hauled aft. There are others
called _sister blocks_, _double_ and _treble blocks_, _fiddle blocks_,
great _jeer blocks_ for sending up and down heavy spars, stepping
masts, etc. Many of the blocks aboard ship take their names from the
particular use to which they may be put, such as _quarter blocks_,
_brace blocks_, _hanging blocks_, _clewline blocks_.
When we were cleaned up forward, and ready for the last long spell
of fine weather, with its round of marling-spike work, chipping,
painting, tarring and holystoning, we were treated to a few hours of
excitement that was different from the usual thing of that kind aboard
the _Fuller_, as we had a chance to enjoy the show like spectators at
the rail, and not, as on most occasions, when we saw the circus in the
same way that the performers see it, namely, dangling from the flying
trapeze near the top of the tent.
It was on a wet Friday morning; we were scrubbing deck paintwork when
the "wheel" sang out, "Steamer ahoy!"
This was unusual, and all hands were astonished at the closeness of a
cloud of smoke that was tearing toward us from somewhere to windward.
Captain Nichols came out on deck and got the long telescope to bear. He
pronounced her a cruiser.
She was coming for us fast; suddenly she altered her course fully four
points and came in under our stern. She was a dirty white, streaked
with rust, a fair-sized armored cruiser, two funnels with a military
mast between them.
"Break out the ensign, Mr. Zerk. Might as well show her who we are."
Indeed, the cruiser was reading our name and hailing-port on the broad
transom in letters of shining gold.
"She's a Spaniard, one of them has a mast between two funnels," someone
said. I remembered this, having in mind the pictures of the Spanish
ships in West Indian waters, published in the magazines while we were
in Honolulu.
"All out for Barcelona!" shouted the mate. The ensign went up, and we
dipped. The cruiser ran up the Argentine colors, answered our salute
and resumed her course.
"Hey, you loafers, get back on that paint work; this ain't no Spanish
prison!"
Of course we all grinned at the great humor of the joke, and began to
rub with our brick dust rags; the starboard watch went below at once,
for it was unhealthy to be seen standing around on deck during a watch
below. We all knew that the afternoon below would soon be gone and
hoped to stall off the day of doom as long as possible.