"All hands take in sail!"
"Stand by y'r tops'l halliards!"
"Let go!"
Sharply shouted out in quick succession came these orders from Captain
Snaggs, the hoarse words of command ringing through the ship fore and
aft, and making even the ringbolts in the deck jingle--albeit they were
uttered in a sort of drawling voice, that had a strong nasal twang, as
if the skipper made as much use of his nose as of his mouth in speaking.
This impression his thin and, now, tightly compressed lips tended to
confirm; while his hard, angular features and long, pointed, sallow
face, closely shaven, saving as to the projecting chin, which a
sandy-coloured billy-goat beard made project all the more, gave him the
appearance of a man who had a will of his own, aye, and a temper of his
own, too, should anyone attempt to smooth him down the wrong way, or, in
sea parlance, "run foul of his hawse!"
Captain Snaggs did not look particularly amiable at the present moment.
Standing by the break of the poop, with his lean, lanky body half bent
over the rail, he was keeping one eye out to windward, whence he had
just caught sight in time of the coming squall, looking down below the
while at the hands in the waist jumping briskly to their stations and
casting off the halliards with a will, almost before the last echo of
his shout `let go!' had ceased to roar in their ears; and yet the
captain's gaze seemed to gleam beyond these, over their heads and away
forwards, to where Jan Steenbock, the second-mate, a dark-haired Dane,
was engaged rousing out the port watch, banging away at the fo'c's'le
hatchway and likewise shouting, in feeble imitation of the skipper's
roar,--
"All ha-ands, ahoy! Doomble oop, my mans, and take in ze sail! Doomble
oop!"
But the men, who had only been relieved a short time before by the
starboard watch, and had gone below for their dinner when `eight bells'
were struck, seemed rather loth at turning out again so soon for duty,
the more especially as their caterer had just brought from the cook's
galley the mess kid, full of some savoury compound, the appetising odour
of which filled the air, and, being wafted upwards from below, made even
the swarthy second-mate feel hungry, as he peered down the hatchway and
called out to the laggards to come on deck.
"It vas goot, ja," murmured Jan Steenbock to himself, wiping his
watering mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve and sniffing up a
prolonged sniff of the odorous stew. "It vas goot, ja, and hart to leaf
ze groob; but ze sheeps cannot wait, my mans; zo doomble oop dere!
Doomble oop!"
Captain Snaggs, however, his watchful weather eye and quick intelligence
taking in everything at a glance, liked the second-mate's slowness of
speech and action as little as he relished the men's evident reluctance
at hurrying up again on deck; for, although barely a second or two had
elapsed from his first order to the crew, he grew as angry as if it had
been a "month of Sundays," his sallow face flushing with red streaks and
his sandy billy-goat beard bristling like wire, every hair on end, just
as a cat's tail swells at the sight of a strange dog in its immediate
vicinity when it puts up its back.
"Avast thaar, ye durned fule!" he screamed in his passion, dancing about
the poop and bringing his fist down with a resounding thump on the brass
rail, as if the inanimate material represented for the nonce the back of
the mate, whom he longed to belabour. "Guess one'd think ye wer coaxin'
a lot o' wummen folk to come to a prayer-meetin'! Why don't ye go down
in the fo'c's'le an' drive 'em up, if they won't come on deck when
they're hailed? Below thaar, d'ye haar?--all hands reef tops'ls!"
This shout, which the captain yelled out in a voice of thunder, finally
fetched the dawdlers on deck, first one and then another crawling up the
hatchway with lingering feet, in that half-hearted, dilatory,
aggravating way that sailors--and some shore people, too for that
matter--know well how to put on when setting to a task that runs against
their grain and which they do not relish; though they can be spry
enough, and with ten times the smartness of any landsmen, when
cheerfully disposed for the work they have in hand, or in the face of
some real emergency or imminent peril, forgetting then their past
grievances, and buckling to the job right manfully, in true `shellback'
fashion, as if many-handed, like Briareus, with every hand a dozen
fingers on it, and each finger a hook!
So it could be seen now.
The _Denver City_, a ship-rigged vessel of about thirteen hundred tons
burthen, bound from Liverpool to San Francisco with a general cargo, had
been two days out from the Mersey, battling against bad weather all the
way from the start, with a foul wind, that shifted from the west to
south-west and back again to the west, dead in her teeth, as she essayed
to shape her course down Saint George's Channel to the Atlantic.
First, beating to the westward with the ebb tide, so as to give Great
Orme's Head a wide berth, and then making a short board south when she
had cleared Anglesey; what with the currents and the thick fog,
accompanied with driving rain, that she met on nearing the Welsh coast,
she nearly came to grief on the Skerries, the water shoaling rapidly on
the lead being hove, shortly before the bright fixed light showing above
the red on the Platters rocks loomed close in on the starboard bow.
This made it a case of 'bout ship at once, Captain Snaggs thenceforth
hugging the Irish side of the channel way and keeping it well on board
on the port tack; and so on this second morning after leaving Liverpool,
the ship was some six miles south of the Tuskar Light, with a
forty-fathom bottom under her and the wind still to the southward and
westward, right ahead of her true course, but shifting and veering from
one point to another, and with a sudden sharp squall coming every now
and then, by way of a change, to increase the labour of the men, already
pretty well worn out by forty-eight hours tacking to and fro in the
captain's endeavours to beat to windward in the face of the foul
weather.
As the _Denver City_, too, reached the more open seaway, the water got
rougher, a northern stream setting up the Irish Sea from Scilly meeting
the incoming tide round Carnsore Point, and causing a nasty chopping
sea; which, save in the sullen green hollows of the waves, was dead and
lead-coloured as far as the eye could reach--as leaden, indeed, as the
heavy grey sky overhead, where some fleecy floating clouds of lighter
wrack, rapidly drifting across the darker background that lined the
horizon all round, made the latter of a deeper tone by contrast, besides
acting as the _avant courier_ of a fresh squall--the wind just then
tearing and shrieking through the rigging in short angry gusts and then
sighing as it wailed away to leeward, like the spirit of some lost
mariner chaunting the requiem of those drowned in the remorseless deep!
When the port watch had gone below at `eight bells,' as mentioned
before, to have their dinner, the weather had looked a little brighter,
a small patch of blue sky, not quite as big as the Dutchman's proverbial
pair of breeches, showing right overhead at the zenith as the ship's
bell struck the midday hour, giving a slight promise of better things to
come; and so, as Captain Snaggs had been trying to `carry on' all he
could from the time the vessel left the Mersey, working the hands to
death, as they imagined, unnecessarily in tacking and beating about in
his attempt to make a fair wind out of a foul one, instead of waiting
more sensibly for a more favourable breeze, such as might reasonably be
expected in another day or two at most--judging by those signs sailors
know so well, as do farmers, but which are inexplainable according to
any natural meteorological laws--the hands now thought, on being so
suddenly summoned again on deck, and forced to leave their untasted meal
just as they were in the very act, so to speak, of putting it into their
mouths, and with its tantalising taste and smell vexing them all the
more, that the `old man' only roused them out again from sheer malice
and devilry, to make another fresh tack or short board, with the object
of `hazing' or driving them, as only slaves and sailors can be driven in
these days by a brutal captain and hard taskmaster!
This it was that made them loth to leave their snug and warm fo'c's'le,
filled as it was with the grateful odour of the appetising lobscouse
which Sam Jedfoot, the negro cook, a great favourite with the crew by
reason of his careful attention to their creature comforts, had so
thoughtfully compounded for them; and thus it was that they crawled up
the hatchway from below so laggardly, in response to the second-mate's
pleading order and Captain Snaggs second stentorian hail, as if they
were ascending a mountain, and each man had a couple of half-hundred
weights tied to his legs, so as to make his movements the slower.
"Hoo-ry oop, mans!" cried the second-mate, in his queer foreign lingo.
"Hoo-ry oop, or you vill have ze skipper after yous! He vas look as if
he vas comin' down ze poop ladder joost now!"
"Durn the skipper! He ain't got no more feelin' in his old carkiss than
a Rock Island clam!" muttered the leading man of the disturbed watch, as
he stepped out over the coaming of the hatchway on to the deck, as
leisurely as if he were executing a step in the sword dance; but, the
next moment, as his eye took in the position of the ship and the scene
around, the wind catching him at the moment, and almost knocking him
backwards down the hatchway, as it met him full butt, he made a dash for
the weather rigging, shouting out to his companions behind, who were
coming up out of the fo'c's'le just as slowly as he had done: "Look
alive, mates! Ther's a reg'lar screamer blowin' up, an' no mistake.
We'll be took aback, if we don't get in our rags in time. Look smart;
an' let's show the skipper how spry we ken be when we chooses!"
The captain, or `skipper', soon supplemented this advice by another of
his roaring commands, yelled out at a pitch of voice that defied alike
the shriek of the wind, and the noise of the sea, and the slatting of
the huge topsails as they bellied out into balloons one moment and then
flapped back again with a bang against the swaying masts, that quivered
again and again with the shock, as if the next blow would knock them out
of the ship.
"Forrud there! Away aloft, ye lazy skunks!" cried Captain Snaggs, when
he saw the watch at last turn out, gripping the brass poop rail in front
of him with both hands, so as to steady himself and prevent his taking a
header into the waist below, as he seemed to be on the point of doing
every minute, in his excitement. "Lay out, thaar, on the yards, ye
skulking lubbers! Lay out, thaar, d'ye hear? Thaar's no time to lose!
Sharp's the word an' quick the motion!"
The starboard watch, which had been waiting for the others, at once
rounded the weather braces, so as to take the wind out of the sails as
the men raced aloft, each anxious now to be first out on the yard; and,
the reef tackle being hauled out, the spilling lines were clutched hold
of, and the heavy folds of the canvas gathered up, the men at the
yard-arms seeing to the earring being clear and ready for passing, with
the hands facing to leeward, so as to lighten the sail and assist the
weather earring being hauled out, as they held the reef-line, and again
facing to windward and lightening the sail there in the same fashion, so
as to haul out the lee-earring before the signal was given by those out
at the end of the yard-arms to "toggle away!"
It was risky work, especially as the ship was rather shorthanded, to
attempt reefing the three topsails all at once, but the job was at last
accomplished to the captain's apparent satisfaction, for he sang out for
them to come down from aloft; when, the topsail halliards being brought
to the capstan, the yards were bowsed again, the slack of the ropes
coiled down, and everything made comfortable.
Captain Snaggs, however, had not done with them yet.
"Clew up an' furl the mainsail!"
"Man the jib down-haul!"
"Brail up the spanker!"
He shouted out these several orders as quickly as he could bawl them,
the creaking of the cordage and rattling of the clew-garnet blocks
forming a fitting accompaniment to his twangy voice; while the plaintive
`Yo--ho--hoy--e! Yo--ho--hai--e!' of the men, as they hauled upon the
clewlines and leech and buntlines of the heavy main course, chimed in
musically with the wash of the waves as they broke over the bows,
dashing high over the yard-arms in a cataract of spray, and wetting to
the skin those out on the fo'c's'le furling the jib--these having the
benefit also of a second bath below the surface as well, when the ship
dived under as they got on to the footrope of the jib-boom, plunging
them into the water up to their middles and more.
"I guess, we're going to hev it rougher yet," said the captain
presently, when the second-mate came aft, after seeing all snug forward,
to ask whether he might now dismiss the port watch to their long delayed
dinner. "Thet thaar squall wer a buster, but thaar's worse comin', to
my reck'nin'. We'd best take another reef in them topsails an' hev one
in the foresail, too."
"Verra goot, sir!" replied Jan Steenbock, the mate, respectfully, as he
made his way forward again to where the men were waiting, anxious to go
below to their lobscouse--cold, alas! by now. "Verra goot!"
Captain Snaggs smiled contemptuously after him, and then broke into a
laugh, which was shared in by the first-mate, an American like himself,
but one of a stouter and coarser stamp and build, albeit he boasted of a
more romantic sort of name--Jefferson Flinders, to wit. This worthy now
sniggering in sympathy, as he came up the after companion and took his
place by the captain's side, having been roused out before his time by
the commotion on deck.
"A rum coon thet, sir," said he to the captain, in response to his
laugh. "He'll be the death of me some day, I reckon, with thet durned
`verra goot!' of his'n, you bet, sir!"
"We've a rum lot o' hands altogither aboard, Flinders--chaps ez thinks
they hev only come to sea to eat an' enj'y themselves, an' don't want to
work fur thaar grub; but, I guess I'll haze' 'em, Flinders, I'll haze'
'em!" snapped out Captain Snaggs, in reply, his wiry billy-goat beard
bristling again as he yelled out in a louder tone,--"Forrud thaar!
Mister Steenbock; what air ye about, man--didn't I tell ye I want
another reef taken in them topsails? Away aloft with ye agen; lay out
thaar, an' look spry about it!"
The halliards were therefore again let go, and the same performance gone
through as before, with the addition of the men having to go up on the
fore yard after they had finished with the topsails, and take a reef as
well in the foresail--another piece of touch work.
As the ship was then found not to steer so well close-hauled, without
any headsail, on account of the jib being lowered down, the foretopmost
staysail was hoisted in its place and the bunt of the spanker loosened,
to show a sort of `goose-wing' aft,--this little additional fore and aft
sail now giving her just the steadying power she wanted for her helm,
and enabling her to lie a bit closer to the wind.
"Thet will do, the port watch!" cried Captain Snaggs at length, and the
men were scampering back to the fo'c's'le in high glee, glad of being
released at last, when, as if he'd only been playing with them--as a cat
plays with a mouse--he arrested their rush below with another shout,--
"Belay thaar! All hands 'bout ship!"
"Ha! ha!" sniggered Jefferson Flinders, the first-mate, behind him,
enjoying the joke amazingly; "guess ye had 'em thaar, cap. Them coons
'll catch a weasel asleep, I reckon, when they try working a traverse on
a man of the grit of yourn!"
"Bully for ye," echoed the captain, grinning and showing his yellow
teeth, while his pointed beard wagged out. "Say, Flinders, I'll fix
'em!"
The men, though, did not relish the joke; nor did they think it such an
amusing one! It might, certainly, have been necessary to put the ship
about, for the leeway she was making, coupled with the set of the cross
tides, was causing her to hug the Irish coast too much, so that she was
now bearing right on to the Saltee rocks, the vessel having covered the
intervening twenty odd miles of water that lay between the Tuskar and
this point since the hands had been first called up; but Captain Snaggs
could have done this just as well off-hand after the topsails were
reefed, without waiting until the men were ready to go below again
before giving the fresh order.
It was only part and parcel of his tyrannical nature, that never seemed
satisfied unless when giving pain and annoyance to those forced to serve
under him.
And so, the men grumbled audibly as they came back once more from the
fore hatch, manning the sheets and braces, when the skipper's warning
shout was heard,--
"Helm's a-lee!"
"Tacks and sheets!" the next order followed; when the head sails were
flattened and the ship brought up to the wind.