Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: _The Dream Ship_]
[Illustration: Title page]
*THE CRUISE OF THE
DREAM SHIP*
BY
RALPH STOCK
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS
LINE DRAWINGS
BY
LYNN BOGUE HUNT
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, WASHINGTON, D. C.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
TO
PETER AND STEVE
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I. THE DREAM
On dreams, and the means to realize them.
II. THE PREPARATION
Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in particular.
III. AT VIGO, OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN
Some confessions and a few morals
IV. THE CANARY ISLANDS
Dropping the pilot--and the result
V. THE START ACROSS THE ATLANTIC
Visitations--pleasant, and the reverse
VI. THE ARRIVAL AT BRITISH WEST INDIES
Deep-sea thoughts--Concerning Calms--Visitors in mid-Atlantic--Barbados
and beyond
VII. THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL
From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings that intervened
VIII. THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS
The ash heap
IX. THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS
The Real South Seas--Big-game shooting extraordinary--A case of thwarted
ambition
X. THE PAUMOTU ISLANDS
The people of the atolls--including Mr. Mumpus
XI. PAPEETE, TAHITI
Tahiti: its pleasures and problems
XII. THE ISLAND OF MOOREA
The land of the lizard men--Facts and fancies, including a few horrors
XIII. PALMERSTON ISLAND
A hint of hurricane--The atoll of perfection, introducing "Mister
Masters himself"
XIV. SAVAGE ISLAND
The Island called "Savage," including the ordeal by hospitality
XV. THE FRIENDLY ISLANDS AND THE END OF THE DREAM
The island that _was_ savage--Dream's end, and a few realities
XVI. THURSDAY ISLAND
Concerning a wild-goose chase, and where it led
XVII. ADVICE TO DREAMERS OF DREAM SHIPS
For the prospective dream-ship owner the world over
APPENDIX
*LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS*
The Dream Ship . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
The Route of the Dream Ship
Ready for Sea
The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-Ocean
Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm
Peter's Cooking Week
Peter Entertains
The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific
At St. Lucia, West Indies
Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas
Pascal, the Pearl-Diving Non-starter
A Man of the Atolls
Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands
Pearl-Diver About to Descend
Pearl-Divers in a Paumotan Lagoon
Mr. Mumpus's Blisters
Fish-Spearing on the Reef
Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men
Moorea Greets the Dream Ship
The Leaning Palms
Landing on Palmerston Island
The National Sport at Palmerston Island
Dragging a Boat Through the Reef Pass
The Taro Patch
Mr. Masters Himself
The Dream Ship Bargain Sale
Thursday Island Pearling Luggers
In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner
High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach
Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders
The Japanese Club
Out of the Deep
The Main Products of Torres Straits
An Islander's Home on T.I.
The Tennis Handicap
Lines of the Dream Ship, Designed by Colin Archer and Built at
Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908
Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship
*THE CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP*
_On dreams, and the means to realize them_
[Illustration: Chapter I headpiece]
*CHAPTER I*
_On dreams, and the means to realize them_
We all have our dreams. Without them we should be clods. It is in our
dreams that we accomplish the impossible; the rich man dumps his load of
responsibility and lives in a log shack on a mountain top, the poor man
becomes rich, the stay-at-home travels, the wanderer finds an abiding
place.
For more years than I like to recall my dream has been to cruise through
the South Sea Islands in my own ship, and if you had ever been to the
South Sea Islands, it would be yours also. They are the sole remaining
spot on this earth that is not infested with big-game-shooting
expeditions, globe-trotters, or profiteers, where the inhabitants know
how to live, and where the unfortunate from distant and turbulent lands
can still find interest, enjoyment, and peace.
My dream was as impracticable as most. There was a war to be attended
to and lived through if Providence so willed. There was a ship to be
bought, fitted out, and provisioned on a bank balance that would fill
the modern cat's-meat-man with contempt. There were the little matters
of cramming into a chronically unmathematical head sufficient knowledge
of navigation to steer such a ship across the world when she _was_
bought, and of finding a crew that would work her without hope of
monetary reward.
The thing looked and sounded sufficiently like comic opera to deter me
from mentioning it to any but a select few, and _they_ laughed. Yet
such is the driving power of a dream if its fulfilment is sufficiently
desired that I write in retrospect with my vision a secure and
accomplished fact.
Exactly how it all came about I find it difficult to recall. I have
vague recollections of crouching in dug-outs in France, and while others
had recourse during their leisure to letter-cases replete with
photographs of fluffy girls, I pored with equal interest over plans and
designs of my dream ship.
In hospital it was the same, and when a medical board politely ushered
me into the street a free man, it took me rather less than four hours to
reach the nearest seaport and commence a search that covered the best
part of six months.
It is no easy matter to find the counterpart of a dream ship, but in the
end I found her patiently awaiting me in a backwater of glorious
Devon:--a Norwegian-built auxiliary cutter of twenty-three tons
register, designed as a lifeboat for the North Sea fishing fleet,
forty-seven feet over all, fifteen feet beam, eight feet draught, built
to stand up to anything, and be handled by a crew of three or less. Such
was my dream ship in cold print. In reality, and seen through her
owner's eyes, she was, naturally, the most wonderful thing that ever
happened. A mother on the subject of her child is almost derogatory
compared with an owner concerning his ship, so the reader shall be
spared further details.
Having found her, there was the little matter of paying for her. I had
no money. I have never had any money, but that is a detail that should
never be allowed to stand in the way of a really desirable dream. It
was necessary to make some. How? By conducting a stubborn offensive on
the Army Authorities for my war gratuity. By sitting up to all hours in
a moth-eaten dressing-gown and a microscopic flat writing short stories.
By assiduously cultivating maiden aunts. By coercion. By---- But I
refuse to say more.
The dream ship became mine, but what of a crew? Well, I have a sister,
and a sister is an uncommonly handy thing to have, provided she is of
the right variety. Mine happens to be, for she agreed to forego all the
delicacies of the season and float with me on a piece of wood to the
South Sea Islands. So also did a recently demobilized officer who, on
hearing that these same islands were not less than three thousand miles
from the nearest early-morning parade, offered his services with almost
unbecoming alacrity.
With ship and crew accounted for, those unacquainted with the
intricacies of ocean cruising may imagine there was nothing more to be
done than to sail. Others, who have perhaps trodden the thorny path
leading to the fulfilment of a dream such as ours, will realize that our
troubles had little more than begun. The hull of a ship--even a dream
ship--is a thing vastly different from a vessel fully equipped for a
voyage. The difference between a house "furnished" and "unfurnished" is
nothing to it. We needed an auxiliary motor engine for entering and
leaving port if we would escape extortionate towage charges. We needed
copper sheathing to protect our future home against the dreaded cobra
worm of tropical waters that has been known to reduce sound wood to the
semblance of a honeycomb within six months. We needed water tanks to
contain three hundred gallons, oil tanks to hold two hundred, nautical
instruments and gear of every possible description, not to mention
provisions for an indefinite period.
Exactly how we were to acquire these things without the proverbial penny
to do it with was a problem that gave us pause until at an
extraordinary, general meeting of the firm of Peter, Steve, and Myself,
dream merchants, it was proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously that
we suffered from lack of capital, and that, in the words of the
chairman, we should have to scatter and scratch for it.
So, each to his method!
Peter became what is called in the advertisements "useful maid" to an
exacting invalid of religious and parsimonious tendencies at a South
Coast resort. Steve faded into the smoke of a great city on a mission
the details of which he has never divulged to this day, though judging
by its success I am divided in my surmise as to its nature between
"bridge" and robbery with violence.
As for me, I saw nothing for it but a return to the moth-eaten
dressing-gown--until I happened to visit the local fish market and asked
the price of sole. The answer caused me furiously to think. There were
a hundred and fifty sailing vessels in this old-fashioned Devonshire
fishing fleet, each earning a handsome income, and not one of them a
better craft than mine. Why not go trawling with the dream ship?
This I did, and propose to give a brief account of my experiences for
the benefit of those desirous of knowing one way of making a ship pay
for herself.
From frequent recourse to the bar-parlour of "The Hole in the Wall," a
far-famed hostelry replete with smoke-grimed rafters and sawdust floor,
I learnt that the universal custom amongst fishing craft thereabouts was
to have a crew of three: two "hands" and a skipper. The money that the
catch of fish realized on sale by auction was divided at the week end
into five, a share each for the crew, and the remainder going "to the
ship" or, in other words, to the owner, who is responsible for all gear.
[Illustration: _The Route of the Dream Ship_]
As regards nets: there are two kinds of trawl net, the "beam" and the
otter. Imagine a huge, meshed jelly-bag being towed along the bottom of
the sea, and you have the net. But how is the mouth of it, which is
often twenty feet long, kept open? In the case of the beam trawl, by a
wooden spar terminating each end in iron "heads"; and this is the usual
type of net for the sailing smacks comprising the main fleet. But for
smaller craft, such as motor boats, a beam trawl is too heavy and
unwieldy; consequently the otter trawl was invented.
[Illustration: _Ready for Sea_]
This consists of two boards about three feet by four, weighted at the
bottom, and attached to each corner of the mouth of the net. They are
"slung" at such an angle that the force of the water as the boat tows
them along the bottom of the sea forces them outward, like kites, and
thus keeps the mouth of the net stretched. In addition to this, the top
of the net's mouth is kept up by cork, and the bottom down, by leads
disposed along the foot-rope. It is a simple contrivance, like most
things ingenious.
Ninety fathoms of warp, and two wire "bridles," one leading to each
board, and thirty fathoms in length, complete the fishing gear, which is
paid out and hauled in by means of a hand capstan.
All these articles I somehow acquired, including a "hand" of forbidding
aspect, and a boy. The dream ship was converted into a smack with as
much expediency as an elderly shipwright with a taste for beer, and his
accomplice, a lad of fifteen, allowed; and finally she stood, a thing of
such beauty in smacks that I wrote a sonnet to her, which shows the
appalling effects of freedom, sea air, and a fish diet.
My opinion of her, however, was not shared by the fishing fraternity.
Almost everything that could be wrong with a smack was the matter with
the dream ship according to these chronically pessimistic gentry. She
had too much freeboard. She had too much beam for her length. Her
bulwarks were not high enough. She would never "tow" (trawl).
Yet upon a never-to-be-forgotten morning we sailed--dearly beloved word
of infinite possibilities!--we sailed at a seven-knot clip for precisely
ten miles. We could beat the ketch-rigged smacks of the fleet to
wind'ard without topsail or staysail. I grinned, the boy grinned, even
the "hand" grinned as he looked aloft; and it was at that precise moment
that I saw his grin fade into an open-mouthed, wide-eyed stare.
"She's gone at the eyes of the rigging," was all he said, with complete
composure, and in rich Devonian.
We put about. The mast-head was leaning at an angle of forty degrees,
and wabbling on its splintered base like a drunken man. The "hand," in
white chin whiskers, enormous boots, and a bowler hat dented on one
side, continued to grin. In that hour I hated the man. To him it was a
gigantic joke, an amusing problem as to whether we could reach harbour
before the mast fell about our ears. To me, the owner of a dream ship,
it was tragedy. There are moments when even a sense of humour can be
out of place.
One hundred yards from our moorings the mast "went" at the deck as well
as the hounds, and fell with a crash the full length of the
ship--without touching a soul. It was little short of a miracle, and
for a few moments we stood in our several places pondering it.
The mast had scarce met the deck, with the sails and rigging hanging
over the side in a tangled mass, when a smack's crew was alongside. Did
we want help? We did, but hardly expected such a stiff bill for salvage
as was rendered the next day.
It took three weeks to step the dream ship's new mast; three miserable
weeks of waiting that only those who have "fitted out" can appreciate.
But in time we sailed afresh. We even launched the trawl with much
shouting and flurry, and at the end of two hours' speculation hauled it
up again by sheer brawn and the capstan, got the net aboard, and found
mud, nothing but mud, in the cod-end.
Various explanations were forthcoming from the "hand" for this calamity.
There was too much lead on the foot-rope. There was too much cork on
the head-line. The otter boards were not slung true. We had been
towing too fast. We had been towing too slow. Why, bless your heart,
there were men (successful fishermen now) who had spent months in
adjusting an otter trawl. An inch this way or that made all the
difference. An otter trawl was like a watch. Out of all this the hard
fact emerged that we had caught no fish.
[Illustration: Fisherman]
For two weeks we were out early and late experimenting, and for two
weeks I scraped together (Heaven knows how!) sufficient for the "hand's"
retainer and my own board and lodging. And then--success came to us as
by a miracle. Instead of mud, or shells, or weed, we found fish in the
cod-end: fat plaice, luxurious sole, skate, and whiting.
What we had done to our otter trawl I don't think anyone knew, least of
all the "hand," and I am none the wiser to this day, but it caught fish.
We treasured that trawl as something exceedingly precious, and nothing,
nothing whatsoever, would cause us to alter its ropes or leads a hair's
breadth. We lived in constant dread that we should meet a "hitch" (an
obstacle on the bottom of the sea) that would make it necessary to cut
the warp and lose this wonderful trawl. It would have taken two weeks,
perhaps two months, to discover another like it, and we were averaging
fifty pounds a week.
Success breeds ambition, and I installed a motor auxiliary engine.
Further, there is only one way of catching more fish than by trawling
all day, and that is trawling all night. The fish, especially whiting,
do not see the net coming in the dark. So we acquired the habits of
night-hawks, sailing at four o'clock in the afternoon, and returning at
six the next morning. It paid. It paid handsomely. What should I not
be able to report at the next general meeting of dream merchants?
It was a fine sight on a pitch-black night to see our wake streaming
away like smoke from the propeller, so bright with phosphorescence that
it seemed a powerful light must be hung over the stern. And to watch
the net, lit with a myriad tiny lamps, creeping in yard by yard. Then,
what a splashing as the big skate and plaice came alongside!
It must be remembered that the dream ship's career as a fishing smack
was during the last phases of the great war. She saw three German
submarines, two steamers sunk, and had her stalwart ribs severely shaken
by depth-charges on several occasions. In fact, as one concussion
caused her to leak, I had serious thoughts of decorating her with a
wound-stripe on the starboard quarter. What the effect of one of those
fearful implements of destruction must be at close quarters, and while
submerged, I can hardly imagine. I only know that one was dropped about
half a mile from the dream ship, and from the cabin it sounded as though
someone had hit the oil-tanks with a sledge-hammer, and felt as though
she had run bow on, and at a nine-knot clip, into an iceberg.
Over twenty good, sound fishing smacks belonging to the fleet with which
we sailed were sent to the bottom by German submarines. In one case the
crew were stripped of their jerseys--the only article aboard the smack
that seemed to appeal to the Hun--and left on deck while the submarine
submerged under their feet. The one survivor's chief complaint appeared
to be the loss of his jersey.
On more than one occasion a German submarine appeared in the midst of
the fishing fleet, which they favoured as an unsuspected lurking-place.
Warps were cut on the instant, and, under full sail, a hundred smacks
might have been seen racing harbourward minus their gear. This became
such a common occurrence that patrol boats were sent out with the fleet,
and "forbidden areas" created.
These last were unpopular with fishermen. The authorities seemed to
pitch inevitably on the most prolific grounds to place under the ban.
Poaching became general. In one instance the skipper of a smack, who
had had a bad "week's work," decided to make amends or perish in the
effort. He altered the registered number of his boat, which is carried
in large white figures on the mainsail and bow, with whitewash,
burnt-corked the faces of himself and his crew, and sailed for the
banned area.
For hours he trawled backward and forward across the holy ground, with
dread and hope alternating in his heart, and with the first hint of dawn
hauled in his net, to discover that in the general excitement he had
"shot" his trawl with the cod-end untied!
Nothing daunted, he returned to the attack the following night, and as
Fate the Jester so often decrees, on this occasion, when the cod-end was
securely tied and all going well, the hated voice of the fisheries
inspector, better known as the "bogey-man," came out of the night, close
alongside: "You are reported for trawling in the proscribed area."
Simultaneously a shaft of light from an electric torch bit into the
darkness, exposing the smack's number and her black-faced crew.
"Stand by. I'm coming aboard," were the next instructions, but the men
were suddenly electrified into life. In stony silence, so that their
voices should not be recognized, the skipper successfully threatened the
boarding "bogey-man" with a cutlass, while the crew set the steam
capstan to work and soon had the trawl aboard with its valuable freight.
With the "bogey-man" still threatening dire vengeance, the smack stood
out to sea, and catching the morning breeze, outstripped the inspector's
launch. The authorities never knew who perpetrated this outrage, as,
when they came to look up the smack's number in the register, they found
it to be that of an antiquated hulk that had never left harbour.
It is to be feared that the dream ship poached. On one occasion a thick
fog descended upon her while trawling. She continued the motion blindly
for three hours, when the fog lifted and we discovered--naturally with
deep regrets--that we had covered a forbidden area from end to end, and
had caught sole, plaice, and turbot to the value of forty pounds.
The dream ship had many experiences while "paying for herself," and was
destined to have many more. For her size, it is doubtful if any craft
has enjoyed a more varied life, and the more I think of her lying there
in foreign waters, ... But of this anon.
*THE PREPARATION*
_Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in
particular_
[Illustration: Chapter II headpiece]
*CHAPTER II*
_Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in
particular_
Our separate excursions into the field of commerce resulted in a
healthier financial outlook at the next general meeting of dream
merchants. Plans developed apace. Lists were made, schedules drawn up.
An actual sailing date began to emerge out of a welter of conjecture.
On paper, the dream ship was converted from a work-worn fishing-smack
into a cruiser yacht of comfort and elegance within a month, and a
trifle under the estimated cost.
On paper, the art of navigation was acquired in our spare time, after
the airy fashion of a Correspondence-School advertisement.
And again on paper--a map of the world outspread on the cabin table, to
be exact--we actually decided on our route. At the point of an
indomitable lead pencil we traversed vast tracts of ocean in the winking
of an eye, and explored the furthermost corners of the earth; and if
there is a more fascinating evening's entertainment, I should like to
hear of it.
Spain should be touched at, for the sake of her wine, if nothing else;
perhaps Madeira, and most certainly the Canary Islands. After that,
there was the little matter of the Atlantic Ocean, ending in the West
Indies. Then came the Caribbean Sea, the Panama Canal, and so down into
the milky way of the Pacific. It looked a long way; it _was_ a long
way, but we had a ship, and we had a crew, and what was the sea if not
the highway of the earth? The enthusiasm of ignorance? Perhaps; yet I
am convinced that without the enthusiasm, and most certainly without the
ignorance, we should never have set sail, much less won through to our
goal.
The transition from fancy to fact was effected the following morning,
when Steve and I commenced the soul-racking task of transferring twelve
tons of rusty pig-iron from the dream ship's bilge to the quay alongside
which we lay. This mass of obstinate metal had to be chipped and
painted, and ultimately replaced so that we might disport ourselves on
our beam ends, if the elements so willed, without shifting it. It was
one of the dream ship's strong points, that her ballast was all
"inside." There was no "fin" of lead hanging from her keel, that might
come adrift from a multitude of causes, and leave us a tottering hulk.
I told Steve this, as we wrestled with two hundredweight pigs, that had
a knack of slipping their moorings in mid-air, and crashing through the
cabin floor boards, or on to our anatomies with striking impartiality.
I told it to him again, as we sat in the rain on the quay, chipping rust
into each other's eyes, but received no satisfactory reply on either
occasion.
"By the way," was all he said that evening, when, weary and bruised and
rusty, we flung ourselves on our bunks, "according to schedule, this is
where we study navigation, isn't it?" And for three mortal hours he
gave his undivided attention to a nautical epitome. That is the kind of
man Steve is.
There is no undertaking that requires a more careful selection of
personnel than a cruise such as we contemplated, and no better
opportunity of taking a man's measure than when fitting out! By the
time it is done, one has either come to the conclusion that the other
fellow has his points, or that to remain in his company another hour is
beyond endurance. Naturally, his feelings are similar, and that we of
the dream ship stood the mutual test seemed to me to augur well for the
future.
It was during this trying period that we encountered a peculiarly
pernicious type of the genus yachtsman on his native heath. He was
owner of a pretty little six-tonner across the creek, and was "fitting
out" also--had been for two months, as far as we could gather. The
thing was evidently a hobby with him that he infinitely preferred to
getting to sea. With a paint pot in one hand, and a camel's hair brush
in the other, he advanced on his craft in the manner of an artist
attacking a master canvas, applied the pigment, and stood back with his
head at an angle to view the effect. In itself there was nothing
against this form of amusement, provided that it interfered with no one
else; but, evidently tiring of his own company, at which I am not
surprised, our yachtsman strolled in the direction of the dream ship to
offer unsolicited criticism.
[Illustration: _The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-ocean_;
_Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm_]
"Fine craft you have there," was his introductory remark, and my heart
warmed to him. Here, at all events, was a judge. "But too much beam
for her length, and too much _flaire_. She'll break your heart going to
wind'ard," he added, judicially, and I confess to loathing him on the
instant. Imagine a stranger approaching you in the street and saying:
"Fine wife you have there, but I don't like her face--or her action."
Well, that is how I felt. For you must be told, unless you are an
"owner" and know already, that the simile of the ship and the wife is
not so far-fetched as may appear. Yet, with superhuman restraint, I
continued to chip iron while it was pointed out to me that lead was
better, that to paint spars instead of varnishing them was a crime, and
to paint decks was worse; in short, that most things about the dream
ship met with this yachtsman's hearty disapproval. To which I was
constrained to make answer that with all her defects the dream ship
happened to satisfy _me_ because I was an ex-fisherman and not a
yachtsman; that for one thing I could not afford to be a yachtsman, and
for another I had no wish to be a yachtsman, being rather too fond of
the sea. So we parted the best of enemies, and had not done with each
other, as will transpire later.
[Illustration: _Peter's Cooking Week_;
_Peter Entertains_]
The moral of this somewhat hectic interlude is: when fitting out for a
cruise, get the advice of a deep-water man, and find a place where there
are no yachtsmen. This last is difficult, but it is worth while.
Much the same thing applies to the study of navigation. If the beginner
lends an ear to the horde of amateur cranks who dabble in the subject,
and who seem obsessed with a desire to impart their half-baked theories
to others, he will know as much about the practical business of finding
a ship's position at sea as he does about the origin of life. There is
the long lean man, usually with a drooping moustache, who demonstrates
on an instrument of his own invention that can do anything but
talk--this last deficiency being amply atoned for by the inventor
himself. There is the man with "short cuts" and "clean cuts." There is
even the man who still persists in the belief that the world is "flat
with rounded edges," and produces reams of his own screed, printed at
enormous expense, in support of his theories; but he is easily disposed
of. After admitting that the shape of the world is not a burning
question with you anyway, because after all it is not a bad old world
and certainly the best we can expect in this life, you confess to a
sneaking suspicion that it is a rhomboid.
No, there is only one way of learning to find a ship's position at sea
if you are unable to spend three months or more at a school of
navigation, and that is to find a retired master mariner who, for a
stipulated sum, will teach you exactly what he did himself probably
three hundred and sixty-five times in the year for thirty years.
Hearken unto him, in spite of all lures to the contrary, and in three
weeks or less the miracle will cease to be a miracle.
We of the dream ship were fortunate in running such a mentor to earth in
his charming cottage on the hillside, overlooking the harbour. The
Skipper, as he shall henceforth be called, was of the old school, and
so, if it is permissible to say such things of a lady, was his wife!
This remarkable woman followed the sea with her husband on every
ocean-going schooner he commanded, and once, when the entire crew was
down with beri-beri, and a voracious tug hovered alongside like a bird
of prey, she brought the ship to port single-handed, thus saving the
owners a stupendous sum for salvage. They rewarded her with a
presentation piano, and she wept. She could not play. So a cheque for
a hundred guineas was substituted, and her husband alleges that she
bought three new hats and a galley range in which she cooks the acme in
figgy dough to this day.
[Illustration: Using a sextant]
The Skipper, a man of monumental and very necessary patience, received
us each day in a torture chamber of his own, replete with thumb screw
and rack in the form of nautical epitomes, and model craft at variance
on the placid surface of a deal table. That small room was the scene of
strange and tragic happenings. Gales, fogs, collisions, lee shores, and
shipwreck followed one another in rapid succession, and invariably
terminated in the short, sharp query: "What do you do now?"
But these things constituted seamanship, which is essentially a matter
of experience, not of rote. It was after our first, second, and even
third day of attempting to find longitude that we reeled from the
classroom, our heads a whirling chaos of logarithms, traverse tables,
and despair. At no time that I can recall did our dream come so near to
dissolution.
"Have you," muttered Steve, as we paused during our descent to the town,
and the strongest cup of tea procurable, "have you the foggiest idea of
what we are driving at?"
I admitted that I had not, and the funereal procession proceeded on its
way.
There are two methods of attacking the problem of navigation: one is by
intelligent understanding, and the other by rule of thumb. If yours is
the type of mind that revels in mathematics, then the first is obviously
your course, and a pleasant one at that. If, upon the other hand, you
are cursed, as I am, with a mind that reels at the mere sight of a
timetable, then the second has its points, for you get there just the
same, and in spite of experts' warnings to the contrary. Without
knowing the why or wherefore of your figurative acrobatics, provided you
follow the rule of thumb implicitly, and can add, subtract, multiply,
and divide correctly, there is nothing to prevent you from finding a
ship's position at sea day in and day out, identically with the greatest
experts on earth. I have done it, and I have a shrewd suspicion, backed
by the opinion of the Skipper, that more than one master mariner does it
in precisely the same way. All hail to logarithms, and the obscure but
miraculous gentleman who invented them!
At long last there came a day when the shipwright's hammer ceased to
resound aboard the dream ship, and save for provisions and water, and a
snowdrift of unpaid bills, we were ready to take leave of the yards.
With an ebb tide and the faithful Skipper aboard, we dropped down the
river, and as cleanly as may be on to a mud bank! I am not going to say
how it happened, because I do not know. All we were acutely conscious
of at the time was that our yachtsman, in his pretty little six-tonner,
had chosen the same date of departure as ourselves, and was rapidly
approaching down the channel that we should have followed, and had not,
and that somehow the secret of our dream must have reached his
protruding ears, for as he came abreast of us he reared his hideous form
out of the cockpit.
"Hullo," he cried. "Have you made your South Sea Islands already?"
We did not answer, there was nothing to be said; but when a tug hauled
us free on the next tide, and rounding a bend in the river, we came upon
our adversary in precisely the same predicament, we passed him in
silence, the most satisfying silence I have ever indulged in.
Without a dissentient voice, the task of choosing and stowing the
provisions was relegated to Peter---- "A woman is so much better at that
sort of thing." Steve and I admitted as much, with touching
magnanimity.
In due course a cart backed up to the quayside, and an active little
grocer proceeded to heap the dream ship's deck with comestibles--tinned,
boxed, and jarred. These we passed through the skylights, before an
admiring audience of fisher-folk, and Peter, being ambidextrous,
contrived to stow them in the lockers with one hand and make a list of
them with the other.
I have my own notions about provisioning a dream ship in the future--if
for me there is a future in dream ships. During the following year we
proved, to our own dissatisfaction, that although tinned food is mighty
handy, it is not a healthy continuous diet... No, I see myself laying in
salt junk of the windjammer variety, plenty of waterglassed eggs and
condensed milk, good ship's biscuits, a "crock" of hand-salted butter,
dried fruits, jam or marmalade to taste, pickled beetroot for the blood,
flour, raisins, and baking powder, Scotch oatmeal, sugar, tea, coffee,
cocoa, and lard, and nothing else whatsoever. It may be asked: "What
else could there possibly be?"--to which I make answer: "A hundred and
one canned atrocities, such as Somebody's curried giblets, or Somebody
Else's evaporated tripe, that it were better if one consigned to the
deep than ate." It is extraordinary the number of useless things one
can be lured into acquiring while "fitting out," and we of the dream
ship bought most of them.
"Barter" was Peter's idea. In her mind the word was inalienably
associated with the South Sea Islands, and were we not bound thither?
It was only another example of her boundless optimism. Steve and I
might furtively discuss the number of miles between ourselves and our
goal, the probable discomfitures by the way, even the possibility of not
getting there at all. Not so Peter. We were going to the South Sea
Islands, and to go to the South Sea Islands without "barter" was a thing
undreamed of in her philosophy. Hence a hurried pilgrimage to London,
and the purchase, out of our rapidly diminishing capital, of variegated
prints, looking-glasses, imitation tortoise-shell hair combs, Jew's
harps, and brown paper belts.
On our return, the Skipper, who had remained aboard as watchman during
our absence, displayed a certain uneasiness, the cause of which was hard
to determine. He expressed his keen admiration for the dream ship, as
he had often done before, and then paused, until goaded into the
confession that he wished he thought as much of her crew. That is not
how he put it, but that was what he meant, and we were inclined to agree
with him. In other words, it was on the dear old man's conscience that
he was letting us go to sea with insufficient knowledge, a scruple as
rare as it is refreshing these days. We immediately and unanimously
pointed out that there was only one way out of the dilemma, and that was
for him to accompany us. He shook his grizzled head, and smiled
wistfully; said it was twenty years since he had been to sea, that he
was too old, that his "missus" would never let him go, and finally, with
a twinkle in his keen blue eye, that he would come as far as Spain "just
to get us into the hang of longitude," whereat we fell upon him in a
paean of gratitude.
Behold, then, the crew of the dream ship ready to sail, with a combined
capital of one hundred pounds sterling, and a clearance for Brisbane,
Australia.
*AT VIGO, OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN*
_Some confessions and a few morals_
[Illustration: Chapter III headpiece]
*CHAPTER III*
_Some confessions and a few morals_
At six o'clock the next morning a small, depressed-looking procession
wended its way to the quay, followed by the sidelong glances and
whispered comments of the fish-market fraternity.
It was the noble army of dream merchants setting forth on its quest.
And why depressed? I do not know, except that, personally, on the eve
of any problematical undertaking I feel that way, and so, apparently, do
others. Perhaps it was that the enthusiasm of ignorance had momentarily
deserted us, and we were awed by a rational glimpse of the task that lay
ahead. Such moods vanish the instant one gets down to work, the great
panacea, but until then they crouch on the shoulders, a dour company.
In silence we rowed out to the dream ship, and hoisted sail. I was
going to say that in silence we lowered the dinghy on to its chocks,
but, as a fact, the keel descended on the Skipper's toe, extracting a
shout of anguish from that usually restrained mariner.
Almost simultaneously, and for no apparent reason, Steve took an
involuntary seat on the open skylight, which shut with a crash on one of
his fingers.
The moorings were cast off prematurely, and, getting under way on the
wrong tack, we sailed, with the utmost precision, into a neighbouring
fishing-smack, nearly breaking our bowsprit.
I could imagine the grinning heads of the fisher folk lining the
breakwater wall.
"They be goin' ter the South Sea Islands, they be!" I could almost hear
them saying, and dived below to show them what a motor auxiliary could
do. There were one hundred and fifty vessels moored in that harbour, and
I should not like to say how many we fouled during the next half hour.
Indeed I could not, for throughout the process I was wrestling with the
engine, which refused to budge--until we had rounded the breakwater, and
there was no further use for it. Such is the way of these necessary
evils aboard a sailing ship.
Coming on deck, I was confronted with a sorry spectacle. Our port
light-board was in splinters. Relics of vessels we had caressed in
parting littered the deck. The Skipper was in the steering well, with
the tiller in one hand and his toe in the other; and Peter was
administering iodine and lint to Steve's crushed finger.
"She goes!" I triumphed, tactlessly referring to my Herculean labours
with the engine.
"D'you think it's broken?" demanded the Skipper, extending an enormous,
bootless foot.
"Flat as a pancake," muttered Steve.
Which gives a fair idea of the trend of individual thought on occasions.
But at long last we were off! Off before a seven-knot nor'-wester, and
with only twelve thousand miles to go! What else mattered?
[Illustration: Sailboat, flying fish]
By the time we had picked up an intermittent pallor on the horizon that
was Ushant light at a distance of thirty miles, the wind had
strengthened to half a gale, and there was nothing the dream ship loved
more dearly than half a gale on the quarter. In a series of exhilarating
swoops, it flung her down into the Bay of Biscay; but what she did not
like was being left there to roll helplessly in a windless swell. I
have to call it a "swell," just as I have to say we "rolled," though
neither word conveys our subsequent acrobatics in the least.
"The Bay" has an unsavoury reputation anyway, but for sheer
unpleasantness commend me to the mood in which the dream ship made its
acquaintance.
Literally from beam end to beam end we lurched. The engine was useless.
Our propeller was out of the quarter, and under present circumstances as
much out of the water as in it.
Any one aboard capable of sea-sickness, promptly _was_. The Skipper
who, it must be confessed, had not been able to eat since setting sail,
though he clung to his duties like a Stoic, was as near plaintive as I
have ever seen him. Curiously enough, his malady took the form of
conjuring visions of his good wife's cooking. I honestly believe that
if we had been able to produce the roast beef, cabbage, and "figgy
dough" of his own home table, he would have eaten. But all we could
offer him was bovril, tongue, and tinned asparagus. We did not know how
to live, he assured us. On the schooner in the old days he had a
_stove_, not one of these newfangled tin contraptions. And his wife
cooked. And when she cooked, she _cooked_! Figgy dough that melted in
the mouth.
At this juncture his audience was well advised to move to a safe
distance.
In response to our eternal lurchings, ominous sounds began to filter up
from below. A metallic click-clock, click-clock, a methodical thudding,
a resounding crash. The first of these proved to be a kerosene tank
that had come adrift from its rack fastenings, and threatened to fall on
the engine. A galvanized iron receptacle containing seventy gallons of
liquid is not the easiest of things to handle in a seaway, let alone
with a crushed finger. My heart went out to Steve, but it was
characteristic of the man that never a whimper escaped him. All that we
could do was to wedge the tank into place with stout battens clean
across the ship, which we did, and turned our attention to the next
calamity. The piano had followed the example of the tank, and the
wash-hand stand had emulated the piano; and rather than appear peculiar,
a two-hundred-pound drum of treasured Scotch oatmeal was rolling on the
floor, mingling its contents with the brine that oozed from a crate of
salt pork wedged under the cabin table.
The crash was merely the dethronement of a lighted stove in the
fo'c's'le, on which Peter had been persisting for the last hour, and in
spite of her own condition, in an attempt to produce something that the
Skipper _would_ eat.
On the whole, a healthy lesson in making all secure before sailing.
In the midst of our agonies below, a stentorian voice hailed us from the
cockpit:
"All hands on deck! Lower mainsail!" Which was followed almost
immediately by a "crack" like a pistol shot.
Our boom had snapped clean off about five feet from the end.
Such is "the Bay" in lightsome mood. Apparently the only article aboard
unaffected by it was the chronometer, ticking placidly in its gimbals
and bed of plush. There was something enviable about that chronometer.
The dawn brought with it a faint but steady breath, and discovering that
there was sufficient boom left to set a double-reefed mainsail, we
continued on our way, and a blessedly even keel, until toward evening we
raised the coast of Spain.
The welcome and unmistakable smell of land came to us over the water,
and presently the mouth of the Vigo River opened out, revealing a maze
of leading lights.
The engine behaved itself, and by midnight the dream ship had anchored
off the town, to an accompaniment of star shells and crackers.
It pleased us to imagine that these were our welcome, but as a fact the
inevitable Spanish fiesta was in progress. We had made our first
foreign port.
*THE CANARY ISLANDS*
_Dropping the pilot--and the result_
[Illustration: Chapter IV headpiece]
*CHAPTER IV*
_Dropping the pilot--and the result_
Our first and imperative need was sleep. There comes a time when
enforced wakefulness causes the eyes to feel as though they were sinking
into the head. We of the dream ship had reached this pitch, and turned
in "all standing," to remain log-like until disturbed by port officials
at five o'clock the next morning.
In a state of pyjamas and semi-torpor I handed them the ship's papers,
which proved to be satisfactory; Steve treated them to a few chosen
words in near-Spanish picked up during a doubtful past in Mexico, and we
tumbled in again. But not to sleep. Thereafter, an endless procession
of boats, manned by picturesque and voluble brigands who offered for
sale every conceivable commodity from anchor chain to picture postcards,
succeeded in dragging us from our bunks, and propelling us on deck.
A pleasant little town is Vigo. One of a goodly number scattered over
the world that I should like to make my home. Each to his taste, and
perhaps I am impressionable as to the desirable spots of this earth, but
to my way of thinking almost any race knows how to enjoy life better
than the Anglo-Saxon of to-day, and fashions its surroundings to that
end.
From the river front, with its handsome promenade, hotels, and green,
open spaces, Vigo climbs the sunny hillside in cheerful fashion. No one
seems overburdened with business cares, but when such things have to be
attended to, the palm-fringed _Alamada_ takes the place of an office,
and the "deal" is discussed over _vino tinto_ and cigarettes, to the
accompaniment of an excellent band.
We of the dream ship went ashore with the Skipper wearing a fancy-worked
carpet-slipper on one foot and a boot on the other, but no one appeared
to notice the peculiarity, and it is quite certain the Skipper would not
have minded if they had. His is a type of hardihood that I envy as much
as I admire.
At lunch, too, he found cause for complaint in the food, and small
wonder. After a week's enforced abstention, he found that in these
benighted parts figgy dough was as unprocurable as elsewhere. Frankly,
he was disappointed in Vigo and, after limping over the cobblestones in
clothes more adapted to the Arctic than to Spanish sunshine, he returned
aboard "to do a few jobs." We knew what this meant. He would
systematically and efficiently set right everything that was wrong
aboard the dream ship--a long-splice here, a bit of carpentry
there--which was precisely what we ought to have been doing instead of
gallivanting about Vigo. Most excellent of skippers! He had been a
tower of strength to us in time of stress, and a qualm seized me when I
secured his passage to Southampton, and realized that in another week he
would be gone.
From the quaint cobbled and terraced streets of the old town we went
down to the _Alamada_, and sat for a while watching the children dance
to the music of the band. No organized, mechanical spectacle this, but
a joyous affair of rhythmic abandon, twinkling legs, and laughter. Most
of us like to think that the children of our own particular country are
the most desirable, and they would be poor folk who did not; but for
unconscious grace of movement and dainty appearance, the Spanish kiddy
is hard to beat.
And this happy absence of self-consciousness is not confined to the
children. Picture, if you can, and as we of the dream ship saw him a
little later, a well-dressed Spanish gentleman standing in the middle of
one of Vigo's main thoroughfares and gazing toward the housetops,
apparently engaged in practising the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. No one of
the stream of pedestrians passing along the sidewalks took the slightest
notice of him. Neither did the wheeled traffic, except to swerve
obligingly out of his path. It was _his_ affair, and a love affair at
that. He was conversing with his _enamorata_ at the third-floor balcony
window in the only way possible to a suitor in Spain, where parents
firmly believe in "love at a distance" until the actual engagement. And
it needed three vulgar sightseers such as the crew of the dream ship to
find anything unusual in the proceeding. I am ashamed to say that the
lady caught sight of us, and pointed in alarm, whereat the gentleman
turned with an excusable frown of annoyance, and we hurried on our way.
There are only two things the Spaniard takes really seriously: his love
and his bull-fights. Leave him to them, as you value a whole skin.
Our next introduction was to the local cable office. Personally, I have
always regarded such places as drab receptacles for grudging messages,
but with the Eastern Telegraph Company it is a different matter.
Certainly this admirable concern takes your message, but then proceeds
to take you to its heart, and thereafter, wherever its myriad wires
extend, you may be sure of a welcome from the kindliest of hosts. It
conducts you to its palatial bachelor quarters situated on the hillside
behind the town, and proceeds to spoil you with every device known to a
pampered age. Tennis, golf, dances, and dinners are yours to repletion,
followed by moonlight car rides into the country, and feasts at distant
_fondas_ under the trellised vines.
At any rate, that is what it did with us, and we tried to reciprocate.
The Eastern Telegraph Company, or as much of it as could get aboard at
one time, made the dream ship its headquarters during our stay; dived
from her bowsprit or under her keel with equal delight, mealed off
strange messes in her seething saloon, and sang songs on deck to Peter's
piano accompaniment below.