"Well, come along, then," cut in my companion. "I'm the owner, and I
promise you that I won't."
So saying, my strange acquaintance led the way to a narrow gang plank
stretching from the wharf to the ship's poop. Laughingly declining my
proffered assistance, she tripped lightly along it, and as lightly
sprang down upon the deck of narrow planking paid with white-lead
instead of the more usual pitch.
Allowing me a few moments to look round, my companion presently led me
forward to the break of the poop, where, standing at the head of one of
the ladders leading down to the main-deck, I obtained a view of the
whole length of the ship. The first thing to attract my attention was
the wheelhouse, a teak structure raised upon massive steel standards,
lofty enough to allow the helmsman a clear view ahead and astern.
Some ten feet ahead of it was the after hatchway, the coamings of which
stood about eighteen inches high, and, like those aboard a man-o'-war,
were protected by rails and stanchions. The hatchway was open, and
there was a ladder leading down through it. Just beyond this was the
mainmast; a little way forward of which was the main-hatch, also open,
and, like the other, protected by rails and stanchions. Beyond this
hatchway there stood, in chocks, a fine powerful screw launch, about
forty feet long by ten feet beam; and just ahead of her rose the
foremast. Before the foremast gaped the fore-hatchway, also open; then
came a handsome capstan; and ahead of it, leaving just comfortable room
to work, rose the bulkhead of the turtle-back topgallant forecastle. In
addition to the launch, the vessel carried four other boats in davits,
namely, two cutters, some thirty-five feet long, and two whaler gigs,
each about twenty-five feet long.
My companion--or hostess, rather, I suppose I ought to call her--allowed
me to stand about five minutes at the break of the poop, as I ran my eye
over the deck and noted, with many approving comments, the various items
that especially appealed to me. Then she invited me to accompany her
below.
I will spare the reader a detailed description of the apartments--I
cannot call them cabins--to which I was now conducted; suffice it to say
that, in their several ways, they were a combination of magnificence,
luxury, and comfort that seemed to me almost incredible, remembering
that I was aboard a ship.
Having duly expressed my admiration for these truly beautiful and
luxurious apartments, I was shown two other but much smaller rooms, one
on either side of the companion stairway. These two rooms occupied the
extreme fore end of the poop, and could be entered from the main-deck as
well as from the vestibule. The one on the starboard side was the
chart-room, and was fitted up with a bookshelf crammed with nautical
works of various descriptions, a table large enough to spread a good big
chart upon, a cabinet in which reposed a complete set of the most
recently published charts, a case containing no less than four
chronometers, and a cupboard wherein were securely packed a whole
battery of sextants and other instruments. The corresponding room on
the port side was fitted up as a writing room, and here the log slate
was kept and the logbook written up from time to time. Here also the
ship's clock and a very fine aneroid barometer were securely bolted to
the bulkhead, side by side, in such a position that they could be seen
from outside by merely glancing through the window. And near them, hung
in gimbals from a long bracket, was a very fine Fitzroy mercurial
barometer.
My hostess seemed genuinely gratified at the admiration which I freely
expressed, especially for the noble array of charts and nautical
instruments; these, to be quite candid, appealing to me even more
strongly than the sumptuous elegance of the drawing and dining-rooms.
She smiled brightly as I expatiated with enthusiasm upon these matters,
and when at length I paused, she said:
"Now let us go below, and I will show you the officers' and men's
quarters."
We descended from the vestibule by way of a staircase at the back of the
main companion, and presently entered the wardroom, which adjoined the
dining-room, but was only about half its size. This was the living-room
of the executive officers of the ship, and was a very fine, comfortable
room, although, of course, its fittings and furnishings were much less
sumptuous than those belonging exclusively to the owner.
On the side of the ship opposite the wardroom, and with a good wide
passage between the two, was the block of officers' cabins, the comfort
and convenience of which left nothing to be desired. Next came the
petty officers' berthage, of which the same may be said, although, as
was to be expected, the space here was rather more restricted, and the
fittings somewhat plainer than in those of the other officers.
Next came the kitchen--it would be an outrage to dub such a place a
"galley"--and forward of it again came the men's quarters, a great, airy
place, well-lighted by scuttles in the ship's sides, with sleeping
accommodation for eighty men. This consisted of two tiers of hammocks,
forty hammocks on either side of the room, their head-clews suspended
from hooks bolted to the sides of the ship; while the foot-clews were
secured to steel stanchions hinged to the deck above, and so arranged
that they could be triced up out of the way when required, leaving ample
room for the men's mess tables.
I very willingly and very fully expressed my admiration for everything
shown me, not only because all was well worthy of admiration, but also
because I saw that it gratified my hostess, who explained to me that she
had planned everything herself.
At length my inspection of the beautiful and wonderful ship came to an
end. As we ascended to the deck by way of the fore-hatch ladder my
hostess remarked:
"There! I guess that's all there is to show. And,"--glancing at an
elegant little watch which she wore attached to a bracelet--"my stars,
if it ain't just five o'clock! I want my tea. Do you drink tea, young
man?"
"I should really enjoy a cup of tea, madam, if you would be so kind as
to offer me one," I said.
"Are you a teetotaller, then?" the lady asked.
"Well, no; hardly that," I replied. "That is to say, I have never
formally forsworn intoxicants; but I very rarely take them--never,
indeed, I may say, except when I have been exposed for several hours to
extreme cold, or have been wet to the skin, or something of that kind.
Even then I am inclined to think a cup of scalding hot coffee really
does one more good."
"Well, I guess you're as nearly right as makes no matter," returned my
hostess. "Now, just you come into my drawing-room, and I'll give you a
cup of real good tea. Ah! there is Lizette, my chief stewardess. I
guess she is looking for me to tell me that tea is served, so come
along."
The lady was right in her surmise, for the trig, decidedly pretty, and
exceedingly capable-looking young woman, in a black dress, with white
cap and apron, who at that moment stepped out on deck, came forward and
duly made the anticipated announcement.
It was a distinctly novel experience for me to find myself seated in
that elegant apartment, drinking the most delicious tea I had ever
tasted out of a hand-painted cup of china which I knew must be worth its
weight in gold, munching cakes and biscuits of wonderful flavour, and
being treated quite as an equal by this smartly dressed and vivacious
American lady. Not the least of her charms was that she had the knack
of putting one absolutely at one's ease; and presently she began to
question me about myself.
"I guess I don't know now whether I've done you any kindness in inviting
you aboard to see over the _Stella Maris_," she said. "I reckon your
own ship will seem a bit dowdy in comparison, won't she?"
"I am sure she will--when I find her," I replied. "Unfortunately, I
haven't a ship just now; indeed, I had been prowling round the docks all
day looking for one when the sight of your yacht brought me up all
standing. I love a pretty ship, and anxious though I am to get another
berth, I could not deny myself the pleasure of taking a good look at
her."
"Y-e-s," my companion agreed; "I can understand that feeling and
sympathise with it too. There's nothing made by the hand of man that I
admire more than a handsome ship. And so you're out of a berth, Mr--"
"Leigh," I supplied; "Walter Leigh, at your service, madam."
"Thank you!" she answered. "Any relation to the Lees of Virginia?"
"No," I said, "I am afraid not. I am a Leigh of Devon, you know--
L-e-i-g-h, not L double e."
"I see," she responded. "Well, Mr Leigh, if it's not a rude question
to ask, how do you come to be out of employment?"
"Not through any misconduct of mine, I am happy to say," I answered.
"The way of it is this. The City line of ships--the line in which I
served and have only recently completed my apprenticeship--is
amalgamating with, or, rather, is being absorbed by, the firm of Hepburn
Brothers, the one-time rivals of the City line. Hepburns are, of
course, taking over many of the City officers, as well as the ships.
But Mr Clayton, Hepburns' present manager, was once master of a City
liner in which I was serving; and--well, something happened which caused
Clayton to lose his berth, and unfortunately for me it was through me
that the matter came to light. Consequently, now that Clayton has the
chance to do me a bad turn, he is doing it by refusing to take me on
with the new firm."
"Is that so? Well, I call that real mean," exclaimed my hostess, in
accents of indignation. "And is that the reason why you have not been
able to get other employment?"
"Oh, no!" I said, "excepting, of course, so far as Hepburn Brothers are
concerned. My failure to-day arises simply from the fact that none of
the skippers I have spoken to happen to have any vacancies."
"Nothing wrong with your discharge, I suppose?"
"Nothing whatever," I answered, whipping the document out of my pocket
and handing it to her.
She read it carefully and handed it back.
"Thank you!" she said. "I guess that looks all right. How old are you,
Mr Leigh?"
"I shall be eighteen on the ninth of next December," I replied,
beginning now to wonder whether this questioning was likely to lead to
anything, or whether it was merely the result of kindly curiosity on the
part of my hostess.
"Eighteen!" she exclaimed. "Well, I declare to goodness I'd have said
you were at least three years older, if I'd been asked to guess. Only
eighteen! And what kind of a berth have you been looking for, may I
ask?"
"Well," I said, "I had it in my mind to get into some big craft as third
mate, if I could find an opening. It would afford me a chance to work
up for my ticket, which I am naturally anxious to obtain as soon as
possible."
"Sure," she agreed. "And do you know anything about navigation? But I
guess you do, by the way that you looked at those charts and instruments
just now."
"Oh, yes!" I said; "I rather fancy myself as a navigator. Navigation
is quite a hobby of mine."
"Tell me how much you know," she said. "I'm something of a navigator
myself. In fact, Mr Leigh, I am one of the few women who hold a
master's certificate and are qualified to take command of a ship sailing
to any part of the world. I am captain of this yacht, in fact as well
as in name; I brought her across from New York to the Nore without the
ghost of a hitch, and I guess I can take her the rest of the trip round
the world, upon which we are bound. Now, go ahead and tell me what you
know about navigation."
I named the several problems in navigation, one or more of which I had
been accustomed to practise daily and nightly under my late skipper; and
the lady was graciously pleased to express her cordial approval of my
knowledge.
"Yes," she said; "if you can do all those things I guess you are pretty
good--quite as good, in fact, as Neil Kennedy, my chief officer, and he
is no slouch as a navigator. Now, Mr Leigh, I have not been putting
you through your facings just out of sheer feminine curiosity; I've been
doing it with a purpose. I am Mrs Cornelia Vansittart, wife of Julius
Vansittart of New York, engineer, the inventor of the Vansittart
gasoline engine. I am passionately fond of yachting, so my husband made
me a present of the _Stella Maris_, and consented to my making a voyage
in her round the world. She is a good ship, and I have a good crew; but
I have only two mates, and Kennedy says that in a ship of this size, and
on such a cruise as we are contemplating, I ought to have a third. At
first I didn't propose to do anything of the kind, for I don't like
being told by anybody what I ought to do, or to have; but somehow, when
I saw you lost in admiration of my ship, I sort of took a fancy to you.
I like the look of you, and thought that if I must have a third mate,
I'd like one something like you; so I invited you to come aboard, that I
might have a chance to talk to you and find out if you came up to
sample. I mean to have a good time this trip, and I mean that my
officers and crew shall have a good time too, if it rests with me. I've
taken a whole lot of trouble to pick the right sort of men to man this
ship, and I've come to the conclusion that you are the right sort. So
if you care to accept the position I am ready to ship you as third mate
of the _Stella Maris_. The pay is thirty per, with all found, uniforms
included. Now, what do you say?"
I had a sufficient knowledge of American colloquialisms to be aware that
the expression "thirty per" meant thirty dollars--or six pounds--per
month, which was considerably better than I had hoped for, or was at all
likely to get elsewhere. I liked the ship, and I was immensely taken
with my prospective new skipper; therefore I at once unhesitatingly and
gratefully accepted the offer.
I was then gracefully dismissed, with instructions to be prepared to
"sign on" at eleven o'clock on the morrow, and to have my dunnage aboard
not later than noon, since the yacht would haul out of dock and proceed
down the river early in the afternoon.
I had taken my leave of Mrs Vansittart, and was already out on deck on
my way to the gangway, when the lady rushed after me and called upon me
to stop, exclaiming:
"Sakes alive! what's come over me? I declare to goodness I clean forgot
that you haven't yet been measured for your uniforms. Colson,"--to one
of the seamen who were engaged in striking packing cases down
below--"pass the word for Mr Grimwood, please. Mr Grimwood," she
explained, "is the purser. I'll turn you over to him, and he will take
you to the tailor, who will soon rig you out."
A shout down the after hatchway resulted in Mr Grimwood's prompt
appearance on deck, and to him I was in due form introduced.
"Mr Grimwood," said Mrs Vansittart, "this is Mr Walter Leigh--
L-e-i-g-h, you know--who will sign on at eleven o'clock to-morrow
morning as third mate of this ship. I want you to take him below to
Snip, who will measure him for his uniforms. Please tell Snip to
arrange things so that Mr Leigh's working uniform shall be ready for
him by noon. When you have done that, have the goodness to assign a
cabin to Mr Leigh; and at the same time I'd like you to introduce him
to the rest of the wardroom officers. You'll see to that? Thank you!
Once more, good afternoon, Mr Leigh!"
As the lady turned and left us, Grimwood chuckled.
"So the skipper's taken Kennedy's advice, after all, to ship a third
mate," he remarked. "Guess he's put one over Briscoe this time, anyway.
Briscoe's our `second', you know, and he bet Kennedy that he couldn't
persuade Mrs Vansittart to ship a `third'. Kennedy'll be a bit set up
when he hears the news, because, between you and me, he doesn't take
overmuch stock in Briscoe, and has held all along that we ought to have
a third mate to take his place if necessary. Oh, yes, Briscoe's all
right, so far as he goes; but he doesn't go far enough. He's not
exactly the right sort of man for a ship of this kind, and I think that,
for once in a way, Mrs Vansittart made a mistake when she picked him.
But I guess you'd better not take too much notice of what I say; I don't
want to prejudice you against him."
We found Snip--by the way, that was the tailor's actual name, and not a
nickname, as I had at first imagined--comfortably ensconced in a little,
well-lighted workroom under the topgallant forecastle. He quickly took
my measure, promising, somewhat to my amazement, to have my working
uniform ready for me to try on as early on the following morning as I
chose to come aboard--the earlier the better, he assured me. This
matter settled, the purser--to whom I took an immediate liking--led me
aft and down below to the wardroom, where we found Mr Neil Kennedy, the
chief officer, Mr Alexander Mackenzie, the chief engineer, and Doctor
Stephen Harper, the ship's medico, chatting and smoking together. To
these I was introduced by Grimwood; and I was at once admitted as a
member of the fraternity with much cordiality.
I liked those three men immensely. Neil Kennedy was a huge man,
standing six feet three in his socks, as I afterwards learned, and being
bulky in proportion, was the sort of man that a "hazing" skipper would
at once have singled out as eminently suited to keep a refractory crew
in order and get the last ounce of work out of the laziest skulker. But
it happened that Kennedy was not that sort of man at all. Although
admirably fitted by Nature for the part, he was not the typical
quarterdeck tyrant and bully, but a genial, merry, great-hearted
Irish-American of the very best stamp. He could, however, if occasion
demanded it, display a sternness and severity of manner well calculated
to subdue the most recklessly insubordinate of mariners. His voice was
like the bellow of a bull, and could be heard from the taffrail to the
flying jib-boom end in anything short of a full-grown hurricane.
The doctor was quite another type of man--tall, lean, clean-shaven,
slightly bald, with a pair of piercing black eyes that seemed to look a
man through and through. Possessed of a quiet, well-modulated and
cultured voice, and a deliberate yet firm manner of speaking, he was
apparently a man of high attainments, and unmistakably a gentleman.
As for Mackenzie, the chief engineer, he was but a trifle less
formidable in appearance than Kennedy--red-haired, with a shaggy red
beard and moustache, the former of which he had a trick of pushing up
over his mouth and nose when he was meditating deeply, and immense hands
as hairy as a monkey's. He was apparently between forty and fifty years
of age, and had been domiciled in America for the last twenty years,
which he had spent in Mr Vansittart's workshops, but his accent was as
broad as though he had just come straight from Glasgow. He happened to
make some passing reference to a certain Mackintosh as being busy with
"the engines down below"; and when I enquired with some surprise what
engines he referred to, he exclaimed:
"Hoots, laddie! D'ye no' ken that we're an auxiliary-screw, then?"
"Auxiliary-screw!" I ejaculated. "No, certainly not. I had a good
look at the craft before I came aboard, but I saw no sign of a
propeller. And besides, where is your funnel?"
"Funnel, man!" he retorted. "We ha'e no need o' a funnel. Our engines
are operated by gasoline, and we ha'e ane o' twa hunner and feefty
horse-power, giving the ship a speed o' seven knots, forbye anither ane
o' a hunner and feefty to drive the dynamos and work the capstan and
winches. Man, I tell ye this bonnie boat is richt up-to-date, and dinna
forget it. As to the propeller, naiturally ye wadna see't, the watter
bein' sae thick."
At Kennedy's pressing invitation I remained aboard to dine, and
incidentally to be introduced to the remaining members of the wardroom
mess--Mr Samuel Briscoe, the second officer, and Mr Robert Mackintosh,
the second engineer. Before the meal was over I had come to agree with
the purser that in selecting Briscoe for her second officer Mrs
Vansittart had not been quite so happily inspired as in the case of the
other members of the mess. He was a pasty-faced fellow of about forty
years of age, baggy under his watery-looking, almost colourless blue
eyes, slow in his movements, glum and churlish of manner, and unpolished
of speech; also I had a suspicion that he was more addicted to drink
than was at all desirable in a man occupying such a responsible position
in such a ship. He would doubtless have done well enough as "dicky" in
an ordinary wind-jammer, but on the quarterdeck of such a craft as the
_Stella Maris_ I considered he was distinctly out of place.
During the progress of the meal I learned that, as I had already
suspected, the yacht was a brand-new ship, this being her first voyage.
Her exact measurement, it appeared, was two thousand six hundred and
seventeen tons. She had originated in the office of Herreshoff, the
world-famous yacht designer, and embraced in her construction every last
refinement known to the most up-to-date naval constructor. She had been
built to the order of Mr Julius Vansittart, the multi-millionaire
engineer and steel magnate, as a birthday present to his wife. Mrs
Vansittart's passion was yachting, and she was wont to knock about New
York Bay, the Hudson River, and Long Island Sound, with occasional
adventurous stretches down the coast as far as Delaware Bay, or even to
Baltimore, in a sturdy little ten-ton sloop, the while she studied
seamanship and navigation and Mr Vansittart attended to his business.
I further learned that the lady's boast to me, that she was captain of
the yacht in fact as well as in name, was literally true, she having not
only picked and shipped the entire crew, officers as well as men, but
taken command of the ship when the pilot left her, and sailed and
navigated her across the Atlantic and up the English Channel with no
more assistance from her officers than a shipmaster usually receives.
"I tell you, sor, it's a treat to see her put this ship about, blow
high, blow low," Kennedy remarked admiringly; "though how the mischief
she learned the way to handle a square-rigger it puzzles the sowl of me
to know."
It transpired that Mrs Vansittart was accompanied on this trip by her
daughter Anthea, aged sixteen--"as bonnie a lassie as you e'er set eyes
upon," Mackintosh interjected--and her son Julius, a lad of twelve--"and
thoroughly spoiled at that, more's the pity," the doctor added. There
was also a certain Reverend Henry James Monroe, M.A., a middle-aged,
refined, and very scholarly man, who served in the dual capacity of
chaplain of the ship and tutor to the aforesaid Julius. He was one of
the saloon party, and was held in the highest honour and respect by Mrs
Vansittart, who deferred to his opinion in all things save in the matter
of discipline where her darling boy was concerned. I also learned that
the yacht was manned by a crew of no less than eighty seamen, every one
of whom was rated as A.B.; so that, with the saloon party, officers,
petty officers, stewards, and stewardesses, we should make the
respectable muster of one hundred and eight all told when we went to sea
on the morrow.