So sail did get shortened more or less in time even in that ship, and her
tall spars never went overboard while I served in her. However, all the
time I was with them, Captain S— and Mr. P— did not get on very well
together. If P— carried on “like the very devil” because he was too deaf
to know how much wind there was, Captain S— (who, as I have said, seemed
constitutionally incapable of ordering one of his officers to shorten
sail) resented the necessity forced upon him by Mr. P—’s desperate goings
on. It was in Captain S—’s tradition rather to reprove his officers for
not carrying on quite enough—in his phrase “for not taking every ounce of
advantage of a fair wind.” But there was also a psychological motive
that made him extremely difficult to deal with on board that iron
clipper. He had just come out of the marvellous _Tweed_, a ship, I have
heard, heavy to look at but of phenomenal speed. In the middle sixties
she had beaten by a day and a half the steam mail-boat from Hong Kong to
Singapore. There was something peculiarly lucky, perhaps, in the placing
of her masts—who knows? Officers of men-of-war used to come on board to
take the exact dimensions of her sail-plan. Perhaps there had been a
touch of genius or the finger of good fortune in the fashioning of her
lines at bow and stern. It is impossible to say. She was built in the
East Indies somewhere, of teak-wood throughout, except the deck. She had
a great sheer, high bows, and a clumsy stern. The men who had seen her
described her to me as “nothing much to look at.” But in the great
Indian famine of the seventies that ship, already old then, made some
wonderful dashes across the Gulf of Bengal with cargoes of rice from
Rangoon to Madras.
She took the secret of her speed with her, and, unsightly as she was, her
image surely has its glorious place in the mirror of the old sea.
The point, however, is that Captain S—, who used to say frequently, “She
never made a decent passage after I left her,” seemed to think that the
secret of her speed lay in her famous commander. No doubt the secret of
many a ship’s excellence does lie with the man on board, but it was
hopeless for Captain S— to try to make his new iron clipper equal the
feats which made the old _Tweed_ a name of praise upon the lips of
English-speaking seamen. There was something pathetic in it, as in the
endeavour of an artist in his old age to equal the masterpieces of his
youth—for the _Tweed’s_ famous passages were Captain S—’s masterpieces.
It was pathetic, and perhaps just the least bit dangerous. At any rate,
I am glad that, what between Captain S—’s yearning for old triumphs and
Mr. P—’s deafness, I have seen some memorable carrying on to make a
passage. And I have carried on myself upon the tall spars of that Clyde
shipbuilder’s masterpiece as I have never carried on in a ship before or
since.
The second mate falling ill during the passage, I was promoted to officer
of the watch, alone in charge of the deck. Thus the immense leverage of
the ship’s tall masts became a matter very near my own heart. I suppose
it was something of a compliment for a young fellow to be trusted,
apparently without any supervision, by such a commander as Captain S—;
though, as far as I can remember, neither the tone, nor the manner, nor
yet the drift of Captain S—’s remarks addressed to myself did ever, by
the most strained interpretation, imply a favourable opinion of my
abilities. And he was, I must say, a most uncomfortable commander to get
your orders from at night. If I had the watch from eight till midnight,
he would leave the deck about nine with the words, “Don’t take any sail
off her.” Then, on the point of disappearing down the companion-way, he
would add curtly: “Don’t carry anything away.” I am glad to say that I
never did; one night, however, I was caught, not quite prepared, by a
sudden shift of wind.
There was, of course, a good deal of noise—running about, the shouts of
the sailors, the thrashing of the sails—enough, in fact, to wake the
dead. But S— never came on deck. When I was relieved by the chief mate
an hour afterwards, he sent for me. I went into his state-room; he was
lying on his couch wrapped up in a rug, with a pillow under his head.
“What was the matter with you up there just now?” he asked.
“Wind flew round on the lee quarter, sir,” I said.
“Couldn’t you see the shift coming?”
“Yes, sir, I thought it wasn’t very far off.”
“Why didn’t you have your courses hauled up at once, then?” he asked in a
tone that ought to have made my blood run cold.
But this was my chance, and I did not let it slip.
“Well, sir,” I said in an apologetic tone, “she was going eleven knots
very nicely, and I thought she would do for another half-hour or so.”
He gazed at me darkly out of his head, lying very still on the white
pillow, for a time.
“Ah, yes, another half-hour. That’s the way ships get dismasted.”
And that was all I got in the way of a wigging. I waited a little while
and then went out, shutting carefully the door of the state-room after
me.
Well, I have loved, lived with, and left the sea without ever seeing a
ship’s tall fabric of sticks, cobwebs and gossamer go by the board.
Sheer good luck, no doubt. But as to poor P—, I am sure that he would
not have got off scot-free like this but for the god of gales, who called
him away early from this earth, which is three parts ocean, and therefore
a fit abode for sailors. A few years afterwards I met in an Indian port
a man who had served in the ships of the same company. Names came up in
our talk, names of our colleagues in the same employ, and, naturally
enough, I asked after P—. Had he got a command yet? And the other man
answered carelessly:
“No; but he’s provided for, anyhow. A heavy sea took him off the poop in
the run between New Zealand and the Horn.”
Thus P— passed away from amongst the tall spars of ships that he had
tried to their utmost in many a spell of boisterous weather. He had
shown me what carrying on meant, but he was not a man to learn discretion
from. He could not help his deafness. One can only remember his cheery
temper, his admiration for the jokes in _Punch_, his little oddities—like
his strange passion for borrowing looking-glasses, for instance. Each of
our cabins had its own looking-glass screwed to the bulkhead, and what he
wanted with more of them we never could fathom. He asked for the loan in
confidential tones. Why? Mystery. We made various surmises. No one
will ever know now. At any rate, it was a harmless eccentricity, and may
the god of gales, who took him away so abruptly between New Zealand and
the Horn, let his soul rest in some Paradise of true seamen, where no
amount of carrying on will ever dismast a ship!