Part 12

We, however, troubled ourselves but little with these speculations. The one thing patent to us was that our little pets were exposed to the most deadly peril, that these ravenous birds were carrying them off one by one, and we were apparently powerless to protect them. We could not cage them, although the absence of cages would have been no obstacle, as we should soon have manufactured efficient substitutes; but they were so happy in their freedom that we felt we could not deprive them of it. But we organised a raid among those bloodthirsty pirates, as we called them, forgetting that they were merely obeying the law of their being, and the first dark hour saw us silently creeping aloft to where they had taken their roost. Two were caught, but in both cases the captors had something to remember their encounter by. Grasping at the shadowy birds in the darkness with only one free hand, they were unable to prevent the fierce creatures defending themselves with beak and talons, and one man came down with his prize’s claws driven so far into his hand that the wounds took many days to heal. When we had secured them we couldn’t bring ourselves to kill them, they were such handsome, graceful birds, but had they been given a choice in the matter I make no doubt they would have preferred a speedy death rather than the lingering pain of starvation which befell them. For they refused all food, and sat moping on their perches, only rousing when any one came near, and glaring unsubdued with their bold, fierce eyes, bright and fearless until they glazed in death. We were never able to catch any more of them, although they remained with us until our captain managed to allow the vessel to run ashore upon one of the enormous coral reefs that crop up here and there in the Gulf of Mexico. The tiny spot of dry land that appeared at the summit of this great mountain of coral was barren of all vegetation except a little creeping plant, a kind of _arenaria_, so that it would have afforded no satisfactory abiding-place for our little shipmates, even if any of them could escape the watchful eyes of their enemies aloft. So that I suppose after we abandoned the ship they remained on board until she broke up altogether, and then fell an easy prey to the falcons.

This was the only occasion upon which I have known a vessel at sea to be visited by so varied a collection of small birds, and certainly the only case I have ever heard of where land birds have flown on board and made themselves at home. When I say at sea, of course I do not mean in a narrow strait like the Channel, where passing vessels must often be visited by migrants crossing to or from the Continent. But when well out in the North Atlantic, certainly to the westward of the Azores, and out of sight of them, I have several times known a number of swallows to fly on board and cling almost like bats to whatever projections they first happened to reach. Exhausted with their long battle against the overmastering winds, faint with hunger and thirst, they had at last reached a resting-place, only to find it so unsuited to all their needs that nothing remained for them to do but die. Earnest attempts were made to induce them to live, but unsuccessfully; and as they never regained strength sufficient to resume their weary journey, they provided a sumptuous meal for the ship’s cat. Even had they been able to make a fresh start, it is hard to imagine that the sense of direction which guides them in their long flight from or to their winter haunts would have enabled them to shape a course from such an utterly unknown base as a ship at sea must necessarily be to them.

While making a passage up the China Sea vessels are often boarded by strange bird visitors, and some of them may be induced to live upon such scanty fare as can be found for them on shipboard. I once witnessed with intense interest a gallant attempt made by a crane to find a rest for her weary wings on board of an old barque in which I was an able seaman. We were two days out from Hong-Kong, bound to Manila, through a strong south-west monsoon. The direction of the wind almost enabled us to lay our course, and therefore the “old man” was cracking on, all the sail being set that she would stagger under close-hauled. Being in ballast, she lay over at an angle that would have alarmed anybody but a yachtsman; but she was a staunch, weatherly old ship, and hung well to windward. It was my wheel from six to eight in the evening, and as I wrestled with it in the attempt to keep the old barky up to her work, I suddenly caught sight of the gaunt form of a crane flapping her heavy wings in dogged fashion to come up with us from to leeward, we making at the time about eight knots an hour. After a long fight the brave bird succeeded in reaching us, and coasted along the lee side, turning her long neck anxiously from side to side as if searching for a favourable spot whereon to alight. Just as she seemed to have made up her mind to come inboard abaft the foresail, a gust of back-draught caught her wide pinions and whirled her away to leeward, about a hundred fathoms at one sweep, while it was evident that she had the utmost difficulty in maintaining her balance. Another long struggle ensued as the gloom of the coming night deepened, and the steady, strenuous wind pressed us onward through the turbulent sea. The weary pilgrim at last succeeded in fetching up to us again, and with a feeling of the keenest satisfaction I saw her work her way to windward, as if instinct warned her that in that way alone she would succeed in reaching a place of rest. Backward and forward along our weather side she sailed twice, searching with anxious eye the whole of our decks, but fearing to trust herself thereon, where so many men were apparently awaiting to entrap her. No, she would not venture, and quite a pang of disappointment and sympathy shot through me as I saw her drift away astern and renew her hopeless efforts to board us on the lee side. At last she came up so closely that I could see the laboured heaving of her breast muscles, and I declare that the expression in her full, dark eyes was almost human in its pathos of despair. She poised herself almost above the rail, the vessel gave a great lee lurch, and down the slopes of the mizen came pouring an eddy of baffled wind. It caught the doomed bird, whirled her over and over as she fought vainly to regain her balance, and at last bore her down so closely to the seething tumult beneath her that a breaking wave lapped her up and she disappeared. All hands had witnessed her brave battle with fate, and quite a buzz of sympathy went up for her in her sad defeat.

That same evening one of the lads found a strange bird nestling under one of the boats. None of us knew what it was, for none of us ever remembered seeing so queer a creature before. Nor will this be wondered at when I say that it was a goat-sucker, as I learned long afterwards by seeing a plate of one in a Natural History I was reading. But the curious speculations that its appearance gave rise to in the fo’c’s’le were most amusing. The wide gape of its mouth, so unexpected when it was shut, was a source of the greatest wonder, while the downy fluff of its feathers made one man say it reminded him of a “nowl” that a skipper of a ship he was in once caught and kept alive for a long time as a pet.

Of the few visitors that board a ship in mid-ocean none are more difficult to account for than butterflies. I have seen the common white butterfly fluttering about a ship in the North Atlantic when she was certainly over 500 miles from the nearest land. And in various parts of the world butterflies and moths will suddenly appear as if out of space, although the nearest land be several hundreds of miles distant. I have heard the theory advanced that their chrysalides must have been on board the ship, and they have just been hatched out when seen. It may be so, although I think unlikely; but yet it is hard to imagine that so fragile a creature, associated only in the mind with sunny gardens or scented hillsides, could brave successfully the stern rigour of a flight extending over several hundred miles of sea. All that is certain about the matter is that they _do_ visit the ships at such distances from land, and disappear as if disheartened at the unsuitability of their environment. Lying in Sant’ Ana, Mexico, once, loading mahogany, I witnessed the labours of an unbidden guest that made me incline somewhat to the chrysalis theory about the butterflies. Our anchorage was some three miles off shore in the open roadstead, where the rafts of great mahogany logs tossed and tumbled about ceaselessly alongside. They had all been a long time in the water before they reached us, and were consequently well coated with slime, which made them an exceedingly precarious footing for the unfortunate slingsman, who was as often in the water as he was on the raft. One evening as I lay in my bunk reading by the light of a smuggled candle, I was much worried by a persistent buzz that sounded very near, and far too loud to be the voice of any mosquito that I had ever been unfortunate enough to be attended by. Several times I looked for this noisy insect without success, and at last gave up the task and went on deck, feeling sure there wasn’t room in the bunk for the possessor of that voice and myself. Next day after dinner I was again lying in my bunk, resting during the remainder of the dinner hour, when to my amazement I saw what I took to be an overgrown wasp or hornet suddenly alight upon a beam overhead, walk into a corner, and begin the music that had so worried me overnight. I watched him keenly, but could hardly make out his little game, until he suddenly flew away. Then getting a light, for the corner was rather dark, I discovered a row of snug apartments much like acorn-cups, only deeper, all neatly cemented together, and as smooth inside as a thimble. Presently along came Mr. Wasp, or Hornet, or whatever he was, again, and set to work, while I watched him as closely as I dared without giving him offence, noticing that he carried his material in a little blob on his chest between his fore legs. It looked like mud; but where could he get mud from? I could swear there was none on board under that fierce sun, and I couldn’t imagine him going six miles in five minutes, which he must needs have done had he gone ashore for it. So I watched his flight as well as I could, but it was two days before I discovered my gentleman on one of the logs alongside, scraping up a supply of slime, and skipping nimbly into the air each time the sea washed over his alighting-place. That mystery was solved at any rate. I kept careful watch over that row of dwellings thereafter, determined to suppress the whole block at the first sign of a brood of wasps making their appearance. None ever did, and at last I took down the cells with the greatest care, finding them perfectly empty. So I came to the conclusion that my ingenious and industrious guest had been building for the love of the thing, or for amusement, or to keep his hand in, or perhaps something warned him in time that the site he had selected for his eligible row of residences was liable to sudden serious vicissitudes of climate. At any rate, he abandoned them, much to my comfort.

“THE WAY OF A SHIP”

Solomon had, among the many mighty qualities of mind which have secured his high eminence as the wisest man of the world, an attribute which does not always accompany abundant knowledge. He was prompt to admit his limitations, as far as he knew them, frankly and fully. And among them he confesses an inability to understand “the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.” It may be urged that there was little to wonder at in this, since the exigencies of his position must have precluded his gaining more than the slightest actual experience of seafaring. Yet it is marvellous that he should have mentioned this thing, seemingly simple to a shore-dweller, which is to all mariners a mystery past finding out. No matter how long a sailor may have sailed the seas in one ship, or how deeply he may have studied the ways of that ship under apparently all combinations of wind and sea, he will never be found to assert thoughtfully that he _knows_ her altogether. Much more, then, are the myriad idiosyncrasies of all ships unknowable. Kipling has done more, perhaps, than any other living writer to point out how certain fabrics of man’s construction become invested with individuality of an unmistakable kind, and of course so acute an observer could not fail to notice how pre-eminently is this the case with ships.

Now, in what follows I seek as best I may to show, by a niggardly handful of instances in my own experience, how the “personality” of ships expresses itself, and how incomprehensible these manifestations are to the men whose business it is to study them. Even before the ship has quitted the place of her birth, yea, while she is yet a-building, something of this may be noted. One man will study deepest mathematical problems, will perfectly apply his formulæ, and see them accurately embodied in steel or timber, so that by all ordinary laws of cause and effect the resultant vessel should be a marvel of speed, stability, and strength. And yet she is a failure. She has all the vices that the sailor knows and dreads: crank, slow, leewardly, hanging in stays, impossible to steer satisfactorily. Every man who ever sails in her carries in his tenacious sea-memory, to the day of his death, vengeful recollections of her perversities, and often in the dog-watch holds forth to his shipmates in eloquent denunciation of her manifold iniquities long after one would have thought her very name would be forgotten. Another shipbuilder, innocent of a scintilla of mathematics, impatient of diagrams, will begin apparently without preparation, adding timber to timber, and breast-hook to stem, until out of the dumb cavern of his mind a ship is evolved, his inexpressible idea manifested in graceful yet massive shape. And that ship will be all that the other is not. As if the spirit of her builder had somehow been wrought into her frame, she behaves with intelligence, and becomes the delight, the pride, of those fortunate enough to sail in her.

Such a vessel it was once my good fortune to join in London for a winter passage across to Nova Scotia. Up to that time my experience had been confined to large vessels and long voyages, and it was not without the stern compulsion of want that I shipped in the _Wanderer_. She was a brigantine of two hundred and forty tons register, built in some little out-of-the-way harbour in Nova Scotia by one of the amphibious sailor-farmers of that ungenerous coast, in just such a rule-of-thumb manner as I have spoken of. When I got on board I pitied myself greatly. I felt cramped for room; I dreaded the colossal waves of the Atlantic at that stormy winter season, in what I considered to be a weakly built craft fit only for creeping closely along-shore. We worked down the river, also a new departure to me, always accustomed hitherto to be towed down to Beachy Head by a strenuous tug. The delicate way in which she responded to all the calls we made on her astonished our pilot, who was loud in his praises of her “handiness,” one of the most praiseworthy qualities a ship can have in a seaman’s eyes. Nevertheless, I still looked anxiously forward to our meeting with the Atlantic, although day by day, as we zigzagged down Channel, I felt more and more amazed at the sympathy she showed with her crew. At last we emerged upon the wide, open ocean, clear of even the idea of shelter from any land; and as if to show conclusively how groundless were my fears, it blew a bitter north-west gale. Never have I known such keen delight in watching a vessel’s behaviour as I knew then. As if she were one of the sea-people, such as the foam-like gulls or wheeling petrels, next of kin to the waves themselves, she sported with the tumultuous elements, her motion as easy as the sway of the seaweed and as light as a bubble. And even when the strength of the storm-wind forbade us to show more than the tiniest square of canvas, she answered the touch of her helm, as sensitive to its gentle suasion as Hiawatha’s Cheemaun to the voice of her master. Never a wave broke on deck, although she had so little free-board that a bucket of water could almost be dipped without the aid of a lanyard. That gale taught me a lesson I have never been able to forget. It was, never to judge of the seaworthy qualities of a ship by her appearance at anchor, but to wait until she had an opportunity of telling me in her own language what she could do.

Then came a spell of favourable weather--for the season, that is--when we could carry plenty of sail and make good use of our time. Another characteristic now revealed itself in her--her steerability. Once steady on her course under all canvas, one turn of a spoke, or at most of two spokes, of the wheel was sufficient to keep her so; and for an hour I have walked back and forth before the wheel, with both hands in my pockets, while she sped along at ten knots an hour, as straight as an arrow in its flight. But when any sail was taken off her, no matter which, she would no longer steer herself, as if the just and perfect balance of her sail area had been disturbed; but she was easier to steer then than any vessel I have ever known. Lastly, a strong gale tested her powers of running before it, the last touch of excellence in any ship being that she shall run safely dead before a gale. During its height we _passed_ the Anchor liner _California_, a huge steamship some twenty times our bulk. From end to end of that mighty ship the frolicsome waves leaped and tumbled; from every scupper and swinging-port spouted a briny flood. Every sea, meeting her mass in its way, just climbed on board and spread itself, so that she looked, as sailors say, like a half-tide rock. From her towering hurricane-deck our little craft must have appeared a forlorn little object--just a waif of the sea, existing only by a succession of miracles. Yet even her muffled-up passengers, gazing down upon the white dryness of our decks, looked as if they could dimly understand that the comfort which was unmistakably absent from their own wallowing monster was cosily present with us.

Another vessel, built on the same coast, but three times the size of the _Wanderer_, was the _Sea Gem_, in which I had an extended experience. Under an old sea-dog of a captain who commanded her the first part of the voyage, she played more pranks than a jibbing mule with a new driver. None of the ordinary manœuvres necessary to a sailing-ship would she perform without the strangest antics and refusals. She seemed possessed of a stubborn demon of contrariness. Sometimes at night, when, at the change of the watch, all hands were kept on deck to tack ship, more than an hour would be wasted in futile attempts to get her about in a seamanlike way. She would prance up into the wind gaily enough, as if about to turn in her own length, and then at the crucial moment fall off again against the hard-down helm, while all hands cursed her vigorously for the most obstinate, clumsy vessel ever calked. Or she would come up far enough for the order of “mainsail haul,” and there she would stick, like a wall-eyed sow in a muddy lane, hard and fast in irons. With her mainyards braced a-port and her foreyards a-starboard, she reminded all hands of nothing so much as the old sea-yarn of the Yankee schooner-skipper who for the first time found himself in command of a bark. Quite scared of those big square sails, he lay in port until, by some lucky chance, he got hold of a mate who had long sailed in square-rigged vessels. Then he boldly put to sea. But by some evil hap the poor mate fell overboard and was drowned when they had been several days out; and one morning a homeward-bounder spied a bark in irons making rapid signals of distress, although the weather was fine, and the vessel appeared staunch and seaworthy enough. Rounding to under the sufferer’s stern, the homeward-bound skipper hailed, “What’s the matter?” “Oh!” roared the almost frantic Yankee, “for God’s sake send somebody aboard that knows somethin’ about this kind er ship. I’ve lost my square-rigged mate overboard, an’ I cain’t git a move on her nohow!” He’d been trying to sail her “winged out,” schooner fashion. So disgusted was our skipper with the _Sea Gem_ that he left her in Mobile, saying that he was going to retire from the sea altogether. But we all believed he was scared to death that she would run away with him some fine day. Another skipper took command, a Yankee Welshman by the name of Jones. The first day out I heard the second mate say to him deferentially, “She’s rather ugly in stays, sir.” “_Is_ she?” queried the old man, with an astonished air. “Wall, I should hev surmised she was ez nimble ez a kitten. Yew don’t say!” Shortly after it became necessary to tack, and, to our utter amazement, the _Sea Gem_ came about in almost her own length, with never a suggestion that she had ever been otherwise than as handy as a St. Ives smack. Nor did she ever after betray any signs of unwillingness to behave with the same cheerful alacrity. Had her trim been different we could have understood it, because some ships handy in ballast are veritable cows when loaded, and _vice versâ_. But that reasoning had here no weight, since her draft was essentially the same.