Part 11

In the morning watch to-day the gale broke after blowing for twenty-four hours, the main-sail being set at four o’clock, during which process both mates were knocked down flat on the deck by an unexpected sea while they were standing by the main-hatch. At eight this morning the wind had moderated to a light, fitful breeze, and we wallowed all the forenoon in a high, broken sea; indeed, throughout the night we could get but little sleep owing to the severe rolling. Glancing to leeward as soon as we appeared on deck, there was our old friend the “Dowes” on our beam, distant a little more than a mile, bobbing about under her top-gallant-sails as we were, though she carried her cross-jack and we the spanker. She made, indeed, a fine picture as she forged sullenly ahead, showing a glistening sheath of copper as she divided the slopes of the larger seas, with a glint of brass from the poop when the sun peered out from between light showers. At nine o’clock we perceived several agitated figures close to her wheel, and presently a string of flags blew out and were run up to her gaff-end, and quite a little conversation ensued. The first signal which Platt made was DWV, signifying “How are you?” This we answered with BRC, which is to say, “All well.” Then followed in rapid succession, “When did you sail?” “When did you pass the equator?” “A pleasant voyage,” to all of which we replied with the various flag combinations which spelled the words; each then dipped the ensign three times, and the interview was brought to a close. It was very interesting thus conversing with the sly wretch, and it is singular how much interest foremast hands always take in such proceedings, carefully following every shift of flag, some of the older sailors always professing to be able to read the signals, often telling their messmates the most absurd things, which they implicitly believe.

I never saw so great a change in any one as came over Captain Scruggs yesterday during the gale. He was as quiet and retiring as the most bashful of individuals, and in fact exhibited an amount of anxiety surprising in so aggresive and domineering a person. Nearly all masters of sailing ships, as noted before, are nervous in bad weather; and in truth, a gale of wind at sea is something to make one quiet and mindful of man’s trivial strength when measured against the mighty powers of nature. But the captain was unnaturally reserved and almost crushed, and asked me half a dozen times what I thought of it; while at 2.30 in the afternoon, standing on the weather side of the wheel-house, he put his face close to my ear and shouted, “It’s blowing harder than ever,” with a rising inflection, as though awaiting my inexperienced opinion. This morning, however, he was his same old self again, drenching Sammie with heavy showers of profanity on the least provocation. In spite of his depression yesterday, the skipper gave vent to one of his quaint sayings. At the time he had on a cap, which, though not tied under his chin, resisted the utmost violence of the squalls; on commenting upon this to him, he cried, “They’re great things; you ought to have one; ’twould stop on as long as your pants.”

Some of the sailors are beginning to grumble even so soon as this. I had a talk with old Kelly this afternoon at the pumps and in a low voice he let fall his opinions on various subjects. Now, this man has been well educated and talks evenly, without effort, and the inflections and tone of his voice indicate that by birth his natural sphere in life is a good deal higher than that of a common sailor. “Well,” he remarked. “I’ve been in square-riggers for thirty-three years now, but I never did see one like this for yelling and cursing; why, they knock all the sense out of a man’s head the way they shout. And work, you talk about galleys, but there never was a gang of slaves driven as we are.” This must be taken with the usual amount of salt, which should always be liberally sprinkled over the conversation of the average sailor; still, when a second mate acknowledges that the men are hard pushed, there is not much doubt about its being true. Kelly is right, though, about the shouting of Captain Scruggs; if there wasn’t so much sea-room I believe that we would all be deafened by this time; and the worst part of it is that this sort of thing is absolutely useless. I have frequently known the skipper to work the men into such a state that they were paralyzed and unable to execute the simplest order.

At the present moment, sitting in the cabin, we can hear the wind beginning to sing again in the rigging, and a second gale would not surprise us in the least, for there is, in addition, a heavy swell rolling up from the southwest, all of which cannot be the result of our late gale.

This roaring of the wind aloft when it is blowing very hard is resolvable into several different tones: the heavy shrouds taking the base, the somewhat lighter backstays resembling the barytone, the halliards and braces standing for the tenor, while the buntlines and clew-lines take the part of a piercing falsetto, as shrill as a thousand piccolos; the whole blending into a resonant chorus of orchestral power, with grand, majestic crescendi like the double open diapason of a cathedral organ. Latitude 32° 35′ south; longitude, 44° 50′ west.

+June 25+

The question which agitates us at this moment is, are we going to have another pampero? for it is breezing up fast from west-southwest, the same old quarter. We didn’t have much wind this forenoon, but by dinner-time it freshened so that at one o’clock the skipper said to the mate in tones of despair, “Get that upper mizzentop-sail in, Mr. Goggins”; and no sooner were the men down on deck again than came the order, “Reef the foretop-sail.” All hands were on deck, and the foreshrouds were instantly filled with the yellow figures scurrying aloft, and in half an hour the ship was once more under snug canvas.

At four yesterday afternoon, chancing to look under the foot of the main-sail, my wife and I saw a large four-masted bark under top-gallant-sails bound north and steering in such a way as to pass within easy signalling distance; and the skipper lost no time in appearing on deck in answer to a summons, at once ordering the ship’s number to be made. On came the stranger, and in a few minutes we could see that she had lost her mizzen-royal, yard, mast, and everything. She was a very ugly vessel, narrow and dingy, built of wood, with a curious stern like nothing we had ever seen before, and no more apparent sheer than a billiard-table. Very soon she was abreast of us, but no answering flags fluttered from her gaff, and we wondered what manner of ship this was thus to ignore signals. We thought that she was going to pass us by completely unnoticed, when there crawled feebly to her spanker-gaff the green, white, and red banner of Italy. The meaning of this manœuvre was that this ill-starred old ship, which was evidently an ancient steamer, was totally destitute of flags bar her national ensign; and, having no signals, she would, of course, possess no code-book, and therefore our number, standing out stiffly a hundred feet from the deck, would be quite unintelligible to her.

No sooner was this ship hull down astern than another one arose ahead. We were below at the time, and when we reached the deck we were almost abreast of each other. Our name was still flying from the signal-halliards, while the other had hoisted FGH, meaning “What is your longitude?” We gratified her wish and she doubtless got our name all right, but refused to tell us hers; but, dipping her ensign, went surging heavily along on her homeward-bound course. A long time passed before we could make out what her ensign was, for it was a flag seldom seen on the ocean highways, and the mate had the honor of being the first to distinguish it. It was the flag of Chile: a broad horizontal band of red below, the upper half being divided into two squares, white and blue, with a large white star in the upper left-hand corner. She, too, was a wooden ship, but not so villanous-looking as the Italian, and carried double top-gallant-sails on the fore and main. We all hope that she’ll report us, for we have sailed through thirty-six degrees of latitude without having sighted any vessel which would be likely to report us on arrival. How happy our relatives and friends will be when they see our report in the ship-news columns by that steamer just north of the line, “Spoken, ship ‘Hosea Higgins.’ Scruggs, New York for San Francisco, June 6. Latitude, 2° north; longitude, 28° west!”

To-day at noon we were almost exactly in the latitude of Cape Agulhas, so that the Horn is thirteen hundred miles south of the southernmost extremity of the Eastern Hemisphere, a difference of latitude greater than that which separates Halifax and Key West, or New York and Havana. Latitude, 34° 46′ south; longitude, 45° 20′ west.

+June 26+

At quarter to five yesterday the skipper, thinking that we would do better on the other tack, wore ship at that hour in half a gale of wind. There was a deal of excitement and bad language on the captain’s part, which so rattled the helmsman that we were thirty-five minutes in wearing, about eighteen or twenty minutes being our average. There was a heavy sea running at the time, too, and in spite of cautions my wife insisted upon sitting on top of the after-cabin skylight during the process of wearing, and when we began to roll heavily when before the wind and sea, the expected happened; for my wife fetched away and would have had a very severe fall if the captain hadn’t grasped her tightly and held on. I tried to reach her in time, but lost my foothold, sat down vehemently, shot straightaway across the smooth deck-house with incredible speed, and brought to with a smash against the deck-house monkey-rail. I kept astonishingly cool in the flight across, and even selected where to put my feet when I should reach the rail; indeed, it was an illustration of the theory that if a man is not paralyzed with horror at some frightful spectacle the presence of danger sharpens his wits, and his mind becomes clear and calculating. Immediately after wearing, the captain ordered the main-sail reefed, and at eight in the evening a single reef was tied in the maintop-sail, the weather being very squally, with much rain and hail.

To-day dawned with a light west-southwest wind and a clear sky, with a long, southerly swell which made us roll dreadfully all night. At nine o’clock we broke off to the southward of northwest; so the captain wore round once more, and now we are making south by west half west, Skippers have an odd way sometimes of saying south _by_ west, accenting strongly the “by” as a precaution against mistaking the course for south-southwest, if slurred over quickly.

We thought that we had finished with the “Judas Dowes,” but no; this morning at dawn she was in plain view, five miles astern, and overhauled us so rapidly that when we went on the other tack she had neared us to three miles. No sooner had she observed us in the act of wearing than up went her main-sail and cross-jack, and she followed suit; there is no gainsaying the fact that the “Dowes” is the faster ship on a wind, though free things are reversed. By standing so long on the starboard tack through Wednesday’s gale and some heavy winds since we found, when braced up on the port tack last night, that the cargo had shifted slightly, and that on this leg the ship had a tendency to roll to windward. The captain said that the cargo hadn’t actually shifted, but had listed, as sailors call it, the effect on the ship being perceptible to no one but a seaman.

Mr. Rarx told me the other day that he spent two years on the West African coast, between Sierra Leone and Lagos, aboard of an English supply steamer; and that while there he saw what, in his estimation, was the loftiest-rigged vessel that ever floated. “You can talk about your talkabouts,” said he, “but that English man-o’-war had four yards above her main-royal. I’m tellin’ you a fact,” he added.

Well, we are dawdling away day after day up here in about 35° south instead of clipping down past the Plate the other side of 40°. The captain says that after we have passed that parallel until we reach 50° south we will probably have a number of fine days, clear and exhilarating, with magnificent sunsets. We have had some good views of the Magellan Clouds lately, as the sky at night in the south has been quite clear. They are strange-looking things, with somewhat the appearance of the nebula in Andromeda. Latitude, 34° 39′ south; longitude, 46° 26′ west.

+June 27+

Very strong west to west-southwest winds, and the vessel laboring in a broken sea in corkscrew dives under single-reefed fore- and maintop-sail. It was fine up to midnight, when it clouded over and commenced to blow, so that we had to shorten sail; and at eight this morning, the ship diving deeply, the upper mizzentop-sail was stowed altogether. The “Dowes” made a valiant attempt to hold on to us; but I think that we can carry on better in heavy winds, for when day broke she had vanished astern.

Last evening at the pumps Olsen and I talked together for the first time. He is a very decent fellow and the quietest man in the ship. “I never did see anythin’ like the shoutin’ here,” he observed, the first thing. “Oh, blow that,” quoth Murphy; “it goes in one ear and out the other.” “That’s all right,” answered Olsen, “but I ain’t used to it; and every time the old man hollers me heart’s in me mouth. If I ever sign in an American ship again it’ll be the ‘S. P. Hitchcock.’ When me and Coleman come round from Honolulu in her little while ago, we did more work in one watch there than we do here all day, and there wasn’t any yellin’ at all. You never saw Cap’n Gates on the main-deck neither; he knew his business. On the whole, I like British vessels about the best of any, except the way they carry on is fearful, and bein’ iron ships they can stand it. I sailed in the British ship ‘Dominion’ once from Barry to San Francisco, and I never did see such sail-carryin’. As for the main-deck, you couldn’t put your foot on it in bad weather without fear of goin’ overboard. One night in the Pacific, about 45° south, in a southerly gale, there came a crack, and away went all three t’-gallant-masts overboard, all from carryin’ on.”

Olsen’s remark about Captain Gates’s knowing his business was a cut at Captain Scruggs for prowling around the deck forward at all hours of the day and night. Sailors hate this; and while a ship-master has the right to scour his vessel fore and aft if he sees fit, he is generally never seen forward of the galley, unless something special has happened.

After dinner to-day, when we went up on the poop, we found that both wind and sea had increased, but there was nothing to warn us of what was to happen. We had arranged the folding-chairs against the wheel-house, sheltered from the violence of the wind by the bulwarks, and I was in the act of arranging a rug around my wife, when the skipper cried out, “Now, then, mind yourself!” We felt the ship rising higher and higher on an unusually heavy sea, and, looking forward, were just in time to see a great, white cataract roar over the weather-side abaft the main-rigging. Half of it tumbled into the waist, while the other half broke with a stunning crash full against the forward end of the poop-deck-house. It wrenched away a heavy wooden shutter, built to repel just such an attack as this, snapping a thick brass hook as if it had been of glass, washed away a short, massive ladder leading to the top of the deck-house, and then bore down upon us like a freshet. Captain Scruggs again came to the rescue, and, picking my wife up, chair and all, held her clear of the flood; while the only thing for me to do, seeing that my wife was safe, was to fall across one of the stern-bitts hard by and lift my legs out of the water as I best could; and here I remained for two minutes, floundering and wallowing about as though on a pivot, and this just after an especially hearty dinner. When most of the water had run off, the skipper placed my wife’s chair on the deck again with such dexterous cunning as to disengage the supporting-bar in the rear, letting the whole contrivance down flat, so that my wife lay prone upon the deck in the chill sea-water, which still swirled about our feet. It didn’t seem to disturb him much, and he only remarked, as he stamped on the deck, squirting little jets of water out of his Cape Horn slippers, “There, that’s more water than I’ve seen on this ship’s poop since I’ve had her.” It was really a grand spectacle as the sea broke on board, and would have made a superb subject for a camera.

We are now in the very heart of the violent river Plate region, being at noon to-day abreast of that vast estuary, whose mouth is three degrees in width. The Rio de la Plata, or River of Silver, is, like Cape Hatteras, the dividing line between two climates: that of the torrid Brazils and of the cold, bleak pampas of the Argentine and Patagonia, just as Hatteras is the turning-point, so to speak, in the climates of our Southern and Middle Atlantic States. They are, too, about equidistant from the equator. A rather noteworthy fact is that, bar Cape Horn, the three stormiest localities in the Southern Hemisphere are almost exactly in the same latitude, though thousands of miles apart: the river Plate, Cape Agulhas, and Cape Leewin, at the southwestern end of Australia. Latitude, 36° 55′ south; longitude, 47° 20′ west.

+June 28+

By way of variety, light winds were vouchsafed to us for the twenty-four hours, varying from southwest to northeast, and we made not fifty miles of southing in that time. Very suddenly last night at nine o’clock the wind let go at southwest, and instantly came out of the southeast, backing gradually to northeast, where it is now; but though a fair wind we are not doing three knots an hour. However, the glass is falling and a change is no doubt at hand, and the sea has gone down till nothing remains but a sullen, greasy roll from south-southeast. We earnestly hope for a strong, fair wind which will give us at least eight knots, for the skipper’s temper is failing rapidly, and he is beginning to rage at the weather. Generally, by the fiftieth day from New York he has crossed the parallel of 50° south, so that in round numbers we are about seven hundred miles north of his average, this being our forty-eighth day at sea. It has been noted previously, I think, that he has never been more than one hundred and thirty days on a voyage, and has made eight voyages between New York and San Francisco in less than one hundred days; his longest passage of the Horn--that is, from 50° to 50°--was nineteen days; the shortest, eleven. Fine work, all this, which few ship-masters can equal.

My wife asked the skipper last evening if he had ever lost a ship. He said no, but that he had had one or two narrow calls. “One of the worst cases of smash-up I ever saw,” he continued, “happened to me when I had the ‘Judas Dawes’ about six years ago. We were well down in the southeast Trades in the Pacific, bound from ’Frisco to New York; the weather had been squally, and on this particular day, in about 14° south, I had specially told the mate not to loose the jib-topsail, but when I went below after dinner for a nap the beggar did it. When I went on deck again at four there was a squall makin’ ahead, and I ordered some hands to stand by the sky-sail-halliards, for I didn’t know the jib-topsail had been loosed. Well, sir, the squall hit us (it was a corker) and snapped off the jib-boom; and, as I ran forrad, crack went the foretop-mast, then the maint’-gallant-mast, and at last over went the mizzen-t’-gallant-mast. In all my goin’ to sea I never saw the like of it; ’twas as bad nearly as the ‘May Flint,’ only we had smooth water. Forrad we were a wreck, with nothing at all above the foreyard, while alongside was a fearful mass o’ gear slammin’ against the ship, and you know those Trades in the Pacific blow fresh. Well, we cleared up the wreck after hard work, sent up a few of the old yards that weren’t too far gone to fish, made sail, and crossed Sandy Hook Bar, ninety-eight days from ’Frisco, under a jury-rig.” Captain Scruggs has as great a reputation for fast passages as any living American ship-master in the California trade, but we’ll have to have better luck if we are to reach port in less than one hundred and thirty days from New York.

We are entering that region most celebrated in the world for its sunsets; it would be interesting to know whether there is anything in this, or whether it is imagination on the part of captains. At any rate, we witnessed one this evening finer than any which we have ever seen before; the sun sinking into the core of a huge, crimson cavern in the centre of an inky cloud, from behind which shot up scores of slender, golden arrows toward the zenith, presenting a scene of such lurid magnificence as to fill the heart with reverence and wonder. And by that same token, the sun is getting low in the northern sky, his altitude at meridian being only a little above 30°, or about the same as at New York towards the end of December.

The day being chill and raw, with a noon temperature of 52°, a fire was lighted in the cabin stove for the first time; and as the thermometer below has stood for a long while at 55° and a dismal drizzle prevailed all day, the heat and glow of the fire were grateful beyond expression. Latitude, 37° 42′ south; longitude, 47° 40′ west.

+June 29+