Part 12

From six o’clock yesterday evening till noon to-day we had a breeze so light that at times the sky-sails flapped idly against the masts, and for several hours we were becalmed on a motionless sea,--a sea so wonderfully smooth that, but for the temperature, we might readily have fancied ourselves in the equatorial Doldrums again. At four yesterday afternoon a crisp little breeze came whipping along out of the south (although it lasted only two hours) driving away the squalls and muggy air, a bright, rosy atmosphere taking their place at sundown, with a horizon as sharply cut as the edge of a razor. As for the night which followed, it was as brittle and sparkling as any evening in Nova Scotia, wanting only the flashing pennons of the Aurora Borealis to complete the picture. The firmament glittered with splendid constellations, the stars dancing and scintillating with the glance of steel, as though electric sparks, while the Milky Way seemed firm and solid enough to walk upon. A magnificent sunrise succeeded this matchless night, and we stood entranced by the glory of the scene for half an hour, watching the lovely colors shift every few seconds like the revolutions of a kaleidoscope, changing the tiny, pink, shell-like clouds into glowing, golden embers as the great orb touched the horizon and threw a path of crimson fire even to the vessel’s side. Where are the gales of wind which are supposed to scream incessantly over the Southern Ocean? Where are the giant seas which sweep the South Atlantic with their foaming crests? It is not difficult to answer the latter question, for we will not meet with any of those tremendous rollers which have made Cape Horn the hobgoblin of navigators till we have cleared Staten Land and receive the full fury of the thousands of miles of tempestuous ocean which lie to the south and west of the Horn. It is true that on our first voyage we experienced very heavy weather when in this latitude; but then we were bound the other way and were near the forty-third eastern meridian (about four hundred miles the other side of Good Hope) at this parallel; the weather, as a general rule, is far worse farther to the eastward at 40° south than in here near the land, where bright skies and much smoother seas are the rule rather than the exception. We are not more than three hundred and fifty miles from South America now, so that even if we did have a heavy westerly gale (westerly winds are almost constant south of 30° south) the sea could not rise to such heights as it does off Agulhas and Cape Horn.

But these gentle winds we cannot understand; at dinner-time to-day, though, a nice little breeze came along from the westward, and we are humming along under the sky-sails, doing well except that we are not making much westing, as we can’t do better than south by west.

The captain is like one demented. As MacFoy whispered to me this afternoon when the jib-topsail-sheet parted, throwing him into a paroxysm, “If he doesn’t get a fair wind soon he’ll go mad.” In truth, he has been in a passion all day, chassezing up and down the main-deck as though he had a devil. Just before the sheet went he had a spasm of tautening things up, and went braying about with a voice of brass, driving the men like animals before him; he had just ordered the above sheet flattened in when crack it went, and in a few seconds the clew of the sail was in fluttering ribbons, for the wind, though not strong, whipped away the old canvas as though it were a cobweb. The mate caught it too when he came out of his cavern at quarter to twelve to take the sun, and by the time that we sat down to dinner the old man had worked him into a speechless state, so that throughout the meal he sat crushed and silent, with a face like a cigar Indian. These repasts on such occasions are pregnant with gloomy thoughts, stillness reigning as the skipper fiercely gnaws at his dinner, clicking his teeth, while the whole top of his head seems to move as he chews, his temples particularly rotating like the eccentrics of a steam-engine. His head is quite bald, and his face is embellished with such enormous whiskers that his whole head looks like an inverted sea-anemone; and when he is angry, as he was to-day, his black eyes so glitter and snap under such shaggy brows that they seem about to jump out and annihilate you. After dinner, which appeared to increase his ill-humor, being a dyspeptic, he went up to put some new panes of glass into the skylight which the sea had broken. He fussed and fumed around with putty, diamond, and chisel for half an hour, at the end of which time he had one pane nicely adjusted, when it cracked across one corner. This almost prostrated him, and when two other cracks appeared in rapid succession, each calling forth a low, intense “d----,” he simply got up and ran away.

Then this amiable man commenced on the mate again, who, of course, began to “bullyrag” the men, and finally brought down young Louis Eckers to his knees with a hard blow in the face with his fist. This was due solely to temper, because he had to repeat an order which Louis didn’t understand on account of his ignorance of English.

Our first albatross presented himself to view this morning. When you are making your first long voyage there is generally some confusion at first, resulting in the more or less similarity between an albatross and a molly-hawk. The latter are large birds and really look a good deal like the former; but when you have seen an albatross half a dozen times, you will never forget his appearance. There is no mistaking that great beak or the odd hunchback-look of those shoulders, much less the majestic flight of the stately bird as he skims along close to the surface of the sea and then rises in a splendid circle on those great wings of his. Our friend of this morning, however, did not long abide with us, but, after looking us over, wheeled about and vanished in the south. A Cape pigeon struck the taffrail this morning and fell on the poop by the wheel-house. He was a beautiful little creature, with a snow-white breast, dark-brown wings splashed with white, and a glossy black head and neck, with a sheen as of satin on the feathers. After sufficiently admiring the little fellow and showing him to the cat, who wouldn’t approach within ten feet of him, we hove it overboard, and it whizzed screaming away to rejoin its companions, who now follow us in scores. Latitude, 38° 12′ south; longitude, 49° 35′ west.

+June 30+

The bright happy weather of yesterday has given place to a chill, gloomy day with half a gale from the westward, while the ship under reefed topsails has been digging into a strong head-sea in quite a violent manner. How tender and delicate, so to speak, even the best and largest of wooden vessels really are! For instance, at nine last evening the second mate said that he thought he would put the gaskets on the royals, the sky-sails having come in before supper.

“What on earth do you want to stow the royals for?” said I; “there certainly is not wind enough for that.”

“No, it’s not the wind,” he answered, “but this sea’s makin’ ahead, and she’ll strain goin’ into it with the royals on her.”

There certainly was a southerly sea running, but the ship was diving easily, without wrenching or pounding; and it surely was very surprising that a powerful ship like this would have to shorten sail for such a swell. “And that’s just the great point in favor of an iron ship,” said Mr. Rarx; “you can drive her through most anything and not give her a thought. You know the ‘William J. Rotch’? We opened her all up forrad a-drivin’ of her into a head-sea beatin’ up the Sea of Japan trying to find Willywoodstock in a fog.”

“Where’s that place? It’s new to me,” said I.

“Siberia,” was his reply; and it was not until some hours afterward that I grasped his meaning; he intended to say Vladivostok.

As the night wore on it grew squally, and at three in the morning the fore- and maintop-sails were reefed, while at four o’clock the massive iron hook on the cross-jack-tack carried away, and the sail was saved only by the prompt and good work of both watches. I awoke in the midst of the operation, and above the boom of the seas we could hear the skipper’s hurricane voice shouting, “Haul away on those buntlines; _haul away on those buntlines_; +HAUL AWAY ON THOSE BUNTLINES+.”

At five yesterday afternoon, just before we clewed up the sky-sails, we sailed through a whole fleet of albatrosses, feeding quietly on the water. It was the first time that we had seen so many of the big birds at rest at one time, and they looked very large and dignified as they rose and sunk upon the swell. To say that we sailed through them is not strictly correct, though, for when we had approached to within two hundred yards or so they rose from the surface and went sailing away into the southwest. It is always interesting to watch them rise from the water, flapping their immense wings, each two yards long, and rapidly paddling with feet as large as cabbage leaves to gain an impetus; when, the wind striking beneath their pinions, they stow their great feet somewhere in their stern feathers, and with a couple of powerful strokes of wing away they soar up to windward; and you can watch an albatross for half an hour at a time thereafter, and not a single alar movement can be discerned.

The Scottish bosun entertained me last night for some time in drawing comparisons between various sailing ships. I asked him how the men liked it here. “Why, can’t you tell?” said he. “They don’t like it at all; and I can tell you it’s no child’s play aboard here. Most of the men, you see, have come out of British ships, where they don’t break men’s bones with clubs or their hearts with drivin’.”

“If you like British ships better than ours, what did you sign in this one for?” I asked.

“Why did I?” he replied. “Why, for the same reason that lots of others do,--for the sake o’ the Snug Harbor. Ye see, if any man serves five years in American ships and can prove it, he can end his days in peace and comfort in the Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island, where they take care of him. But, say, I never see a skipper like this one before. Has he slept at all since we came to sea? I’m hanged if I think so, for at all times o’ the night the first thing you know there’s th’ old man standin’ within two foot of you on the main-deck, like a black spook. Lord knows how he gets around, _I_ don’t.”

To-day we attained the highest southern latitude which my wife and I ever reached, as on our first voyage around the other cape 39° 5′ was the southernmost point. Having crossed the fortieth parallel, we have also probably passed without the influence of the river Plate region; but it is too bad that we are not two hundred miles farther to the westward. Latitude, 40° 31′ south; longitude, 51° 10′ west.

+July 1+

Strong winds from the westward, shifting in the morning watch to southeast, and a rough sea prevailed up to noon to-day, when it cleared up, a persistent rain having added its portion to the dreariness of the weather. At five this morning, when the wind shifted to the southeast, we wore and stood in shore on the port tack, heeling well over to a strong breeze. Both wind and sea increased as the morning advanced, and at nine we had to take some of the sails off the ship. And here mark the skipper’s perversity: at this particular moment we were in quite a severe squall, and I shouted to him, “It’s breezing all the time.” “No, it ain’t,” he replied, harshly; “the wind’s lettin’ go.” Ten minutes later he ordered the maintop-gallant-sail to be clewed up, and in another five minutes he ordered in the spanker. Anything to differ from me and express an opinion of his own, even if he has to act against it.

After these two sails had come in the ship was easier, but the sea was making very rapidly, and in another hour we were taking large quantities of water aboard. It was a wild sight then: an immense squall overhanging us and darkening the heavens and the sea; the ship enveloped in clouds of whirling spray; the driving rain, whipping us with the sting of a lash; the crash of a sea now and then against the forward house; and the flock of sea-birds astern wheeling and diving through the squall, with a brace of gaunt, gray albatrosses sailing calmly along, as though this were a tropic zephyr.

During one of these squalls the carpenter was observed at work on the weather side of the forecastle-house, dodging the seas as each gave warning of its approach by a peculiar motion just before it broke aboard, which one soon learns to know. We were beginning to think that if he didn’t look sharp he would catch it, when a great mass of water arose alongside, faltered a moment high up above the rail, and then, with overwhelming fury, the whole sea thundered aboard. First it flattened Chips out against the deck-house as though he had been crucified against it; then it lifted him, mighty man though he is, and drove him with terrible force against the pumps; while the huge volume of water, encountering the various obstacles in its mad career about the deck, shot into the air as high as the mainyard, totally blotting out the waist of the ship. What saved that carpenter from mortal hurt is beyond human ken. The mate says that it was his sheathing of blubber which encases his carcass like that of a seal. At any rate, he painfully gathered up his clumsy, massive frame and stumbled forward with both hands on his left leg, which proved to be very badly bruised, and he complains now of a hard pain in his chest. This was by far more water than we have had on board at any one time, and it is difficult to conceive of the grandeur of such a sea breaking aboard, though it is an awful sight withal; its power seems resistless, and as it sweeps over the side with a peculiar, crushing sound, one involuntarily grips the rail or a belaying-pin with the grasp of a vice.

When this last squall had passed, lo! a ship to windward, and I was again the first to sing out “Sail ho.” There is much secret pleasure for me in this; for, whenever it occurs, the captain always walks over to Mr. Goggins, who is generally wool-gathering at the break of the poop, and asks him if there is anything in sight. “Naw, sir, there hain’t nothin’. Oh, yes, there’s a sail to wind’ard, sir, through the fog.” “Oh, thanks,” usually answers the skipper ironically, by which the mate knows that he’s been caught again.

Visions of the “Dowes” appeared to us as we studied the stranger as closely as the flying spray and rain would permit, the ship being under her topsails with the main-sail hauled up. Presently, though, we saw that she had no sky-sail-yards, proving that she was not our friend; while her short, thick, pole bowsprit showed that she was doubtless a metal ship, which belief was later confirmed by painted ports.

At noon the sun burst through the dense pall of cloud, and an afternoon of dazzling beauty followed, with the good old “Higgins” surging ahead over the long, blue, foaming seas, a sky of sapphire overhead, dappled with a few thin, cirrus clouds and a grand breeze over the beam, giving us about eight knots on a southwest-half-west course. Just at noon the other ship, too, presented a splendid appearance. To begin with, she was a very handsome vessel, and had so altered her position as to be close astern, a little on our weather quarter, distant about one-third of a mile. Her topsails and courses (she had set her main-sail and cross-jack) were swelled out like great cylinders, while her painted ports lent her the dignity of an old-time frigate; and she presented to us a perfect ideal of the poetry of motion as she rolled deeply but easily, now sinking into a valley to her lower yards, now cleaving the lofty crest of a breaking sea which veiled her in a storm of spray.

At half-past one we decided to signal her, and ran up our number, to which she instantly replied that she was the “La Pallice”; then we informed her that we were from New York bound to San Francisco, fifty-one days out, while she proved to be from Hamburg for the same destination, and was fifty-nine days at sea; after which we dipped our ensign, which she answered with the tricolor of France.

We are reading Nansen’s “First Crossing of Greenland” together with the greatest interest, being one of the most charmingly written of all stories of Arctic work. What a delightful time we will have with his “Farthest North”! We have it on board, but I am waiting till we pass 50° south, so that we can read it in a part of the world almost as rough and desolate as he passed over in his great journey. Latitude, 42° 24′ south; longitude, 52° 36′ west.

+July 2+

We had a good breeze from the south all last night and this morning, which put us off to about west by south; but, as our aim for the past four or five days has been to make westing rather than southing, this breeze was most acceptable. The strong wind of yesterday eased up in the second dog-watch last night, and we carried the top-gallant-sails without trouble afterward.

A great change has taken place in the temperature, for at eight this morning the thermometer stood at 38° in the air and 47° in the water,--a fall in thirty-six hours of 15° in the atmosphere and 16° in the sea. People who have never been exposed for consecutive hours to a temperature at sea of between 30° and 40° can have no just idea of how penetratingly cold the wind is when the mercury drops below 40°, or of how many clothes it is necessary to wear if one wants to stay on deck a long while without constant motion. For example, I have on now two suits of heavy underwear, pilot-cloth trousers, a heavy jersey, a whip-cord waistcoat, a padded leather jacket, and a mackintosh; the costume is completed with mention of knitted woollen gloves and socks and leather boots and ditto hat. Now, there are numerous brawny, burly individuals who will ridicule this mass of apparel, and insist that one ought to keep moving, which would make it unnecessary. But to begin with, our promenade is here limited to seventy-five feet instead of several hundred, as in the case of a transatlantic steamer; and, besides, I have not that maniac passion for pedestrianism which lays so fierce a hold on some people the instant that they set foot upon a vessel’s deck. When I want exercise, half an hour at the pumps, even in cold weather, is sufficient; and I’ll warrant that it would be enough for the brawny, burly individuals before noticed. Neither of us came to sea to stay below, so we pile on sufficient clothes to repel even the strongest blasts, and can sit comfortably and unruffled for hours on deck without a break.

Points in connection with such a voyage as this can be learned only by experience; our first one gave us all that was necessary, so that we knew exactly what to bring with us this time. A leather jacket very thickly lined is almost inconceivably useful, as are a pair of heavy leather knee-boots, at least one size too large, to allow for woollen socks. Such boots well greased will be sufficiently water-tight for all ordinary purposes, and if they should become water-logged, they can always be dried at the galley-fire; rubber boots, though, should never be omitted from the sea wardrobe. The best head-gear is a woollen cap with ear-flaps, and a sou’wester, of course, for bad weather. As to oilskins, there is now manufactured a water-proof stuff, which has proved in this case to be everything that is claimed for it. It is brown in color, and in texture much like a mackintosh, but harder to the touch, and is in two pieces,--short jacket and trousers. These suits have been used in the life-saving service on the Atlantic coast, and the only objection which the men made to the suits was that the sand cut the stuff in a high wind, so that in a short time it became quite porous. At sea, however, I have never found the equal of one of these suits; and, as a test, I stood for two hours yesterday in drenching rain and spray in one position, so as to allow the elements full continuous sweep at one point, and when we went below the inside of the jacket was not even damp. A long oil-skin coat is extremely unwieldy at sea, for if it is blowing at all hard the skirts cling to the legs most aggravatingly, and I have had some hard falls by being thus tripped. All mates wear long yellow coats, however, and I wondered why until yesterday, when I asked Mr. Goggins if a short jacket and pants wouldn’t be more comfortable; but he replied, indignantly, “Wot do yer think I am, a foremast ’and?” It seemed to me that a mate who has to wear a long coat to distinguish him from an ordinary sailor must be like the man who tells another that he himself is a gentleman,--he must be somewhat in doubt about it.

It is to be hoped that this treatise on deep-sea garments has not proved a bore; but after our previous voyage so many persons asked us what we wore in bad weather in the Southern Ocean, that the above explanations may not be out of place. My wife dresses much as she would for golf,--a short skirt and leather gaiters for clear, cold weather, with yellow oil-skins when it rains and the spray flies.

We observed some further fine cloud effects to-day a little after sunrise, the horizon being smothered at frequent intervals with dense squalls; and at nine o’clock a ponderous mass of cumulus cloud appeared in the south, rearing its immense domes nearly to the zenith, like heaps of yellow wool, for the sun’s reflection changed the color of the great bank to that of rich cream, while far below, at the base, the cloud shaded off into a dim, sable mass. “There’s snow in that fellow,” quoth the skipper, which was certainly true, for ten minutes later we were swallowed up in a thick snow-squall, which lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes. Snow seemed to be a singular phenomenon on the second of July, not to mention the biting cold. Latitude 43° 8′ south; longitude, 56° 45′ west.

+July 3+

This morning broke with a clear sky and little or no wind, and when the sun came up fine and rosy, he looked over the rim of the horizon across an azure sea just crinkled by a faint westerly breeze. Light as it was, though, there was a biting sting in it which, before breakfast, set the teeth chattering and raised one’s knuckles into big gristly knobs. The broad sweep of the South Atlantic was well-nigh motionless, for it was only at considerable intervals that a slight swell came sighing up from the Antarctic, and the sea was as calm as off Newport in August. Clothes suspended against the walls hung without motion, and we might well have fancied ourselves in Long Island Sound; as for the day, it was cloudless save for an occasional snow flurry, which lasted only a few minutes. This clear, cold, merry weather at sea is indescribably charming, though, no doubt, the men would tell a different tale, for Olsen and Jacquin, who were mending an old fine-weather royal on the cabin-house this morning, had to knock off work now and then to beat some feeling into their stiffened fingers before they could drive the needles through the canvas.