Part 13
As we draw nearer and nearer to Cape Horn the men are daily growing very anxious to know the ship’s position, and as I am, of course, the only individual on board who will gratify their curiosity, they often ask me several times a day. Frequently, on the main-deck, a man will ask what the position is in a very low tone, after a careful scrutiny round about to see that none of the after-guard is hard by. Sometimes, as I pass by the wheel-house, I am assailed in a raven’s whisper with, “Say, mister, what’s the latitood?” and their pleasure at being told is quite child-like. A passenger on a sailing ship, by the way, is seldom, if ever, called by his name; he is simply “mister.” Of course, in a general way, sailors often get an idea of the approach of land from the discoloration of the water, the increase in the number of vessels sighted, and the presence of land-birds; but the average sailor probably couldn’t tell within much less than a thousand miles of where he is on a voyage like this. Even a second mate is generally very much in the dark on this subject, for he is never a navigator on American ships, as he ought to be, and keeps no reckoning. We have often seen Mr. Rarx go up to the mate and hint in various ways that he would like to know the ship’s position at noon. The mate sometimes tells him; but Mr. Rarx is too good a seaman to stand well with such a man as the mate, who does not know very much more of that art than some of the sailors. Besides, it _might_ get to the men through one of the bosuns, which would be truly horrible and unspeakable; therefore, unless there is a passenger aboard, sailors live in almost blank ignorance of their whereabouts throughout a four or five months’ voyage.
The bosun of the port-watch, big MacFoy, has been limping badly for several days, his left foot being so severely mashed and swollen that he cannot bear even a loose rubber boot on it. This is the result of a sea which fell upon him one night at the weather forebraces. It slung him across the deck and jammed his foot against a fife-rail stanchion, but luckily broke no bones. I have promised to give him a glass of grog to-morrow, the Fourth of July, but exceeding caution will have to be exercised lest I be apprehended by the powers.
Yesterday the main-spencer was rigged, and as this is a heavy-weather sail, a description of it may prove of interest. It is otherwise known as a storm-try-sail, and, being a fore-and aft-sail, is set on the main lower mast. A number of stout screw-eyes were driven into the mast, extending from a point about eight feet above the deck to an iron band three feet below the top; through these eyes an iron rod was inserted, and to this rod the sail was laced. A standing-gaff was then rigged, furnished with hoops, to which the head of the sail was bent, the method of setting being by hauling it out on the gaff, like the fore- and aft-sails on steamers. It is forty-four feet long on the luff and twenty-two on the gaff, and is, of course, of No. 0 duck, with a bolt-rope nearly as big as the fore-tack. The spencer is what is known as a steadying sail in bad weather, and is usually set after the courses have all been hauled up and the ship is head-reaching under the lower topsails, or when the ship is regularly hove to.
There was a very turbulent scene enacted while the sail was being bent. The mate was aloft, swinging over the rim of the top in a bowline, trying to fit the end of the gaff into a gooseneck, both man and spar flying wildly about as the ship rolled. Two vangs led down from the gaff-end to the deck, one on either side, while a man on each, trying to hold it steady, was jerked about like the tail of a kite. The mate was already in a passion, for no sooner would he have the end nearly in the socket than away it would fly, while he himself brought to with a thump against the futtock-shrouds. At this juncture Captain Scruggs appeared with his sextant. It was the signal for chaos. Everything almost immediately was plunged into inextricable confusion. Something had manifestly gone wrong with the old man below, for he was bristling when he laid down his instrument on the deck-house and walked with foreboding leisure to the break of the poop. You could see that he was seething within himself; but for some time he appeared totally unconscious of the mate, the spencer, and everything else; but when the gaff drew off and smote the taut weather-shrouds with the force of a steam-hammer, he thought it was time to take a hand. Did the mate give an order he would instantly countermand it, sandwiching in sarcastic remarks, such as, “Ah, that’s beautiful! You’d make a master-rigger, you would. Think you’ll git that in by dark? I could put the whole main-mast in while you’re scratchin’ away up there.” At these pleasantries old Goggins fairly snarled and bared his teeth in devilish grins, but kept silent. At last, seeing a chance, he bawled to the man below who was surging up on the rope, “Lower away smart, now.” “Hoist away, there,” immediately cried the skipper. Behold the fatal straw on the dromedary. “’Ow in the name o’ G---- am Hi to do this, Cap’n Scruggs, if you don’t let me alone?” And then they went at it like Kilkenny cats, so that the air quivered with blasphemous discharges. It was quite astonishing to hear the mate answer back with such intrepid vehemence, and they kept it up so long that the captain lost his sight; for when he removed his sextant the sun was falling, which didn’t add very much to the geniality of his temper. Scenes of this sort are heralded with the most intense joy by the men, who turn their heads away to hide faces which actually glisten with delight. Latitude, 43° 13′ south; longitude, 58° 24′ west.
+July 4+
We celebrated Independence Day not with pyrotechnical demonstrations, but with a remarkable barometric performance: it fell seven-tenths of an inch in ten hours, from 30.40 to 29.70, and this with an ugly look to windward. The breeze began to freshen late yesterday afternoon, and at five o’clock in came the fore- and mizzen-royals. At table, the various utensils suddenly began to jump about, which was very astonishing, inasmuch as the sea was almost perfectly quiet half an hour earlier. The breeze kept on making, and when we came up from supper, at six o’clock, the captain ordered the main-royal- and mizzen-top-gallant-sail clewed up. At this time the ship was diving heavily, and it was time to take the fore- and maintop-gallants off her, too; the skipper had just concluded to furl them, when, with a great weltering plunge, the ship pushed her lofty flaring bows completely under a coaming sea, and then instantly rearing back, the enormous mass of water was projected with terrific force against the forward end of the forecastle-house. It smashed the lee door like cardboard, though it was three inches thick, and then washed aft like a Hooghly bore, absolutely filling the lee decks to the rail with solid water,--that is, it was six feet deep in the scuppers, and it seemed incredible that any bulwarks could withstand the strain; yet the water ran off in a few minutes, leaving no further trace of its power than a snarled mass of running gear which had been lifted off the pins. Good luck that the lookout had just been ordered to the top of the house instead of the forecastle-head, or there wouldn’t have been much of him left after that sea had struck him.
The forecastle, though, was a spectacle indeed. Its doors open forward, which no sailor likes; and when the big sea came from dead ahead and stove the lee door, the water poured into the house in thousands of gallons. It stood a foot deep on the floor, and shot up violently to the carlines at every roll, washing the men’s bedding out of even the topmost bunks (they are always built in three tiers, one above the other), while their chests went banging about in the deep water, the majority of them burst open, and others broken all to pieces. The sills of the doors on all ships opening on the main-deck are usually about eighteen inches high, to prevent the entrance of water, if possible; but if, as in this case, a great quantity find its way into the forecastle, these very sills prevent its egress. To be sure, there are leaders which are supposed to draw the water off, but they are so small that more than an hour passed before all the brine had disappeared. How sorrowful and helpless the poor fellows looked as they surveyed their drenched clothes and broken chests! and, worse than all, the dank, soaked forecastle. It means more suffering and privation than landsmen have any idea of, for the men will have to sleep in soggy, clammy, mildewed bunks for at least a month. No forecastle ever dries off Cape Horn, on account of the intense humidity of that region; and even if the forecastle has a stove in it, it doesn’t dry things out, but calls forth instead a rank steam from the reeking walls, which pervades the room like a foul mist.
All this time the glass had been falling, and we looked for bad weather; the captain had the main-sail hauled up, and in every way stood by for a heavy blow. But we worked out a false reckoning, for the wind shortly afterward let go more than half, while the aneroid rose to 29.85, where it is now. Since six o’clock this morning we have been about six points off our course, with the wind at south-southwest; therefore the captain once more wrapped himself in his mantle of wrath, and throughout dinner kept mumbling continuously to himself concerning the probability of there being a Jonah on board. This was not the first time that he has hinted at such things, and, though we knew well that he meant us, I didn’t say anything, but let him growl on. It is almost impossible to conceive how unpleasant it is to be considered a Jonah aboard ship; it is easy to say, “What’s the use of paying any attention to it?” But you can’t help heeding it, though it is only superstition, and the eyes of every one on board aft seem to say, “Look at the Jonah.” Foremast hands do not care how long they are at sea if they get decent food and even passably good treatment; indeed, the saying among them is, “More days, more dollars.” Still, in spite of everything we are reminded of that dismal verse in the “Ancient Mariner,”--
“One by one, by the star-dogged moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang And cursed me with his eye.”
There is another cause, however, for the skipper’s bad temper; yesterday we slaughtered our first pig, and at all three meals to-day we had fresh pork. Captain Scruggs caused prodigious quantities of it to disappear and has been in anguish ever since. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anything edible which will so upset one’s digestion as fresh pork at sea; it is bad enough ashore, where plenty of exercise is to be had, but aboard ship one hearty meal of pork freshly killed will cause an incredible amount of distress. The skipper instanced an illustration of how difficult it is to digest at sea: on the last outward voyage he killed a pig just before he reached San Francisco, and, the weather being too warm to keep the meat sweet, most of it was given to the sailors. Now, these men can digest sour, soggy bread and salt beef like ironwood, yet this fresh pork vanquished them, and five men were actually laid up in their bunks at the end of the second day.
Had many severe hail-squalls during the last twenty-four hours, but fine weather otherwise, sharp and clear. Latitude, 44° 41′ south; longitude, 59° 58′ west.
+July 5+
Very light southerly airs and a calm sea have added vastly to our surprise at such weather off Patagonia. How remarkable it is to find these gentle, variable winds here, when the popular notion of this region is a continuous westerly gale! Findlay’s “South Atlantic Directory,” however, indicates generally fine weather from 40° to 50° south _near the land_, and this has been our skipper’s almost invariable experience, except that the wind ought to be to the northward instead of to the southward of west; at the present moment, though, the breeze shows signs of hauling to the northward with the sun, instead of against, so perhaps it will stop there for a while. The wind has been so light and contrary for the twenty-four hours, that in that period we made only eight miles of latitude and seven of longitude!
My wife and I have finished reading Nansen’s “First Crossing of Greenland,” and during its perusal we learned some remarkable facts. For instance, it is strange how the body craves fat or grease of any sort when deprived of it for a long while; and it is also very odd to read that a lump of butter eaten alone slakes the thirst of men in the Arctic regions! I wonder why Nansen doesn’t undertake the ascent of Mount Everest? It seems to me that he, with all his strength and vitality, would be peculiarly well fitted for such an expedition, not to mention his being a man of science. How much interest the writings of Sir Joseph Hooker would lack if that great mountaineer had not been a scientist! The amount of risk to Nansen, too, in comparison with an Arctic voyage, would be very small; while the glory of being the first to stand upon the topmost pinnacle of the earth’s surface could be dwarfed only by the attainment of the Pole itself. I have loaned the second mate the Greenland book, as Mr. Rarx is deeply interested in such work, and is desirous of joining an expedition to the North Pole. He fears not being able to pass the physical tests necessary before becoming a member of the crew, but as he has considerable knowledge of the Peary Greenland expedition, it is my notion that he tried to join it, but was rejected; and as he laid stress on the fact that no one would be taken who had any old scars on his person, it is not unlikely that he was barred for this reason. Considering his lean, powerful frame, he ought to be well able to endure hardships.
Looking at the spencer, which is, of course, brailed up in such light weather, Mr. Rarx said, “Oh, those are great sails! Wait till it’s blowin’ and she under that and the topsails! They’ll stand a power o’ wind, but I’ve seen ’em blown away. I was second mate of a Nova Scotia ship, the ‘Mary L. Burrill,’ a few years ago, and we were bound across this time from Greenock to St. John in February, which it isn’t necessary for me to say anything more about the weather. We’d be’n lyin’ to for twenty hours under a goose-winged maintop-sail and spencer when the wind all at once rose to a perfect hurricane and hove us down to the hatches. And then the maintop-sail and that there spencer, sir, nearly as hard and thick as a plank, flew away like a muslin handkercheef; and though we had double gaskets on all the sails, four of ’em was blown loose and ripped off the yards like paper. Now, it’s blowin’ pretty hard when a lower maintop-sail goes, but nothin’ short of a hurricane can budge a new spencer. But no canvas ever made will stand a North Atlantic midwinter gale, and you hear me. We sighted a big White Star freighter this day, and she afterward reported the wind eighty miles an hour _between_ the squalls; not in ’em, mind. And if you want to see somethin’ to put joy in your heart, you ought to see these big White Star steamers in a heavy gale! I saw the ‘Cufic’ once comin’ across in another cyclone in the ‘J. B. Walker,’ and the way she kept clear of the seas was a caution. I’m a good enough American, but you can’t beat Harland and Wolff very much.”
Mr. Rarx is an infinitely more agreeable man to talk to than the mate, who is the longest-winded and most tiresome old porpoise who ever spun a yarn. His only recommendations are his hideousness, which is positively attractive, and his strange, absurd facial contortions when he doesn’t intend to be funny. Sometimes during the first watch, when it is very dark, with the exception of the binnacle lamp which casts its rays upon him as he crosses its path, he is actually weird-looking. His voice, too, is as husky as a rusty hinge now, owing to a severe cold, and last night he vented some curious statements. Neither of us had said a word for maybe five minutes, I watching the compass card, he grinning and mouthing to himself in the moonlight. Presently he wormed himself over to where I stood, looked earnestly at me a few seconds and croaked,--
“You’ll see plenty of people in California with no teeth.”
“How is that?” said I.
“Dunno,” he replied; “they do say it’s the climate; anyhow, you’ll see lots with nothin’ but gums.”
Then he crawled back to the other side, performed some further silent, facial acrobatics, returned, and wheezed out mysteriously, “You’ll be bothered with fleas there; they’re that plenty I always has a regular quadrille with ’em.”
A remarkable habit the captain has at table of asking the mate if he won’t have some of everything in sight; no matter how many dishes there may be on the board, the skipper always gazes fiercely at him for a moment, and then says rapidly and severely, “Have some of the salt meat, Mr. Goggins? Have some beans? Have some potatoes? Have some bread? Have some sparrow-grass?” All this in one breath, to which the mate answers, “A leetle, if you please, sir;” or if it’s a second asking, which is merely form, he replies with his droning, “No-o-o, sir, I thank you, sir; I’ve ’ad sufficient, sir, I thank you, sir,” as though to show how he is depriving himself, for he insists that it is vulgar to enjoy eating!
Sometimes the old creature corners my wife and me and entertains us with anecdotes of his acquaintances in San Francisco and how excessively numerous his influential friends are there. He will tell us that ’Arry Dolan is now getting seventy-five dollars a month at the Union Iron Works; and when we venture the opinion that he must be a rising young man, he answers, “Oh, ’Arry’s all right. Why, I knew him w’en he was gettin’ only three dollars a week at the Works.” Here generally follows a genealogical history of the Dolans for several generations, while their individual characteristics become the subject of minute discussion.
Well, we’re beating slowly, slowly, down the inhospitable shores of Patagonia, and our luck doesn’t seem to be much better than it was in the southeast Trades. Latitude, 44° 49′ south; longitude, 60° 5′ west.
+July 6+
If our nautical instruments had not assured us that we were at noon in about 45° south, distant one hundred and twenty-five miles from Cape Dos Bahios, we might easily have imagined the ship to be lying off Staten Island in New York Harbor. We never but once before saw the sea so free from swell, and that was in the Indian Ocean, thirty-four miles south of the equator; which position we not only held for twenty-four hours, but during that entire period no one perceived the least motion in the ship. It is true that to-day we made nearly one hundred miles; but from eight till eleven this forenoon we were motionless on the water, while a stage was slung over the stern a foot from the surface, on which the mate and the carpenter worked for two hours on the rudder-head; it is only once or twice during an entire voyage that a vessel for hours at a time will not rise and fall twelve inches. To us it is really a remarkable experience to thus float silently along within three hundred and fifty miles of the Falklands, though the skipper says, “Well, I told you we’d have light weather north of 50°.”
At noon to-day, however, the western sky indicated a breeze, and presently a little breath stole ever so gently over the quiet ocean, scarcely curling the smooth, level plane of the sea; and, gradually freshening, the ship gathered steerage way in five minutes or so and began to lazily move ahead through a large flock of Cape pigeons which had settled to feed in great numbers during the calm, though we could perceive nothing edible in the water. The birds seemed to delight in the breeze as much as we did, for in light weather they seldom rise higher than a few feet above the surface, lacking the force of wind which enables them to rise easily; as in a strong breeze they make no further effort than to guide themselves, rising and falling without movement of wing. A huge, hoary albatross, a perfect old patriarch, has been with us all day, skimming over the water so closely as to touch it occasionally with his breast, and seldom more than a foot from it. It is wonderful that they can maintain so close and uniform a flight to the surface, without movement and in a calm.
The day before yesterday, being more exasperated than ever before at the skipper’s continuous grumbling at the weather, I told him that I thought that he asked altogether too much in demanding a fair wind all the time, and that when a man began a voyage he ought to expect more or less head-winds throughout the passage, for they were to be expected anywhere and at any minute at sea during a whole voyage, even in the Trades. Since then he hasn’t said a word against the weather, and is, for him, extremely agreeable. Heavens, how hairy he is! So thickly covered is his whole face that the only visible bare spots are his nose and eyes; for his beard grows right up over his cheek-bones, and his eyebrows seem to be spreading all over his forehead. So dense are his whiskers that when he comes on deck after a session with his Dutch pipe the smoke can still be seen eddying and seething in his beard.
Last evening as we were reading some of Kipling’s delightful sea-poems the skipper called down and asked whether we wouldn’t like to see a lunar rainbow. We went on deck at once, and there, sure enough, was a perfect specimen of this strange phenomenon, and so clearly defined that the brighter colors were distinctly visible. We had seen but one lunar rainbow before, and that was a very faint one in the Bay of Bengal, about one hundred miles from the Sandheads.
It is a curious fact that, like captains, there are comparatively few foremast hands who remain perfectly strong and well throughout a long passage. At least eight of ours are looking quite seedy, some with bad colds, others with various disorders of liver and stomach, so that they have to be doctored and fixed up with an assortment of medicines. The way that five-grain blue-mass pills fly around on a deep-water ship is a caution; one would think they were peppermint drops. Latitude 45° 20′ south; longitude 62° 10′ west.
+July 7+
What a change can be wrought at sea in a few hours! At eleven yesterday morning we were motionless upon a glassy sea; eight hours later we were rushing southward under the topsails before a moderate gale!
“And now the storm-blast came, and he Was tyrannous and strong; He struck with his o’ertaking wings, And chased us south along.”
Throughout yesterday afternoon the breeze steadily freshened, and by four o’clock the sky-sails had been stowed, followed at five by the royals, while after supper the gaskets were put on the three top-gallant-sails and the cross-jack was hauled up; the ship logging exactly twelve knots between six and seven o’clock, the best which we have done yet, the wind being true and steady from west-northwest, a little abaft the beam. I have seldom seen a finer sight than that presented by the ship as she went bounding away south by west before this grand breeze blowing straight off the pampas of Patagonia; the moon, now at first quarter, casting a broad wake of silver radiance over the short, steep, foaming seas which had arisen as though by magic, and were already snarling and showing their teeth up above the weather-quarter. By ten o’clock the spray had begun to bury the waist of the ship once more, while at intervals during the night a deep, heavy boom told us that something beside mere spray was tumbling over the weather-side.