Part 24
Even if the weather were not so delightful, our fine progress would cover a multitude of grievances, for we have done five hundred and eighty-six miles in three days, a continuous average of eight knots. If credible, the nights are even finer than the days, and we sat late on deck last evening plunking away on the banjo, with everything steeped in the white light of the moon just past the full. So wonderfully brilliant were her beams that the shadows of the weather mizzen-rigging cast upon the immense concave expanse of the main-sail stood forth as from an arc-light. The serenity of such a night is almost unearthly.
The first step in the rehabilitation of the ship for port has been progressing for two days,--the tarring down of the standing rigging. It is always the dirtiest job aboard ship, and the men are plastered from crown to toe with the sticky fluid. Next after this comes the painting, then the holy-stoning, and lastly the varnishing of what little bright work there is on the poop.
When at the pumps last evening I learned that the men had been deeply impressed with my having assisted the donkey the other night. Murphy especially seemed to extract much amusement from the fact, and when I told him that some exercise was necessary to health, he said that he never allowed that subject to bother him, adding, “There’s one thing I’m just grand at,--lyin’ in me bunk.” His appearance substantiates this statement, for he is as round and rugged as he was three months ago; I truly believe that he is the only man forward who doesn’t bear the marks of either Cape Horn or a belaying-pin. On the other hand, Louis the Gaul is the saddest and most dejected-looking man I ever saw. He has at all times that melancholy, dispirited look that one sees in the eyes of a captive ourang-outang. We talked together last night, and he informed me that this was his first American ship, and, please God, it would be his last. In very broken English, and in the deferential tones of a foreigner, he asked, “Sair, do your laws allow men to be treated as ze men are treated aboard zees sheep?”
“No,” I answered; “but so far there does not seem to have been any attempt made by the United States authorities to enforce the laws they have made.” Jacquin didn’t know enough English to go more deeply into the subject, and the talk drifted to the French navy, in which he has served sixteen years altogether; and when I told him that I knew the “Jean Bart” very well, his delight was child-like. Then he imparted a bit of rather astonishing news by saying that a man who has served for twenty years in the French navy (and it need not be all in one stretch) is pensioned by the government at three francs and a half per day. Besides possessing the second most powerful navy, France has some rattling fine square-riggers, such as the “La France,” the largest sailing vessel in the world bar the “Potosi,” the “Dunquerque,” and the “Quevilly,” the greatest tank sailing ship afloat, carrying one million gallons of oil in bulk between Philadelphia and Rouen.
Our pigeons have left us, and well they might, considering the latitude. What a distance they followed us! From 30° south in one ocean to 16° south in the other, and from the forty-fifth to the one hundredth meridian. Quite a stretch of salt-water that. Mother Carey’s chickens have come as a sort of compensation, hovering over our wake and darting down between the waves like swallows whizzing through the air after insects. Latitude, 14° 5′ south; longitude, 99° west.
+August 15+
Shall it be written that this day is the finest of all? It is even so, and I pray the reader to bear with me, and to remember that if he were in my place he would no doubt give expression to the same thought. If the entire voyage, except that part lying in the Pacific between the southern tropic and the equator, were composed of gales and snow-storms, it seems as though these winds would atone for any amount of previous distress and inconvenience. It seems wonderful that the atmosphere can possess simultaneously such exhilaration and such a smooth, luscious balminess. Oh, superb, glorious southeast Trades, thy equal is not in the world!
THE TRADE-WIND’S SONG.
Oh, I am the wind that the seamen love, I am steady and strong and true; They follow my track by the clouds above O’er the fathomless, tropic blue.
For close by the shores of the sunny Azores Their ships I await to convoy; When into their sails my constant breath pours, They hail me with turbulent joy.
I bring them a rest from tiresome toil, Of trimming the sail to the blast; For I love to keep gear all snug in the coil, And the sheets and the braces all fast.
From the deck to the truck I pour all my force, In spanker and jib I am strong; For I make every course to pull like a horse. And worry the great ship along.
As I fly o’er the blue I sing to the crew Who answer me back with a hail; I whistle a note as I slip by the throat Of the buoyant and bellying sail.
I laugh when the wave leaps over the head, And the jibs through the spray-bow shine; For an acre of foam is broken and spread When she shoulders and tosses the brine.
Through daylight and dark I follow the bark, I keep like a hound on her trail; I’m strongest at noon, yet under the moon I stiffen the bunt of her sail.
The wide ocean through for days I pursue, Till slowly my forces all wane; Then in whispers of calm I bid them adieu, And vanish in thunder and rain.
Oh, I am the wind that the seamen love, I am steady and strong and true; They follow my track by the clouds above O’er the fathomless, tropic blue.
Thus has Thomas Fleming Day delightfully written of the flowing Trades.
The men are busily engaged shearing away the great mops of hair that protected their heads in cold weather. Coleman (a man with a baneful eye and one who ought to be watched) seems to be the most accomplished tonsorial artist in the ship; he has already operated on half a dozen men, and all hands but one have assumed that appearance of cleanliness usual among sailors in the tropics. The exception is Tim, who, bar Mr. Goggins, is the dirtiest man on board. And now for a secret, profound and extraordinary! Let the peruser of these pages prepare himself for the concussion; let him brace himself for the impending blow! Mr. Goggins was seen to go forward to the galley an hour ago and return with a basin of water! Can it be possible that he is about to submit his face and hands to the purification of a quart, a whole quart of fresh water? But no; this could not be. Let us banish the thought. He would perish of shock. Yet it must be for this that he fetched the water, for it is the only conceivable use to which he could put it, so we live in hopes of a change at supper. We have never anywhere come in contact with a person so irreclaimably obnoxious, and we can only wonder why the captain allows him to come to the table in such a condition. If a man wants to be dirty, it’s his own personal affair; but when he becomes objectionable to others, steps ought to be taken to remedy the evil.
By far the most agreeable persons on board are the steward and cook, not to mention David MacFoy, who is so much more pleasant and entertaining than the rest that he forms a class all by himself. The cook, though, is a jolly little man, and welcomed us with much homely attention when we invaded his precinct the other day to learn how to make curry properly. To start with, it is hard to get good curry-powder even in India, and that which we brought back with us from Calcutta in glass jars is not as good as that which can be bought in San Francisco in square tins, that city being the only place in the United States where this particular sort can be obtained. But besides the necessity for good powder, there are certain proportions of chopped onion, flour, butter, etc., to be added in its preparation, so that in order to learn how to make curry properly it is necessary to witness the process as performed by an Indian or a Chinaman.
A rather interesting little fact to us to-day is that this is the first occasion on which three figures have ever been necessary to express our longitude. Latitude, 12° 5’ south; longitude, 101° 40′ west.
+August 16+
Fear not. I do not intend to say how much more beautiful to-day is than yesterday, though I should like to, and it is hard to refrain from doing so in such weather; but more than enough has been said on this subject. As a matter of fact, it is not quite so fine to-day, for the wind is dead aft, so that the after-sails are the only ones that do much good, and our run has not been quite up to the usual standard.
This has been a grand cleaning day forward. Every movable object was taken out of the forward house and spread on the forecastle-head in the baking sun, and a curious sight did the men’s old clothes and bedding present after lying mildewed and sodden for so many weeks. They lay in a wretched heap, the outside of which was composed of ancient, grimy bedticks, frowsy, ill-looking quilts, and disreputable, mouldy mufflers. The forecastle itself was then swept cleanly out and thoroughly washed with soap and water.
We have scores of snow-white birds with us now, about the size of common gulls, called bosuns. They are pretty creatures, with the most remarkable tails; for, instead of the usual fan-shaped arrangement of feathers, their bodies seem to be elongated into pointed spines, so thin and sharp that it is almost impossible to see the extreme end. These birds are very noisy and keep up a harsh croaking, whence their name, as a bosun is supposed to live in a continual state of exhortation. On coming up from supper last night just before six, we saw a plump, little feathered creature bearing down upon us, which had a very familiar appearance; and great was our surprise a moment later when we found that it was a Cape pigeon! Imagine one within six hundred miles of the equator! He must have been the last survivor of some vessel ahead of us, and, having abandoned her, concluded to stop and see if he couldn’t find some scraps here. He looked very calm sailing about on motionless wing among the flocks of bosuns and Mother Carey’s chickens that appear, in comparison, to make so great an effort at flying. This morning, though, we found that this, the last token of Cape Horn, had vanished. Mr. Rarx, however, didn’t seem much surprised at the appearance of the pigeon, and told us that he had seen them often in the harbor of Callao in 12° south.
In a maritime paper that the second mate showed us to-day there was rather an interesting article concerning the naming of ships. According to it, French merchant-vessels are usually called after provinces, towns, wines, and victories, but never after men, except the greatest men of French history. British ships are generally named after mythological characters, lakes, bays, glens, and cities; German vessels after rivers, ports, poets, states, and characters in German literature. The Italians name theirs after characters in Italian literature, and names of hope, courage, enterprise, and religion. Spanish ships are almost always called after cities or the great commanders in Spanish history. Norwegians and Swedes take the names of localities dear to them; while American ships are given the names of their owners, relatives, friends, or “any old thing.”
The same paper contained a short dissertation on scurvy. I wonder how many people there are who know that, according to the latest researches, scurvy is not a disease produced by eating salt meat? For many years Professor Torup, of the University of Christiania, has been studying this dreaded malady, scurvy, in all its forms, and about five years ago he proved to his own satisfaction that it is produced by ptomaine poisoning incident to putrefaction in meats which had not been properly cured or preserved. Fridjof Nansen believed in this theory, and when he was fitting out the “Fram” for her Arctic voyage he took the most extraordinary precautions to have every can or barrel of preserved meat that went on board in the best possible condition, particularly the salt meats. The sequel to this care was that upon his return every man on board was in perfect health, and had been during the three years’ voyage; this has been considered sufficient proof that it is poison in the meat, and not the salted meat itself, which produces that most ghastly of all diseases. Latitude, 10° 8′ south; longitude, 103° 56′ west.
+August 17+
Still the same weather conditions, with a little more wind and, strange to tell, a heavy ground-swell from the southwest. Imagine how hard the gale must have been to drive the swell through thirty degrees of latitude, as it is not probable that a wind strong enough to raise such a sea would prevail north of 40° south. Soon, indeed, now we will enter upon the last quarter of our voyage, and that portion of the Pacific between the line and 40° north is at this season often responsible for more long passages than any other part of the Cape Horn voyage. Many a flyer has rolled booming across the equator on a record-breaking trip, struck the Doldrums north of the line like running into a stone wall, and added fifty days more to the passage before sighting the Farallones. Just a year ago the “Shenandoah,” one of our fastest vessels, was forty-six days sailing up to ’Frisco from the equator.
Last night in the first watch I had a long talk with the second mate. It seems that he and Mr. Goggins have had words several times lately, and as Mr. Rarx knows what we think of the mate, he unburdened his mind in a very unusual manner. He says that Goggins would make a tip-top mate of a garbage-dumper, but that he isn’t fit for a geordie brig, much less a clipper ship, or what passes for a clipper in these days. “But the worst of it is, he’s no seaman; and when my watch on deck comes ain’t there a h---- of a fine mess, and I’ve got to do it all over again. And look at his men, the state he’s got ’em into; there’s not a man-jack o’ the whole lot that’ll turn a finger for him, with his shoutin’ and hollerin’ and swearin’. I wonder the captain shipped such a ---- ---- old cripple, for he knew him before. I’m gettin’ bloody sick o’ the voyage. What’s the matter with the mate is that he came in through the cabin-windows instead o’ the hawse-pipes.”
All this and much more did Mr. Rarx pour forth, working himself into quite a rage as he went along, and embellishing his discourse with regular handspike oaths.
In the American merchant service a mate always rises to that position through the various grades from ordinary seaman up; but on British ships boys (frequently gentlemen’s sons) sign for three years as apprentices, live aft, and are taught navigation and seamanship perfectly and practically by captains who are often privileged to write R. N. R. after their names, paying, I think, about one hundred guineas for this instruction. When this course is over they are fit for second mate, and in another two years pass for mate and then master. How different in America, where the law requires no examination for a man before he goes in command of a sailing vessel! How Mr. Goggins could rise to be mate from a cabin-boy without passing through the forecastle is quite marvellous, as he has always sailed in Yankee ships. He is a very obscure individual, though, and no doubt landed in the cabin in some inscrutable manner.
Mr. Rarx, on the other hand, would make a good mate of a large yacht were it not for his temper, which is very violent, and he has a way of harboring up revenge for petty trifles. We have seen more bad treatment of the men at the hands of Goggins; but my belief is that the second mate does considerable hammering on his own account the other side of the forecastle-house. It is a curious fact that so many bright men stick at second mate all their lives, never rising any higher, simply because they have never learned the use of a sextant, or how to copy figures from an epitome, for that’s all that navigation amounts to as carried on at sea. This is the great dividing line between first and second mate, which a man like Rarx could overcome in a few weeks of application. When a second mate has passed his thirty-fifth year his pristine ardor and zeal begin to wane, for by that time his aspirations for improvement are not so keen as they were; and if he is not a mate shortly afterward, he never will be. Similarly, when a mate has passed that age and never has had a command, he settles down in the capacity of chief officer, and by the time he is forty he performs his duties thereafter with no more ambition than the ox that hauls the plough. Many ship-masters refuse to take either a mate or a second mate who is more than thirty-five years old. Reference is made to sailing craft only, as men in the transatlantic mail service not infrequently reach fifty years before succeeding to one of the greyhounds. In the early days of Yankee clippers scores of men went out as master at twenty-one, and capable ones at that, as the records show.
Whenever there is a pause in the conversation at meals now, Captain Scruggs always fills in with some remarks about Nansen (or Naysen, as he always calls him) and Arctic expeditions. It is remarkable with what regularity he does this, and the mate as regularly asks in a grieved tone, addressing no one in particular, “And will yer tell me wot good hit’s a-goin’ to do when they do find the pole?” Then the skipper indignantly asks him if he supposes that an expedition is idle all the time in the ice; to which the mate replies, “Well, I know there’s nothin’ to be found out about the land up there, cause there hain’t none.” And then they go at it like a pair of quarrelsome cats, till suddenly the old man fetches the table a whack and cries out, “Very well, sir; you’re not here to argue; that’ll do, sir,” in his fiercest tones. At such times he looks like the ogre of childhood. These set-tos are extremely amusing, though, for neither knows anything about the subject, and the air throbs with “magnetic poles,” “Arctic circles,” and “phemomemoms.” By the way, it is interesting to know that England held the record for the highest latitude for two hundred and seventy-five years, or since Hudson’s voyage in 1607 to 1882, when the record passed to the United States, to be wrested from her thirteen or fourteen years later by the Norwegians. Let us hope that Peary, whom Sir Clements Markham calls “the greatest living ice-traveller,” will regain what we have lost, and this time succeed in attaining that geographical point, the quest of which has resulted in the loss of such splendid men as Franklin and de Long.
Almost all of the painting aloft has been finished except the lower masts. The topmast and lower mast-heads all glitter in the glory of a coat of dark reddish-brown, and the rigging fairly scintillates in the sun in its dress of glossy tar. Mr. Goggins says that he well remembers the first wire-rigged sailing vessel seen in the United States. She was a full-rigged London brig, and when she arrived in New York she looked so neat and trim aloft that even the old shell-backs, who doubted the efficacy of wire, were obliged to admit that in appearance, anyhow, she was away ahead of the old style. “But you wait till she strikes a gale o’ wind,” said these Solons, “and then you’ll see.” And they didn’t have long to wait, for on her return voyage to England she was totally dismasted three hundred miles west of Cape Clear. Latitude, 8° 19′ south; longitude, 105° 40′ west.
+August 18+
A still fresher breeze to-day, but it is dead aft. But we are moving so steadily in the same direction, northwest, that we slip through the water without appreciating how fast we are going; and as each noon puts us two degrees farther north, we ought to cross the line next Saturday. Gradually, too, we have been gliding into warmer weather, and last night we experienced, for the first time in the Pacific, the tremendous heat of the equatorial regions. There is something inexpressibly depressing to many people after a few days’ sojourn in the tropics; something that seems to drain the vitality. Personally I have never experienced this feeling, and exercise should never be omitted in hot weather by robust persons, although it should not be severe, and ought never be taken when the sun is more than ten degrees above the horizon.
This morning as we were hanging over the side in the shade, watching the copper slipping smoothly through the water, while a perfect cataract of cool wind poured over us out of the lee side of the cross-jack, we saw a disk of vivid green resting upon the surface of the clear, blue depths. We thought it was a cluster of sea-grass till the captain said, “Hello, there’s our first turtle.” So it proved to be, and as the ship passed within a few feet of him we had an excellent view of his broad, corrugated back, fully three feet across; he was reposing in peaceful slumber as we slid past, with head retracted, but feet and tail extended like a starfish, and he looked immeasurably comfortable, resting so placidly on the water, indolently rising and falling in the quiet sea; and we envied him, lying there in his clear, cool element. Latitude, 6° 38′ south; longitude, 107° 44′ west.
+August 19+
One hundred days at sea, and we celebrated the circumstance in real old-fashioned, long-approved Yankee style. Last evening, immediately after supper, we went up on the cabin-house and sat down to enjoy the sunset. All at once we heard angry voices forward, and then Louis, the Frenchman, shot head first out of the lee door of the carpenter-shop, followed by the massive body of Chips himself, who held in his hand a bludgeon. They were both in a passion. Louis dropped his hat as he flew through the doorway, and as he stooped to pick it up, smack! came the truncheon upon his flank. Then Louis straightened up, shot out his fist, and smote Chips painfully on the chin; the latter returned the blow, and in a second they were at it tooth and nail. Now, Louis is a very active, powerful man, and in a long spell he would, no doubt, wear the other out, but in close quarters he was no match for the carpenter’s weight; for a few seconds Louis prevailed, but Chips recovered, and, being a foot taller than the Gaul, he seized him by the throat and backed him over towards the rail, against which he caused Louis’s head to come into such frequent and violent contact that we could hear the tattoo where we sat. Then Louis began his national, low habit of kicking, but was unsuccessful in his contemptible trick, and they were still in the throes of battle when the mate appeared and cautiously hauled them apart. The shirts of both were in shreds and the Frenchman was in a fearful rage. By and by Chips came aft to supper; he bore no facial marks of the encounter save that he was very pale.
At seven o’clock I went up to one of the men, Charlie, and asked him what the row was about. He said that, as far as he knew, Louis went into the carpenter-shop to get some kerosene to cleanse the paint from his hands, and, having no business in there without permission, Chips had thrown him out. The carpenter, by the way, hasn’t been fair to the men lately with their water. One day off Cape Horn, when he went into the forecastle with the men’s allowance, one of them said to him, thereby exhibiting an unusually good spirit, “Say, Chips, there’s no good o’ givin’ us all that water in cold weather, we can’t drink it.” Then when the hot weather came and the men grew thirsty, Chips refused to give them more than they asked for off the Horn, though each man is entitled here to four quarts per day.