Part 4

“Hi don’t think it’ll burn, Cap’n Scruggs: the hole ain’t big enough,” meekly observed the mate.

“I didn’t ask you whether you thought ’twould burn or not,” responded the skipper, who had snapped about an inch off the end of his little saw. “I asked you for a match.”

Finally the contents of the barrel were ignited, and the skipper, seizing the chimes at one end, bade the mate do the same at the other; then to lift it horizontally, swing it to and fro, and when he said “three,” to let it go over the stern. But the mate got it wrong in some way, and let go at “two,” and as the captain hung on, there was a good deal of excitement for a few seconds. The barrel all but hauled him overboard after breaking off two or three finger nails, banged loudly against the counter, turned over, and dropped into the water hole-side down.

The scene which followed was too harrowing for reproduction, but it was interrupted by the loud voice of the lookout, “Light right ahead, sir.” Instantly all was silent. The skipper jumped up on the deck-house, while the mate ran for the top-gallant-forecastle, whence he shouted back, “All right, sir, she’s keeping away”; and in a few minutes, a bark of about seven hundred tons under topsails passed us to leeward, by the wind, bound north.

Mr. Goggins entertained us at dinner to-day with a new version of an old sea-fight. The captain did not come to the table until supper, owing to his celebrations, which he prolonged far into the night; so, after the soup had been cleared away at dinner, the mate began, “Did you ever hear, sir, and ma’am, of the true ’istory about Sims (Semmes) in the battle of the ‘Kearsarge’ and ‘Halabama’?” “No,” said I; “let us have it.”

“’Twon’t take long to tell,” said the mate. “He warn’t in the fight at all. Where was he? Aboard o’ that English yacht, the ‘Greyhound,’ or whatever she was, a-lookin’ on! Yes, sir; I was in Liverpool then, and he come in and went on board the ‘Great Western,’ and her cap’n spit in his face, and him without the courage to reply.”

Mr. Goggins had a sousing yesterday which diverted all hands for some time. He was coming down from forward on the weather side, with that peculiar confidence assumed by captains and mates when the spray is flying, as if it were impossible for a drop of water to strike them. The mate had reached the main hatch, when he heard the swash of an unusually heavy sea, and casually turned his head in time to see a perfect storm of spray flying down upon him. It hit him fairly between the shoulders. He staggered, fluttered about for a moment, and then flapped heavily and helplessly against the hatch-combing, where he sat up finally in a foot of water, drenched to the bone.

Our fine breeze holds, but we are still hard on the wind; course, southeast by south, true. Latitude, 17° 15′ north; longitude, 36° 50′ west.

+May 26+

Last night was a squally one and the sky-sails were furled early in the evening, hands being stationed at the royal-halliards as well, until they, too, were stowed at three in the morning.

We had an accident yesterday afternoon, which, though comparatively trivial, occasioned some lively work. My wife and I were playing backgammon at the forward end of the deck-house in the first dog watch, and everything was running very smoothly, when, with a snap and a rattle of chain links, the lee maintop-gallant-sheet was carried away. In a second there was an uproar. Two men jumped with great alacrity into the weather rigging and in a few minutes were astride of the lee upper maintop-sail-yard-arm, working like demons, with the long length of chain sheet waving and slashing among the braces as the ship rolled in the beam seas. Louis, the Frenchman, swung himself into the rigging immediately afterward, stationing himself on the royal-yard-arm, followed by Mr. Rarx and three other men.

It wasn’t long before the work of repair was progressing satisfactorily, when the skipper appeared at the cabin door, and, without preliminary, commenced to shake things up a little. He shook with such success that in three or four minutes Jimmie Rumps began to simply hop into the air at intervals, the men were reduced to idiots, while Mr. Goggins charged about, gulping with excitement; for the captain would sandwich in such observations as, “I wonder whether I shipped you for a mate or a farmer”; and requesting him, in soft but deadly tones, to be “good enough to secure that sheet so it’ll hold till to-morrow, anyway.” After snarling everything up into a hundred grannies, Captain Scruggs vanished, and the work proceeded quietly. The only man who kept his head was the second mate. This French seaman, Louis Jacquin, is an ideal sailor. He is built like an ox, short and very broad, with a bull neck thrust well down between massive shoulders, a back all corrugated with muscle, and, what is very remarkable in a sailor, large, strong legs. He is as swarthy as a Spaniard, with blue-black hair and short moustache, and a wide, powerful jaw, with a pleasant scowl, if such can exist, on his lean, determined face. He is a man to lean on in an accident.

We were glad to hear that when repairs had been made, the men were going to mast-head the top-gallant- and royal-yards to the stimulus of chanties; and sure enough, when the top-gallant-halliards were manned, the invigorating strains of “A Long Time Ago” broke out in a hoarse but agreeable barytone. A sailor’s chorus of this sort is a very inspiring thing. The whole of the crew, eighteen brawny fellows, were stretched in line, clear across the deck, with David MacFoy, the lusty-voiced Scot, at the end, to sing the verses; and at the conclusion of each line a roar would go ringing over the water that must have been heard behind the horizon, the halliards coming in a full yard at each swing. The main-royal went aloft to the tune of “A Poor Old Man,” and the boys seem to find so much pleasure in their chanties and their faces so shine with merriment that even the sight of them is enough to put a man in a good humor.

Over against this pleasant diversion looms up gloomily to-day’s evening repast. The captain had again imbibed enough to make him quarrelsome, and during the half-hour that we were at table the mate was so jerked about at the end of the skipper’s tongue that, objectionable as he is, we could but pity him, for in five minutes he was in a running perspiration. The only one who enjoyed the situation was the little Malay steward, whose face shone with delight as he moved noiselessly about the table with his gentle “scuse” (excuse), which he utters whenever he places a plate before us. It might be stated that the mate and the steward of a ship are at perpetual war; for the former always has charge of the beef, pork, and flour, which he invariably grudges to the steward.

The skipper has surprised us by handing me his sextant now and then, at about a quarter to noon, with the injunction, “Just look out for her to-day,” and has then disappeared below, to lie concealed often for several hours. We made the discovery to-day that he does this to avoid making himself ridiculous when taking the sun; for naturally a man requires all his faculties to know exactly when the sun is at meridian. Latitude, 14° 34′ north; longitude, 35° 12′ west.

+May 27+

Our good luck still follows us, for the Trades are stronger than ever. We made two hundred and twenty-two miles in the twenty-four hours, and for the last ten days our average daily run has been one hundred and ninety miles. Not very many vessels can show such a record in the northeast Trades at the end of May, and while two hundred and twenty-two miles would be merely a fair run with a free wind, it is extremely good work close-hauled with the leeches of the sky-sails lifting. It is true that we are still four degrees too far west for this latitude, but I expect that we’ll fetch by San Roque all right anyhow. “Where will we lose the Trades?” is in every one’s mouth; forty eight hours will, no doubt, see the end of them, and then for the Doldrums and rain. It is very hot now, but the atmosphere is quite dry.

The captain hasn’t boozed any all day, and at dinner he was in normal condition, and we had a long talk about the Scotch clippers of forty and fifty years ago. I asked him which he thought was the fastest sailing ship ever launched; he was in a good humor and answered pleasantly, “Well, that’s a big question. Some will tell you that the ‘Sovereign of the Seas’ was the smartest; others, the ‘Andrew Jackson’; some, the ‘Flying Cloud,’ which went out to San Francisco in eighty-five days, twenty-one hours, in 1857. These were all American ships, as I suppose you know; but the fastest ship, I think, that ever left the ways was the ‘Lothair,’ of Aberdeen, and I believe she was faster than that other Scotchman, the ‘Thermopylæ,’ with her sixty days from London to Melbourne. I’ll tell you what happened to me once: I was second mate of a Newburyport ship, and we were running our easting down bound out to Canton, and were somewhere near Tristan d’Acunha, when we sighted a vessel astern. It was blowing hard from the nor’west, and the next time I looked, a couple of hours later, there was the ship close on our quarter, and we doing twelve knots. ‘Holy jiggers,’ says I to the mate, ‘there’s the “Flyin’ Dutchman.”’ ‘Naw,’ says he, ‘its the “Thermopylæ.”’ But when she was abeam a little later, she hoisted her name, the ‘Lothair,’ and its been my opinion ever since that she was making mighty close to seventeen knots.” Then I asked him what he thought of the runs of some of our old tea-clippers of from four hundred to four hundred and forty miles. “Don’t believe it,” was all he said. It is very possible that the “Lothair” was doing better than sixteen knots at that time, and one of the most prominent young naval architects in New York told me once that if he got the order, he could design a sailing vessel which, under favorable conditions, would log eighteen knots.

The best authentic day’s run which I know of was made by the ship in which we sailed from New York to Calcutta three years ago, on her next eastern voyage to Anjer. She was running her easting down in ballast not far from Amsterdam Island, and from noon to noon on one occasion she sailed three hundred and fifty-one miles, an average of fifteen miles an hour; I mean knots, of course. Captain Kingdon wrote to me of this performance from Passaroean, and asserted positively that it was done by some of the best observations which he ever got in the Southern Ocean, and that dead reckoning had nothing to do with it. Indeed, that whole passage was a very quick one, as he went out to Java in eighty-three days from New York, and broke the record, as far as he knew, from the longitude of Cape Agulhas to Anjer, having covered that immense distance in twenty-one days. I told Captain Scruggs about this, and he doubted it, until he learned the vessel’s name. “Oh,” said he, “the ‘Mandalore’; well, maybe she did. I saw her in the dry-dock once, and there never was such a bottom on a merchant ship; ’twas like a yacht’s.” And, in truth, the handsomest vessel which I ever saw, taken as a whole, alow and aloft, was the “Mandalore” of London, built at Stockton-on-Tees. Seen, as we often saw her afterwards, moored in the Hooghly at Calcutta, among scores of the finest sailing ships in the world, she was the star of the fleet, the pride and very life of her captain. Poor, dear old Kingdon! The voyage on which he broke the record from Good Hope to the Straits of Sunda was the last he ever made. The “Mandalore” sailed from Banjoewangie, bound to Boston on the return passage, but called a few weeks later at Table Bay with the captain sick. He pluckily continued, though against the doctor’s orders, but was soon afterwards landed at St. Helena ill with cancer, the vessel proceeding in charge of the mate. Captain Kingdon then went by steamer to London _via_ Madeira, but was too far advanced in life for an operation, so he was ordered to Cairo, in the hope that the dry atmosphere would prolong his life. But his constitution was not able to hold out much longer, and two months after his arrival in Egypt died Ray Kingdon, true friend, master mariner, gentleman. Latitude, 11° 25′ north; longitude, 33° 14′ west.

+May 28+

The wind god is so exceedingly gracious to us at present that I cannot but think that he is saving himself to swoop down upon us in fell wrath at the Horn. Here we are bowling merrily along within five hundred miles of the equator, doing two hundred and twenty miles in the twenty-four hours, with an unlimited prospect of wind ahead; and if we could maintain this speed of nine knots, we would cross the line on Sunday, nineteen days from New York. There are sure to be several days of calms between the Trades, though, so let us call it twenty-five days.

During the whole of yesterday the captain kept as sober as a lord chancellor, until ten o’clock last night, when he took a drink, which set him off again. He was very talkative when we left the deck at 10.30, and the last thing that I remember before dropping off to sleep was, “You’ll have an easier time of it if you break a few of their ---- ---- heads.” This to the second mate after he had had two more drinks. We knew by this he was in for another round of festivities, and my wife said this morning that he was charging around the cabin all night, snoring and groaning, falling over camp-chairs and door-sills. I have known him to sink into a stupor on the cabin sofa, shoot off with a whoop in a lurch of the ship, wallow on the floor till he struck the table-legs, and then peacefully continue his slumbers in that attitude. He doesn’t like my mixing with the men so much, especially when pumping-ship; he is very suspicious, and said last evening that he shouldn’t think that I’d want to come into contact with such men, forgetting how much more interesting they are than he is.

If sailors can be induced to talk, they are the most entertaining people as a class which it is possible to find. But it is very hard for a stranger to break the ice with them; and if the stranger should be a gentleman it makes it twice as hard, for they will always be extremely reserved in his presence. The only way to do if you want them to talk freely among themselves (which is much the most amusing) is to ask them questions and try to start conversations with them at every opportunity; generally, at the end of a week, they will see that you really like to converse with them, the ice will gradually melt, and from that time forward, if you should ever feel gloomy and sulky, go down on the main-deck and stand by the galley during the second dog-watch, and listen to the witty passes at each other; in fifteen minutes you will be shaking with laughter, for theirs is real humor.

At the pumps this evening I asked the Frenchman several questions, and found him not at all averse to talking, though his English is very bad. In speaking of the Southern Ocean, he said that his preference lay in favor of the Horn voyages, saying that the Good Hope seas were too short, meaning that in the event of a very heavy sea it is best to have as long a one as possible. Probably he was thinking of the Agulhas Bank, where there is at times possibly the most dangerous sea in the world,--a Bay of Fundy sea multiplied by ten. Across this bank, in a westerly direction, flows a swift current that issues from the Mozambique Channel, called now the Agulhas Current, and this, meeting the westerly gales, produces enormous, hollow seas, from which no vessel, however buoyant, can keep free.

What a splendid fellow this Gaul is! What a back and legs! and his wrists are as large as some men’s ankles. He has a really engaging smile, too, in spite of his bulldog jaws and shaggy brows. Opposite to me to-day pumped Jimmie Rumps. Curiously enough, he is the only sailor whom I have ever heard swear in joking among themselves, however they may talk alone in the forecastle, and he does so because he thinks that it is big. “There’s a fellow I’d like to see on the pumps,” he remarked, quite an ugly look coming into his face; and, glancing astern, I saw the skipper descending the weather-poop ladder. Though many of the men were evidently of this opinion, not a word was said by any of them; for might I not repeat their sentiments aft in the cabin for aught that they knew? Therefore the observation was received with scowls and a dead silence, which continued until Rumps again broke in with, “Last voyage I was in the American ship ‘Ivanhoe,’ and I was nearly starved to death!” “Eh?” said Louis, sharply. “I said I was starved in the ‘Ivanhoe,’” repeated Jimmie. “Oh,” replied the Frenchman; “I t’ought you meant zees sheep; you’ll find no bettair food anywhere zan here.” It is not often that a sailor will acknowledge this, and it speaks very well for Louis.

“Say,” Jimmie went on, “I’ve had enough of the sea, and if I can, I’m going home to Brooklyn on eight wheels [_i.e._, railway car]; and lemme give you a tip on San Francisco; don’t you miss the baths, though it’ll cost you ten cents, and a quarter for a fresh-water swim. And, say, you go over and see Oakland; but I dunno if they’ve got the fare down to five yet.”

It is rather surprising that Captain Scruggs doesn’t take an interest in keeping track of his various voyages, plotted off on the different charts, as Captain Kingdon did. The latter used some which had sixteen voyages pricked off on them as plain as ink could make it, forming a very useful aid for future work, as he could select the average from them all, for each voyage as it progressed. Our skipper, however, takes no such pains, and so far hasn’t even looked at an ordinary chart. To-day my wife asked him to show her where we were, at noon, and he hauled out from under the sofa an old, ragged, hydrographic wind-chart, and after much stertorous breathing he managed to stab the position on the paper with the dividers, being so palsied from last night’s potations that he had to steady one hand with the other before he could hit the chart within several degrees of where we were. Latitude, 8° 24′ north; longitude, 31° 40′ west.

+May 29+

The end of the Trades is at hand. After blowing us through nearly twenty-five degrees of latitude, the wind began to let go yesterday afternoon and to simultaneously haul to the southward, while an immense pall of blue-black cloud rose slowly out of the southwest and solemnly spread itself over the clear sky, with an indication of thunder-squalls in the “white heads” which crowned its summit. Sure enough, in the middle watch there was some mild thunder and lightning, but hardly any rain. However, a drizzle started later on, and as the morning was a soft one and the atmosphere almost as heavy and hot as the steam from a kettle,--a typical tropical morning,--the men were turned to scrubbing the paint-work generally. It was a very long, tedious job, for every particle of white paint had been transformed into a dirty drab in the New York docks. I never saw such a change in a vessel as the men, starting at the taffrail, worked their way forward--poop, bulwarks, boats, skids, everything putting off the grimy look, and assuming in its stead a glossy whiteness which almost hurt the eye.

It is strange that we have no head-pump here. On the “Mandalore” there was a very powerful one, worked by four men, and a line of two-inch hose that reached to the after hatch. Our method of washing down the decks, though, is as primitive as irrigation in India, for all the water must be hoisted over the side in a canvas bucket and dumped into a cask, whence it is taken out as wanted.

Speaking of the “Mandalore” reminds me of a gruesome tale which MacFoy, the bosun, told me last evening. So broad is his brogue that it was rather hard to understand him, but I gathered the following: One day, about nine years ago, there started from Hamburg, bound to San Francisco, the big Liverpool ship “Falls of Ayr.” The weather growing very bad in the Channel, though, she up helm and ran back for the Downs, to anchor till the gale should break. Shortly before she sailed the “Mandalore” left Hull, also bound around the Horn to San Diego, on what MacFoy said was her maiden voyage. After getting well out into the Channel, though, and finding it as thick as pea-soup, she, too, ran back for the Downs, and before anybody knew what was happening, with a fearful crash she hit the “Falls of Ayr” head on, well aft on the quarter, dividing her nearly in two and smashing her boats, which she carried aft, Liverpool fashion. Very curiously, the “Ayr” had no after companion-way, entrance to the main cabin being effected solely by means of the doors on the main-deck. These, being of iron, crumpled like paper under the impact of collision, and then jammed, so that in the hurry and confusion they baffled all attempts at opening, and before anything could be done the ship foundered, carrying down with her every soul aft,--captain, two mates, steward, and cook, caught like flies in a trap. Nor was this all. Three boats had been broken into match-wood, leaving but one unharmed, in which only a handful of the men and two apprentices escaped. “And look again, sir,” continued David, “she’s the unluckiest ship that ever left a yard. Two years later she ran down a large Belfast ship off Pernambuco, one of the Star Line,--I think ’twas the ‘Star of Greece,’--though both ships finally made Buenos Ayres for repairs.”

And this was the dear old “Mandalore” which carried us so happily across thirteen thousand miles of ocean only a short time ago! We had absolutely no suspicion of those accidents before, and I asked the bosun if he couldn’t be mistaken, but he answered, “I never forget a ship, sir; this one I mean is a London ship built at Stockton nine years ago.” That settled it; but how strange that we should never have heard of either case!

There are two boxes of Sicilian oranges on board which are holding out remarkably well; for though they are getting a little dry, not one has so far spoiled. We also have good cool water to drink yet; for in spite of the great heat of the last two days, it has not penetrated the big galvanized iron tanks below. Indeed, the water is so much cooler than the air that a blur forms on the outside of a tumbler. But this will soon change, and we will have drinking-water at a temperature of ninety degrees for a fortnight. Latitude, 6° 5′ north; longitude, 30° 30′ west.

+May 30+