Part 8

This morning, while on the starboard tack, the skipper, who has now lost every vestige of the patience which he formerly exhibited, thought that at last the wind was going to shift to southeast at least, so he sung out to wear round; but when we were snugged down on the port tack, we fell off to southwest half west, exactly as before. It seemed impossible that a human being could have shown such boundless rage as the captain did then. We could hear him muttering away at the farther side of the poop, “What’s the use? No sort of use; no sort of use at all.” And then, in a frenzy of sudden wrath, he stamped lustily upon the deck and swore like the mouth of the pit, his wiry whiskers bristling as though electrified, as he fiercely wagged his head; for he wot not that we were hard by. Then his eye wandered to the main-deck, and down the weather poop-ladder he clattered, looking for trouble, for we could hear him growling and mumbling at the galley door.

In rough weather, instead of ordinary teacups we have large, flat, china utensils, which look like shaving-mugs, so that at first I seemed to miss the brush. The mate, thinking to have another go at merrie England, cried, triumphantly, “I’ll bet you had nothin’ like them on the ‘Mandalore.’” But we quite shocked him with the information that on that good ship we were furnished not only with these useful pieces of crockery, but with some which held an imperial quart, from which we drank our soup in heavy weather as from Brobdingnagian teacups. Perhaps Mr. Goggins was never so absurd as to-day after dinner, when he confidentially called to me and said, “Say, did yer hear the cap’n say ‘pressperation’ instead of ‘perspiration’ just now? There ain’t no such a word, yer know”; this with an urbanity which would have floored a Chinaman.

Mr. Rarx, too, sometimes favors us with some observations entirely _sui generis_, and particularly droll in that he has a well-inflated opinion of his own choice of English. He was telling of a painful accident which happened to him several years ago, in which his back was wrenched; “and, sir,” he concluded, “I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t stand, and I couldn’t lay, and I couldn’t set.” We wondered whether he were possessed of any sort of ornithological accomplishments.

In windy weather wearing stirs up a lively scene. This is how it is done on the “Higgins”: The skipper is pacing athwartships, undecided whether to hold on any longer or not; then suddenly he stops, walks to the break of the poop, and says quietly to the mate, “See the braces clear for running, Mr. Goggins.” In five minutes or so the mate catches the captain’s eye, and asks, “Are you ready, sir?”

“Am I ready, sir!” repeats the latter, who will have nothing suggested to him; “most certainly I am _not_ ready; don’t you see that squall to windward?”

The mate withers; and when it has passed the idea of having to break tacks again seems to have festered in the skipper’s mind, for he suddenly snaps out, “All hands wear ship,” like a bunch of fire-crackers going off. “All h-a-n-d-s wear ship” roar the mates, running forward to rouse out the men, and aft they tumble and take up their positions at the various ropes. Then the skipper begins his harangue with voice of thunder and wind-mill arms: “Haul away on your main and crojjick buntlines and clew-garnets; square the crojjick-yard; you at the wheel, hard up yer hellum. Weather main-braces now; haul away, you blasted old women; come in on those tops’l-braces. Head-yards now; let go the foretack; foresheet now, all hands; forebraces; steady your wheel.” The ship by this time has fallen off dead before the wind, and the old man is in the zenith of his passion, whirling back and forth across the poop, belching perfect volcanoes of profanity.

“Main-braces again now; overhaul those spilling-lines and that main lee inner buntline; again your main-braces; crojjick-tack, ---- ---- it; look alive there and get that main-sheet aft; lead it to the capstan; heave; in she comes, that’s well. Main and crojjick bowlines now; that’s the style. Haul taut the weather-braces fore and aft, and clear up the decks.”

This oration is delivered in a hurricane voice to an accompaniment of roaring wind and flying spray, which sometimes enshrouds the whole forecastle like a snow-squall; and the mates whiz about, driving the men before them, and they in turn rend the air with their cries as they come in on the braces. Each man seems to have an individual ejaculation when hauling away, only one man, of course, singing out at each rope; but as there are often half a dozen knots of men at work, there are as many strange yells. Louis, the Frenchman, says, “Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho,” beginning very deep and ending in a falsetto; Broadhead, one of the youngest and smartest seamen in the ship, eases his mind with “Hoo-oop, come in with her; oh, fiddle-strings; oh, split the wind”; Olafsen cries, “Ha-joop, ha-joop”; while Timothy Powers, the wild, carrot-topped Irishman, screams, “Yah ha-a-a-a, yah ha-a-a-a,” like a freight train with the brakes on.

Best of all, though, are the chanties; and as the men know each other well by this time, there are plenty of them; and good old songs they are, songs of the days of ’49, into which the men throw heart and soul. Some of the best ones for hauling are, “Blow, my Bully Boys, Blow,” “A Long Time Ago,” and “A Poor Old Man,” which latter two I believe that I mentioned before; while some of the melodies sung to pumping ship are even better. One is “The Plains of Mexico,” entirely in the minor, with a weird effect; another, “The Banks of the Sacramento,” each verse of which ends,--

“For there’s plenty of gold, So I am told, On the banks of the Sacramento.”

Still another, “The Girls of Dublin Town,” is sung to the Southern tune of the “Bonnie Blue Flag,” the final words of each stanza being,--

“Then it’s hurrah, hurrah, For the girls of Dubberlin town; Hurrah for the bonnie green flag, And the harp without a crown.”

“John Brown’s Whiskey-Bottle’s Empty on the Shelf” and “Give a Man Time to Roll a Man Down” are too well known to need comment. It is a fine sight to see eight muscular fellows at the pump-handles in the dusk of the evening, their broad backs standing forth against the dark recesses, rising and falling as they sing their favorite choruses, MacFoy of the port watch and Murphy of the starboard always supplying the solo parts. Latitude, 7° 56′ south; longitude, 30° 4′ west.

+June 13+

Worse and worse! The wind is more ahead than ever, and in the last twenty-four hours we made six thousand and eighty feet of southing, or precisely one sea-mile. Between yesterday noon and six in the evening we did make a few miles of latitude, for we tacked ship at the latter hour close to Cape St. Agostinho in 8° 40′ south; but after standing over on the starboard tack till one o’clock to-day, we went back again to the northward, and at mid-day the sun told us that we had made only one mile of latitude to the good. I thought that the captain intended to stand off shore this time for at least two hundred and fifty miles; but when both watches had dined at one o’clock, we wore round again and once more stood in for the beach. What a pity it is that we can’t make better use of this magnificent breeze, which is too strong for even a main-royal! Free, eleven knots would be our speed now, instead of which we go diving hard into it jammed on the wind, pegging along at never more than six knots, four points off our course on the most favorable tack.

Last evening we were presented with a most exquisite panorama of the Brazilian coast. At noon we were immediately east of Pernambuco, about thirty-five miles off shore; and, continuing on our southwesterly course, we brought the land aboard twenty-five miles south of that city at five o’clock. All that we could make out of the shore at that time was that it consisted of a succession of lofty hills; and it was not until we came up from supper at six o’clock that we saw the land distinctly enough to appreciate aught of its beauty, lying as it did at that hour broad on the starboard beam and ahead. On the quarter appeared dimly the snow-white angular walls of a little town lying snugly on an arm of the sea, glowing warm and mellow in the rich light; while by the aid of glasses we perceived, shrouded in the mists of a thundering surf, broad stretches of coral sand fringed at high-water mark with clusters of palmettos and cabbage-palms; back of these, dancing and shimmering in heat-waves, rolled the sand-dunes; and then came the series of lovely hills rising tier on tier into the interior, rich in that wonderfully luxuriant vegetation that clothes the surface of equatorial Brazil, with the veils of night mist just beginning to form in the valleys and deep ravines. The whole of this fascinating scene lay steeped in the after-glow of a superb sunset, which touched everything with a reddish-golden tinge to be observed only in the tropics.

Lying almost entirely within the torrid zone, the climate of Brazil is naturally a very hot one, and is also extremely humid, the rainfall for the year at Maranhão amounting to the enormous total of two hundred and eighty inches, or seven times greater than that of New York. Such an excess of moisture has a corresponding effect upon its plant life, and has given Brazil a wealth of vegetation not excelled by any country of the world. Travellers assert that it is utterly beyond description, and that in the ravines and passes near the coast, where the humidity is intense, it defies man’s utmost efforts at restraint. Even as far south as Rio, trees split for palings send forth shoots and branches immediately; and on the banks of the Amazon, the level of which mighty stream is yearly raised forty feet by the immense rainfall, the loftiest trees destroy each other by their proximity, and are literally bound together by rich vines and lianes. In the province of Maranhão, the grasses, roots, and other plants extending from the brinks of pools in time weave themselves into vegetable bridges, along which the traveller wends his way, unaware that he has left terra firma until he perceives the scaly jaws of an alligator protruding through the herbage before him. On all sides the vegetation is bewildering, and every representative of plant life is of a gigantic size.

But to return to ourselves. Happening to glance ahead a little later we caught a glimpse of the great light-house on the extremity of Cape St. Agostinho just as its beacon flashed over the sea, sending its brilliant needles of light far out over the moon-lit ocean. Just at dusk a large coasting steamer came unexpectedly out from under the hills, in whose stern waved the green-and-gold flag of Brazil; and, heading south across the wide wake of the moon, suddenly vanished in the gloom beyond the sombre headland. The light on Cape St. Agostinho, by the way, can compare favorably with our most powerful ones, for its rays are visible twenty-five miles at sea; the tower being in the form of a white iron tripod one hundred and sixty feet high, whose apex is three hundred and sixty feet above the ocean. Indeed, on the whole of the South American seaboard, from the Guianas to Cape Horn, there is only one other light which equals it, and that is on Cape Frio, just to the eastward of Rio Janeiro.

Speaking of Cape Horn, I wonder when we’re going to see that famous rock? At this present rate we would be several months in beating down the coast; if we were only as far south now as the Abrolhos Islands, we could begin to keep off a little, that being about the first point at which ships bound to the westward begin to think of bearing away. The old mate told us the other day that coming to the eastward towards New York this last time, they unbent the foresail and made some repairs to it on the main-deck with Cape Horn in sight! This means that there was not enough sea there at the time to wet the decks, for a sail is never stretched there if there is any probability of water coming aboard.

The sea has now returned to its usual Prussian blue, for, being on soundings yesterday afternoon, it changed to a most beautiful, pale, transparent green, owing to the white, sandy bottom over which we sailed, only twenty fathoms away; our least distance from the land having been about eight miles. Latitude, 7° 57′ south; longitude, 32° 47′ west.

+June 14+

Though the Trades are still from the south-southeast, we have done very well, as an offing of one hundred and thirty miles has enabled us to hold on to the port tack all day; and as the coast-line south of Maceió trends slightly to the westward, we may be able to go free of the land until we reach the Abrolhoses, for which it will no doubt be necessary for us to make a slight hitch. We were more than seven days in making nine degrees of latitude; for, a week ago last night, we passed the St. Paul’s Rocks fifty-five miles north of the line, and yesterday we had not quite reached the eighth parallel. Can the reader duplicate this tortoise-like progression in the southeast trade-wind? It is more like the Doldrums in spite of a spanking breeze. Sometimes when there is a lull in the wind the deep voice of Captain Scruggs will be heard, “Loose the main-royal”; but five minutes later will come the order, “Let go the main-royal-halliards; and you can put the gaskets on, Mr. Rarx, we won’t want it any more.” This word “loose” is almost invariably used at sea, and you never hear “Set the mizzen-t’-gallant-s’l” or “Hoist the fore-sky-s’l”; they are always “loosed.”

At dinner to-day the skipper said, “I’ll bet they’ve been having trouble off the river Plate lately.” “Why?” said I. “Don’t you see this swell a-heavin’ up?” he replied; “they’ve been having a southerly buster down there.” Now, that portion of the South Atlantic in the vicinity of that vast estuary, the Rio de la Plata, is subject to terrific gales of wind known as pamperos, because they blow off the pampas or plains of the Argentine; but the skipper, having lived long on the coast of Australia, where the hardest gales are called southerly busters, usually gives that name to the pampero.

The Rio de la Plata should never be called the Plat River, pronouncing it as we do the Platte River in Nebraska; if the English form is used at all, it should be called Plate, which is so universal that one of the largest, if not the largest, shipping-houses doing business in South America is known as the Brazil and River Plate Steamship Company.

A rather singular fact in connection with the skipper is that he has never been to any one of the three largest and most important ports between Cancer and Capricorn,--Calcutta, Bombay, or Rio Janeiro. This is really astonishing, as it would be hard indeed to find another American sailor brought up in the last generation who had never been to either Calcutta or Rio; Bombay is more modern. Captain Scruggs is quite interested in the Nicaraguan Canal project, and he insists that with its completion will pass away the sailing ship from the face of the waters, though I do not entirely agree in this theory. People also thought that when the Suez Canal was cut through it would kill the long-voyage trade to the East; yet what are the facts? It is probable that nearly double the number of sailing vessels pass Agulhas per year as pass Cape Horn, fully eight hundred rounding Africa in both directions in a twelvemonth. The amount of case oil alone from New York and Philadelphia which goes East in sail bottoms is enormous. Few people, though, realize how much cheaper it is to ship goods from New York to either San Francisco or China in sailing vessels than by rail or steamer. For instance, the railway freights from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans averages about fifteen dollars per ton; sailing ship rates, from seven to eight dollars per ton, and often less. Eighty thousand cases of oil, which would be the cargo of a modern two-thousand net ton iron sailing vessel, are transported to Shanghai around Good Hope for seventeen thousand dollars; but if they were sent overland to San Francisco from New York, and then by steamer to destination, the freight charges would be trebled, for they would amount to fifty thousand dollars.

We have just finished reading aloud the book which contains perhaps the finest descriptions of tropical scenery in English,--Kingsley’s “Westward Ho.” Nothing could be more charming than the picture of the delight of the scurvy-ridden fellow-voyagers of Amyas Leigh upon first landing in the West Indies; while the description of a Barbadian sunrise is positively entrancing. Latitude, 10° 15′ south; longitude, 34° 35′ west.

+June 15+

Another very excellent run was the result of yesterday’s work, even though we could not steer a better course than southwest, for we made not far from three degrees of latitude, finding at noon that Bahia bore west, distant one hundred and twenty miles, so that we are at the moment some distance off the land. Last night was one of the grandest that we ever remember at sea. A strong breeze whistled from the southeast at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the long southerly swell, making a rather confused sea in which we sheared about considerably, our high, powerful bows crushing the steep head seas which came rushing ceaselessly at us, piling up on either hand a hissing wall of foam and then flinging it far away on both bows, which, meeting the next on-rushing wave, and impinging one against the other, would shoot up to an astonishing height, to be driven back again in a perfect hurricane of spray, which drenched the forecastle-head, completely obliterating for the moment the lookout, who emerged from these showers like the shade of Neptune, with the water dripping from his oil-skins in the moonlight in glistening rivulets. The moon herself was full almost at the moment of rising, shining with so great an effulgence as to necessitate the partial closing of the eyelids if one looked at the disk, and casting a weird light upon the abysses of a heavy rain-squall crossing our stern. I don’t know when we have enjoyed an evening as much as this one, lying at full length in deck-chairs, watching the mizzen-truck roll through the stars in tremendous arcs, and listening to the bursting of the seas against the bows and the hissing of the water as it rushed under the counter. There is but one word which describes it,--ideal.

Has any one ever seen a keg of root-beer tapped in hot weather after it has been well shaken up? Or has any one ever heard of a keg of root-beer at all. I have always thought of it in bottles. However, we have one on board, and if the expansive force of a superheated, well-agitated barrel of root-beer can be appreciated, it will be understood that we had a very animated and sprightly thirty minutes this forenoon. Ever since the commencement of the voyage a beer-keg of this fluid has been churning and rattling away under one of the alley-ways which extend aft on either side of the cabin-house. For some time past the skipper has been cautioning us to save all the Apollinaris bottles, as he wanted to fill them, in cool weather, with the root-beer. But he grew impatient, and concluded to broach the keg this morning, after the contents had been well shaken up for a week in equatorial heat. Therefore he gathered round about him a phalanx of empty bottles, and, assisted by the second mate and the boy Sammie, advanced hardily against the passive “kag.” After much ado, and the use of sundry expletives and the dripping of perspiration, they got it mounted on its side upon a low wooden box, wedged it, held a bottle under the spigot, turned the faucet, and stood by. But something was wrong; no liquor flowed, so that the spigot must have been plugged with something. “Mr. Rarx,” said the skipper, “go and get a bit of stiff wire.” Back came the second mate at the end of a minute, during which Captain Scruggs was engaged in impotently kicking and pounding the keg; and when Mr. Rarx had brought the wire, he spent ten minutes jabbing away with it, eliciting with great force now and then a little jet of brown foam, which generally hit him somewhere in the face, which he persisted in holding in front of the spigot. Tiring of this, which gave promise of lasting all day without bearing fruit, he despatched the carpenter for an auger, having finally reached the conclusion that it was for lack of a vent that nothing would flow. The second mate was intrusted with its manipulation, and very confidently proceeded to bore a hole in the bung in the upper side. The wildest dream could not have pictured huger success. No sooner had the instrument pierced the wood than, with a hissing shriek, a column of dark liquid as big as a pencil shot high into the air like the spouting of a whale, breaking full against Mr. Rarx’s head, after blowing the auger out of the hole. Then there were frantic shoutings for a plug, while the little cascade played merrily away, falling in a gentle shower of amber froth upon those who tried in vain to stay its impetuous flow. Finally it was plugged, and the skipper called for a tumbler, that he might draw a glassful of the godly nectar, and, sipping it, gain courage for the bottling operation. But, oh, misery! No sooner was the faucet turned than out shot a horizontal stream of root-beer as large as a garden-hose, and with such incredible force that the liquid was blown into a sticky foam a few inches from the spigot. Then there was a rush for utensils on every one’s part but the skipper’s, who stuck fearlessly to his post in spite of the thick jet of mucilaginous steam, trying to turn the faucet with a monkey-wrench. During this exhibition my wife and I stood at the break of the poop, looking down upon the actors, and simply howling at the old man, who, crouched low upon the deck, wrestled like a gladiator with the unruly “kag”; and when he finally emerged from his vapor-bath, with dripping beard and garments soaked to the skin, I feared that the second mate would die of apoplexy. However, most of the beer was saved, and we filled and corked away fully seventy-five bottles of the bubbling mixture. Latitude, 12° 51′ south; longitude, 36° 2′ west.

+June 16+

Most doleful to disclose, the Trades began to let go this morning, and at ten o’clock the sky-sails were set for the first time in several days, while at the present moment, the middle of the afternoon, we are doing wretchedly, even though we have come up to south-southwest. As for the day, it was really magnificent; temperature of the air, 80°; of the sea, 78°, while the breeze was of that singular mixture of vigor and balm so often observed in the southeast trade-wind. Not a cloud specked the deep cobalt of the heavens all day save some feathery mare’s-tails near the zenith and a few clusters of pearly clouds on the southeastern horizon.

As usual, though, there was something to mar the serenity of the day; how many days are there without some untoward incident to cast its fell shadow? In this case it was the temper of Captain Scruggs, who no sooner did he perceive that the wind was letting go than he at once began to blackguard the men and the weather in wild, lurid language. Perhaps he wanted to catch up with himself, for it must be chronicled that three days, actually three long days, seventy-two hours, have passed without his having consigned any one’s immortal parts to the fathomless pit! Last evening my wife asked him if about 20° south wasn’t the average spot to lose the Trades; this, in truth, is about the usual place at which the southeast winds vanish, but the disagreeable man glared at us for a few seconds and then snapped, “How do I know? You’re liable to lose ’m anywhere,” with an explosion on the final word.