Part 12

I can almost hear the noble army of schooner-, ketch-, and yawl-owners howling their execration at these remarks, but I cannot help it. I have tried most rigs, and come back to the cutter. The howlers will at least admit that she sails as close to the wind as any, and closer than most; and as for facility in handling by the smallest possible crew, we of the dream ship had no trouble on this score, for she would heave-to in a gale under single reef like a duck, and with the wind abeam would go for hours on end with the tiller pegged.

Our main difficulty was that the dream ship was too heavily sparred. The boom was the size of an average mast for a vessel of her tonnage, and the gaff little smaller in proportion.

Next time, we shall have smaller spars, and a top-mast instead of a pole mast. Aboard the dream ship our topsail yard was twenty-three feet long, and many were the anxious moments in lowering it when taking in the topsail during a squall. The topmast does away with any necessity for a yard, and can be lowered to the deck in foul weather, thus also eliminating considerable top-hamper.

A hollow topmast and a hollow squaresail yard sound alluring, and have proved themselves efficient in temperate climes, but would they stand the intense heat of, say, the Paumotus? I know they are put to a boiling test for several hours, but what about months? It would be a disconcerting episode, to say the least, if one's spars commenced to open out like a flower in mid-ocean. I am sufficiently generous to allow someone else to make the experiment.

_Gear_.--The importance of good ground tackle cannot be over-emphasized. Never carry less than one hundred fathoms of sound, galvanized-iron cable, preferably amidships, and see that the anchors have long shanks. We carried three: a skeleton, for dropping for short periods; a medium, for ordinary use; and a large, for holding her in an emergency. We never used any but the medium, and we never dragged anchor, mainly on account of the length of shank.

A winch is better than a capstan for heaving anchor, and if placed abaft the mast, serves also for "swigging" on halyards, or hoisting sail.

As for sails, the dream ship's were all "barked" or tanned after the fisherman style, and there is no doubt that this process prevents rot, especially in the humid tropics. We carried one medium-weight mainsail, a working and a balloon foresail, storm and balloon jibs, and a squaresail, and of these the last was the most generally useful. Again I hear the howlers howling: "Why not a spinnaker?" and my reply is that a squaresail can be used whenever a spinnaker can be used; it is a larger sail, yet infinitely easier to handle.

Our main halyards were of "combination" rope, that is, hemp to all outward appearances, but internally carrying several strands of flexible steel wire. There is nothing stronger, and nothing that will stand the perpetual chafe of a long passage better. Its slight awkwardness in handling compared with ordinary manila is amply atoned for by its durability. I was afraid to use it for peak halyards on account of its inelasticity, but next time it shall be rove throughout, with the exception of the main sheet, which must perforce be of manila.

Wheel- or tiller-steering gear is a matter of taste. Personally, I like to feel the "life" of a ship, and this is better accomplished with a tiller.

_Fittings_.--A deep-sea cruiser should always be flush-decked, and have an entirely detached, self-emptying cockpit. Coach roofs and immense skylights make for additional headroom below, but during bad weather are an abomination.

We did not carry davits. They look "yachty," but we were not anxious to look that way, and found it far less trouble to haul the thirteen-foot dinghy over the bulwarks with the fore halyards. If one went in for every "fitting" advertised in a yachting catalogue, the deck--which must be kept as clear as possible--would be a scrap-heap of "gadgets."

Brass, too, is a good thing to do without. Again, it looks well, but think of the work it entails, and have painted galvanized-iron instead. There is no reason why a vessel should not look as "ship-shape" with these latter fittings as with all the glinting--and dulling--brasswork in the world.

Good paint is the best wood-preserver there is; for that reason, and several others not unconnected with labour, the dream ship was painted throughout instead of varnished. The decks were painted (pinewood colour), and remained as sound and unscathed at the end of the voyage as they had been at the beginning. Boom and gaff were painted the same colour, hatches and skylights were white, as also were her top sides.

And that is another thing: never have black paint if going to the tropics. The dream ship's cockpit was black, and the helmsman could scarcely bear to touch any part of it with his naked hand, though the white ship's rail was comparatively cool. The mere thought of black top sides in the neighbourhood of the Paumotus causes me to break into a profuse perspiration to this day.

Down below, the two prime factors are ventilation and light. In order to secure the first of these, the dream ship's internal arrangements were of the simplest. There were no separate staterooms, which confine space and are difficult to air. She was open from end to end, save for the bulkheads, each containing a comprehensive doorway, so that the for'ard hatch could be opened and a current of air pass clean through the ship.

As for light, the interior decoration was white enamel, which reflects every gleam from the skylights.

The engine-room was a problem, until we decided--very rightly, as we discovered later--to sacrifice some living space in order to have a roomy "chamber of horrors." It is far more satisfactory to be tortured in a palace than in a pill-box. It leaves adequate space for the expression of feeling.

Because his ship is essentially a sailing vessel, the present-day owner too often tucks his engine away anywhere. It does not do. Some time or other, when the necessary atrocity is engaged in saving life, as ours did on more than one occasion, a vital part of the machinery is found to be out of reach, or so difficult to get at that invaluable time is lost.

As regards cooking and artificial lighting, we had three Primus stoves and an oven on gimbals, over which we contrived to render food eatable, and ordinary swinging lamps. There are those, I know, who prefer electric light on account of its comparative coolness, and to such I would say: "Enterprising fellow! You like dynamos and fiddling with 'gadgets' generally. Very well." Personally, I am a coward in this department.

_Ballast_.--There is something peculiarly unattractive about ballast. One sees nothing for many laborious hours spent upon it, and it takes up valuable space. But it must not be forgotten that on its correct distribution the whole stability of a vessel depends. Whether lead, pig-iron, or stone, according to purse, for a cruise anywhere in the neighbourhood of coral, it must be _inside_, and immovable. The reasons for these stipulations are obvious, but too often cruising yachts do not return, and it is not always a matter of a lee shore, broaching to, or being pooped; but ballast.

An excellent plan is to have it cemented in, for this also ensures a clean bilge, but if this is done, the owner would be well advised to have the vessel's timbers surveyed first and a certificate of soundness given, because before now cement has been used for nothing less than hiding rotten timbers.

_Auxiliary Engines_.--There is no doubt that an auxiliary engine for a deep-sea cruiser is well-nigh indispensable. It may be used but twice in a passage of four thousand miles, as ours was--once for getting out of harbour and once for getting in. But what of the countless contingencies that may arise, such as lee shores, narrow waters, contrary currents and calms, when without power a vessel is helpless?

The heavy-duty, comparatively slow-revolutioned, kerosene-burning type is the best. It may be more cumbersome, and make more noise than the natty little launch engine, but it is infinitely more reliable. A thirteen-horsepower drove the dream ship at four knots through calm water, so one's own particular fancy may be selected on that basis. Each has his own idea as to motor marine engines, and all I can do here is to extend to the engineer my good wishes--and sincerest sympathies.

_Deep-Sea Cruising_.--The inevitable remark that greets the deep-sea cruiser in small craft on completing a passage is: "Fancy coming all this way in that little thing!" And if the speaker only knew it, his remark is an insult to the owner. There is no reason in the world why a staunch, seaworthy craft of not less than forty-one feet on the waterline should not continue to circumnavigate the globe indefinitely, and with every whit as much safety as a ten-thousand-ton liner. The forty-one-footer goes to the top of every wave; the ten-thousand-tonner rests upon two or more; that is the sole difference.

Before leaving England, "know-alls" were good enough to point out to me that it was a silly game at best; that I was risking my precious life for no particular purpose, and that I should never get where I wanted to, anyway. As for taking one's sister, it was nothing short of murder.

When I returned, the self-same people, chatting over a club "port" between races, agreed that there was, after all, nothing in it. Was not deep-sea cruising in fair-weather latitudes safer than coastal navigation in our pestiferous home waters?

With this latter argument I entirely agree, and would point out that I never held any other view. Moreover, we made the cruise because we wanted to, and not because it was a safe or daring thing to do.

_Where to find a Dream Ship_.--This, as I think has been sufficiently demonstrated in the foregoing pages, is the most difficult question of all to answer at the present time.

I have given here the design and sail plan of my dream ship, and if it meets with your approval sufficiently to impel you to have a replica, and if you are willing and able to spend in the neighbourhood of L2,500 or about $12,500, I can only suggest going to Porsgrund, Norway, or better still Randers, Denmark (where her timbers could be of Danish oak), and have her built. For this particular type of boat, Scandinavia cannot be equalled, let alone beaten. But in these days, building boats is a pastime for millionaires only.

From this giddy pinnacle of affluence we fall to the next best thing, which is a second-hand boat as like the dream ship in seaworthiness and handiness as it is possible to procure, and that is what I have been searching for ever since the dream cruise ended. There are no more pilot boats of the dream-ship type being built in Norway. Steam has dethroned them, and those still in use are either too old to buy or too invaluable to sell. So, we are reduced to the inevitable compromise, and personally, I think I have found it in an English, Bristol Channel Pilot cutter, for which I paid L450 or, at par, about $2,250.

Yes, I have another dream ship. I have notified Peter. I have cabled to Samoa. Next time....

But that is another dream.

THE END

*APPENDIX**

State of Affairs Aboard the Ship--Contents of her Larder--Length of South Seamen's Voyages--Account of a Flying Whale-man--Determination to Leave the Vessel--The Bay of Nukuheva--The Typees--Invasion of their Valley by Porter--Reflections--Glen of Tior--Interview Between the Old King and the French Admiral.

*From "Typee" by Herman Melville, copyright 1892 by Elizabeth S. Melville. Reprinted by permission of The Page Company, publishers of the works of Herman Melville, as follows: Typee, Omoo, Moby Dick, White Jacket

Our ship had not been many days in the harbour of Nukuheva before I came to the determination of leaving her. That my reasons for resolving to take this step were numerous and weighty, may be inferred from the fact that I chose rather to risk my fortunes among the savages of the island, than to endure another voyage on board the _Dolly_. To use the concise, point-blank phrase of the sailors, I had made up my mind to "run away." Now, as a meaning is generally attached to these two words no way flattering to the individual to whom they are applied, it behooves me, for the sake of my own character, to offer some explanation of my conduct.

When I entered on board the _Dolly_, I signed, as a matter of course, the ship's articles, thereby voluntarily engaging, and legally binding myself to serve in a certain capacity for the period of the voyage; and, special considerations apart, I was of course bound to fulfil the agreement. But in all contracts, if one party fail to perform his share of the compact, is not the other virtually absolved from his liability? Who is there who will not answer in the affirmative?

Having settled the principle, then, let me apply it to the particular case in question. In numberless instances had not only, the implied but the specified conditions of the articles been violated on the part of the ship in which I served. The usage on board of her was tyrannical; the sick had been inhumanly neglected; the provisions had been doled out in scanty allowance; and her cruises were unreasonably protracted. The captain was the author of these abuses; it was in vain to think that he would either remedy them, or alter his conduct, which was arbitrary and violent in the extreme. His prompt reply to all complaints and remonstrances was--the butt-end of a hand-spike, so convincingly administered as effectually to silence the aggrieved party.

To whom could we apply for redress? We had left both law and equity on the other side of the Cape; and unfortunately, with a very few exceptions, our crew was composed of a parcel of dastardly and mean-spirited wretches, divided among themselves, and only united in enduring without resistance the unmitigated tyranny of the captain. It would have been mere madness for any two or three of the number, unassisted by the rest, to attempt making a stand against his ill-usage. They would only have called down upon themselves the particular vengeance of this "Lord of the Plank," and subjected their shipmates to additional hardships.

But, after all, these things could have been endured awhile, had we entertained the hope of being speedily delivered from them by the due completion of the term of our servitude. But what a dismal prospect awaited us in this quarter! The longevity of Cape Horn whaling voyages is proverbial, frequently extending over a period of four or five years.

Some long-haired, bare-necked youths, who, forced by the united influences of Captain Marryat and hard times, embark at Nantucket for a pleasure excursion to the Pacific, and whose anxious mothers provide them with bottled milk for the occasion, oftentimes return very respectable middle-aged gentlemen.

The very preparations made for one of these expeditions are enough to frighten one. As the vessel carries out no cargo, her hold is filled with provisions for her own consumption. The owners, who officiate as caterers for the voyage, supply the larder with an abundance of dainties. Delicate morsels of beef and pork, cut on scientific principles from every part of the animal, and of all conceivable shapes and sizes, are carefully packed in salt, and stored away in barrels; affording a never-ending variety in their different degrees of toughness, and in the peculiarities of their saline properties. Choice old water, too, decanted into stout six-barrel casks, and two pints of which are allowed every day to each soul on board; together with ample store of sea-bread, previously reduced to a state of petrifaction, with a view to preserve it either from decay or consumption in the ordinary mode, are likewise provided for the nourishment and gastronomic enjoyment of the crew.

But not to speak of the quality of these articles of sailors' fare, the abundance in which they are put on board a whaling vessel is almost incredible. Oftentimes, when we had occasion to break out in the hold, and I beheld the successive tiers of casks and barrels, whose contents were all destined to be consumed in due course by the ship's company, my heart sank within me.

Although, as a general case, a ship unlucky in falling in with whales continues to cruise after them until she has barely sufficient provisions remaining to take her home, turning round then quietly and making the best of her way to her friends, yet there are instances when even this natural obstacle to the further prosecution of the voyage is overcome by headstrong captains, who, bartering the fruits of their hard-earned toils for a new supply of provisions in some of the ports of Chili or Peru, begin the voyage afresh, with unabated zeal and perseverance. It is in vain that the owners write urgent letters to him to sail for home, and for their sake to bring back the ship, since it appears he can put nothing in her. Not he. He has registered a vow; he will fill his vessel with good sperm oil, or failing to do so, never again strike Yankee soundings.

I heard of one whaler, which after many years' absence was given up for lost. The last that had been heard of her was a shadowy report of her having touched at some of those unstable islands in the far Pacific, whose eccentric wanderings are carefully noted in each new edition of the South Sea charts. After a long interval, however, the _Perseverance_--for that was her name--was spoken somewhere in the vicinity of the ends of the earth, cruising along as leisurely as ever, her sails all bepatched and bequilted with rope-yarns, her spars fished with old pipe stores, and her rigging knotted and spliced in every possible direction. Her crew was composed of some twenty venerable Greenwich-pensioner-looking old salts, who just managed to hobble about deck. The ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the signal halyards and poop-down-haul, were rove through snatch-blocks, and led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sail set without the assistance of machinery.

Her hull was incrusted with barnacles, which completely encased her. Three pet sharks followed in her wake, and every day came alongside to regale themselves from the contents of the cook's bucket, which were pitched over to them. A vast shoal of bonetas and albicores always kept her company.

Such was the account I heard of this vessel, and the remembrance of it always haunted me; what eventually became of her I never learned; at any rate, she never reached home, and I suppose she is still regularly tacking twice in the twenty-four hours somewhere off Desolate Island, or the Devil's-Tail Peak.

Having said thus much touching the usual length of these voyages, when I inform the reader that ours had as it were just commenced, we being only fifteen months out, and even at that time hailed as a late arrival and boarded for news, he will readily perceive that there was little to encourage one in looking forward to the future, especially as I had always had a presentiment that we should make an unfortunate voyage, and our experience so far had justified the expectation.

I may here state, and on my faith as an honest man, that though more than three years have elapsed since I left this same identical vessel, she still continues in the Pacific; and but a few days since I saw her reported in the papers as having touched at the Sandwich Islands, previous to going on the coast of Japan.

But to return to my narrative. Placed in these circumstances then, with no prospect of matters mending if I remained aboard the _Dolly_, I at once made up my mind to leave her: to be sure it was rather an inglorious thing to steal away privily from those at whose hands I had received wrongs and outrages that I could not resent; but how was such a course to be avoided when it was the only alternative left me? Having made up my mind, I proceeded to acquire all the information I could obtain relating to the island and its inhabitants, with a view of shaping my plans of escape accordingly. The result of these inquiries I will now state, in order that the ensuing narrative may be the better understood.

The bay of Nukuheva, in which we were then lying, is an expanse of water not unlike in figure the space included within the limits of a horse-shoe. It is, perhaps, nine miles in circumference. You approach it from the sea by a narrow entrance, flanked on either side by two small twin islets which soar conically to the height of some five hundred feet. From these the shore recedes on both hands, and describes a deep semicircle.

From the verge of the water the land rises uniformly on all sides, with green and sloping acclivities, until from gently rolling hillsides and moderate elevations it insensibly swells into lofty and majestic heights, whose blue outlines ranged all around, close in the view. The beautiful aspect of the shore is heightened by deep and romantic glens, which come down to it at almost equal distances, all apparently radiating from a common centre, and the upper extremities of which are lost to the eye beneath the shadow of the mountains. Down each of these little valleys flows a clear stream, here and there assuming the form of a slender cascade, then stealing invisibly along until it bursts upon the sight again in larger and more noisy waterfalls, and at last demurely wanders along to the sea.

The houses of the natives, constructed of the yellow bamboo, tastefully twisted together in a kind of wickerwork, and thatched with the long tapering leaves of the palmetto, are scattered irregularly along these valleys beneath the shady branches of the cocoanut trees.

Nothing can exceed the imposing scenery of this bay. Viewed from our ship as she lay at anchor in the middle of the harbour, it presented the appearance of a vast natural amphitheatre in decay, and overgrown with vines, the deep glens that furrowed its sides appearing like enormous fissures caused by the ravages of time. Very often when lost in admiration at its beauty I have experienced a pang of regret that a scene so enchanting should be hidden from the world in these remote seas, and seldom meet the eyes of devoted lovers of nature.

Besides this bay the shores of the island are indented by several other extensive inlets, into which descend broad and verdant valleys. These are inhabited by as many distinct tribes of savages, who, although speaking kindred dialects of a common language, and having the same religion and laws, have from time immemorial waged hereditary warfare against each other. The intervening mountains, generally two or three thousand feet above the level of the sea, geographically define the territories of each of these hostile tribes, who never cross them, save on some expedition of war or plunder. Immediately adjacent to Nukuheva, and only separated from it by the mountains seen from the harbour, lies the lovely valley of Happar, whose inmates cherish the most friendly relations with the inhabitants of Nukuheva. On the other side of Happar, and closely adjoining it, is the magnificent valley of the dreaded Typees, the unappeasable enemies of both these tribes.