Part 3
And this happy absence of self-consciousness is not confined to the children. Picture, if you can, and as we of the dream ship saw him a little later, a well-dressed Spanish gentleman standing in the middle of one of Vigo's main thoroughfares and gazing toward the housetops, apparently engaged in practising the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. No one of the stream of pedestrians passing along the sidewalks took the slightest notice of him. Neither did the wheeled traffic, except to swerve obligingly out of his path. It was _his_ affair, and a love affair at that. He was conversing with his _enamorata_ at the third-floor balcony window in the only way possible to a suitor in Spain, where parents firmly believe in "love at a distance" until the actual engagement. And it needed three vulgar sightseers such as the crew of the dream ship to find anything unusual in the proceeding. I am ashamed to say that the lady caught sight of us, and pointed in alarm, whereat the gentleman turned with an excusable frown of annoyance, and we hurried on our way.
There are only two things the Spaniard takes really seriously: his love and his bull-fights. Leave him to them, as you value a whole skin.
Our next introduction was to the local cable office. Personally, I have always regarded such places as drab receptacles for grudging messages, but with the Eastern Telegraph Company it is a different matter. Certainly this admirable concern takes your message, but then proceeds to take you to its heart, and thereafter, wherever its myriad wires extend, you may be sure of a welcome from the kindliest of hosts. It conducts you to its palatial bachelor quarters situated on the hillside behind the town, and proceeds to spoil you with every device known to a pampered age. Tennis, golf, dances, and dinners are yours to repletion, followed by moonlight car rides into the country, and feasts at distant _fondas_ under the trellised vines.
At any rate, that is what it did with us, and we tried to reciprocate. The Eastern Telegraph Company, or as much of it as could get aboard at one time, made the dream ship its headquarters during our stay; dived from her bowsprit or under her keel with equal delight, mealed off strange messes in her seething saloon, and sang songs on deck to Peter's piano accompaniment below.
With such distractions afoot, it is small wonder that nearly a week slipped by before the subject of a sailing date received the attention it deserved. The Skipper grunted his disapproval of our dilatory methods, and pointed out in a satirical fashion peculiarly his own that there were "things" to be done. Amongst them, he mentioned the necessity of making out a new deviation card by the Polar Star, whereat Steve and I collapsed. Had we not done with this pest of deviation? Had we not already discovered and tabulated, at the cost of terrific mental effort, the error of the dream ship's compass owing to local attraction?
The Skipper admitted as much with a wistful smile, but pointed out that deviation has an aggravating habit of changing with latitude. It was the first we had heard of it, and that night we sat again under our long-suffering professor, and swung the dream ship to a mocking North Star.
Then there was the matter of our broken boom. The Skipper and I towed it over, neatly scarfed (dovetailed and bound) from a neighbouring shipyard the next morning. And the instability of things below as demonstrated in the Bay of Biscay? This was remedied by having iron bands placed round everything movable, and screwed to bulkhead or floor. We were ready. The Skipper stepped ashore with his modest little suitcase, and limped away without so much as a backward glance. Why? His "missus" has told me since that he never expected to see us again.
So we three and the dream ship dropped down Vigo River bound for Las Palmas, Canary Islands, with the biggest mixed cargo of hope and ignorance that ever put to sea.
Four hours on and eight off was how we apportioned our watches and, thanks to fair winds and the easy handling of the dream ship, it was seldom necessary for more than one of us to be on deck at a time. In fact, there were hours on end when the helmsman could peg the tiller and take a constitutional.
Cooking we took week and week about, a dreaded ordeal. It is one thing to concoct food in a porcelain-fitted kitchen on _terra firma_, and quite another to do it over a primus stove in a leaping, gyrating fo'c's'le. Porridge was found adhering to the ceiling after Steve's "week," but hush! perhaps he may have something to say on the subject of Peter and myself. There is always plenty to say about the other fellow, but in nine cases out of ten it is best left unsaid. Forbearance is as much the keynote of good-fellowship on a dream ship as elsewhere--perhaps more--and we are rather proud of the fact that we have covered half the world without battle, murder, or sudden death.
With only three of a crew some of our troubles may be imagined, but undoubtedly the worst of these, after a couple of weeks at sea, was being awakened from a trance-like sleep to take a trick at the tiller. One does not feel human under such circumstances, but more in the nature of a bear disturbed during hibernation.
And the awakener's task is not much better. He is forced to peg the tiller, even with a following wind, nip below to resuscitate somehow his log-like relief, and get back before the ship jibes. If there is time he may employ the proper and humane method of applying gradually increased pressure to the sleeper's arm until he awakes. If there is not, he must resort to any merciless method that proves effective. In either case, he is as unpopular as an alarm clock, which, by the way, we tried, but discarded on account of its waking everyone aboard.
The manner of our several wakings formed an interesting, if somewhat intimate, subject of discussion at breakfast one morning. Peter's was voted uninteresting because whatever means were employed to arouse her she merely opened her eyes, and meekly murmured: "All right." Steve, upon the other hand, was uncertain. If he happened to be dreaming at the time, which was usually the case, he either hit out the instant he was touched, or muttered something unintelligible, and tenderly covered the disturbing hand with his own.
As for me, I yawned cavernously, invariably said: "How's she going?" and almost as invariably fell asleep again. Or so runs the report, and one is not permitted to argue with reports. Verily, if man would discover himself--and others--let him have recourse to a dream ship and a crew of three!
It was during the passage from Vigo to Las Palmas that we first experienced that most aggravating of winds, the light, varying, following. I have heard schooner skippers declare that they prefer the "head" variety, and I can well believe it. At night, when it is exceedingly difficult to tell where such a wind is coming from, it is no more pleasant to jibe inadvertently than to have to do so sometimes thrice within the hour to keep the ship on her course. It wears out a short-handed, light-weight crew (Peter turned the scale at ninety-eight pounds, Steve at one hundred and forty-five, and myself at one hundred and forty), and conservation of energy, which makes for good health, is of prime importance on a voyage such as ours.
Finally, we lowered the mainsail, with its jolting, crashing boom, and carried on in blessed tranquillity under a squaresail, which proved to be the most useful sail we had aboard.
At the end of seven days' routine, and fair but light winds, we experienced the acute joy of finding land precisely where our frenzied calculations had placed it. As Madeira loomed on the starboard bow, Steve was seen to pace the deck with a quiet but new-born dignity--until hailed below to help wash dishes. But even this failed to quell the navigator's exuberance, and the dish-washer exchanged views on the subject with the helmsman through the skylight. This, then, was the navigation that master mariners made such a song and dance about! Well, we must be master mariners, that was all we had to say! We had summoned Madeira, and Madeira had appeared! We were not at all sure that we had not discovered Madeira!
Peter seemed strangely unimpressed. Perhaps she sensed what is indeed a fact, that luck in navigation, as in most things, favours the beginner. For instance, a mistake somewhere in our calculations brought us as near disaster in the next twenty-four hours as one cares to be. Taking Madeira as our point of departure, we shaped a course for Las Palmas, giving the intervening Salvage Islands a berth of ten miles to the westward. We reckoned this a safe distance, considering that according to "sailing directions" there was still more to the westward a strong current inclining toward the African coast. Well, that current failed to register in the particular case of the dream ship, and on top of it the "mistake somewhere" caused a cold shiver to traverse the spine of the helmsman when, at one o'clock of a pitch-black night, while doing a comfortable seven knots, a mass of rock reared itself out of the sea seemingly not more than a few hundred yards, though probably more nearly a mile, to starboard.
It was the westernmost island of the Salvages, uninhabited, unlighted, and this same helmsman who, as it happens, was myself, would like to know what prevented the "mistake somewhere" from being just that trifle bigger necessary to land us in splinters on the rocks, the fate of more than one good ship provided with a lookout and master mariner. Surely the luck of the beginner!
The incident gave us violently to think, and we thought again when, a few days later, on summoning the island of Grand Canary with the magic wand of sextant and logarithm, it failed to materialize. Had we overrun the entire Canary Group, and were we gaily heading for the African coast with its picturesque Riff pirates who specialize in becalmed ships, or were we even now heading for the iron-bound coast of Grand Canary? In the dense mist that so often shrouds this group we could not tell. Moreover, our dead reckoning said one thing and our observations another. They usually do.
"When in doubt, heave to," was a maxim of the Skipper's that we happened to remember, so we hove to and waited, though for what I am not quite clear. If it were for the mist to disperse, I am inclined to think we should be there still. Steve and I passed the time in heated discussions as to our whereabouts, which under the circumstances was as futile an occupation as any we could have indulged in, but what would you? After golf it is doubtful if there is anything more debatable than incipient navigation. We continued to talk, and the dream ship continued to rock idly on a heavy swell, until Peter broke the spell by emitting a well-known squeak of excitement and pointing heavenward.
"_That_ isn't a cloud," she announced with apparent irrelevance.
It was not. It was the peak of Teneriffe towering out of the mist, to port, like the great pyramid from the sands of Egypt.
"There you are," quoth Steve.
"Exactly," said I, though what either of us meant I have no notion.
"In the meantime," suggested Peter the practical, "don't you think we might be getting on with it?"
On this point the master and the mate of the dream ship were agreed, and the voyage continued.
*THE START ACROSS THE ATLANTIC*
_Visitations--pleasant, and the reverse_
*CHAPTER V*
_Visitations--pleasant, and the reverse_
Our entry into Las Palmas savoured of a circus come to town. We were the "act" where the music stops for effect. No one seemed to know who we were or why we were, which after all is not surprising, and the curious, consisting of gaping crowds on the breakwater and a heterogeneous fleet of anything from powerful launches to frowsy bumboats, seemed intent on finding out.
There is an immense and almost constant swell off Las Palmas, and the performance started when, in answer to our signal, a pilot stepped aboard, and came as near to measuring his dignified and bedizened length on the deck as was possible without actually doing it. He was evidently unused to dream ships in a swell. Regaining a certain amount of equilibrium, he tottered to the mast and clung there affectionately, until informed that we were from England, when he risked changing his grip to shake us all warmly by the hand, and point dramatically harbourward.
This last I took as a signal for the engine which, to my relief, "went," and we rounded the breakwater with the entire fleet of bumboats and their yelling occupants in our wake. Peter was at the tiller, in pyjamas she had not had time to change, frenziedly following the course indicated by the pilot's outstretched arm. Steve was attempting in halting Spanish to communicate the fact that our engine had no "reverse," and failing utterly. And I had made the distressing discovery that there was something amiss with our water circulation. Above all rose the clamour of the bum-boatmen:--"Hi, washing, Senor!" "Hi, hi, bananas!" "Hi, hi, hi...."
So the dream ship threaded the intricacies of Las Palmas's inner harbour, missing coal hulks by a bare foot, shaving schooners and, by means of the anchor dropped in sheer desperation, barely saving herself from ramming the Club Nautico.
Even then our troubles were by no means at an end. A boarding party of eternal bumboatmen broke through our defenses, and thronged the deck. In vain we pointed out that all we needed at the moment was sleep, and that if they had any for sale we would buy large quantities, otherwise they must go, or be pushed. They chose to be pushed, and there was something in the nature of a _melee_ afoot when a sleek launch came alongside and a short, corpulent gentleman, literally glittering with gold lace, and using a sword as a walking stick, stepped aboard. He was the chief of the harbour police, and the effect of his august presence was magical. The enemy retired in disorder, and our saviour, who honoured us with his company over a glass of rum, gave us the key to peace and quiet in a Spanish port. It consisted in presenting the law (embodied in himself) with a trifling donation, and running the international code flag "P" up to the mast head, after which one is at liberty to shoot any one who comes aboard without permission. It is worth knowing, for we of the dream ship did both these things, and from that hour suffered no further molestation.
Unless you are a coal magnate, a ship's chandler, a banana agent, or a consumptive, it is hard to find a reason for living at Las Palmas. It is a dreary sort of place built on, and occasionally smothered by, sand blown across the ocean from the Sahara, hundreds of miles distant, and the only diversion appears to be dances and roulette at the Club Nautico.
We of the dream ship promptly "fell" for the roulette, in company with most of the inhabitants, until it was borne in upon us that if we "fell" much further we should plumb the depths of our slender resources. It is a pathetic sight to see workers, not the leisured "profitocracy" one encounters at a place like Monte Carlo, handing over their hard-earned week's wage to a stony-faced _croupier_, and borrowing from any one who will lend for "just one more spin." No, we remained for the most part well out amongst the cooler breezes of the harbour, under the thrice-blessed squaresail which now did service as an awning--sleeping, swimming, fishing, and again sleeping, for we had some arrears to make up in this last respect.
Our splendid isolation, however, did not prevent us from meeting interesting people, foremost amongst whom was the skipper of the four-masted schooner _Dorothy_ of New York, a hard-bitten Yank if ever there was one. He caught us clinging to his anchor chain for a breather during the morning swim, and was treating us to an entirely new vocabulary of invective when suddenly, and with no apparent cause, he changed his mind and invited us aboard.
In his remarkably comfortable quarters, and standing in pools of our own making, we discussed things in general and a bottle of Madeira in particular.
"Waal," he observed, on learning that we were off "that funny bit of wood yonder," and had every intention of remaining on it across the Atlantic, "if you ain't got a gall!"
From that moment the _Dorothy_ and the dream ship became "matey craft," though a greater contrast than between a four-masted schooner and a twenty-three-ton cutter can scarcely be imagined. Our friend had several grievances, and aired them, though with such cheerful profanity as to cause us endless amusement. He had left the sea for good when he was lured out of retirement by a stupendous sum to command the _Dorothy_. The fact was they had no sailing masters in the States these days, and now that they had found wind to be cheaper than coal, and were building schooners so fast that half of them were green timber and opened up like sieves, they could get no one to take charge--no one, that is, but hairless boys who learnt navigation on a three-weeks' course, and knew as much about seamanship or handling the hoboes one ships these days as a dead-ripe lemon....
At this juncture Steve and I might have been seen to exchange guilty glances, but I don't think we were, and the diatribe continued.
... Another thing: here was he at a port like Las Palmas, with his entire crew, bar the mate, in a Spanish gaol through a few shore indiscretions of the previous evening, and no one to _do_ anything about it. There was no United States consul in Las Palmas, no, sir; what did we think of that? There was nothing against a bit of shore joy once in a while. It was to be expected. But when they took a man's _cook_.... He would have to see his very good friend the British Consul about it, that was all, though the idea was abhorrent to his independent spirit.
Amongst other things he treated us to a vivid and somewhat terrifying picture of present-day New York, and expressed the whole-souled wish never to return. It appeared that in this barbarous spot a mere man is at a discount. He can get nothing to drink. His pipe, cigar, or cigarette is in imminent peril of being snatched from his mouth, and if he chances to look sideways at a lady she arrests him on the spot. We shivered in unison, and refilled our glasses.
Our friend dined aboard the dream ship that evening, and showed himself to be the good fellow that he was by demonstrating short cuts in navigation, telling us of winds and weather we should be likely to encounter, giving us introductions to friends at distant ports, and--listening without flinching to a clarionet solo. It is such members of the vast fraternity of the sea that one hopes to meet again, and so rarely does.
Another of our guests was of a very different calibre, though none the less interesting in his way. We awoke one morning to find a sleek white yacht of about the dream ship's tonnage anchored hard by, and flying a silken flag of gorgeous but unknown design, which on book reference proved to be the now-extinct emblem of the Portuguese Royalist.
By noon her owner had paid us a formal call, and at four o'clock this amazing youth, in a natty naval uniform garnished with decorations for various heroic deeds, was laying bare his heart in excellent English over a cup of afternoon tea. It was good, he informed us, to see the Blue Ensign again after what he had been through. There was something stable about the Blue Ensign that was vastly refreshing to a homeless exile. During the present welter of world upheaval the Portuguese rebellions had been overlooked, but what he, a Royalist, had been through--_what_ he had been through!
His was the only yacht in Portuguese waters during the late rebellion. She lay in the bay of Funchal, Madeira, and in Madeira's gaol reposed, or at any rate contrived to live, two full-blown counts, a general, and various smaller fry, incarcerated for their political views. Could a fellow Royalist and a yacht owner stand by and do nothing under such circumstances? A thousand times, no! On a dark night, and in face of sentries armed to the teeth, he had rescued them, taken them aboard his ship, and set sail for Las Palmas without stores, water, or navigation instruments, fearing that any such preparations would arouse suspicion. Well, he had arrived. After incredible hardships, he had arrived, only to have his yacht and cargo of hungry counts interned by the rascally Spaniard! Another cup of tea? Ah, thanks ... to the CAUSE!
The Portuguese says: "A Spaniard is always a Spaniard." The Spaniard says: "A Portuguese is always a Portuguese." Or they do at Las Palmas, and the mere outsider can only take their respective words for it, and draw his own conclusions.
After two weeks of idling--and cooking--we became so heartily tired of the latter that we determined to indulge in the wild extravagance of a cook. The process of engagement was simplicity itself. We merely selected one of the almost constant stream of applicants for work that visited the dream ship, duly installed him in the fo'c's'le, and left him to it.
Our selection, or rather Peter's, as we left such things to a woman's alleged intuition, was a venerable Maltese with a sheaf of credentials the size of a pack of cards, and a winning if somewhat weak smile. Thereafter, for a week, real food, though doused in olive oil, emerged from the fo'c's'le, and we experienced the keen satisfaction after meals of being able to hold a cigarette in one hand without a dish cloth in the other.
This happy state of affairs continued until, following one of his "evenings off," our cook was stricken with an illness that he ascribed to bad meat, though the symptoms corresponded more to the effects of bad drink. In any case, he lay writhing in his bunk, clasping various portions of his anatomy, and declaring that he was about to die. Now, the dream ship had a medicine chest of which she was as proud as the eminent physician who had selected it. This personage believed in injection rather than internal application; and no doubt he was right, provided there was someone aboard who understood a hypodermic syringe. But there was not. I stood beside the bunk, looking up the unhappy man's symptoms in a ship's medical guide as they occurred, while Steve and Peter lifted from its bed of cotton wool a glass-and-steel instrument more like an overgrown mosquito than anything I can call to mind. The look of it appalled me, but not so Steve. He pumped our wretched cook so full of laudanum that he never moved an eyelid for fifteen hours. We called his state one of merciful oblivion, and rather prided ourselves on the achievement until it occurred to someone that we might have killed him. Followed frantic tests with a looking-glass, and much listening for heart-beats, until our victim was resuscitated--and left the next day.
No, in future, and in spite of expert advice to the contrary, which perhaps does not take the limitations of dream ships into account, I shall in future only take the trusted remedies endeared by experience: iodine, a good aperient and astringent, asperin, plenty of boracic lint and bandages, and a lancet.
As though in judgment, there descended upon us in turn a plague of these islands called Canary fever. It was our first and last illness throughout the cruise, but it pulled us down to such an extent that Peter and I decided to try the hills of Grand Canary as a recuperative.