Part 10
To our great astonishment we were enabled by a little shift of wind to fetch by the Abrolhos Islands and to keep on, as we were on the port tack. It was a matter of great satisfaction to us all, and it put the captain in quite a radiant humor. The wind has been pretty well from the eastward of late, and even if it hasn’t been very strong, it enabled us for the first time in many days to round in the weather-braces and take advantage of what there was. Last night was exactly like the weather during a summer northeaster on the New England coast, one of those disagreeable spells which occur two or three times in July and August that fill the hearts of the hotel proprietors with dismay. A dense drizzle, increasing at times to heavy showers, prevailed throughout the night, accompanied by a mist which concealed everything one hundred yards away; while at times we had short but severe puffs of wind, for which we had to stow the sky-sails. At 9.30 in the evening a very strong breeze came out of the east; and, increasing, the second mate, whose watch it was, went forward to haul down the jib-topsail. So he left us on the poop in a heavy shower, and in a few minutes we heard some sharp slatting, but paid no attention to it, supposing that the jib-topsail-sheet had got adrift. Presently Mr. Rarx came back breathing heavily, and remarked, “Very funny; I don’t see how that sail could go like that.” “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Wrong? Why, the main-top-gallant-stay-s’l’s clean gone out the bolt-ropes, and in a minute we’ll have the old man up here tellin’ me ’twas my fault.”
Sure enough, in a few moments the captain’s bushy face arose through the companion-way, and he said without preliminary, “I suppose that was the main-t’-gallant-stay-s’l that went, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mr. Rarx, meekly, “I was----”
“I suppose you were going to say that you was about to haul it down; well, you needn’t bother to explain; if you hadn’t had it too flat ’twouldn’t have went; thirty years ago, men didn’t sign as second mate till they knew how to trim a sail.”
The blighting sarcasm with which he said this put the second mate’s temper on edge again, and I expect that he’ll store this up against the skipper for possible future use, for he is unquestionably a fine sailor-man.
It is rather remarkable that we have caught no fish lately, as the sea in the vicinity of the Abrolhos Islands is the greatest fishing-ground on the whole Brazilian seaboard. For twenty-four hours now we have been on soundings with an average depth of forty fathoms; and while the water is of a dirty green color, it is wonderfully phosphorescent, though not quite equalling the water on the equator; still, when the patent log was hauled in last evening at eight o’clock (it hung up and down at that hour), the line was a rope of fire, dripping with silver sparks, and long after it had been coiled away over a pin it continued to emit brilliant flashes of phosphoric light.
Our new main-topgallant-yard is coming along nicely. It is being trimmed down from one of the double top-gallant-yards which the ship used to carry; this is a rather remarkable fact, that if a vessel carries double top-gallant-sails the yards will be larger in every way than if they were single. It would be hard to conceive a more gnome-like appearance than that presented by the carpenter to-day as he was hewing at the spar with an adze, seen from a distance of about one hundred feet; nearer, the illusion vanished. But his tall, peaked felt hat, immensely broad face, open dungaree-jumper which refused to meet over his globular person, and short, fat legs, lent him, when he rested on his adze with wide-spread feet, a wonderfully elfin aspect.
In a squall this morning I noticed that the mate wore for the first time a tremendously thick garment of red cloth, which he called a llama coat, being made of the wool or hair of that quadruped. It looked something like a flannel shirt, but was not split up the sides, and seemed to be as thick as a felt slipper. Mr. Goggins says that he has never yet seen the rain which can penetrate it. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is the fact that he has worn it for fifteen years and intends to wear it fifteen more. How sailors hate oil-skins! Their aversion to them is universal, and seems to be unreasonable. The captain, for instance, has several ancient, heavy suits which he calls his Cape Horn clothes. Whenever his presence is required for any length of time in a heavy rain, he dons one of these suits and goes on deck in a soft felt hat and a pair of slippers, only to return in fifteen or twenty minutes with dripping garments, his slippers sobbing at every step; in two minutes, though, he is arrayed in another suit, with the same foot-gear, and marches on deck again to repeat this operation as long as his dry clothes hold out. All this for dislike of oil-skins and boots. Latitude, 19° 56′ south; longitude, 38° 15′ west.
+June 19+
Rio is said to possess a superb climate in the winter months; but if it is finer than the weather which we are having now it must be supernaturally beautiful. For twenty-four hours we have run before a fresh northeast breeze, the only fault to be found with which is the fact that, as we are now dead before the wind, the after-sails are the only ones which draw, blanketing the others. The course this morning was given to the quartermaster, southwest, which will not be altered except in case of necessity till we have passed the Falklands. No mention has been made, by the way, of our helmsmen, dignified by the name of quartermasters. They do not really hold this rank, as they are merely sailors who have been picked out by the mates as the best helmsmen, and receive no more wages than able seamen. The idea of this is to have only certain men to steer the ship, that they may thoroughly understand her under all circumstances. It is curious to see how much less tanned these men are than the others, owing to the protection of the wheel-house.
The old mate continues to crawl growlingly about the decks, grumbling at various actual and phantasmagorical afflictions. His mode of progression is a sort of creeping prowl, as he thrusts his face into every nook and cranny, with a hundred wrinkles in his great, flabby nose, as though he were continuously assailed with disagreeable odors. He hazes the men a great deal more than the second mate does, though I do not think that he is particularly courageous; a flock of Gogginses might, like jackals, prove dangerous, but singly, his valor I’m sure would dwindle at close quarters. Being a poor seaman, the men have no respect at all for him, and in the presence of the skipper he bawls at the sailors and makes a feint of hitting them, glancing at the old man for approval, as he rolls about, exhorting them in his most rasping voice to “Come now, git a move on.”
Mr. Rarx gets several times more work out of his watch, for he knows how to handle the men; and as he has recovered his equanimity he continues to exhibit his claims to being a humorist. His men were hoisting the yards up taut in the second dog-watch yesterday, and when they came to the maintop-gallant-halliards, they burst into a fine chanty, “Whiskey”; then when they had finished with the main-yards they began on the foretop-gallant-halliards, but without a song. The yard seemed to stick a bit; and as sailors can always do twice the work with the inspiration of a song, Mr. Rarx called out, “Give us a little more of that whiskey, fellows”; which so tickled the fellows’ fancies that some of them shook in their extremity of mirth, though a sailor must always laugh at a mate’s joke. If the second mate were not such a bad-tempered man he would not be an unpleasant companion, for he talks well and is always very neat; but his recent villanous deed deprives his conversation of most of its erstwhile attractions, while he appears to think absolutely nothing of it.
Louis Jacquin is indisputably the best sailor in the forecastle, though young Broadhead, the New Yorker, is by no means a bad second. Louis’s marlinspike seamanship is really beautiful; and it turns out, as I expected, that he has served a long period in the French navy. Strange how sailors shift back and forth from man-of-war to merchantman. This man has good principles, too; for when the little bosun Rumps began to blackguard the skipper the other day, saying, “I’d like to have a crack at you ashore,” looking up at the poop, the Frenchman said, “Zat ees not right”; nor was this intended for me to hear. Louis made a queer mistake the other day. He was telling Broadhead about the attractions of Paris, and finally asked him, “Have you evair seen Père la Chère?” “What’s that?” said Broadhead. “Père la Chère, zee cemetarie,” answered Jacquin. It was an odd mistake for a Frenchman to make.
The captain is in fine feather now that we are doing well, but is annoyed that we do not meet more steamers. I never saw a skipper so anxious to be spoken and reported as Captain Scruggs; and last evening when a large steamer passed us bound south, probably to Rio, he almost wept because it was dark.
One of our two cabin cats has vanished; it was the “coon-cat,” and after a long search to-day we were forced to the belief that it has fallen overboard. It is hard luck, and its companion, the Maltese, is inconsolable. The captain seems really cut up about it, for he has all a sailor’s fancy for animals. One of Mr. Goggins’s traits, however, is his cruelty to the poor, ugly alley-cat which belongs to him,--another illustration of the sort of creature that he is. Latitude, 22° 30′ south; longitude, 39° 25′ west.
+June 20+
At nine o’clock this morning I sighted a vessel’s upper canvas ahead, far down in the southwest; she seemed to be a bark, and as such I reported her to the skipper. The breeze was from the eastward and blowing fresh, so that every sail was drawing to the utmost, and we were doing nearly eleven knots at the time. Slowly we drew up on the vessel, slowly but certainly, and at eleven o’clock she proved to be a ship, and we concluded that she was one of the Englishmen which sailed a week ahead of us: the “Balclutha,” from London, the “Merioneth,” from Swansea, and the “Peleus,” from Hamburg, all bound to San Francisco, and the “Annesley,” from Cardiff for Portland, Oregon. It was quite probable that we would fall in with each other hereabouts. In spite of the power of our glasses, however, it was impossible to tell for a long while whether she was a Yankee or a Britisher, until all at once she yawed, when the sun reflected from her sails showed that they were of cotton, so that the chances were in favor of her hailing from the States. We paid no further attention to her, though, till after dinner, when, by that time having raised her hull out of the water, we perceived that she carried a stunsail on the starboard side! Here was a spectacle as unusual as a blue moon in these days of scanty rigs and short crews! Still, in spite of her extra cloths, we overhauled her, and soon made the additional discovery that, like ourselves, she crossed three sky-sail-yards. (What a graceful, slender look they give to a vessel!) Captain Scruggs at this instant emerged from the cabin with his ancient, feeble-looking, clattering, brass telescope under his arm, levelled it at the flying stranger, bracing the long, tottering tubes against the top-gallant-backstays, gazed at her for a full minute, and announced her name,--the “Judas Dowes.” Now, this vessel sailed from New York for San Diego six days before we did, and though she has a fine record as a fast sailer, lo! we have overhauled her on the fortieth day. I am under the impression that Captains Scruggs and Platt had a wager as to who would pass the equator first; and as the “Dowes” undoubtedly crossed ahead of us, our skipper was in quite a bad humor when he found who the stranger was. We asked him if he couldn’t be mistaken, to which he disdainfully answered, “Mistaken? Of course not; wasn’t I master of her four years before I took the ‘Hosea Higgins’?” “Does Platt recognize us, do you suppose?” I asked him then. “Most certainly he does,” testily replied the captain; “who wouldn’t know them upper topsails?” And in truth the “Higgins” could be picked out among a score of other vessels simply by her long topmasts. There is every prospect of passing the “Judas Dowes” in the night, for at the moment, 4 +P.M.+, we cannot be more than seven or eight miles apart.
Many people, even those identified with affairs nautical, will be surprised to learn that there are still fully half a dozen of our ships which make a regular practice of carrying stunsails whenever they will draw. Those vessels which I am certain follow this plan are the “Paul Revere,” the “Judas Dowes,” and the “Indiana.”
The sail which the “Dowes” carried this afternoon probably doesn’t add half a knot to her speed; but some of the ships mentioned carry such an extra spread of canvas as to very decidedly augment their sailing powers. For instance, Mr. Rarx said, “While I was second mate of the ‘Paul Revere’ awhile ago, we had stuns’ls that added a thousand square yards to the ship’s canvas and put two knots on her speed.” Some seafaring people of the present day do not believe that fifty years ago our famous clippers carried royal-stunsails, a leading maritime publication in New York saying a year ago, “We never heard of a ship-master foolish enough to carry royal-stunsails.” Now this is a mistake, for Mr. Goggins has positively asserted that about thirty years ago he was in a bark for some months that set these auxiliary sails, the vessel’s name, according to the mate, being the “Chickloa,” so called after a large coffee plantation in Guatemala. Far more conclusive proof, however, is to be found in “Two Years before the Mast,” in which Dana, always minutely accurate, mentioned the royal-stunsails set on the ship “Alert,” in which he returned to Boston from California.
Last evening at the pumps I had some interesting yarns from Murphy, who is a round, jolly, chubby individual, very active and good-natured. The second mate says that this fellow is not at all a bad lot, and that his only fault lies in his inclination to be a little “fresh.” Murphy commenced about the American bark “St. James,” in which he went out from New York to Shanghai in ninety-seven days three years ago. “Oh, but she’s just a daisy, she is! Why, she’s a square-rigged yacht. And go, I tell you honest, I saw her log fifteen knots on that voyage under the tops’ls and fores’l between Tristan d’Acunha and the Cape; and if ever you want to sail with a nice man, you ship with Cap’n Banfield; there’s no better.” As a matter of fact, the “St. James,” which is a very large vessel to be bark-rigged, being of fifteen hundred tons, is the most yacht-like square-rigger under the stars and stripes, and a friend of mine who went out to Shanghai in her on this very voyage which Murphy mentioned, in speaking from a passenger’s stand-point, corroborated every word of the sailor’s, and said that it would be impossible to find a more agreeable man to sail with than Captain Banfield, who for some time was in the large Boston schooner yacht “Alert.”
In contradistinction to this fast passage of the “St. James” friend Murphy spoke as follows: “The last time I went round the Horn was in the Yankee ship ‘Centennial,’ and we were a hundred and ninety-nine days from New York to ’Frisco. We had a terrible time off Cape Horn, and ran back twice to the Falklands for repairs, and at last a third time we bore away for Montevideo. We passed close to Stanley this time, too, but there was a heavy gale on and we dasn’t try for that place again. As we ran by, though, we saw an American ship tryin’ to weather the Billy Rocks at the entrance to Stanley Harbor, and we passed so close to her that I heard the cap’n say as how he could see the sailors in the riggin’ with the glasses. We afterward found out ’twas the ‘City of Philadelphia.’” Then I remembered the tragedy of this ship. She sailed from Philadelphia for San Francisco a little over two years ago. Her captain had just bought her for himself, and she had on board a passenger travelling for his health. The vessel was disabled off Cape Horn, bore away for Stanley for repairs, missed stays off the harbor, struck on the terrible Billy Rocks in a gale of wind, and every soul on board perished.
The last Yankee square-rigger to lay her bones upon the beach was the “Commodore,” which ran on Malden Island in the Pacific, in 5° south and 155° west, about a year ago, while on a voyage from Honolulu to New York with sugar. All hands saved.
Murphy, like Louis, is a man-o’-war’s man, and said that the last government vessel in which he served was the “Olympia.” “Oh, Lord, she’s a terror for work,” he added. “I’ll bet she can’t beat this packet in that line,” said one of the men. “She can’t, eh? I’d just like to see you try her once. This ship’s a playground compared to her.” This, in part, bears out what Mr. Rarx said, that this is one of the hardest ships for work that he has ever seen. _If sailors get enough to eat_, though, by far the best way to run a ship is to keep them hard at work continuously; they will always be in far better humor, and when they turn in they will think more about sleep than about imaginary grievances, which foremast hands are very prone to do. Latitude 25° 12′ south; longitude, 42° 14′ west.
+June 21+
Oh, simple, childish Captain Platt of the “Judas Dowes!” This morning when day broke we looked in vain for this vessel, for behold the watery expanse void of objects fashioned by the hand of man save ourselves. We had confidently expected to see the “Dowes” upon our quarter, where, in truth, she would have been if Captain Platt hadn’t shown the white feather, sheering off under cover of the darkness and secreting himself beyond the horizon.
How odd it is to meet an acquaintance away down here near the end of Brazil! The last time that we saw the “Judas Dowes” she lay on the opposite side of the pier from the “Higgins,” both ships having just come in from sea; and lo! we renew our intimacy far down here, thousands of miles from home, below the southern tropic. And a sort of mutual good-fellowship springs up between us, for are we both not going to fling down the gauntlet to the dreadful Horn in the darkness and gloom of midwinter? Everything is so very smooth and sunny and cheerful here at present, that it is hard to believe that there are, no doubt, at this moment, giant four-masters struggling in the grip of an Antarctic sou’wester, hove to, with a tarpaulin in the after-rigging, or driving before it for their lives, buried to the rails in those great Cape Horn surges which roll so grandly onward in their endless journey around the globe.
Turning, then, from such violent scenes, it is doubly pleasant to be wafted thus along over a motionless sea, rippled by the fresh northeasterly breeze that blows us over two hundred miles of water every day. It is warm, too, for this latitude at this season, 77° at noon, for the sun to-day reached the most northerly point of his declination, and at four o’clock this morning, at Greenwich, he entered the constellation of Cancer, ushering in the first day of the southern winter.
Our skipper has formed the very obnoxious habit of immersing beer and Apollinaris bottles in the galvanized iron bucket which holds our drinking-water in the pantry, for the purpose of cooling them off; so that we were shocked one day to observe several labels floating about in the water, having added to it glue and other equally unpleasant foreign substances. Fortunately, the weather will soon be cold now, which will, I hope, put an end to these objectionable proceedings.
Every Sunday thus far Captain Scruggs has blossomed out in a white “biled” shirt, with a standing collar turned over in front, by reason of which he suffers torments throughout that day, until about three in the afternoon, when indications of a sudden metamorphosis begin to appear. First he begins to move restlessly in his chair, elevates and depresses his chin with great force, inserts his hand inside the band and tugs away at it, and finally, unable to stand it any longer, off comes the offending collar with a great wrench, while he passionately nods and revolves his massive head, to free himself of all restraint, as though he had been in a pillory.
It is a curious fact that hardly a single ship-master will say anything in favor of Nelson; personally, I have never yet met one who would admit that this greatest of sea-fighters was better or worse than any other naval commander, for all of whom they appear to have a silent disdain. A sea-captain usually takes as his model Napoleon or Cæsar or even the present emperor of Germany; our skipper reveres the memory of Napoleon and considers him the embodiment of everything grand and exalted; as for Nelson, he won’t even deign to talk about him, and brusquely dismissed the subject to-day by saying that Nelson didn’t even have much command or influence over his men!
There was a vast deal of shouting and confusion on board all day, occasioned by the shifting of the old sails to the new, strong suit for Cape Horn; as the captain said, “Now we’re gettin’ ready for business.” It is the general idea that old sails, nearly worn out, are bent for the bad weather, whereas the very newest of all are sent aloft, for old canvas would melt like wet paper in a really hard squall. Therefore the ship now glitters in a brand-new suit of clothes and presents quite a fine appearance; a yachtsman, however, would contemplate with dismay sundry streaks of mildew and tar-stains on the main-sail, though this is the first time that it has ever been stretched on a yard. So long are our topmasts that the big, upper main-topsail has a double row of reef-points in it; all the uppers are three times as deep as the lowers, which seem but strips of tape in comparison; when this vessel has nothing set but the lower topsails, it must verily be a howling gale. Latitude, 27° 50′ south; longitude, 44° 30′ west.
+June 22+