Part 21

At that moment these were the contents of the table: four dinner-plates, four saucers, two plates of bread and biscuit, a large dish of baked potatoes, a platter of corned-beef hash, a pressed tongue, a dish of butter, a glass jar of marmalade, a basin of stewed apples, and innumerable knives, forks, and spoons. All at once there came that peculiar motion that always precedes an unusually heavy roll in a sailing ship. We grasped the long bench with the grip of death. One short roll to windward, and then began the deep, ponderous, resistless lurch to leeward. Over she went, leisurely and quietly, and still farther, till she must have been rail under. At this moment a dusky object shot by us with incredible speed; it was the steward, who vanished backward into the open store-room opposite, and we saw him not again for several minutes. The last part of him to fade out of sight was his ghastly smile disappearing through the doorway. Then various objects began to fetch away in the pantry,--tin cans, cups and saucers, gradually increasing to an _allegro furioso_; and, finally, with a frightful clash, like the climax of a full orchestra, the entire contents of the table swept grandly across to leeward, and fell like an avalanche against the opposite wall. For the moment we were stunned by the appalling crash, and then there smote upon our ears a shriek whose equal cannot be conceived. It swelled now from a low murmur to a perfectly infernal scream, like the screech of a fog siren, and anon sank down again, like the moaning wail of the Irish death-cry. It was the cat. At first we thought that it was buried under the hurricane of dishes, and looked to see it lying in slithers upon the floor. But no; his tail had been nipped in the movable back with which the benches are provided, and the harder we pushed back against it to prevent ourselves from being projected across the table the fiercer was the grip on the tail. We could not release the unhappy animal without unpleasant results, not to say injury, to ourselves, and we could but sit and hearken to its dreadful voice.

Solemnly and slowly the ship righted, and a scene of remarkable devastation confronted us. On the table two articles remained, a saucer and a shallow, empty, wooden box, used to chock things off in. Everything else had crashed against the opposite wall with such terrific energy that the plates and dishes were reduced to the minutest fragments. Before it finally found a resting-place the cylindrical roll of tongue had carromed separately on each baked potato; a large, unbroken platter slid back and forth on the floor like a toboggan upon a slick, gleaming path of apple-sauce; the butter was face down in the extreme corner of the store-room; and the elliptical wad of corned-beef hash loomed up brown and moist upon the opposite panel, where it had stuck like a wet snow-ball.

When the final clatter had calmed down like the distant mumblings of a thunder-storm, the steward protruded his scared face around the angle of the doorway, and, urged by the saw-like voice of the skipper, who had now flown into a passion, and was standing at the threshold, began to slowly gather up the fragments of our once succulent repast. We contrived to fare pretty well, though, by scraping off the tongue and opening a tin of pease and tomatoes; and we would have treated the whole affair as a joke had it not been for the old man’s temper. He was thoroughly angry, and when I observed that on the “Mandalore” we had racks four inches high instead of two, and that we broke not a dish or a cup during the passage, he almost suffocated, and after glaring at us a moment, leaning against the mizzen-mast at the head of the table, he snarled, “I druther set right down and eat offen the floor than have sech things on the table.”

Indeed, he has been in a violent mood all day at the light weather, and a growl is all that he has vouchsafed by way of an answer. After dinner he went prowling about forward looking for a row, and when he couldn’t find one, he came back and threw half a plank down the lazarette hatch at the poor, mewing, deserted alley-cat which he keeps shuts up in the gloom of that dusky cavern. Latitude, 60° 10′ south; longitude, 76° 20′ west.

+July 27+

Wind east, force 6; course, northwest, half west, true; distance run in the last sixty minutes, ten knots! Glorious work; it is the fastest that we have gone through the water in several weeks; for the last time that we flew along at this speed was off the coast of Patagonia, with a west-northwest gale over the quarter. The grand easterly wind did not reach us until the morning watch, however, so that the whole day’s run was not so great as the heading of this day’s log would indicate. Yesterday, from 4 to 8 +P.M.+, we lounged about in an almost perfect calm; and the stars came out of a clear, placid sky, and, quivering and trembling, peered down upon an ocean nearly motionless, for nothing but the ghost of the southwest swell remained. At the present moment even the last vestige of it has vanished under the influence of the east wind, and the sea is silent and undisturbed save for the ruffling caused by the fast-freshening breeze. Strange weather for 60° south, only four hundred and fifty miles from the South Polar Circle, in a locality world-famous for its seas and storms. Sometimes, as in our case, enormous seas are encountered in sight of Cape Horn itself; but usually the largest are seen to the westward of the Diego Ramirez, where the sea sinks again to great depths. This easterly wind is quite surprising to us also; for, barring one day of southeasterly winds when we first spoke the French ship, four weeks ago, we have had almost continuous westerly gales. Even for Cape Horn a month of such implacable winds is a bad record, for on an average an easterly blow should come every two or three weeks. Our joy, therefore, is very great, now that we are going so finely and heading our true course, with the wind on the quarter, and all possible sail set and drawing. Another unusual, and to our eyes an extremely beautiful, spectacle was the bright, clear sky of last night, with the shining path of the Milky Way encircling the heavens with its girdle of gold-dust; the stately form of the Crux Australis, now at the zenith; and in the south, forty-five degrees above the horizon, those two weird nebulæ, the Magellan Clouds, gazing down at us with wan, dim eyes.

Still another source of delight is the fact that for the first time in three weeks I have been able to wear foot-gear other than rubber boots. My leather ones cracked from being hung too near the stove, so that ever since we passed Cape Virgins it has either been raining so hard or the sea has been so heavy, even on the poop, that nothing but rubber would keep the feet dry; and three steady weeks of rubber boots is somewhat monotonous. And sleep! Heavens! what a grand one last night was for peaceful, deep rest, the first that we have had since we showed our nose outside of Cape St. John. Instead of the customary rolling through an arc of about forty degrees, there was nothing in the ship’s motion to indicate that we were afloat except an occasional deep breath, rather pleasant than otherwise. But I am writing as though we were in the Tropics and in fine weather for good and all; instead of which, there are hundreds, almost thousands of miles to cover before the fine, warm days begin. At this season fine weather cannot be looked for till we cross 30° south in about 100° west, a difference of latitude alone of eighteen hundred miles, not to mention longitude at all.

Would that some stranger could have heard the mate’s conversation at dinner to-day and witnessed his gesticulations. The old man commenced on the subject of the men who manned sailing ships in these days, a topic that invariably has him in a helpless rage in a few minutes. “Why,” said he, after a long speech, “I had a crew once in the ‘Priscilly Waters’ that was sailors, not farmers; one watch of those fellows would do more work in four hours than the whole of the eighteen men here in a day, and there was only ten of ’em before the mast. Why, all hands on the ‘Waters’ used to nearly yank the masts out of her.”

As in duty bound, the mate agreed with the skipper, which he did by sharp jerks and winks in the old man’s direction; and even went him one better by telling how, in ancient days on the Pacific coast, _he_ had had a crew in the “Jacob Billings,” for nineteen months on end, who used to lift the ship clean out of the water. But his manner of speech at meals in the captain’s presence! His absurd, grotesque ways! He is always much embarrassed how to begin when he has anything on his mind; and I can see him now, grinning and simpering like a fool, gazing intently out of the forward window. At last his meditations overwhelm him; and, drawing his greasy sleeve several times across his mouth from ear to ear, he begins to utter odd sounds in his throat, still staring out on the main-deck. Gradually he grows bolder, and fragments of sentences can be here and there detected; when suddenly, carried entirely away, he turns his bleary eyes full upon you and finishes in a violent shout, instantly collapsing, like an exhausted bellows.

Often, during an evening, when I go on deck for a breath of air before turning in, he will discourse thus: “I tell you, Mr. Stevens, Noo York carn’t touch San Francisco for cheap livin’. Why, sir, I can git a meal in a ’igh-toned rest’rant there for less nor a quarter of what I can East. Me and the wife was passin’ along the street in San Francisco one evenin’ (yer’d never take me for the mate of a ship, sir, if you was to meet me ashore), and she says to me, says she, ‘’Arry, I’m ’ungry,’ says she. ‘Hall right,’ I says, ‘so am I.’ So we goes into a ’igh-toned rest’rant and has a bowl er soup, a bit er fish, a pick er veal, some vegetables, a piece er pie, and a big cupper corfee. And ’ow much d’ye think it were? Ten cents apiece. ‘Pretty good,’ says I to th’ old woman; ‘we’ll try it in Noo York.’ So w’en we got East ag’in, we went into a rest’rant on Fulton Street, near the ferry, up two flights. Oh, it were ’igh-toned, too, sir. They ’ad niggers for waiters. So I picked one out and says to ’im, ‘’Ere, you, bring a bit er steak,’ I says, ‘some pertaters, and corfee.’ Well, I ’ad to leave the steak, I couldn’t eat it; and I says to the nigger, ‘Take them pertaters back; I never eats warmed-over vegetables.’ And wot d’ye think they stuck me? Fifty cents each!”

His talking of restaurants puts me in mind of a rather amusing incident that happened to my wife and me in Boston a year or two ago. We were walking through Washington Street one evening, and being extremely hungry, stepped into one of the many dairy kitchens that adorn that thoroughfare. We found, upon seating ourselves, that it was a religious institution, with biblical mottoes upon the walls, and we were amusing ourselves watching the amazement of the prim, gray old couples from the country, almost stunned by the bevelled mirrors and electric lamps, when we became aware of two glaring legends hung cheek by jowl high up on the wall. One read, “Only the righteous shall see God.” Its neighbor, “Keep your eye on your hat and coat.” Latitude, 59° 9′ south; longitude, 79° 15′ west.

+July 28+

Course, northwest true, distance run in the twenty-four hours, two hundred and seventy-eight miles! Hurrah for the fair wind! Long live the easterly gale! What better conditions could be desired than those that now prevail? A fair, fresh gale, a sea which, while rough, is nothing out of the way, and a splendid position in which to take the expected northwesterly gales in a day or two. Every square inch of canvas is drawing to its utmost capacity, and we averaged only a fraction less than twelve knots for the twenty-four hours. Now, in spite of all the old records of more than three hundred and fifty miles a day, a run of two hundred and eighty is an extremely good one. It is certainly no great feat for a ship to make fifty or fifty-five miles in a watch, but when she maintains twelve knots for twenty-four hours, sailors call it fast going.

Some heavy water has come aboard in the last three hours, as all sailing vessels are very wet running before a strong wind and sea. At this very moment we shipped a comber over the quarter that broke entirely over the cabin-house with a crash that shook the bulkheads, and the skipper has just sung out, “Clew up the royals.” This is still another fine example of the difference between on and off the wind. It is blowing a fresh gale, as noted before, which means about forty-five miles an hour; yet until this moment we have lugged the three royals without trouble, and only clewed them up because the sea is getting ugly; by the wind we would be under reefed topsails. The “Hosea Higgins” doesn’t seem to run well. Even in this sea, which certainly is not really heavy yet, she is emphatically a wet ship. The “Mandalore,” a “diving-bell,” was drier than the “Higgins” is now, when she was running before a sixty-mile gale. We had no business to take that sea over the quarter a moment ago; indeed, ever since noon we have had heavy, green water on the poop, and an idea of the quantity may be gained when it is said that while the captain was standing by the weather mizzen-shrouds after dinner, a sea washed his legs from under him, and his grip on the mizzentop-sail-halliards was the only thing that prevented his being swept down on the main-deck. All the square windows in the weather-side of the house have been covered with the heavy, solid wooden shutters, as though they were ports in the ship’s side, instead of being inside of and protected by the bulwarks. The glass, which has been wonderfully steady for sixty hours, has commenced to fall, and a heavy gale is probably overhauling us, for easterly gales off the Horn have a hard name.

In all our experience at sea we never saw anything like the dampness during the late light weather. No rain fell then, but so heavily charged with moisture was the atmosphere that the water actually ran off the poop as during a shower; and from the top of the wheel-house, in size ten by fifteen feet, we filled two ten-gallon tubs in twelve hours with the moisture that condensed upon it; while down the walls of our room, separated from the dining-room, where the hot stove is, only by the after-cabin, moisture trickled in glistening beads.

The men have slightly improved, though they are still a badly used-up lot of sailors. To what an apparently infinite number and variety of ailments and mishaps they are liable! There is the tough and hardy second mate, even he has lost the entire use of one hand by a trivial accident. He had a small wart or something of that sort on the back of his right hand a few days ago, and on one occasion, while slacking off the weather lower maintop-sail-brace, one of the ropes knocked off this tiny excrescence. Mr. Rarx paid no heed to it; but in twenty-four hours his hand had swollen dreadfully, puffing up like a huge biscuit, and where the wart had been there formed a large sore that had to be lanced. Cold salt-water and friction must be looked to as accountable for this, for Rarx is as lean and healthy-looking as a prize-fighter. Louis Jacquin, the Frenchman, too, another specimen of rugged health, had a finger caught in a main-brace block and jammed, drawing blood; and in two days an ugly purple rising appeared at the base of the nail, as large and shining as a hot-house grape--so hard, withal, that a lance penetrated it with difficulty.

The best men in the ship are sent to the helm now, for an awkward, false turn of the wheel in such a sea would broach the ship to in a moment, and then, good-by pumps, rail, and everything else on the main-deck. Latitude, 55° 53′ south; longitude, 85° 20′ west.

+July 29+

_Salve lux benigna!_ Yesterday morning daybreak came perceptibly earlier than it used to, and by seven o’clock it was sufficiently light to distinguish faces at a short distance; while this morning, so much northing had we made, that at seven it was broad daylight; and we will soon be able to eat our quarter-to-eight breakfast without the palsied yellow glare of the lamp. It is true that the sky is still of a Saturnian lead color, but the dark, heavy _feel_ of the atmosphere has disappeared. To-morrow we will cut the fiftieth parallel if this easterly breeze holds. It has let go to a certain extent, yet it blew us over two hundred and fifty miles in the twenty-four hours, and in three days we have done six hundred and fifty miles to the northwest-ward, which is extraordinarily good work for this locality; our position is simply splendid.

The desire of Captain Scruggs for wishing to appear that he knows everything, especially in the presence of the mate, is still very remarkable. Sometimes it is amusing, but more often extremely annoying. Frequently, when I tell him something that he has never heard of before, he will nod his head slightly, and, with an alteration of my own words, repeat the sentence aggressively and dogmatically, as though it came directly from him, and he was giving us the information. The mate is completely deceived, and always looks admiringly toward him, simultaneously winking and leering atrociously. Moreover, Captain Scruggs is a man whom you cannot possibly surprise by any statement; and he is always unmoved in the face of the most unusual occurrences. As an example, we found, one morning, having taken the precaution of glancing into the pitcher, that the syrup contained a quantity of foreign substances which floated about in it.

“There seems to be a number of curious things in the syrup,” I humbly ventured; “looks like long-cut tobacco.” Disturbed? Indeed, no. He only clutched the pitcher from me, peered ferociously into it, and growled, “Steward, see if you can’t get this dust out with a knife.”

The skipper is likewise completely destitute of imagination. Shortly after we sailed I started to read an extract to him (I was bold in those days) from a collection of excellent sea stories called “The Port of Missing Ships,” in which mention is made of a mate who was so zealous that he “tried to see how near he could come to standing in two places at the same time without splitting himself.” Here I paused and glanced with a smile at the old man. But, with a face as expressionless as a tadpole’s, he asked, “Isn’t that a little overdrawn?”

The mate rises to the most sublime heights of his absurdities when he observes at dinner, as he frequently does, with a smirk perfectly diabolical, “Hi knows the secrets of hall the codfish haristocracy of San Francisco. My old woman used to work in the Wite ’Ouse” (_i.e._, that city’s branch of the Parisian Maison Blanc) “as a fitter; and be gar’s sakes, sir, the things wot I’ve ’eerd is hawful.”

He also makes use of extraordinary syncopations in conversation. For example, should my wife ask him a question about the weather, he always says “Sam?” which, being done into English, signifies, “What say, ma’am?”

Mr. Goggins is also abnormally addicted to stewed prunes, which we often have for supper. He usually disposes of four or five at each mouthful, and you wait to see him get rid of the pits; but you are disappointed, because he seems to have swallowed them. At length he has finished a large saucerful, pushes back his plate, draws his sleeve heavily across his face, leans back in his seat, looks fixedly at a point in the ceiling with a wooden face, draws in a long breath, bends over, and gently blows a dozen or so of prune-stones into his plate, like a shower of hail-stones. Then mumbling, “Hexcuse me, sir,” wriggles off his seat and out of the door. Latitude, 52° 34′ south; longitude, 89° 37′ west.

+July 30+

At last we have accomplished the arduous midwinter passage of the Horn, having been twenty-two days off the stormy Cape, or just about the average; but we would have been at least a week longer had it not been for that friendly easterly wind. We actually saw the sun several times to-day, too, were enabled to ascertain our exact location, and our calculations proved to be only fifty miles out in longitude and thirty in latitude. In consideration of the fact that for about a fortnight we wrestled with powerful currents, and uncertain ones at that, the error, especially in the departure, must be considered insignificant, in view of the almost limitless sea-room. Whatever may be Captain Scruggs’s failings, he is a first-rate seaman, and a keen, astute navigator; and on many occasions near Cape Horn we had opportunities of observing his accurate, almost infallible judgment.

To add to our increasing sense of comfort, the sun is mounting very rapidly in the heavens, both on account of our northing and by reason of the lengthening of the southern days. The noon altitude was 21° 20′, a very respectable height, more than double that of a week ago, when at meridian the sun, if we had been able to measure his altitude, would not have been more than 9° 30′ above the horizon. The orb, besides, had sufficient power to raise the mercury two degrees at mid-day when we hung a thermometer in his rays.

Off Cape Horn in winter the temperature is usually somewhat lower than that of the North Atlantic between the British Isles and the Newfoundland Banks in January. It is only between the latter point and New York that vessels experience such an intensity of frost as to contract the mercury to zero and sheath them in several feet of solid ice. That is, in the deepest seclusions of the open sea, the weather, even in the coldest season in high latitudes, is generally mild and soft compared with that found at the same parallel near a great expanse of land. Indeed, the comparatively high temperature of the entire Southern Ocean in winter is due to the preponderance of sea, the long, narrow finger of Patagonia being the only land south of 45°, save some diminutive clusters of islands.