Part 23
We have made a disagreeable discovery about Timothy Powers in the port-watch. I don’t remember whether it was mentioned before or not, but Tim was said to have fallen off the forward house two weeks ago and sprained his right arm. From the first the captain never could discover anything wrong with it, but as the fellow insisted that he suffered terrible pains in that member, there was naught to do for a while but to believe him. At last the skipper grew tired of Tim’s loafing, and, going out on the main-deck this morning, he gave the Irishman a very sulphurous dressing down and compelled him to turn to. He was sent forward to clean out the pig-pen, and he went to work with a woful countenance to lift off two planks that served as an apology for a roof to the sty. He couldn’t move them with one hand, so he stopped, looked carefully about to see whether or not he was observed by the mates or any of his friends, deliberately took his arm out of the sling in which he still insisted on carrying it, lifted the heavy planks down with ease, put his arm back in the sling, resumed his pitiful look, turned to reach for a broom, and found the eyes of the second mate fixed steadily upon him. Mr. Rarx had been concealed and had witnessed the whole affair. That settled it. Tim almost fainted from shock, and from now till the end of the voyage his will not be a bed of roses. Think how this creature has been imposing not only on the captain and officers, but on his fellow-shipmates as well! For two entire weeks his most arduous duty consisted in keeping the lookout on the forward house in the daytime, perfectly well, with all night below, while his friends, ill and drenched to the skin, had to dive around the main-deck day and night with chattering teeth, two hands short in the worst weather,--two hands, because old Neilsen has been laid up in his bunk with general debility, too weak to even put his foot on the main-deck. Tim is the sort of animal who contributes much to the misery and suffering of sailors. A captain, for instance, catches a man in such a deceit, never forgets it and refuses to believe the next man, who actually has hurt himself, so that the real sufferer has to bear the penalty of the other’s fraud. It is not a criminal offence, but a low, contemptible trick; though just such a one as a man with a face like Tim’s would be guilty of. The mate’s powers of divination are not particularly acute, for he observed one day off the river Plate, looking at Tim, “There goes a feller that _I_ call a good, faithful man.”
At dinner to-day I chanced to remark that, as we had had such benefits from the easterly wind, we ought to accept our three points of easting now without grumbling. Mr. Goggins, however, is a fearful kicker, even for a sailor; so, thinking to please the old man, he instantly replied, “We ain’t had forty-eight hours o’ good luck on the hull passage.” This was so remarkable a statement that my wife was provoked into saying, gently but positively, “The man who talks like that doesn’t deserve to reach port for six months more.” “Well, we ain’t,” quoth Goggins, doggedly. Then I took a hand (it is usually best not to argue with him and the skipper), and asked as sarcastically as I could, “I suppose that three days’ easterly gale doesn’t count? And how about the first sixteen days of the voyage? You’re enough of a sailor, I suppose, though, to have forgotten all that.” I thought that he was floored; but he was possessed of more vitality than one would have supposed, for he came back at me with, “Well, the yards was ag’in the backstays all the time in the North Atlantic.”
This was such a novel stand to take that we let him alone, so that he got up and tramped out of the cabin much inflated. What possible difference it could make whether or not the yards touched the backstays as long as the ship lay her course and went through the water was beyond my powers of reasoning.
We are now followed by an immense number of Cape pigeons. What merry, blithesome little fellows they are, apparently all good-nature and love for one another as they circle around the ship, almost brushing the standing-gear in their mad, tumbling flight, now skimming just above the sea, now soaring over the mast-heads, and sweeping down again for very joy that they are made! But let a bucket of table refuse be thrown over the side, and then away with good-fellowship and fraternal affection. It’s a true case of every one for himself and the devil take the hindmost. No sooner does the refuse touch the water than two or three catch sight of it, and in an instant fifty pigeons are involved in furious battle. They fairly scream in their excitement, and beat each other with their powerful wings, and snap viciously right and left with sharp, curved bills. Then one lucky one will perchance seize a choice morsel. Instantly he is set upon by a dozen of his companions, who mercilessly bear down upon him before he can rise from the surface with his prize, and actually beat him down under water in their fierce efforts to get at the tempting mouthful; but so plucky are they, that we have never seen one relinquish anything when his bill has once closed upon it.
While the pigeons are engaged in this deadly strife a great molly-hawk sometimes looms up astern, having sighted the combat from afar, and dashing into the centre of the squabbling flock, which scatters before his huge wings and wide, formidable beak, like crows before a vulture, he snaps up the bone of contention and soars away to enjoy it at his leisure. After the rapacious monster has departed from out their midst, the dejected little creatures return, and hover over any particle of food that may remain, ever and anon diving far below the surface for a crumb that they perceive deep down in the placid depths, rising again with such amazing buoyancy and energy as to lift themselves clear out of the water, like an inflated bladder suddenly released. They afford us much amusement; but another six hundred miles farther north will, no doubt, see the last of our merry little companions. Latitude, 39° 35′ south; longitude, 85° west.
+August 4+
Although the lovely clear skies have for a while disappeared, being obscured by the most clearly defined stratus clouds that I ever saw, the weather is bracing and dry, with a sea so smooth that it never would be supposed that we were hundreds of miles from any land larger than Juan Fernandez or its neighbor, Mas-á-Fuera. Each day sees a rise of two or three degrees in the air and sea, and we are moving well up into the heart of the thirties. We will, no doubt, soon fall in with vessels from Chilean ports bound around the Horn; but those from San Francisco have been driven so far to the westward by the Trades that in this latitude they are away over in 125°. The wind is still to the northward of west, and we continue to make more easting than is desirable; because, if we have to steer much farther in towards the land, our course when we take the Trades will have to be northwest in order to cross the line in the right place, which, of course, would be dead before the wind, an undesirable position in a square-rigger, as in that event only the after-sails draw.
Captain Scruggs was quite a treat at the mid-day meal, for he appeared in one of his majestic phases, when no one can tell him anything that he doesn’t already know. My wife unhappily mentioned that this would be fine yachting weather. Now, the mere mention of a yacht nearly always upsets him; and we, therefore, had to listen while he disputed vigorously with himself for some minutes; and he finally concluded with the assertion that he could take the “Volunteer” and sail right round the “Defender”; he knew the old one was better, anyhow, than that there new brass boat, or whatever she was made of. On suggesting that he might find some little difficulty in consummating such an undertaking, he replied, “Well, I’ve got that confidence in myself; I used to sail small boats when I was a boy, and I ain’t forgot how.”
He concluded his remarks, always delivered in explosions as though challenging you to deny them, with a disquisition on jams. He believes in the theory that all kinds of preserves are boiled down together, and that different labels are then stuck on the tins. “Look at that, now,” he growled, pointing to one on the table. “What d’ye call that?” I showed him the device of a fig on the wrapper, with the name beneath it. “Lemme taste it,” said he, plunging a knife deep into the preserves. “There, what’d I tell you? ’Taint fig jam, it’s currants; they hain’t got the right libel onto it,” he explained.
When dinner was over we repaired, as usual, to the after-cabin, while the old man strode heavily back into the dining-room, called the mate, and abruptly demanded, “Have you got that spigotti out yet?”
“What’s that, sir?” asked the mate.
“Spigotti, spigotti; like macaroni. Don’t you know by this time what spigotti is?” said the skipper, very angrily, for he knew that he didn’t have the name right and that we could hear him.
“No, sir, Cap’in Scruggs, sir, I’m d---- if I do,” stammered the hapless Goggins; for we could perceive the captain through a chink in the door bristled up like a ruffled bantam, and the hideous, grisly old mate, his eyes popping out like a pair of deviled kidneys, racking his brain for a translation of spigotti.
But the particularly scintillating jewel in the skipper’s galaxy of remarkable pronunciations is his name for the inhabitants of Chile. They become Chilaneans; though, now that I think of it, I have heard other ship-masters put themselves to the trouble of so pronouncing it. Where do they get that extra syllable from? Now, in the case of Cubians, it’s different. They all say Cuby, so why not Cubians? It’s logical. But Chilaneans is unreasonable.
Speaking of Cuba reminds me of what a Chesapeake Bay fisherman asked me once, “Hain’t Mayceo fit with the Cubians before?” This was just before Maceo was killed.
Captain Scruggs seems utterly unable to avoid contradiction, and, being possessed of very uncouth manners (which he nevertheless knows quite well how to correct), it may be conceived how trying an ordeal half an hour at the table with him must be. “Don’t talk with him, then,” is very easy to say; we don’t talk between meals to him, but at table it is almost necessary to make one or two observations in thirty minutes; and whenever the silence becomes overwhelming and we hazard a remark, it is disheartening to listen continuously to “_I_ don’t _think_ so.” Latitude, 37° 3′ south; longitude 83° 20′ west.
+August 5+
Just another such day as yesterday, with the sky obscured by sharply-cut, stratus clouds. The only perceptible difference is that to-day the air is a little more balmy; the wind and sea are precisely the same, and our experience so far has been that the Pacific is most aptly named. Of course we ought to be reaching smooth water now, though it is often rough in the southeast Trades; the surprising part is that we had such a quiet sea in the stormy forties. The air has been wonderfully soft all day, the thermometer indicating 58° at noon, although the sky was completely overcast.
Mas-á-Fuera bore east-northeast true at mid-day, distant in round numbers one hundred miles, with Juan Fernandez two hundred miles away in about the same direction. The appearance of this latter island is said to be strikingly beautiful, though in size it is only thirteen miles by four. It consists of a series of steep, rugged hills, formed by huge boulders piled one upon the other, the loftiest reaching an altitude of three thousand feet. Palms, tree-ferns, and a thick undergrowth partially cover these rocky declivities, growing in very shallow earth, which slips away when one attempts to scale the precipices, and it is said that on this account the culminating peak has never yet been ascended.
Juan Fernandez, which lies in the approximate corresponding latitude of the Madeiras, is indissolubly associated with Robinson Crusoe, Defoe having based his tale upon the adventures of one Alexander Selkirk, of Fifeshire, Scotland, who was put ashore there in 1704, at his own request, by Captain Straddling of the “Cinque Porte” galley, with whom, as master, Selkirk had quarrelled. It is highly improbable, however, that Juan Fernandez is the island pictured by Defoe, as his descriptions in Crusoe do not always tally with the conformations of Fernandez. Modern writers incline to the belief that Trinidad, off the Venezuelan coast, was the island in “Robinson Crusoe.” Selkirk lived on Juan Fernandez until 1709, when he was rescued by the ship “Duke” from what seems to have been a by no means intolerable imprisonment. Mas-á-Fuera, which means “more to sea,” called so by the Spaniards, though far smaller than its neighbor, is even loftier still, one peak attaining a height of four thousand feet.
In every spot where men do congregate there will nearly always be found one silent individual, from whom it is apparently impossible to extract a single syllable. We had one such on the “Mandalore,” an English seaman with a Board of Trade certificate. During the whole voyage of eighteen weeks he was never heard to utter a word unless he had some unavoidable reason. Aboard the “Higgins” there is a man who can give him cards and spades on taciturnity, for he hasn’t been known to speak by either mate since the eleventh of May. This contemplative genius is Karl, he whom Rarx so brutally struck in the face with the block away back in the South Atlantic. Even then no word passed his lips, though he did groan He isn’t surly--it is just his way--and the mates do not mind now when he doesn’t answer, as he is manifestly so willing. For torpid stupidity and phlegmatic stolidity his equal would be hard to find, and we have often watched him at work and wondered, “Can it really talk?” The most unexpected and painful surprise cannot draw from him the slightest exclamation. For instance, a fortnight ago, one afternoon at the pumps, a big sea surged over the side, but most of the men saved themselves by jumping up on the fife-rail, except Karl and Brün. Indeed, the latter had saved himself, and was kneeling on the rail holding fast to the mizzen-royal-braces; Karl’s mind, though, was far too numb to grapple with such an emergency, so the water carried him off his feet, wrenched away his grip on the pump-handle, and was sweeping him across the deck, when he grasped one of Brün’s feet in his flight. This broke the latter’s hold on the brace, and away both flew into the water-ways, where they bobbed around for a while in thirty-six inches of icy brine. Brün was in a rage, of course, but not so Karl. His wooden face arose by and by from the roaring scuppers, placid and tranquil; he then by degrees found his legs, waited for a weather-roll, shot back to the pumps, and resumed his place, totally unmoved. All this time he was as dumb as a giraffe.
Again, yesterday afternoon, he was doing some work on the starboard main-brace-bumpkin, when he slipped and went half under water before he caught the bight of a rope that luckily hung over the side. Even this didn’t trouble him in the smallest degree; he didn’t even wink his codfish eyes, but seated himself again upon the bumpkin and proceeded with his job.
Toward the end of the third month at sea most people begin to suffer somewhat from dyspepsia, induced, no doubt, by the absence of fresh meat and vegetables, though the best tinned varieties of the latter certainly taste as good as the fresh. In the old days people, it is true, did not have the great amount of such edibles to choose from as they do now in going to sea, but they had plenty of young pigs and sheep and chickens, which atoned in measure for the lack of canned vegetables. Indeed, the deck of a Yankee ship fifty years ago looked like the conventional barn-yard, with its pig-and sheep-stalls, hennery, and not infrequently an enclosure for a couple of cows. Latitude, 34° 5′ south; longitude, 83° 15′ west.
+August 6+
Gradually, since daylight, the form of the clouds has been changing till they have assumed that of cumulus, and as the wind is letting go, with an appearance of showers ahead, we seem to be upon the brink of a change in the weather. For seven days the wind has been at west-northwest, with never a shift of two whole points, while the variation of the aneroid during that period was not more than fifteen-hundredths of an inch. We are practically on the thirtieth parallel at present, so that in eleven days we have made thirty degrees of latitude. Steadily, too, the temperature has been rising, standing at 59° at eight this morning for both air and water; a still more significant indication of our northing, however, is that last night the fire in the cabin stove was allowed to die out, to-day being the first time in thirty-eight days that we have been without artificial heat; thus for almost six weeks has the stove been going full blast, for it was first lighted in 38° south in the Atlantic.
It is always an interesting thing to note the different attitude of captains toward their chief mates on long-voyage ships. Some are extremely affable, others are reserved and haughty to an absurd degree. Where men are confined together in so small a space as a ship’s deck for months at a stretch I think that a captain ought to be reasonably unbending, but always dignified, in his manner toward the chief officer, though, of course, much depends upon the sort of man the latter is. Captain Scruggs is by turns civil and positively wolfish toward Mr. Goggins; and one of the most curious phases of the old man’s character is that he invariably crushes the mate whenever the latter says something that he thinks will please the skipper. Night before last, at supper, during a conversation about British Columbia, the mate turned to the captain and beamingly said, “I remember the time, sir, thirty years ago, when you used to could talk Chinook with the best of ’em.” To his chagrin, though, the old man growled, “Never knew six words of Chinook in my life”; while as a matter of fact he used to talk it well. Mr. Goggins returned to the charge, however, and again essayed some remarks, during which he ventured to hope that the wind would back into the southward and let us make some westing, very reasonably supposing that here was a sentiment that any skipper would endorse. But, though the captain has been in a white heat lately at our easting, he observed that he “didn’t care a chew er terbakker where the wind went to,” which so angered the mate that he answered quite hotly, “Well, so far as _I_ go, I’m sure _I_ don’t care ’ow long we’re at sea; but I _know_ you do and so do the owners.” “I say I don’t care a rap, rap, rap!” stormed the skipper, and we looked for a row; but the mate slid off the bench and disappeared.
Strange man; unfortunate disposition. He must contradict. He feels it his duty to differ from every one else, even if he knows that he is wrong. This morning I remarked, as we sat down to breakfast, “I see the thermometer’s 59° this morning.” “58-1/2°, I think,” he corrected. Now, in the first place, it was 59°; and in the second place, he wouldn’t have known it if it had been half a degree lower, for he can’t read a book without powerful lenses, much less the rusty scale of a thermometer a foot above his head. Latitude, 30° 44′ south; longitude, 82° 30′ west.
+August 7+
“Unhook that double main-sheet! Square the yards!” Oh, welcome, joyous words! Even if the wind is not more than a breath, it allows us now to lay the course and with a little to spare.
There are some ultra-nautical landsmen who will vigorously object to the first word in this day’s log, and will insist that I ought to have written “cast-off” instead; but if these individuals would go to sea they would learn that there are many expressions heard aboard ship which no argument could persuade them to use, for fear of not being considered _au fait_ in nautical nomenclature. We have all seen the horror of the pale youth with the large steam yacht when some one in his hearing has suggested going “down-stairs” instead of “below.” Yet many deep-water sailors say “down-stairs.” And one of Captain Scruggs’s characteristic orders is, “Let the fore-t’gallant-yard run down, Mr. Rarx, and tie up the sail,” instead of “Clew up the fore-t’gant’-s’l,” while he himself ordered the double main-sheet “unhooked.”
To resume. For seven or eight days we have been jammed hard on the wind, and while we have made very excellent northing, we have fallen away to the eastward so much as to well-nigh overbalance our difference of latitude. In yesterday afternoon’s watch, however, the ship began to come up, and all last night we steered northwest, our course, making fairly good way, though it fell calm at daybreak, but breezed a bit again, and the yards were checked in a couple of points more at 10 +A.M.+ According to Findlay, the average time from 50° south in the Pacific to San Francisco is fifty-four days, and as we are somewhat ahead of the average since leaving that parallel, we can stand a good deal of light weather and still make a fair passage. It cannot be denied, though, that from the equator to 40° south on the other side we had a remarkable streak of bad luck; and I expect that the “A. G. Ropes,” which sailed from New York thirteen days ahead of us, will make a faster passage than we will. In parenthesis I might remark that most of the large ship-owners give their captains ten dollars per day for every day under one hundred and twenty. For instance, if a man makes the passage in one hundred and ten days, he is entitled to one hundred dollars.