Part 28
We went along pretty slowly last night, for only the faintest of breezes came whispering over the Pacific; and it was so still that we could plainly hear the sighing of porpoises as they rolled languidly through the water alongside, a brilliant flash of phosphoric light showing where each disappeared. At daylight this morning, though, a delightful breeze came singing out of the east-southeast, and by nine o’clock we were making seven knots, doing twenty-nine miles in the forenoon watch,--no mean speed for the equatorial ocean. It seems that the light spell was only a lull in the Trades, for there are plenty of indications of wind round about.
At 4.30 yesterday, after pumping, I had yet another conversation with the doughty Scot. “Have ye taken notice of the way the mate’s slacked up on the men?” he asked; “that’s a bad sign, now. Here’s this man cut; before ye’ll remember how he used to shout and charge around the decks. What do ye hear from him now? Nothin’ at all. I haven’t heard him raise his voice to one o’ the men since Wednesday night. Why? ’Cause he’s scared. He’s in a funk; and I have the task o’ keepin’ the ship in order forrad. One o’ them, Tim, was goin’ to get ugly this forenoon; but I turned on him sharp and says, ‘See here, now, drop that; you’ve laid one man out, haven’t you? You have; but I’m d---- if you’re goin’ to lay me out,’ says I, and that settled it for the time. Who’ve I got to depend on if they do break out? The mate’s no good, and t’other bosun’s only a child. When Mr. Rarx gets up again you’ll see some fireworks. Did ye ever hear anythin’ about Cap’n Slocum in the ‘D. G. Tillie’? He’s another hard nut. I was comin’ around in her once from Baltimore, bound to ’Frisco with a load o’ coal. One o’ the men forgot to say ‘sir’ to the second mate one day in a hard squall; so Slocum clapped the irons on him, and then near beat the life out of him with a fid. This little bit o’ fun, though, I heard cost him near two thousand dollars. I’ll tell ye the ships you’d ought to sail in if ye make another voyage,--one of the Loch Line; they’re grand ships, and run like men-o’-war; I’ve been in them, and they’re the best that sails the seas.”
They are, doubtless, the best run sailing ships in the world, and were built not alone to carry agricultural implements and wool in the London-Melbourne trade, but to take out passengers as well. There are fifteen of them, and all named after Scottish lochs, and they vary in size from twelve hundred to two thousand tons. If all ships were as fast as the “Loch Torridon,” tramp steamers would be at a discount. This vessel goes wherever she can find a charter, and has made a number of wonderful records. She holds the best record for a deep-loaded ship from Newcastle, Australia, to San Francisco,--forty-six days. In 1891 she made the passage from Sydney to London, wool-laden, in eighty days, beating a fleet of seventy-eight vessels, similarly loaded and bound to the United Kingdom. It was on this voyage that Captain Pattman, who has commanded the ship for sixteen years, made a record that is simply marvellous, by sailing from the Diego Ramirez to the Lizard in forty-one days! In 1892 the “Loch Torridon,” in ballast, went out to Melbourne from London in sixty-nine days, and the consecutive runs for nine days were, in knots, 302, 290, 288, 272, 285, 282, 270, 327, and 341; and from Saturday noon to Saturday noon the ship made 2119 knots, an average of 303 knots per day, or about thirteen miles per hour. Another fast passage of this gallant ship was from Newcastle, Australia, to Valparaiso in thirty days. It is easy to imagine the intense pride that a ship-master must feel in such a vessel. Her picture appears on the opposite page. It is a pity that her royals are clewed up.
[Illustration: The four-masted British ship “Loch Torridon”]
Last evening Louis’s coat and a change of clothes were brought aft by Charlie, one of the jolly, good-tempered fellows. “Lemme see them duds,” growled the mate, standing by the wheel-house, who then went carefully through the pockets for concealed weapons, but found only a lump of tobacco, which some one had slipped into the pocket, as Louis is a great masticator of the weed. The mate subsequently transferred the tobacco to his own pocket, whereupon Charlie actually expostulated with him, at which Mr. Goggins said never a word! The second mate is now doing quite well, and ate his first solid food to-day, a bit of dry toast, but his rations still consist mostly of arrow-root gruel. The captain told us to-day that last Friday he didn’t think that Mr. Rarx would live through that day, but a robust constitution has apparently pulled him past the crisis. The more we ponder on the stabbing affair the more remarkable it seems that the second mate should have started the row. If the truth were known, both Rarx and Louis were perhaps getting a little rusty from disuse and tried to brighten matters up a little; but Rarx’ll never take another Dago by the throat again (at sea Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians are Dagos; Scandinavians, Hollanders, and Germans are Dutchmen). Louis will have a very strong case against the second mate if he can get Karl and some of the others to testify as to their treatment at the hands of Mr. Rarx; and self-defence is an excellent plea when a man takes another by the throat, especially if the said man has been in the habit of utilizing belaying-pins for other purposes than those for which they were intended. Latitude, 1° 45′ north; longitude, 117° 15′ west.
+August 24+
Two hundred and two miles! How’s that for one day’s run in the southeast Trades two hundred and fifty miles north of the equator? Indeed, this is the best that we have done for a fortnight, and it has put all hands in a happy mood. A powerful current setting west-northwest, two and one-half knots an hour, has been responsible for about sixty miles of the distance, but the wind is strong at south-southeast and should give us another good run to-morrow. Except the Gulf Stream, I do not know of a current in the open sea as strong as this one, which, if in a harbor, would at times, half bury a small can-buoy. The heat, though, is very severe now, the humidity and oppressiveness being extreme.
The second mate was carried out of his room this forenoon and laid in a reclining chair on the main-deck. His respiration is improving, though it is still labored, and he says that he really feels but little better. The probability of his being able to resume his duties before we reach port is very remote, which is fortunate for the men, for if Mr. Rarx should sufficiently recover to stand his watches, there would be a terrific thumping of sailors.
The mate went below to put a fresh pair of irons on Louis, and in doing so handled him very roughly (a courageous performance), so that the Frenchman sobbed two or three times. “Ha,” quoth Goggins, “blubberin’, eh? That’s just like you Dagos. You’re nothin’ but a lot of old women with no more sand than a--a--a--jelly-fish, you ain’t.” People in glass houses occurred to me then, and I thought how Louis could, any day, pick up this miserable creature when he went down with his food, and shake the life out of him with just one of those mighty arms of his. The Frenchman is unlucky in having such wrists, for there is not a pair of irons in the ship nearly large enough, and each wrist is encircled by a ringlet of raw skin where the handcuffs have gripped and chafed it as though it had been seared with a hot bracelet. I cannot help feeling sorry for him, in spite of his deed; for it is improbable that a man whose general character is so good and whose face is so frank and honest is a villain at heart. Like the rest of his nation, he is very quick-tempered, and upon the second mate’s catching him by the throat his hand instantly flew to his weapon, the common sailor’s sheath-knife. On the other hand, both Tim and Coleman look like typical hard cases, with restless eyes and evil, discontented, sinister faces. Why is it that such men are seldom maltreated at sea? It is only such inoffensive creatures as Karl and Brün who are kicked about a ship’s deck like curs in an alley-way. Such men as I have mentioned first are thoroughly wide-awake, too, and know just how far to go in irritating captains and mates without laying themselves open to punishment; and when mates cannot detect them, they (the mates) “take it out” on others.
The most intelligent man forward is a New Yorker, Dick Broadhead, and, as he has been very willing to talk, we have had some interesting conversations. He is going out to ship in one of the Pacific mail steamers as quartermaster, which accounts for so respectable a young man’s signing in an American vessel. What a splendid lot of young, native Americans we would have in our merchant marine if boys at sea in our deep-water ships were treated as they are in the vessels of other nations! The real American sailor, as he has proved in our naval achievements, has no superior, and if even the mildest inducements were offered to young men of decent antecedents to sail in our ships, we would soon have a merchant service that would be the envy of the rest of the world. Look at the training-ship “St. Mary’s,” which is supposed to supply young men to officer our steamers and sailing ships. I have yet to meet with a single graduate of this excellent institution on a sailing vessel, for they absolutely refuse to sign in them even as second mate, saying that until blood and belaying-pins cease to fly in our long-voyage ships, they would leave them severely alone. The existing condition of things actually prevents our boys and young men from joining the merchant service. Why have we not a Plimsoll to strip our ships of the unprincipled wretches who command and officer them? Although not a sailor, this excellent man spent most of his life and ten thousand pounds in ameliorating the condition of English seamen. If our sailors were treated as they are in the foreign services, we should have gentlemen’s sons as captains and mates, as they have in Great Britain and Germany, and not the miserable examples of humanity that are to be found on the quarter-decks of the majority of our deep-water-men. The second mate of a ship once said to me, speaking of the captain of one of our crack San Francisco wind-jammers, “What! Cap’n B----? Why, he don’t know who his father and mother were.” If this is the captain, what can you expect?
But I have drifted away from Broadhead. This is the second ship under the stars and stripes that he ever served in, having been shanghaied on board the “Virago” once two or three years before in a Chinese port. It was this ship’s maiden voyage, and she came home around South America from Hong-Kong, instead of around Africa. Concerning Captain Jones, Broadhead remarked, “I’ve seen dummies in command of ships, but he beats the deck. The first bad squall we had off the Horn, I was steering, and he was so scared he just held on to the rail and yelled, and I heard the mate say to him, ‘Why don’t you get the t’-ga’nt-s’ls off her?’ She went down to the sheer-poles in that squall, and they do say he hasn’t had anything above the topsails on her since. I’ll give you a tip: the ‘Virago’s’ got three masts too many for Cap’n Jones.” Latitude, 4° 24′ north; longitude, 119° 20′ west.
+August 25+
So joyous a breeze has wafted us along for twenty-four hours that at noon to-day we were two hundred and two miles from where we were at the same time yesterday. We have no current now, and our run was due solely to good, honest winds from south-southeast. At about noon to-day, though, the breeze shifted to south-southwest, and now (4 +P.M.+) it is at southwest and not strong. It is probable that we have lost the Trades, after holding them for thirty-five degrees of latitude,--a remarkable piece of luck. It was grand sailing then; the very finest that we ever had. But hence to 15° north will no doubt be a trying week. It was a matter of some surprise to us when we first learned that the light southwesterly wind that blows between the Trades in the Atlantic and Pacific is called a monsoon. It is generally supposed that the term monsoon, which is from the Arabian _mawsun_, signifying season, is applied to certain winds on the southeast coast of Asia only.
Gracious, how hot it is here now! What a difference in a few hours! At noon, with the sky heavily overcast and on the coolest part of the deck, the thermometer stood at 84°. In equatorial regions it is only when far removed from salt-water that the mercury rises to such altitudes as 130°; this fearful temperature is experienced in many localities, such as Northern India, Mojave Desert, in Southern California, and in parts of Australia. In such places as Para, Singapore, and Madras, though close to the equator, the temperature seldom rises more than two or three degrees above 90°. Anything higher than 80° in such places, as well as at sea, would be considered almost unbearable by most people.
While my wife and I were reading on the deck-house this morning we observed the wee cook in transports of delight, the cause of which became apparent when he held up a fine bonito. We went down to look at it, and then perceived two men on the jib-boom end fishing for them, so we climbed up on the top-gallant forecastle-head to watch the sport. It was delightful up there, cool and breezy from the gush that whirled out of the curve of the foresail. We braced ourselves against the knight-heads and, looking down over the lofty, flaring bows, we could see dozens of bonitos darting swiftly about the cut-water as we swept grandly on through the blue, transparent sea. Far out on the tapering end of the spar were Charley and Olsen; the former with the line in his hand, the hook being concealed by that singular and universal deep-sea bait, a bit of white cotton cloth. Charley kept the hook just touching the surface, except when he jerked it sharply upward, in imitation of the flight of the flying-fish, which form the principal food of the voracious bonito. It would be all but impossible to conceive a more beautiful scene than that which fascinated us for half an hour. The fish themselves were of the most exquisite colors, some brilliant blue, some magenta, others of a rich purple; and as they flashed through the water with incredible speed, twisting and twirling about in pursuit of their prey, with now and then a gleam of silvery white from their under parts, they looked not unlike segments of a vivid rainbow. Presently one would shoot clear out of the water for the bait, straight and swift as a dart, and seize it in his toothless but greedy jaws. A great churning and splashing would follow, and then Charlie, almost hysterical with excitement, would haul up the lithe, handsome creature, quivering and vibrating as though galvanized. No sooner would he be hooked than perhaps a hundred flying-fish would break through the surface and sail gleaming away for a few rods, only to fall into the rapacious mouths of their enemies. The spectacle was one long to be cherished: the whizzing flight of the glittering little fish, the lustrous-hued bonitos, the tranquil surface of the ocean, broken here and there with foaming ripples, and the lofty tiers of canvas rearing themselves higher and higher toward the clouds.
Captain Scruggs continues his quiet, almost agreeable manner, answers pleasantly, and has little to say at meals. It is aggravating to think that the skipper knew quite well how he ought to have behaved during the voyage, and that he simply didn’t care “whether school kept or not.” Now and then the silence is broken during dinner by a shattering crash of the old man’s ponderous foot upon the oil-cloth floor, while he simultaneously yells, “Get out o’ here, you homely thing!” This is an exhortation to the gaunt, pop-eyed cat, which sometimes slinks into the cabin at meals. It seems impossible to fatten this singular animal, and it skulks and stalks about the decks as lank and ribbed as a Calcutta jackal, with its huge saffron eyes fixed motionlessly upon you in so startling a fashion that it looks like an incarnation of one of Cruikshank’s drawings. Its notions of sport are equally strange; Tommie, the sleek Maltese, has been trying to teach it how to play, but when Tom rushes sportively at it, the other executes a series of prodigious, vertical leaps, with its legs flat out at right angles, and in another moment vanishes with an eldrich cry.
Mr. Rarx is about the same; two of the men supported him to-day while he tried to hobble about the deck; but he cannot for an instant even stand alone. Latitude, 6° 56′ north; longitude, 121° 15′ west.
+August 26+
We are now certain that we have lost the Trades. The wind has been steady at southwest for twenty-four hours, and, though not a strong breeze, we made more than two degrees of latitude, which is not bad going for this region, and three days of it would take us into the northeast winds. It is intensely hot and moist, and heavy showers pelt us every half-hour; but it is a fine chance for cleaning ship, and all hands are at work scrubbing off the old paint from the bulwarks and deck-houses preparatory to the new coat.
How I wish we could get a photograph in colors of that villain, Tim Powers! I never supposed that one of the human species could so nearly in appearance approach the simian race. His head and jaws are covered with a thick growth of bright-red hair, which continues down his throat till it meets a shaggy breast. The body, powerfully made, is curved forward like an ape’s, and long, thick arms, hair-covered to the knuckles, swing loosely well below the middle; and he waddles in his gait like a monkey endeavoring to walk upright. The best possible description of this animal is to say that he is ever so much more like a chimpanzee than a chimpanzee is. Besides all this, he is so dirty that the rest of the men follow him with their eyes as he moves about the deck.
Those who are not especially interested in the well-being of our sailors may find the following dissertation somewhat tiresome; but the facts about to be set forth ought to be known to the public, as they certainly are not, so that I will not begin these remarks with an apology for their length.