Round the Galley Fire

BY W. CLARK RUSSELL AUTHOR OF “THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,” “AN OCEAN TRAGEDY,” “ON THE FOK’S’LE HEAD,” ETC.
A NEW EDITION London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1893


These stories and sketches originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph . No further preface to them is needed than this statement; for the title under which they are collected will fitly express their character, if the reader can imagine himself one of an audience, in a cold Dog Watch, listening to the yarns of a man who has planted himself in the galley, where he delivers his memories and notions to the little company who have gathered round to listen.


A large Australian passenger ship, homeward bound from Sydney, New South Wales, lay becalmed in about two degrees south of the line. She had carried the trade-wind to that point, but it had failed her at daybreak, and all day long she had hung upon the whitish-blue of the oil-smooth sea, slightly leaning with the swell that ran through the bosom of the deep with the regularity of a restful respiration, her white canvas softly beating against the yellow masts, which were radiant with lines of fire, and the water bubbling like a fountain under her counter, as the stern of the great fabric was depressed by the heave of the swell under the bows.
She was tolerably well crowded with human beings, carrying a large number of passengers in the cuddy and steerage, and some thirty or forty people in the ’tween decks. The poop was sheltered by an awning, and under it, seated on chairs or lounging upon the skylights and the hencoops, were such of the passengers as were privileged to use that portion of the decks, reading, talking, smoking, casting languid eyes upon the breathless ocean; ladies fanning themselves, gentlemen in the airiest possible costumes, and at the extremity of the shadowed deck the steersman grasping the wheel, his figure in the pouring vertical sunshine rising and falling against the rich sapphire of the tropical heavens with the swaying of the ship, and the brilliant brass of the binnacle-hood flashing into flames as it slowly lifted and sank under the eye of the burning luminary.