XIII
HOMEWARD
In a Sunday morning, while Benicia's bells were chiming for early Mass, we cast off from the wharf at Port Costa and towed down Sacramento. Though loaded and in sea trim, we were still short of a proper crew, so we brought up in 'Frisco Bay to complete our complement.
Days passed and the boarding-masters could give us no more than two 'rancheros' (who had once seen the sea from Sonoma Heights), and a young coloured man, a sort of a seaman, who had just been discharged from Oakland Jail. The Old Man paid daily visits to the Consul, who could do nothing—there were no men. He went to the boarding-houses, and had to put up with coarse familiarity, to drink beer with the scum of all nations, to clap scoundrels on the back and tell them what sly dogs they were. It was all of no use. The 'crimps' were crippled—there were no men.
"Wa-al, Cap.," Daly would say to the Old Man's complaint, "what kin we dew? I guess we kyan't make men, same's yewr bo'sin 'ud make spunyarn.... Ain't bin a darned soul in this haouse fer weeks as cud tell a clew from a crojeck. Th' ships is hangin' on ter ther men like ole blue! Captens is a-given' em chickens an' soft-tack, be gosh, an' dollars fer 'a drunk' on Sundays.... When they turns 'em to, it's, 'Naow, lads, me boys! When yew'r ready, me sons!' ... A month a-gone it was, 'Out, ye swine! Turn aout, damn ye, an' get a move on!' ... Ah, times is bad, Cap.; times is damn bad! I ain't fingered an advance note since th' Dharwar sailed—a fortnight ago! Hard times, I guess, an' we kyan't club 'em aboard, same's we use ter!"
A hopeless quest, indeed, looking for sailormen ashore; but ships were expected, and when the wind was in the West the Old Man would be up on deck at daybreak, peering out towards the Golden Gate, longing for the glad sight of an inward bounder, that would bring the sorely needed sailors in from the sea.
A week passed, a week of fine weather, with two days of a rattling nor'west wind that would have sent us on our way, free of the land, with a smother of foam under the bows. All lost to us, for no ships came in, and we lay at anchor, swinging ebb and flood—a useless hull and fabric, without a crew to spread the canvas and swing the great yards!
Every morning the Mate would put the windlass in gear and set everything in readiness for breaking out the anchor; but when we saw no tug putting off, and no harbour cat-boats tacking out from the shore with sailors' bags piled in the bows, he would undo the morning's work and put us to 'stand-by' jobs on the rigging. There were other loaded ships in as bad a plight as we. The Drumeltan was eight hands short of her crew of twenty-six, and the Captain of the Peleus was considering the risk of setting off for the Horn, short-handed by three. Sailors' wages were up to thirty and thirty-five dollars a month, and at that (nearly the wage of a Chief Mate of a 'limejuicer') there were no proper able seamen coming forward. Even the 'hobos' and ne'er-do-weels, who usually flock at 'Frisco on the chance of getting a ship's passage out of the country, seemed to be lying low.
One evening the ship Blackadder came in from sea. She was from the Colonies; had made a long passage, and was spoken of as an extra 'hungry' ship—and her crew were in a proper spirit of discontent. She anchored near us, and the Old Man gazed longingly at the fine stout colonials who manned her. He watched the cat-boats putting off from the shore, and smiled at the futile attempts of the ship's Captain and Mates to keep the 'crimps' from boarding. If one was checked at the gangway, two clambered aboard by the head, and the game went merrily on.
"Where's she from, Mister?" said the Old Man to the Mate who stood with him. "Did ye hear?"
"Newcastle, New South Wales, I heard," said Mr. Hollins. "Sixty-five days out, the butcher said; him that came off with the stores this morning."
"Sixty-five, eh! Thirty o' that for a 'dead horse,' an' there'll be about six pound due the men; a matter o' four or five pound wi' slop chest an' that! They'll not stop, Mister, damn the one o' them' ... Ah, there they go; there they go!" Sailors' bags were being loaded into the cat-boats. It was the case of:
The grub was bad, an' th' wages low,
An' it's time—for us—t' leave 'r!
"Good business for us, anyway," said the Old Man, and told the Mate to get his windlass ready for 'heaving up' in the morning.
Alas! he left the other eager shipmasters out of his count. The Captain of the Drumeltan raised the 'blood-money' to an unheard-of sum, and two days later towed out to sea, though the wind was W.S.W. beyond the Straits—a 'dead muzzler'!
A big American ship—the J. B. Flint—was one of the fleet of 'waiters.' She was for China. 'Bully' Nathan was Captain of her (a man who would have made the starkest of pirates, if he had lived in pirate times), and many stories of his and his Mates' brutality were current at the Front. No seaman would sign in the Flint if he had the choice; but the choice lay with the boarding-master when 'Bully' Nathan put up the price.
"Give me gravediggers or organ-grinders, boys, if ye kyan't get sailormen," he was reported to have said. "Anything with two hands an' feet. I guess I'm Jan—K.—Nathan, and they'll be sailormen or 'stiffs' before we reach aout!" No one knew where she got a crew, but while the Britishers were awaiting semi-lawful service, Jan K. slipped out through the night, getting the boarding-house runners to set sail for him before they left the Flint with her crew of drugged longshoremen. At the end of the week we got three more men. Granger, a Liverpool man, who had been working in the Union Ironworks, and, "sick o' th' beach," as he put it, wanted to get back to sea again. Pat Hogan, a merry-faced Irishman, who signed as cook (much to the joy of Houston, who had been the 'food spoiler' since McEwan cleared). The third was a lad, Cutler, a runaway apprentice, who had been working ashore since his ship had sailed. It was said that he had been 'conducting' a tramcar to his own immediate profit and was anxious. We were still six hands short, but, on the morning after a Yankee clipper came in from New York, we towed out—with three prostrate figures lying huddled among the raffle in the fo'cas'le.
We raised the anchor about midnight and dawn found us creeping through the Golden Gate in the wake of a panting tug. There was nothing to see, for the morning mist was over the Straits, and we had no parting view of the harbour. The siren on Benita Point roared a raucous warning as we felt our way past the Head; and that, for us, was the last of the land.
When we reached the schooner and discharged our Pilot, it was still a 'clock calm,' and there was nothing for it but to tow for an offing, while we put the canvas on her in readiness for a breeze.
At setting sail we were hard wrought, for we were still three hands short of our complement, and the three in the fo'cas'le were beyond hope by reason of drug and drink. The blocks and gear were stiff after the long spell in harbour. Some of the new men were poor stuff. The Mexican 'rancheros' were the worst; one was already sea-sick, and the other had a look of despair. They followed the 'crowd' about and made some show of pulling on the tail of the halyards, but they were very green, and it was easy to work off an old sailor's trick on them—'lighting up the slack' of the rope, thus landing them on the broad of their backs when they pulled—at nothing! We should have had pity for them, for they never even pretended to be seamen; but we were shorthanded in a heavy ship, and the more our arms ached, the louder grew our curses at their clumsy 'sodgerin'.'
One of the three in the fo'cas'le 'came to' and staggered out on deck to see where he was. As he gazed about, dazed and bewildered, the Mate, seeing him, shouted.
"Here, you! What's yer name?"
The man passed his hand over his eyes and said, "Hans."
"Well, Hans, you git along to the tops'l halyards; damn smart's th' word!"
With hands to his aching head, the man staggered drunkenly. Everything was confusion to him. Where was he? What ship? What voyage? The last he remembered would be setting the tune to a Dago fiddler in a gaudy saloon, with lashings of drink to keep his feet a-tripping. Now all was mixed and hazy, but in the mist one thing stood definite, a seamanlike order: "Top'sl halyards! Damn smart!" Hans laid aft and tallied on with the crowd.
Here was a man who had been outrageously used. Drugged—robbed—'shanghai-ed'! His head splitting with the foul drink, knowing nothing and no one; but he had heard a seamanlike order, so he hauled on the rope, and only muttered something about his last ship having a crab-winch for the topsail halyards!
About noon we cast off the tug, but there was yet no wind to fill our canvas, and we lay as she had left us long after her smoke had vanished from the misty horizon.
At one we were sent below for our first sea-meal. Over our beef and potatoes we discussed our new shipmates and agreed that they were a weedy lot for a long voyage. In this our view was held by the better men in the fo'cas'le and, after dinner, the crew came aft in a body, headed by Old Martin, who said "as 'ow they wanted t' speak t' th' Captin!"
The Old Man was evidently prepared for a 'growl' from forward, and took a conciliatory stand.
"Well, men? What's the trouble? What have you to say?" he said.
Old Martin took the lead with assurance. "I speaks for all 'ans, Captin," he said.... "An' we says as 'ow this 'ere barque is short-'anded; we says as 'ow there's three empty bunks in th' fo'cas'le; an' two of th' 'ans wot's shipped ain't never bin aloft afore. We says as 'ow—with all doo respeck, Captin—we wants yer t' put back t' port for a crew wot can take th' bloomin' packet round the 'Orn, Sir!"
Martin stepped back, having fired his shot, and he carefully arranged a position among his mates, so that he was neither in front of the 'men' or behind, where Houston and the cook and the 'rancheros' stood.
The Old Man leaned over the poop-rail and looked at the men collectively, with great admiration. He singled out no man for particular regard, but just admired them all, as one looks at soldiers on parade. He moved across the poop to see them at a side angle; the hands became hotly uncomfortable.
"What's this I hear, men? What's this I hear?"
("As fine a crowd o' men as ever I shipped, Mister," a very audible aside to the Mate.) "What's this I hear? D'ye mean t' tell me that ye're afraid t' be homeward bound in a well-found ship, just because we're three hands short of a big 'crowd'?"
"Wot 'bout them wot ain't never been aloft afore," muttered Martin, though in a somewhat subdued voice.
"What about them?" said the Old Man. "What about them? Why, a month in fo'cas'le alongside such fine seamen as I see before me" (here he singled out Welsh John and some of the old hands for a pleasant smile), "alongside men that know their work." (Welsh John and the others straightened themselves up and looked away to the horizon, as if the outcome of the affair were a matter of utter indifference to them.) "D'ye tell me a month alongside men that have sailed with me before won't make sailors of them, eh? Tchutt, I know different.... Sailors they'll be before we reach the Horn." (Here one of the potential 'sailors' ran to the ship's side, intent on an affair of his own.)
The men turned to one another, sheepish.
"Ye know well enough we can't get men, even if we did put back to port," continued the Old Man. "They're no' t' be had! Ye'll have to do yer best, and I'll see" (a sly wink to the Mate) "that ye ain't put on. Steward!"
He gave an order that brought a grin of expectation to the faces of all ''ans,' and the affair ended.
A wily one was our Old Jock!
The Mate was indignant at so much talk.... "A 'clip' under the ear for that Martin," he said, "would have settled it without all that palaver"; and then he went on to tell the Old Man what happened when he was in the New Bedford whalers.
"Aye, aye, man! Aye, aye," said Old Jock, "I know the Yankee game, Mister—blood an' thunder an' belayin' pins an' six-ounce knuckle-dusters! Gun play, too, an' all the rest of it. I know that game, Mister, and it doesn't come off on my ship—no' till a' else has been tried."
He took a turn or two up and down the poop, whistling for a breeze. Out in the nor'-west the haze was lifting, and a faint grey line of ruffled water showed beyond the glassy surface of our encircling calm.
"Stan' by t' check th' yards, Mister," he shouted, rubbing his hands.... "Phe ... w! Phe ... w! Phe ... w! encouraging."