XXI
DOLDRUMS
"Lee fore-brace!"
Mister M'Kellar stepped from the poop and cast off the brace coils with an air of impatience. It wanted but half an hour of 'knocking off time'—and that half-hour would be time enough, for his watch to finish the scraping of the deck-house—but the wind waits on no man, and already the weather clew of the mainsail was lifting lazily to a shift. It was hard to give up the prospect of having the house all finished and ship-shape before the Mate came on deck (and then trimming yards and sail after the work was done); but here was the wind working light into the eastward, and the sails nearly aback, and any minute might bring the Old Man on deck to inquire, with vehemence, "What the —— somebody was doing with the ship?" There was nothing else for it; the house would have to stand.
"T—'tt, lee-fore-brace, the watch there!" Buckets and scrapers were thrown aside, the watch mustered at the braces, and the yards were swung slowly forward, the sails lifting to a faint head air.
This was the last of the south-east trades, a clean-running breeze that had carried us up from 20° S., and brace and sheet blocks, rudely awakened from their three weeks' rest, creaked a long-drawn protest to the failing wind; ropes, dry with disuse, ran stiffly over the sheaves, and the cries of the men at the braces added the human note to a chorus of ship sounds that marked the end of steady sailing weather.
"He—o—ro, round 'm in, me sons; ho—io—io—lay-back-an'-get-yer-muscle-up-fer ghostin' through th' doldrums!" Roused by the song (broad hints and deep-sea pleasantries) of the chanteyman, the Old Man came on deck, and paced slowly up and down the poop, whistling softly for wind, and glancing expectantly around the horizon. Whistle as he might, there was no wisp of stirring cloud, no ruffling of the water, to meet his gaze, and already the sea was glassing over, deserted by the wind. Soon what airs there were died away, leaving us flat becalmed, all signs of movement vanished from the face of the ocean, and we lay, mirrored sharply in the windless, silent sea, under the broad glare of an equatorial sun.
For a space of time we were condemned to a seaman's purgatory; we had entered the 'doldrums,' that strip of baffling weather that lies between the trade winds. We would have some days of calm and heavy rains, sudden squalls and shifting winds, and a fierce overhead sun; and through it all there would be hard labour for our crew (weak and short-handed as we were), incessant hauling of the heavy yards, and trimming of sail. Night or day, every faint breath of wind a-stirring, every shadow on the water, must find our sail in trim for but a flutter of the canvas that would move us on; any course with north in it would serve. "Drive her or drift her," by hard work only could we hope to win into the steady trade winds again, into the gallant sailing weather when you touch neither brace nor sheet from sunset to sunrise.
Overhead the sails hung straight from the head-ropes, with not even a flutter to send a welcome draught to the sweltering deck below. Everywhere was a smell of blistering paint and molten pitch, for the sun, all day blazing on our iron sides, had heated the hull like a furnace wall. Time and again we sluiced the decks, but still pitch oozed from the gaping seams to blister our naked feet, and the moisture dried from the scorched planking almost as quickly as we could draw the water. We waited for relief at sundown, and hoped for a tropical downpour to put us to rights.
Far to the horizon the sea spread out in a glassy stillness, broken only by an occasional movement among the fish. A widening ring would mark a rise—followed by the quick, affrighted flutter of a shoal of flying fish; then the dolphin, darting in eager pursuit, the sun's rays striking on their glistening sides at each leap and flurry. A few sharp seconds of glorious action, then silence, and the level sea stretching out unbroken to the track of the westing sun.
Gasping for a breath of cooler air, we watched the sun go down, but there was no sign of wind, no promise of movement in the faint, vapoury cirrhus that attended his setting.
Ten days of calms (blazing sun or a torrent of rain) and a few faint airs in the night time—and we had gained but a hundred miles. 'Our smart passage,' that we had hoped for when winds were fair and fresh, was out of question; but deep-sea philosophy has a counter for every occasion, and when the wind headed us or failed, someone among us would surely say, "Well, wot's th' odds, anyway? More bloomin' days, more bloomin' dollars, ain't it?" Small comfort this to the Old Man, who was now in the vilest of tempers, and spent his days in cursing the idle steersman, and his nights in quarrelling with the Mates about the trim. If the yards were sharp up, it would be, "What are ye thinkin' about, Mister? Get these yards braced in, an' look damn smart about it!" If they were squared, nothing would do but they must be braced forward, where the sails hung straight down, motionless, as before. Everything and everybody was wrong, and the empty grog bottles went 'plomp' out of the stern ports with unusual frequency. When we were outward bound, the baffling winds that we met off Cape Horn found him calm enough; they were to be expected in that quarter, and in the stir and action of working the ship in high winds, he could forget any vexation he might have felt; but this was different, there was the delay at the Falklands, and here was a further check to the passage—a hundred miles in ten days—provisions running short, grass a foot long on the counter, and still no sign of wind. There would be no congratulatory letter from the owners at the end of this voyage, no kindly commending phrase that means so much to a shipmaster. Instead it would be, "We are at a loss to understand why you have not made a more expeditious passage, considering that the Elsinora, which sailed," etc., etc. It is always a fair wind in Bothwell Street! It was maddening to think of. "Ten miles a day!" Old Jock stamped up and down the poop, snarling at all and sundry. To the steersman it was, "Blast ye, what are ye lookin' round for? Keep yer eye on th' royals, you!" The Mates fared but little better. "Here, Mister," he would shout; "what's th' crowd idlin' about for? Can't ye find no work t' do? D'ye want me t' come and roust them around? It isn't much use o' me keepin' a dog, an' havin' t' bark myself!"
It was a trying time. If the Old Man 'roughed' the Mates, the Mates 'roughed' us, and rough it was. All hands were 'on the raw,' and matters looked ugly between the men and Officers, and who knows what would have happened, had not the eleventh day brought the wind.
It came in the middle watch, a gentle air, that lifted the canvas and set the reef points drumming and dancing at each welcome flutter, and all our truculence and ill-temper vanished with the foam bubbles that rose under our moving fore-foot.
The night had fallen dark and windless as any, and the first watch held a record for hauling yards and changing sheets. "'Ere ye are, boys," was the call at eight bells. "Out ye comes, an' swigs them b——y yards round; windmill tatties, an' th' Old Man 'owlin' like a dancin' —— dervish on th' lid!" The Old Man had been at the bottle, and was more than usually quarrelsome; two men were sent from the wheel for daring to spit over the quarter, and M'Kellar was on a verge of tears at some coarse-worded aspersion on his seamanship. The middle watch began ill. When the wind came we thought it the usual fluke that would last but a minute or two, and then, "mains'l up, an' square mainyards, ye idle hounds!" But no, three bells, four bells, five, the wind still held, the water was ruffling up to windward, the ship leaning handsomely; there was the welcome heave of a swell running under.
So the watch passed. There were no more angry words from the poop. Instead, the Old Man paced to and fro, rubbing his hands, in high good humour, and calling the steersman "m' lad" when he had occasion to con the vessel. After seeing that every foot of canvas was drawing, he went below, and the Second Mate took his place on the weather side, thought things over, and concluded that Old Jock wasn't such a bad sort, after all. We lay about the decks, awaiting further orders. None came, and we could talk of winds and passages, or lie flat on our backs staring up at the gently swaying trucks, watching the soft clouds racing over the zenith; there would be a spanking breeze by daylight. A bell was struck forward in the darkness, and the 'look-out' chanted a long "Awl—'s well!"
All was, indeed, well; we had picked up the north-east trades.