Chapter Eight.
A Sudden Interruption.
“Now, my boy,” said Mr Mackay, who had the “first watch,” from eight o’clock till midnight that is, I sharing it with him, speaking as we were just abreast of the light I’ve mentioned, although so far to the southward that it could only be seen very faintly glimmering on the horizon like a star, a trifle bigger than those which twinkled above it and on either side in the clear northern sky—“we’ve run exactly forty-six miles from our departure point.”
“Departure point, sir!” I repeated after him, my curiosity aroused by the use of such a term. “What is that?”
“The last land sighted before a ship gains the open sea,” replied he kindly, always willing to give me any information, although I’m afraid I caused him a good deal of trouble with my innumerable questions, in my zeal to get acquainted with everything connected with the ship and my profession as an embryo sailor. “Ours was the Lizard; didn’t you notice Cap’en Gillespie taking the bearings of it as we passed this afternoon?”
“Yes, sir. I saw him with his sextant, as you told me that queer triangular thing was,” said I; “but I didn’t know what he was doing. I thought our starting-place was the Thames? We must have gone miles and miles since we left the Downs.”
“So we have, my boy; still, that was only the threshold of our long journey, and sailors do not begin to count their run until fairly out at sea as we are now. When you came up to town the other day from that place in the country—West something or other?”
“Westham, sir,” I suggested; “that’s where we live.”
“Well, then,” he went on, accepting my correction with a smile, “when you were telling your adventures and stated that you came from Westham to London in three hours, say, you would not include the time you had taken in going from the door of your house to the garden gate and from thence to the little town or village whence you started by the railway—eh?”
“No, sir,” said I, laughing at his way of putting the matter. “I would mean from the station at Westham to the railway terminus in London.”
“Just so,” he answered; “and, similarly, we sailors in estimating the length of a voyage, do not take into consideration our passage along the river and down channel, only counting our distance from the last point of land we see of the country we are leaving and the first we sight of that we’re bound to. Our first day’s run, therefore, will be what we get over from the Lizard up to the time the cap’en takes the sun at noon to-morrow, which will tell us our latitude and longitude then, when, by the aid of this fixed starting-point or ‘point of departure,’ and calculating our dead reckoning and courses steered, we will be enabled to know our precise position on the chart.”
“I see, sir,” said I. “I won’t forget what you’ve told me another time, and shall know in future what the term means, sir, thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome, Graham,” he replied pleasantly as he resumed his walk up and down the deck, with an occasional glance to windward and a look at the compass in the binnacle to see that the helmsman was keeping the ship on the course the captain had directed before going below a short time before—west-sou’-west, and as close up to the wind as we could sail, so as to avoid the French coast and get well across the mouth of the Bay of Biscay into the open Atlantic. “I hope to make a good navigator of you in time, my boy.”
“I hope so, too, sir,” said I, trying to keep pace with his measured tread, although I always got out of step as he turned regularly at the end of his walk, which was backwards and forwards between the cabin skylight and the binnacle. “I will try my best, sir.”
While bearing in mind the “departure point,” however, I must not forget to mention, too, that immediately after Captain Gillespie had taken our bearings off the Lizard, he sang out to Tim Rooney the boatswain to send the hands aft.
“Aye, aye, sorr,” responded Tim, at once sounding his shrill whistle and hoarse shout. “A–all ha–ands aft!”
“Now for a bit of speechifying,” said Tom Jerrold, who was along with me on the lee-side of the poop, watching the crew as they mustered together on the main-deck underneath. “The ‘old man’ loves a jaw.”
But Tom was mistaken; for the captain’s speech was laconic in the extreme, being “much shorter, indeed, than his nose,” as my fellow mid was forced to acknowledge in a whisper to me!
“My men,” said he, leaning over the brass rail at the head of the poop, and gazing down into the faces of the rough-and-ready fellows looking up at him expectantly, with all sorts of funny expressions on their countenances, as they wondered what was to come—“we’re now at sea and entering on a long voyage together. I only wish you to do your duty and I will do mine. If you have anything to complain of at any time, come to me singly and I will right it; but if you come in a body, I’ll take no notice of ye. Ye know when I say a thing I mean a thing.”
“Aye, aye sir!” shouted the hands, on his pausing here as if waiting for their answer. “Aye, aye, sir!”
“All right then; ye understand me, I see. That will do the watch.”
Whereupon, half of them went back into the forecastle to finish their tea, while the remainder took their stations about the ship, remaining on deck until their span of duty was out, the whole lot having been divided into two groups, styled respectively the port and starboard watches, under charge of Mr Mackay and the second mate, Mr Saunders—Tom Jerrold and I being in the port watch with the first mate; while Sam Weeks and Matthews, who was like the fifth wheel of a coach as “third mate,” a very anomalous position on board-ship, mustered with the starbowlines under Mr Saunders.
Counting in Captain Gillespie, with the three mates, us apprentices, the boatswain, sailmaker Adams and carpenter Gregory—the three latter all “old hands,” having sailed several voyages previously together in the ship—the steward Pedro Carvalho, Ching Wang our cook, Billy the boy, our “second-class apprentice,” and the eighteen fresh men who had come aboard with the Chinaman at Gravesend, our crew mustered all told some thirty-one hands; and, to complete the description of the vessel and her belongings, the Silver Queen was a sharp-bowed, full-rigged ship, with a tremendous bilge, built for carrying a goodish cargo, which consisted, as I believe I mentioned before, mainly of Manchester goods and Birmingham hardware, besides a private speculation of our captain consisting of a peculiarly novel consignment of Dundee marmalade, packed up in tins like those used for preserved meats and such like dainties.
About this marmalade I shall have something to say by and by; but I think I had better go on with my yarn in proper ship-shape fashion, narrating events in the order in which they occurred—merely stating, in order to give a full account of all concerning us, that, in addition to the particulars of our cargo as already detailed, we had sundry items of live freight in the shape of some pigs, which were stowed in the long-boat on top of the deck-house; three cats, two belonging to the Portuguese steward and messing in the cuddy, while the third was a vagrant Tom that had strayed on board in the docks, and making friends with the carpenter Gregory, or “old chips” as he was generally called, was allowed to take up his quarters in the forepeak, migrating to the cook’s cabin at meal-times with unwavering sagacity; a lot of fowls, accommodated aristocratically in coops on the poop; and, lastly, though by no means least, the starling which I’d caught coming down Channel, and which now seemed very comfortable in the boatswain’s old canary cage, hung up to a ringbolt in his cabin next to mine, and regarded as a sort of joint property between us two.
There, you have our list of passengers; and, now, to continue my story.
Shortly after passing the Bishop’s Rock lighthouse, which we did some few minutes before “Billy,” the ship’s boy, came out of the forecastle and struck “six bells,” eleven o’clock, near the end of the port watch’s spell on deck, the wind, which had freshened considerably since sunset, began to blow with greater force, veering, or “backing” as sailors say, more and more round to the north; so that, although our yards were braced up to the full and the vessel was sailing almost close-hauled, we had to drop off a point or two within the next half-hour from our true western course.
Within the next half-hour, south-west by west was as close as we could now keep her head outward across “The Bay,” the wind even then continuing to show a tendency to shift further round still to the northwards and westwards, and naturally forcing us yet more in a southerly direction before gaining the offing Captain Gillespie wished.
The sea, too, had got up wonderfully during the short period that had elapsed from our leaving the Chops of the Channel—I suppose from its having a wider space to frolic in, without being controlled by the narrow limits of land under its lea; for, the scintillating light of the twinkling stars and pale sickly moon, whose face was ever and anon obscured by light fleecy clouds floating across it in the east, showed the tumid waste of waters heaving and surging tempestuously as far as the eye could reach. The waves were tumbling over each other and racing past the ship in sport, sending their flying scud high over the foreyard, or else trying vainly to poop her; and, when foiled in this, they would dash against her bows with the blow of a battering-ram, or fling themselves bodily on board in an angry cataract that poured down from the forecastle on to the main-deck, flooding the waist up to the height of the bulwarks to leeward, for we heeled over too much to allow of the sea running off through the scuppers, these and our port gunwale as well being well-nigh under water.
Presently, we had to reduce sail, brailing up the spanker and taking a single reef in the topsails; but still keeping the topgallant-sails set above them, a thing frequently done by a skipper who knows how to “carry-on.”
Then, as the wind still rose and as with less canvas the ship would go all the better and not bend over or bury herself so much, the topgallants were taken in. At length, when Mr Mackay and I quitted the deck at midnight, the men were just beginning to clew up the main-sail, the captain, who had come up from below with Mr Saunders when the starboard watch relieved us, having ordered it to be furled and another reef to be taken in the topsails, as it was then blowing great guns and the ship staggering along through a storm-tossed sea, with the sky overcast all round—a sign that we had not seen the worst of it yet!
The Silver Queen pitched so much—giving an occasional heavy roll to starboard as her bows fell off from the battering of the waves, with her stern lifting up out of the water, and rolling back quickly to port again on her taking the helm as the men jammed it hard down—that I found it all I could do to descend the poop ladder safely. I climbed down gingerly, however, holding on to anything I could clutch until I reached the deck-house, which was now nearly knee-deep in the water that was sluicing fore and aft the ship with every pitch and dive she gave, or washing in a body athwart the deck as she rolled, and dashing like a wave against the bulwarks within.
I went to turn in to my bunk, which was on top of that occupied by Sam Weeks, who, very luckily for him, had to turn out, going aft on duty with the rest of the starboard watch; for, in my struggles to ascend to the little narrow shelf that served me for a bed, and which from the motion of the ship was almost perpendicular one moment and the next horizontal, I would have pretty well trampled him to jelly, having to stand on the lower bunk to reach the upper one assigned to me.
Ultimately, however, I managed to climb up to my perch and pulled my blankets about me; and then I tried to sleep as well as the roaring of the wind and rushing wash of the sea, in concert with the creaking of the chain-plates and groaning of the ship’s timbers and myriad voices of the deep, would let me.
But, it was all in vain!
Hitherto, although I had been more than two days and two nights on board and had sailed all the way from the docks along the river and down the Channel, I had never yet been sea-sick, smiling at Tim Rooney’s stereotyped inquiry each day of me, “An’ sure, Misther Gray-ham, aren’t ye sorry yit ye came to say?”
Since the afternoon, however, when the water had become rougher and the ship more lively, I had begun to experience a queer sensation such as I recollect once having at home at Christmas-time—on which occasion Dr Jollop, who was called in to attend me, declared I had eaten too much plum-pudding, just in order to give me some of his nasty pills, of course!
I hadn’t had the chance of having anything so good as that now; but, at tea-time Tom Jerrold, who, like myself, had made friends with Ching Wang, had induced him to compound a savoury mess entitled, “dandy funk,” composed of pounded biscuits, molasses, and grease. Of this mess, I am sorry to say, I had partaken; and the probable source of my present ailment was, no doubt, the insidious dandy funk wherewith Jerrold had beguiled me.
Oh, that night!
Dandy funk or no, I could not soon forget it, for I never was so sick in my life; and what is more, every roll of the ship made me worse, so that I thought I should die—Tom Jerrold, the heartless wretch, who was snoring away as usual in the next bunk to Weeks’ below, not paying the slightest attention to my feeble calls to him for help and assistance between the paroxysms of my agonising qualms.
Somehow or other a sympathetic affinity seemed to be established between the vessel and myself, I rolling as she rolled and heaving when she heaved; while my heart seemed to reach from the Atlantic back to the Channel, and I felt as if I had swallowed the ocean and was trying to get rid of it and couldn’t!
Ille robur et aes triplex, as Horace sang on again getting safely ashore—for he must have been far too ill when afloat in his trireme—and as father used to quote against me should I praise the charms of a sailor’s life, “framed of oak and fortified with triple brass” must have been he who first braved the perils of the sea and made acquaintance with that fell demon whom our French neighbours style more elegantly than ourselves le mal de mer!
Weeks had his revenge upon me now with a vengeance indeed for all he might have suffered from my pummelling of the previous day; yes, and for the reproach of the two black eyes I had given him, which had since altered their colouring to the tints of the sea and sky, they being now of a bluish-purple hue shaded off into green and yellow, so that the general effect harmonised, as Tom Jerrold unkindly remarked, with his sandy hair and mottled complexion.
But, my whilom enemy and now friend Sammy must have been amply indemnified for all this when, at the end of the middle watch, he came in due course to rouse me out again for another turn of duty, not knowing that Mr Mackay, as if anticipating what would happen after the shaking up I had had, had given me leave to lie-in if I liked and “keep my watch below;” for, when Weeks succeeded in opening the door of the deck-house, which he did with much difficulty against the opposing forces of the wind and the water that united to resist his efforts, he found me completely prostrate and in the very apogee of my misery.
“Hullo, Graham!” he called out, clutching hold of the corner of the blanket that enveloped one of my limp legs, which was hanging down almost as inanimate over the side of the bunk, and shaking this latter, too, as vigorously as he did the blanket. “Rouse out, it’s gone eight bells and the port watch are already on deck, with Mr Mackay swearing away at a fine rate because you’re not there—rouse out with you, sharp!”
There was no rousing me, however, pull and tug and shake away as much as he pleased both at my leg and the blanket.
“Leave me alone,” I at last managed to say loud enough for him to hear me. “Mr Mackay told me I needn’t turn out unless I felt well enough; and, oh, Weeks, I do feel so awfully ill!”
“Ill! what’s the row with you?”
“I don’t know,” I feebly murmured. “I think I’m going to die; and I’m so sorry I hurt your eyes yesterday, they do look so bad.”
“Oh, hang my eyes!” replied he hastily, as if he did not like the subject mentioned; and I don’t wonder at this now, when I recollect how very funny they looked, all green and yellow as if he had a pair of goggle-eyed spectacles on. “Why can’t you turn out? You were well enough when you called me four hours ago—shamming Abraham, I suppose,—eh?”
I was too weak, though, to be indignant.
“Indeed I’m not shamming anything,” I protested as earnestly as I could, not quite knowing what his slang phrase meant, but believing it to imply that I was pretending to be ill to shirk duty when I was all right. “Weeks, I’m terribly ill, I tell you!”
He scrutinised me as well as he could by the early light of morning, now coming in through the open cabin door, which he had not been able to close again, the wind holding it back and resisting all his strength.
Tom Jerrold, too, aroused by Weeks’ voice and the cold current of air that was blowing in upon him, rubbed his eyes, and standing up in his bunk while holding on to the top rail of mine, had also a good look at me.
“Bah!” cried he at length. “You’re only sea-sick.”
That was all the consolation he gave me as he shoved himself into his clothes; and then, hastily lugging on a thick monkey-jacket hurried out on deck.
“A nice mess you’ve made, too, of the cabin.”
This was Master Weeks’ sympathy as he took possession of Jerrold’s vacated bunk and quietly composed himself to sleep, regardless of my groans and deaf to all further appeals for aid.
Tim Rooney, however, was the most unkind of all.
Later on in the morning he popped in his head at the cabin door.
“Arrah, sure now, Misther Gray-ham, arn’t ye sorry ye iver came to say, at all at all?”
I should like to have pitched something at him, although I knew what he would say the moment he opened his mouth, with that comical grin of his and the cunning wink of his left eye.
“No,” I cried as courageously as I was able under the circumstances, “I’m not sorry, I tell you, in spite of all that has happened, and when I get better I’ll pay you out for making fun of me when I’m ill!”
“Begorra don’t say that now, me darlint,” said he, grinning more than ever. “Arrah, though, me bhoy, ye look as if ye’d been toorned insoide out, loike them injy-rubber divils childer has to play wid. ’Dade an’ I’d loike to say ye sprooce an’ hearty ag’in; but ownly kape aisy an’ ye’ll be all roight in toime. D’ye fale hoongry yit?”
“Hungry!” I screamed, ill again at the very thought of eating. “Go away, do, and leave me alone—o–oh!”
And then I was worse than ever, and seemed afterwards to have no heart, or head, or stomach left, or legs, or arms, or anything.
The boatswain did not forget me though, in spite of his fun at my expense; and he must have spoken to Ching Wang again about me, for the Chinaman came to the cabin after giving the men their breakfast at eight bells, bringing me a pannikin of hot coffee, his panacea for every woe.
“Hi, lilly pijjin, drinkee dis chop chop,” said he, holding the pannikin to my mouth. “Makee tummy tummy number one piecee!”
I could not swallow much of the liquid; but the drop or two that I took did me good; for, after Ching Wang had gone away I fell asleep, not waking till the afternoon, when, the ship being steadier, I managed to scramble out of my bunk and made a late appearance on deck, feeling decidedly weak but considerably better than in the morning.
“Hullo, found your sea-legs already?” cried Mr Mackay on my crawling up the poop ladder. “I didn’t expect to see you out for another day at least.”
“I don’t feel all right yet, sir,” said I, and I’m sure my pale face must have shown this without any explanation; “but, I didn’t like to give way to being ill, thinking it best to fight against it.”
“Quite right, my boy,” he replied. “I’ve never been sea-sick myself, not even the first time I went afloat; but, I’ve seen a good many suffering from the complaint, and I have noticed that the more they humoured it, the worse they became. You’re getting used to the motion of the ship by this time—eh?”
“Yes, sir,” said I, holding on tightly, however, to the bulwarks as I spoke, the Silver Queen just then giving a lurch to starboard that nearly pitched me overboard. “I’ll soon be able to stand up like you, sir.”
“Well, at all events, you’ve got plenty of pluck, Graham; and that’s the sort of material for making a good sailor. You were asking me last night about the course of the ship, if your sickness hasn’t put our talk out of your head. How far do you think we’ve run?”
“A good way, I suppose, sir,” I answered, “with that gale of wind.”
“Yes, pretty so so,” he said. “When the cap’en took the sun at noon to-day we were in latitude 48 degrees 17 minutes north and longitude just 8 degrees 20 west, or about two hundred miles off Ushant, which we’re to the southward of; so, we’ve run a goodish bit from our point of departure.”
“Oh, I remember all about that, sir,” I cried, getting interested, as he unfolded the chart which was lying on top of the cabin skylight and showed me the vessel’s position. “And we’ve come so far already?”
“Yes, all that,” replied he laughing as he moved his finger on the chart, pointing to another spot at least a couple of inches away from the first pencil-mark; “and we ought to fetch about here, my boy, at noon to-morrow—that is, if this wind holds good and no accident happens to us, please God.”
The ship at this time was going a good ten knots, he further told me, carrying her topgallants and courses again; for, although the sea was rough and covered with long rolling waves, that curled over their ridges into valleys of foam like half-melted snow, and it was blowing pretty well half a gale now from the north-west, to which point the wind had hauled round, it was keeping steady in that quarter, for the barometer remained high, and the Silver Queen, heading south-west by south, was bending well over so that her lee-side was flush almost with the swelling water. She was racing along easily, and presented a perfect picture, with the sun bringing out her white clouds of canvas in stronger contrast against the clear blue sky overhead and tumbling ocean around, and making the glass of the skylight and bits of brass-work about on the deck gleam with a golden radiance as it slowly sank below the horizon, a great globe of fire like a molten mass of metal on our weather bow, the vessel keeping always on the same starboard tack, for she wore round as the wind shifted.
Oh, yes, we were going; and so, evidently, Captain Gillespie thought when he came up the companion presently and took his place alongside Mr Mackay on the poop.
“This is splendid!” said he, rubbing his hands as usual and addressing the first mate, while I crept away further aft, holding on to the bulwarks to preserve my footing, the deck being inclined at such a sharp angle from the ship heeling over with the wind. “I don’t know when the old barquey ever went so free.”
“Nor I, sir,” replied the other with equal enthusiasm; “she’s fairly outdoing herself. We never had such a voyage before, I think, sir.”
“No,” said the captain. “A good start, a fairish wind and plenty of it, a decent crew as far as I can judge as yet, and every prospect of a good voyage. What more can a man wish for?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“And I forgot, Mackay, while speaking of our luck, for you know I like to be particular, and when I say a thing I mean a thing—no stowaways on board!”
“True, sir,” responded the first mate with a laugh, knowing the captain’s great abhorrence of these uninvited and unwelcome passengers. “I think it’s the first voyage we’ve never been troubled with one.”
“Aye, aye, they’re getting afraid of me, Mackay, that’s the reason,” said Captain Gillespie chuckling at this. “They’ve heard tell of the way I treat all such swindling rascals, and know that when I say a thing I mean a thing!”
His satisfaction, however, was short-lived; for, just then, several confused cries and a general commotion was heard forward.
“Hullo!” cried the captain, staggering up to the poop rail and looking towards the bows, “what’s the row there?”
“Bedad, sorr,” shouted back the boatswain, yelling out the words as loudly as he could, like Captain Gillespie, and putting his hands to his mouth to prevent the wind carrying them away seaward, “there’s a did man in the forepake!”