Chapter Seven.
Amongst the Islands.
In spite of all Captain Miles’ endeavours to effect an early start from Saint Vincent, we were not really able to weather the island that evening until many hours after our anchor was tripped and all plain sail made.
This was not due, however, either to the delay caused in hoisting the obstreperous cow on board or to the embarrassing episode that occurred after she was shipped. It was entirely owing to the failure of our moving spirit the wind; for we lay becalmed until morning under the lee of the giant Souffrière, whose dark shadow prevented the land breeze from reaching the vessel, while the next day was far advanced before we could gain an offing so as to take advantage of the light airs that then sprang up from seaward. But, then, the Josephine, bellying out her canvas, bore away on her voyage.
The wide gulf of sea which we were traversing—named after the aboriginal Caribs who ruled over its domain lang syne, and hedged in from the Atlantic Ocean by the semicircular group of the Lesser Antilles, or “Windward Islands” of the West Indies—presents great difficulties to the navigators of sailing ships; as, while the wind throughout its extent blows almost constantly in one direction, a series of cross currents set in another, making it a hard task for even experienced seamen to preserve a straight course towards any particular point when going to windward, the result of which is that “the longest way round,” as in other matters pertaining to shore life, is frequently “the shortest way home!”
Taking up the chart casually, a novice would imagine that our direct route from our port of departure to the English Channel would be indicated by a line drawn between the two points and passing through the Azores; but, a sailor accustomed to tropical latitudes would know that, however feasible this might appear in theory, we could not possibly have adopted such a course. It would have presupposed, in the first case, our possessing the ability to sail straight in the teeth of the north-east trade wind, and, in the second case, that we took no account of the influence of the equatorial current, the stream of which setting westwards into the Caribbean Sea, would have drifted as so far to leeward that at the end of the day’s run we must have been pretty nearly where we started from, any progress we made ahead being neutralised by the action of the stream carrying us in a lateral direction.
For these reasons, all navigators up to their work, when making the passage home from the West Indies and vice versa, instead of fighting against the forces of nature as some old seamen of the past used to do, now make both winds and tides run harmoniously in their favour by meeting them half-way, so to speak. Captain Miles, in our instance, therefore, did not wear out his crew by trying to beat to windward in order to get to the open Atlantic immediately. On the contrary, he kept his vessel well away to leeward, shaping a course for Saint Christopher’s, so as to pass afterwards through the Anegada Channel, between the Virgin Islands, and reach the ocean in that way. In other words, following the example of the ready-witted Irishman who drove an obstinate pig to market by pulling him back by the tail, he deliberately steered to the north-west while really wanting to go to the north-east. But, circuitous as such a route looked, the captain was in the end a gainer by it; for, not only did he keep the wind well abeam of the ship all the way on the starboard tack, but he had the additional advantage of having the strong north-westerly current in his favour in lieu of trying to work against it.
During this portion of our voyage the weather was beautifully fine, the sky being of a clear transparent opal tint without a cloud and the sea of the purest ultramarine blue, with little merry dancing wavelets occasionally flecking its changing surface into foam.
The air, too, was balmy, and not unpleasantly warm, a fine healthy breeze blowing, which filled our good ship’s sails, so that they expanded to the furthest limits of the bolt-ropes, speeding her on her way at the rate of some eight knots an hour, as rising and falling she surged through the sparkling water and left a foaming wake astern that spread out in the shape of a fan behind her track, widening until it was lost in the distance.
When I mentioned my going to visit the Josephine as she lay at anchor while taking in cargo at Grenville Bay, I think I said that I had never before been in a vessel. This, however, was not strictly accurate, for when dad came out to the West Indies from England with my mother and sisters some few years previously, I, of course, accompanied them; and as we had to cross the Atlantic in order to reach Grenada, and there was no other mode of overcoming the three thousand odd miles of ocean that lay between us and our destination except by our adventuring the passage in the ordinary way, I was then really for the first time taken on board a ship. But it must be remembered that I was only at that period a tiny baby about the size of my little sister Tot; and, therefore, my recollections of the time being rather hazy, my first real experiences of the sea and all the incidents of the voyage came upon me with all that novelty and interest which unfamiliarity alone can produce. It is, nevertheless, only right that I should make this correction of my former mis-statement, for I wish to give a true and impartial account of all that happened to me from first to last. I am not “spinning a yarn” merely, as sailor’s say, but telling a true story of my life with all its haps and mishaps.
Now, therefore, as the Josephine dashed along, all was new and strange to me; the limitless expanse of blue water shimmering in the summer sun, with flocks of flying-fish rising in the air occasionally to seek refuge from their enemies of the deep, only to fall back again below the surface after a short curving flight, to avoid the grey pelicans hovering above to attack them there; the fresh bracing breeze, which blew in my face so exhilaratingly; the swaying motion of the vessel that gave a lurch now and then, heeling over when the wind took her suddenly on the quarter as she rose on the swell; the whistling of the cordage and creaking of timbers and rattling of blocks, combined with the cheery yo-ho-hoing of the sailors as they slacked a sheet here and tightened a brace there. Really, I was so pleased, excited, and delighted with the whole scene and its surroundings that it seemed as if I were in the ship of a dream sailing on an enchanted sea!
Presently there arose out of the deep on our starboard bow the Pitons of Saint Lucia, two twin conical rocks like the Needles, only ever so much bigger, being over three thousand feet in height. They were festooned from base to summit with beautiful evergreen foliage; and the entrance to the harbour of the island was to be seen within and beyond these outlying sentinels, stretching up inland towards a mass of purple mountains from a beach of yellow sand.
Next, we passed to the leeward of Martinique; and, then, towards sunset of the same day, as we approached Saint Kitts, islet after islet jumped up out of the sea in front of us, to the right hand and to the left. They were all misty at first, but changed their colours from slaty grey to green as we approached them nearer, although their shape was all pretty much the same—tall sugar-loaf peaks surrounded by verdure sloping down in graceful curves to the water’s edge, the surf breaking against the shore of those to leeward in clouds of spray, while the waves washed the rocky feet of those on the windward side without a ripple.
When the sun disappeared below the western horizon, Montserrat, Redonda, Nevis, Saint Christopher, and Saint Eustatius were all in sight around us; and, just at ten o’clock at night, when the moon was at the full, lighting up the scene with its silvery beams as brightly almost as if it were day, we passed between Saint Eustatius and the island of Saba. We approached the latter within two miles, but when its north point bore west we steered for Dog Island, clearing the reefs somewhere about the middle watch.
Soon after sunrise next morning we weathered Sombrero, the last of the Antilles, and thus got fairly out into the Atlantic, leaving the West Indies behind us as we hauled our wind and bore away for the Azores—although a long stretch of ocean had to be crossed ere we might hope to reach this half-way port on our voyage.
But I have not yet described our ship and those on board.
The Josephine was an old-fashioned barque of about five hundred tons burden, built with a high poop and a topgallant forecastle, “or fo’c’s’le,” as seamen call it.
She was a roomy vessel, possessing great breadth of beam, which made her a staunch sea-boat in rough weather, for she could tumble about as much as she pleased without causing much damage to her timbers or risk of her stability; and this roominess, besides, allowed good accommodation aft for a large number of passengers, although in this instance I was the single solitary “landsman” aboard—that is, if a young shaver of thirteen can be dignified with such a high-sounding title!
Her officers and crew consisted of eighteen hands all told; and amongst the former Captain Miles, her master, a sturdy old sea-dog of forty-five or thereabouts, is entitled to be the first described. He had a broad honest face, with a pair of bushy, reddish-brown mutton-chop whiskers, for, unlike the sailors of to-day, the captain was always clean shaven as to his chin and upper lip, esteeming a moustache an abomination, “which only one of those French Johnny Crapaud lubbers ever think of wearing.”
The next officer in rank after Captain Miles was Mr Marline, the first mate, a thin wiry north countryman, with a lot of latent fun and dry humour in him; and then came Davis, the second mate, a thick-set bull-necked dark-haired Welshman, not more than twenty-four or five years of age. He had been promoted from the foremast on account of his predecessor having died on the passage out. Davis was a very good seaman and up to his work; otherwise, his education being sadly deficient, as even I, a boy, could perceive, and his temper and disposition being none of the best, he was certainly not very well fitted to command those with whom he had formerly associated as an equal.
My old friend Moggridge, the boatswain, and Adze, the carpenter, completed the list of those in authority; and, besides these, must be enumerated Cuffee, the king of the cook’s galley; Jake, who had been put on the muster-roll as an ordinary hand; Harry, the captain’s tawny mulatto steward; and ten able seamen—the finest and strongest of all these being Jackson, a smart young Cornishman hailing from Plymouth, who stood some six feet two in his stockings and gloried in such a broad pair of shoulders that he was worth any three of the other hands put together.
To complete the description of our ship, the lower portion of our cargo, stowed in the ground tier of the hold above the dunnage, was sugar and coffee, with some odd bags of cocoa from my father’s plantation to make weight; but our chief freight, fortunately for us, as you will learn later on, was rum. The puncheons containing this were packed as tightly as possible fore and aft the ship above the heavy produce, reaching up amidships to the level of the main hatch, all the spaces between being so compactly filled in with the lighter samples of cargo that not even a cockroach could have squeezed itself in sideways.
In the waist of the vessel on the upper deck, ranged along the inside of the bulwarks on either hand, from the entrance to the cabin under the break of the poop to right away forwards just abaft the foremast, was a row of water-casks. A couple of these had their tops sawn off lengthwise and contained several live turtle which Captain Miles was hopeful of carrying home safely in time for the next ensuing banquet at the Mansion House on lord mayor’s day, an enterprising ship’s chandler in the Minories having given him an order to that effect before he left England on his voyage out to the West Indies. In a similar way, against the sides of the poop were fixed what looked at first sight to be benches for sitting down upon, but which on closer inspection I discovered to be hen-coops,—their occupants projecting their long necks and heads therefrom, in much perplexity evidently at their strange fate in being thus brought to sea; for, as was the case with myself, this was their first experience of what life on board ship was like, and the exigencies of the cabin table would most probably cause it to be their last!
It was not until the fourth day after we had set sail from Grenada that I was able to note all these particulars. Up to that time I had been too much interested with the moving panorama around me to notice things inboard; and, besides, the motion of the Josephine, when she got lively in the seaway amongst the islands, produced an uneasy feeling which led me ere long to retire below and bewail my old home and those from whom I had been so ruthlessly severed with greater grief than I had felt before. I suffered from that fearful nausea which Father Neptune imposes as a penance on the majority of his votaries, and it was wonderful how very melancholy the sensation made me.
However, I struggled gallantly against the fell foe, and, one morning, I crawled out of my bunk early, just as the men began to wash down the decks, the first work of the day aboard ship. This was shortly after we had cleared the island of Sombrero, and when the Josephine was working her way out to sea.
At first I stopped in the waist, near the entrance to the cabin, but Davis, the second mate, who stood with his trousers tucked up showing his bare feet and legs, superintending the hands sluicing the water about from the hose attached to the head pump out on the forecastle, told me politely to sheer off, as they wanted no idlers in the way; so, I ascended the poop-ladder, and was commiserating the poor fowls in the hen-coops along the rails, when Captain Miles, who was standing close to the helmsman at the wheel, addressed me.
“Hallo, Master Tom,” said he, “got your sea-legs again?”
“Yes, captain,” I replied, “I’m all right now, thank you.”
“Beginning to feel peckish, eh?”
“Not very,” said I, for I was qualmish still, although the fresh air had considerably revived me even in the short time since I had come out of the close cabin.
“Ah, but you must eat, though, my boy,” observed Captain Miles kindly, giving me a kindly pat on the back. “An empty stomach is the worst thing in the world to voyage on. Why, you haven’t hardly eaten a bite since the other evening when that poor cow knocked our dinner all into the middle of next week! Never mind, though, breakfast will be ready at eight bells, and we’ll see whether we can’t get some lining upon your ribs, my little skillygalee.”
“I have already asked Jake to get me a cup of coffee, sir,” I said in reply to this; but, before the captain could answer me again, we both had our attention drawn to the deck below. There seemed to be some sort of commotion going on in the cook’s galley away forward, for all the men had their faces turned in that direction, and they were laughing as if at some good joke.
“Waist ahoy, there!” shouted out Captain Miles, going to the edge of the break of the poop and looking down. “What’s the row forward?”
“Hanged if I know, sir,” answered Davis somewhat surlily, adding more gruffly still to the hands around him, “Here, you lazy lubbers, lay along to your work, or I’ll give you something else to grin about!”
“You need not haze the men like that for nothing,” said the captain sharply, muttering something under his breath about “setting a beggar on horseback, and he’ll ride to the—”
However, his further words were cut short by a loud shout of laughter from the men all together, as if with one accord; and then the commotion in the cook’s galley increased, for I could now distinguish the sound of some violent altercation, voices being raised in anger, mingled with the noise of shuffling feet and the crash of crockery-ware.
“By Jingo, they’re going it!” exclaimed Moggridge, who stood in the waist immediately below us. “They’ll be like the Kilkenny cats, and leave only their tails behind!”
“What’s the matter?” again asked Captain Miles. “Anybody fighting, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” said the boatswain, “the two niggers. They’ve been at it in the caboose ever since we began to wash down decks.”
“Then it’s high time to stop them,” cried the captain darting towards the poop-ladder with the intention of ending the fray, whatever it was.
But, before he could descend two steps, the half-door of the galley burst open outwards with a crash, when two dark figures, locked in a tight embrace and pommelling one another with immense fury, came rolling out upon the deck. They then scrambled and tumbled into the lee scuppers, where they continued to struggle still, unmindful of the foot deep or more of water, into which they were suddenly plunged, that was swishing to and fro with the motion of the ship.
“You take dat now,” I heard Jake’s voice say excitedly. “I mash um face well.”
“An’ you take dat, you hangman tief,” cried the other with equal earnestness. “Golly, I gib you gosh!”
Then came the thud of blows, easily distinguishable above the splashing of the refuse water that had accumulated to leeward from the sluicing of the decks, with the convulsive movements of two pairs of arms and legs mingled together in a confused mass—one woolly head being occasionally uplifted above the other and immediately as quickly dragged down again. The crew all the while screamed with laughter, enjoying the combat with the utmost relish, and without attempting to interfere in any way between the angry antagonists.
“Stop the rascals, stop them!” sang out Captain Miles, jumping down into the waist and hurrying to the scene of action. “They’ll either kill or drown each other!”