“Any chance of a job, sir?” I murmured in my very best longing-for-work voice. The skipper stood stroking his whiskers, and, after scrutinizing me from head to feet, demanded to see my discharges.
“Git yer traps and come aboard.”
I was engaged as a member of the crew.
Next day we were towed down the harbour by a tug, and by midnight had a steady wind on the quarter, which took us out with all sails set into the Pacific.
It was a monotonous, long voyage. The “Saga,” for that was the name of the ship, wasn’t a “Cutty Sark” or a “Thermopylae” for speed.[[1]] Anyway, the length of the voyage helped to warm my ardent longing to arrive at the palmy coral isles.
[1]. The “Cutty Sark” and “Thermopylae” were two of the fastest sailing ships running from London to Sydney. The author sailed before the mast from Sydney to San Francisco on the “Cutty Sark.”
I think I was the happiest member of the crew when, after much buffeting with wild weather and stinking pork and maggoty hard-tack, our old wind-jammer hugged the outer reefs of the Samoan Isles. Ah, the music of the long-drawn sounds of the surges beating over the barrier reefs! I half fancied I could hear the palms sighing lyrical melodies as the winds crept like overflowing zephyrs from some great scented dream across that pagan world. On the dim blue horizon rose ranges of mountains, apparently touching the tropic sky: they were, to me, the peaks of romance!
The dry tongues of the aged, seasoned sailors hung out as they rubbed their tarry hands and sniffed the distant grog-saloon. Old M’Dougal, the ship’s carpenter, danced a jig and looked human for the first time. The Dutch boatswain pulled his red beard, gave a terrific grin in the moonlight, and muttered something about “Voomen and vine.” Then I got my few belongings together, packed my violin carefully, and was ready to go ashore.
It was quite dark when I found myself being rowed, or rather paddled, ashore in an outrigger canoe. As I went gliding by the moon-ridden lagoons, I felt that at last I had surely entered some magical harbour of a fairy-land.
Even when sunrise came like a silent crash of liquid gold over the wide Pacific, touching the mountain peaks and the scattered bee-hive-shaped huts of the forest townships, I was not disillusioned. All seemed as I had so fondly anticipated; it was as I had read about it all. Men yarned and argued dogmatically as they stood, fierce-eyed, before the bar of the wooden grog-shanty; there they stood, attired in large slouched hats, telling such mighty things about their thrilling travels that even old Homer, could he have heard, might well have sighed with envy!