Windjammers and Sea Tramps

by Baron Walter Runciman Runciman

TELLING HIS FORTUNE

"Terrible misfortune?" repeated the impassioned owner. "Is it a terrible misfortune to make a West Coast voyage within three months?"

"No," said the burly tug master, "I now see you do not apprehend the position. I didn't care to say to you that the captain had a vision off Cape Horn which decided him to return to this port."

"What?" said the almost speechless potentate. "A vision? Back here, without being to Valparaiso? My God!—I will never get over it!"

And in truth he nearly collapsed, business, body, and soul, over the matter.

The vessel was brought into the harbour. The sanctified skipper did not receive the promised gifts! The vessel sailed in a few days without him for the same destination; and until a few years since he could be seen any day walking the quay, still holding to the belief that it was the Divine will he had carried out. This faith was strengthened by the vessel never having been heard of again after sailing the second time. I never heard of the owner showing any vindictiveness to the poor captain, who was, no doubt, the victim of a strange hallucination.

It would be unfair to impute a monopoly of superstition to the seafarer. Sailors have superstitions which are not now exclusively theirs, though they may have been the originators of them; for instance, placing a loaf of bread upside down, spilling the salt (and nullifying the mischief by throwing a few grains over the left shoulder); these, as well as the leaving of stray leaves and stalks in teacups are considered sure indications of past or coming events, even by the large and enlightened public who pass their lives on dry land. There are few things more comical than to see the nautical person studiously avoid passing under a shore ladder. The penalty of it has a terror for him; and yet his whole life is spent in passing to and fro under rope ladders aboard ship without any suspicion of evil consequences. But the landsman's belief in mystic tokens and flighty safeguards is faint indeed compared with that which permeates and saturates the mind of the typical sailor. A gentleman with whom I was long and closely associated held definite opinions on symbolic apparitions. His faith in black cats was immovable; but this only extended to those who actually crossed his path, and to him that was a sign indicative of good fortune. I have seen him go into ecstasies of joy over an incident of this kind; and woe unto the person who interrupted the current of his happiness. He would curse him with amazing fluency until resentment choked the power of expression. This same human phenomenon was, in early life, shipwrecked on one of the hidden shoals with which the north-east coast abounds, at the very moment when he was taking from the girdle in the galley a hot cake he had baked in celebration of his birthday, and as a precaution against future calamities he ever after wore the left foot stocking outside in; and although he has passed through many dangers which nearly ended in disaster, he has never again been shipwrecked. Hence his faith is unbroken in the protecting virtue of this mode of wearing that article of dress, and so is his reverent belief in black cats as charms against evil fortune. I have never known a person with a larger sense of genuine humour than this man possessed, and yet one could never appear to slight his peculiar superstitions without producing a paroxysm of fury in him. He would watch for the appearance of a new moon with touching anxiety, and although his finances were very frequently in a precarious condition, he never allowed himself to be without the proverbial penny to turn over under the new moon as a panacea against hidden pecuniary ills! If, in sailor parlance, a star "dogged the moon," that was to him a disturbing omen, and great caution had to be observed that no violation of nautical ethics took place during the transit. It was never regarded as a transit, but as a "sign" from which evil might be evolved.

Amidst all this singular piety in externals (for it was really a species of piety), this typical sailor never gave up his belief in the efficacy of strong language, which, among the worst of his class, was frequently indescribable; and the more eloquent he was in the utterance of oaths the larger became his conviction that he possessed a gift not to be acquired by mere tuition. Many years ago, when I was a very small apprentice boy aboard a brig we had a steward who was also a sailor of no common ability. His career had been a long one of varied villainy, he impersonating alternately a parson and a rich shipowner. In the latter rôle he succeeded in getting large advances of money from unsuspecting store, sail, and rope dealers—taking advantage of a trade-custom which prevails in every port, in return for which he gave orders, which caused the favoured firms to be looked upon with envy. They were requested to have these supplies put aboard four days after the order was given; and the penalty for not being able to do so was to be the loss of a very valuable connection. There was much condescension on the part of the bounteous customer, who "would call again in two days," and much thanking and bowing and shaking of hands on the part of the recipients when the time came to say "Good-day." The stores were duly sent to the docks where the vessels were lying, but the real owners did not recognise the person who had given the order as having any connection with them, whereupon an unhappy dawn broke over the minds of the unsuspecting victims. Many months elapsed before the gentleman in question was apprehended and confronted by the tradesmen to whom he owed a period of blissful dissipation. Needless to say the meeting was not so cordial as the parting, though a lack of cordiality could not be charged against the improvised shipowner. Indeed, to the great discomfort of his former friends, as soon as an opportunity was given him, from his position in the prisoners' dock, he saluted them with playful familiarity; but this did not prevent him being sent to penal servitude. He had played many other rôles under many names, but it was as a parson he prided himself in having met with success by the startling number of conversions that attended his efforts. He belonged to a respectable and well-known family, and their anxiety to have him reclaimed from the vices that had produced for them so much sorrow induced them to prevail on his brother-in-law, who was master of a brig, to take him under his special care; so he was appointed as steward, and thereby given the opportunity of spoiling much valuable food, and causing grievous dissension among the crew.