The lieutenant and commander

by Basil Hall

PROGRESS OF THE VOYAGE.

Let people say what they please of the fine bracing weather of a cold climate, I have never seen any truth-speaking persons who, on coming fairly to the trial, did not complain of a cold frosty morning as a very great nuisance, or who did not cling eagerly to the fire to unbrace themselves again. For my own part, I have always delighted in the relaxation caused by hot weather; and, accordingly, I have very seldom, if ever, felt the weather disagreeably warm, even in India, especially when sailing on the open sea, or enjoying the free range of a wide country, under awnings and bungaloes, or stretched in a palanquin, or shaded by an umbrella on the back of an elephant. Soldiers and sailors, whose duty exposes them at all hours, either on a march or in boats, are often struck down by the heat, and sigh with all their hearts for the bracing frosts of higher latitudes. But those who have the means of bringing to bear on their comforts the innumerable contrivances which the ingenuity of wealth has devised in the East, indeed, make its climate not only bearable, but one of the most enjoyable in the world.

As we sailed along on our voyage to India, gradually slipping down from the high to the low latitudes, the sun crept up higher and higher every day towards the zenith, while the thermometer, of course, rose likewise. What was most agreeable in this change from cold to warmth was the little difference between the temperature of the day and that of the night. As we approached the equator, the thermometer fell only from 82° in the day-time to 79° or 80° at night, which, on deck, was delightful. We did not, of course, come to this high temperature all at once; for on the 6th of May, the day after we passed directly under the sun, the average of the twenty-four hours was 73°, and at night 69° and 70°.

It is not to be imagined that everyone was pleased with these changes; for on board ship, as on shore, there exist discontented spirits, whose acquired habit it is to find fault with the existing state of things, be these what they may. To such cantankerous folks a growl of misery would really seem to be the great paradoxical happiness of their lives, and, in the absence of real hardship, it is part of your thorough-bred growler to prophesy. I have seen a middy of this stamp glad to find, on coming below, that some insignificant portion of his dinner really had been devoured by his hungry messmates, while he himself was keeping his watch on deck.

"I am used worse than a dog!" he would cry, secretly delighted to have gained the luxury of a grievance, "I can't even get a basin of pease-soup put by for me; it's an infernal shame, I'll cut the service!"

The diversity of climate on an Indian voyage furnishes capital nuts for these perturbed spirits. It is first too cold, then too hot; then there is not wind enough; then it blows too fresh in the squalls: by-and-bye the nights are discovered to be abominably close and sultry, and in the day the fierce flaming downright heat of the sun is still worse; then the calms are never to be over; or the lying trades, as they call them, have got capsized, and blow from the west instead of the east! After the line has been crossed, and the south-east wind is met with, the weather soon becomes what these ingenious fellows call too temperate, then it grows too cold again; and next off the Cape the latitude is too stormy. In this alone they have some reason; and I have often regretted that, by a royal ordinance of the King of Portugal, the name of this mighty promontory was changed from Cabo de Tormentos, the headland of storms, to its present spoony title. In short, this grand voyage is merely a peristrephic panorama of miseries, which if they survive, say they, it will be happy for them.—Happy! Not a whit. It is out of their nature to be happy. To find fault, to fling away the good the gods provide them, and to aggravate the pain of every real wound by the impatience of idle complaints, is their diseased joy. "Evil, be thou my good!" they might well exclaim; for, instead of heightening the pleasures of life by full participation, or subduing its inevitable evils, or, at all events, softening their asperity by enduring with fortitude and cheerfulness what cannot be helped, these self-tormentors reject what is substantially pleasing, and cling with habitual but morbid relish to whatever is disagreeable.

As we glided along, through the Trade-winds, towards the neck of sea which divides Africa from South America, the symptoms of a change in climate became daily more manifest. Every skylight and stern window was thrown wide open, and every cabin scuttle driven out, that a free draught of air might sweep through the ship all night long. In the day-time, the pitch in the seams of the upper-deck began to melt, and, by sticking to the soles of our shoes, plastered the planks, to the great discomfiture of the captain of the after-guard. The tar, oozing from the cordage aloft, dropped on our heads, speckled the snow white boat covers, and obliged us to spread the hammock-cloths, to prevent the bedding being ruined by the spots. On the larboard or eastern side of the ship, which, of course, is always presented to the sun when crossing the Trades on the outward-bound voyage, the pitch and rosin with which the seams had been payed ran down in little streams across the lines of paint. To prevent, as far as we could, some of these annoyances, we spread the awnings over the decks, and triced up the curtains, fore and aft, while every art was used to introduce air to all parts of the ship. The half-ports were removed from the main-deck guns, the gratings put on one side, and as many windsails sent down the hatchways as could be made to catch a puff of air. Blue trousers and beaver scrapers soon gave way before the elements, and were succeeded by nankeens, straw hats, and canvas caps. In the captain's cabin, where the presence of the governor, our passenger, still kept up the strait-laced etiquette of the service, coats and epaulettes appeared at dinner; but in the gun-room, the officers, the instant they came below, slipped on their light white jackets, and, disdaining waistcoat, seized their flutes and books, and drew their chairs as near as possible to the mouth of the windsail. In the midshipmen's berth, outside in the steerage, the shirt without neckcloth or stock, and sometimes with its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, was the most fashionable rig. The seamen and marines, of course, dined on the main-deck, not only that they might enjoy the fresh air breathing gently in upon them through the ports on the weather side, and sweeping out again by those to leeward, but that the lower deck might be kept as cool and airy as possible against the sultry feverish night season.

On such occasions the men leave their tables and stools below, and either seat themselves tailor-fashion, or recline Roman-fashion. Nor is this in the least degree unpleasant; for the deck of a man-of-war is made as clean every morning as any table, and is kept so during the day by being swept at least once an hour. Of all the tunes played by the boatswain's pipe, that which calls the sweepers is the most frequently heard. When the order is given for dining on deck, the different messes into which the crew are divided occupy the spots immediately above their usual mess-places below, as far as the guns allow of their doing so. It has always struck me as very pleasing, to see the main-deck covered, from the after hatchway to the cook's coppers, with the people's messes, enjoying their noon-day repast; while the celestial grog, with which their hard, dry, salt junk is washed down, out-matches twenty-fold in Jack's estimation all the thin potations of those who, in no very courteous language, are called their betters.

Until we had crossed the North-east Trade, and reached the Calms, the ship's way through the water was too great to allow of bathing alongside; but we easily contrived a shower-bath, which answered very well. This consisted of a packing-box, the bottom of which was perforated with holes, triced up between two of the skids, near the gangway, and under the quarter of one of the boats on the booms. A couple of the top-men with draw-buckets supplied the water from above, while the bather stood on the main-deck, enjoying the shower. The time selected for this delightful bath was usually about four o'clock in the morning, after the middle watch was out, and before the exhausted officer tumbled into bed. A four hours' walk, indeed, in a sultry night, be it managed ever so gently, has a tendency to produce a degree of heat approaching to feverishness; and I have no words to describe the luxury of standing under a cool shower when the long task is ended. We were generally just enough fatigued to be sure of a sound, light, happy sleep, and just enough heated to revel in the coolest water that was to be had. In fact, we found that of the sea much too warm, being only two or three degrees below the temperature of the air. To remedy this, our plan was, to expose a dozen buckets-full on the gangway at eight or nine o'clock in the evening; and these, being allowed to stand till morning, became so much cooler by the evaporation in the night, that the shock was unspeakably grateful.

Perhaps there is not any more characteristic evidence of our being within the tropical regions than the company of those picturesque little animals, the flying-fish. It is true, that a stray one or two may sometimes be met with far north, making a few short skips out of the water, and I even remember seeing several close to the edge of the banks of Newfoundland, in latitude 45°; but it is not until the voyager has fairly reached the heart of the torrid zone that he sees the flying-fish in perfection. I have hardly ever observed a person so dull or unimaginative that his eye did not glisten as he watched a shoal of flying-fish rise from the sea, and skim along for several hundred yards. There is something in it so totally dissimilar to everything else in other parts of the world, that our wonder goes on increasing every time we see even a single one take its flight. The incredulity of the old Scotch woman on this head is sufficiently excusable. "You may hae seen rivers o' milk, and mountains o' sugar," said she to her son, returned from a voyage; "but you'll ne'er gar me believe you have seen a fish that could flee!"