The lieutenant and commander

by Basil Hall

"I dare say," added the fellow, with rather more dryness of humour than we had imagined was in his doughy composition, "I dare say the whole story you are asking about, of Buonaparte and the Russians, is told very exactly in these bags (pointing to the mail), and if I deliver them safe at Rio, it will be wrong to say I bring no news."

On the 4th of June we had a jollification in honour of good old King George the Third's birthday. In how many different parts of the world, and with what deep and affectionate sincerity, were cups quaffed and cheers rung out in the same loyal cause! If sailors would tell the truth, we should find that when abroad and far away, they generally use their distant friends as the captain, mentioned some time ago, did his ship's company's European clothing—stow them away for a future occasion. I do not say that they forget or neglect their friends; they merely put them by in safety for a time. In fact, as the song says, a sailor's heart and soul have plenty to do "in every port," to keep fully up to the companionships which are present, without moping and moaning over the remembrance of friends at a distance, who, in like manner no doubt, unship us also, more or less, from their thoughts, if not from their memory, for the time being; and it is all right and proper that it should be so.

On the 5th of June we parted from our convoy, the China ships; and, alas! many a good dinner we lost by that separation. Our course lay more to the left, or eastward, as we wished to look in at the Cape of Good Hope, while those great towering castles, the tea ships, could not afford time for play, but struck right down to the southward, in search of the westerly winds which were to sweep them half round the globe, and enable them to fetch the entrance of the China seas in time to save the monsoon to Canton. Each ship sent a boat to us with letters for England, to be forwarded from the Cape. This was probably their last chance for writing home; so that, after the accounts contained in these dispatches reached England, their friends would hear nothing of them till they presented themselves eighteen months afterwards. Neither did they expect to know what was passing at home till they should touch at St. Helena, on the return voyage, in the latter end of the following year.

I remember looking over the lee-gangway next day, at the first blush of the dawn, during the morning watch, and I could barely distinguish the fleet far to leeward, with their royals just showing above the horizon. On taking leave of our convoy, we were reminded that there is always something about the last, the very last look of any object, which brings with it a feeling of melancholy. On this occasion, however, we had nothing more serious to reproach ourselves with than sundry impatient execrations with which we had honoured some of our slow-moving, heavy-sterned friends, when we were compelled to shorten sail in a fair wind, in order to keep them company. A smart frigate making a voyage with a dull-sailing convoy reminds one of the child's story of the provoking journey made by the hare with a drove of oxen.

Our merry attendants, the flying-fish, and others which swarmed about us in the torrid zone, refused to see us across the tropic, and the only aquatics we fell in with afterwards were clumsy whales and grampuses, and occasionally a shoal of white porpoises. Of birds there were plenty, especially albatrosses. The captain, being a good shot with a ball, brought down one of these, which measured seven feet between the tips of the wings. I have several times seen them twelve feet; and I heard a well-authenticated account of one measuring sixteen feet from tip to tip. On the 22nd of June we came in sight of the high land on the northern part of the peninsula of the Cape of Good Hope, the far-famed Table Mountain, which looked its character very well, and really did not disappoint us, though, in general, its height, like that of most high lands, is most outrageously exaggerated in pictures. The wind failed us during the day, and left us rolling about till the evening, when the breeze came too late to be of much use. Next day we rounded the pitch of the Cape, but it blew so strong from the northward, right out of False Bay, accompanied by rain and a high sea, that we found it no easy job to hold our own, much less to gain the anchorage. But on the 24th of June, the day after, the wind moderated and became fair, the weather cleared up, and we sailed almost into Simon's Bay, a snug little nook at the north-western angle of False Bay. It then fell calm, but the boats of the men-of-war at anchor, his Majesty's ships Lion, Nisus, and Galatea, soon towed us into our berth. During the winter of that hemisphere, which corresponds to our northern summer, the only safe quarters for ships is in Simon's Bay, on the south side of the Cape peninsula.

I have a perfect recollection of the feelings with which I leaped out of the boat, and first set foot on the continent of Africa, but am prevented from describing these poetical emotions by the remembrance, equally distinct, of the more engrossing anxiety which both my companion and myself experienced about our linen, then on its way to the laundress in two goodly bundles. For the life of me, I cannot separate the grand ideas suitable to the occasion, from the base interests connected with cotton shirts and duck trousers. And such is the tormenting effect of association, that when I wish to dwell upon the strange feelings, partly professional and partly historical, caused by actually gazing on the identical Cape of Good Hope, a spot completely hammered into the memory of all sailors, straightway I remember the bitter battling with the washer-folks of Simon's Town touching the rate of bleaching shirts: and both the sublime and the beautiful are lost in the useful and ridiculous.

The 3rd of July was named for sailing; but the wind, which first came foul, soon lulled into a calm, then breezed up again; and so on alternately, baffling us in all our attempts to get to sea. Nor was it till the 5th that we succeeded in forcing our way out against a smart south-easter, with a couple of reefs in the topsails, and as much as we could do to carry the mainsail. A westerly current sweeps at all seasons of the year round the Cape of Good Hope, and sometimes proves troublesome enough to outward-bound ships. This stream is evidently caused by the trade-wind in the southern parts of the Indian ocean. For three days we were bamboozled with light south-easterly airs and calms, but on the 8th of July, which is the depth of winter in that hemisphere, there came on a spanking snuffler from the north-west, before which we spun two hundred and forty miles, clean off the reel, in twenty-four hours.

Nothing is more delightful than the commencement of such a fair wind. The sea is then smooth, and the ship seems literally to fly along; the masts and yards bend forwards, as if they would drop over the bows, while the studding-sail booms crack and twist, and, unless great care be taken, sometimes break across; but still, so long as the surface of the sea is plane it is astonishing what a vast expanse of canvas may be spread to the rising gale. By-and-bye, however, it becomes prudent to take in the royals, flying-jib, and top-gallant studding-sails. The boatswain takes a look at the gripes and other fastenings of the boats and booms; the carpenter instinctively examines the port-lashings, and draws up the pump-boxes to look at the leathers; while the gunner sees that all the breechings and tackles of the guns are well secured before the ship begins to roll. The different minor heads of departments, also, to use their own phrase, smell the gale coming on, and each in his respective walk gets things ready to meet it. The captain's and gun-room steward beg the carpenter's mate to drive down a few more cleats and staples, and, having got a cod-line or two from the boatswain's yeoman, or a hank of marline stuff, they commence double lashing all the tables and chairs. The marines' muskets are more securely packed in the arm-chest. The rolling tackles are got ready for the lower yards, and the master, accompanied by the gunner's mate, inspects the lanyards of the lower rigging. All these, and twenty other precautions are taken in a manner so slow and deliberate that they would hardly catch the observation of a passenger. It might also seem as if the different parties were afraid to let out the secret of their own lurking apprehension, but yet were resolved not to be caught unprepared.

Of these forerunners of a gale none is more striking than the repeated looks of anxiety which the captain casts to windward, as if his glance could penetrate the black sky lowering in the north-west, in order to discover what was behind, and how long with safety he might carry sail. Ever and anon he shifts his look from the wind's eye, and rests it on the writhing spars aloft, viewing with much uneasiness the stretching canvas all but torn from the yards. He then steps below, and for the fortieth time reads off the barometer. On returning to the deck he finds that, during the few minutes he has been below, the breeze has freshened considerably, or, it may be, that, coming suddenly upon it again, he views it differently. At all events, he feels the necessity of getting the sails in while he yet can, or before "God Almighty takes them in for him," as the sailors say when matters have been so long deferred, that not only canvas and yards, but even masts, are at times suddenly wrenched out of the ship, and sent in one confused mass far off to leeward, whirling in the gale!

The men, who are generally well aware of the necessity of shortening sail long before the captain has made up his mind to call the hands for that purpose, have probably been collected in groups for some time in different parts of the upper deck, talking low to one another, and looking aloft with a start, every now and then, as the masts or yards give an extra crack.