Tales of the clipper ships

by C. Fox Smith

“Hee-hee,” sniggers Sandy in a mean little way he had. “Hee, hee—ye’ll no hae the chance o’ wearin’ these.”

And then it was that old Balto the Finn—he was an old sailorman, this Balto, and he could remember the real ancient days, the Baltimore clippers and the East Indiamen—spoke for the first time.

“From the dead to the dead!” says Balto. “From a dead corpse were they taken, and to a dead corpse will they go.”

They are great witches, are Finns, as every one knows. And it seemed likely enough that the first part of the saying, at least, was true, for old Charley hadn’t the best of names for the way he got hold of his stuff.

Sandy was one of those chaps who go about in fear and trembling of being robbed; so, after he saw how all the crowd admired the boots, he took to wearing them all the time ashore and afloat. He went ashore in them the night before the “Isle of Skye” was to sail.

He came aboard in them, too, that same night....

The tide drifted him against the hawser, and the anchor watch saw him and hauled him in. Dead as nails, was poor Sandy, and no one knew just how it came about. It was thought he’d slipped on the wet wharf—it was a very bad wharf, with a lot of holes and rough places in it. And of course a man can’t swim in heavy boots....

There was a man in the “Isle of Skye” at that time, a Dago. His name was Tony, short for Antonio. He bought Sandy’s boots very cheap, no one else seeming to care for them.

That was a cruel cold passage, and the “Isle of Skye” being loaded right down to her marks, she was a very wet ship indeed. So that the time came when more than one in the starboard watch wished they were in that Dago’s boots after all, and the fanciful feeling about poor Sandy began to wear off.

The Old Man was a holy terror for cracking on: he had served his time in one of the fast clippers in the Australian wool trade, and he never could get it out of his head that he had to race everything else in the nitrate fleet. He would sooner see a sail carry away any day than reef it, and this passage he was worse than ever.