A Sack of Shakings

by Frank Thomas Bullen

But in the fervour of my recollections of Poley, I have quite neglected another most important branch of the Harbinger’s family of animals, the sheep. Being such a large ship, she had an immense house on deck between the main hatch and the fore mast, in which were a donkey-engine and condenser, a second cabin to accommodate thirty passengers, petty officers’ quarters, carpenters’ shop, and galley. And still there was room between the fore end and the fore mast to admit of two massive pens, built of teak, with galvanised bars in front, being secured there one on top of the other. When I joined the ship these were empty, and their interiors scrubbed as clean as a kitchen table. That morning, looking up the quay, I saw a curious procession. First a tall man, with an air of quiet want of interest about him; by his side sedately marched a ram, a splendid fellow, who looked fully conscious that he was called upon to play an important part in the scheme of things. Behind this solemn pair came a small flock of some thirty sheep, and a wise old dog, keeping a good distance astern of the mob, fittingly brought up the rear. They were expected, for I saw some of the men, under the bo’sun’s directions, carefully laying a series of gangways for them. And, without noise, haste, or fuss, the man marched on board closely followed by the ram. He led the way to where a long plank was laid from the deck to the wide-open door of the upper pen. Then, stepping to the side of it, without a word or even a gesture, he stood quite still while the stately ram walked calmly up that narrow way, followed by the sheep in single file. The leader walked into the pen and right round it, reaching the door just as the fifteenth sheep had entered. The others had been restrained from following as soon as fifteen had passed. Outside he stepped upon the plank with the same grave air of importance, and the moment he had done so the door was slid to in the face of the others who were still following his lead. Then the other pen was filled in the same easy manner, the ram quitting the second pen with the bearing of one whose sublime height of perfection is far above such paltry considerations as praise or blame, while the dog stood aloof somewhat dejectedly, as if conscious that his shining abilities were for the time completely overshadowed by the performances of a mere woolly thing, one of the creatures he had always regarded as being utterly destitute of a single gleam of reasonableness. The ram received a carrot from his master’s pocket with a gracious air, as of one who confers a favour, and together the trio left the ship. The embarkation had been effected in the quietest, most humane manner possible, and to my mind was an object-lesson in ingenuity.

We had no swine, but on top of this same house there was a fine range of teak-built coops of spacious capacity, and these were presently filled with quite a respectable company of fowls, ducks, and geese, all, of course, under the charge of the butcher. Happy are the animals who have no history on board ship, whose lives move steadily on in one well-fed procession unto their ordained end. Here in this grand ship, had it not been for the geese, no one would have realised the presence of poultry at all, so little were they in evidence until they graced the glittering table in the saloon at 6 P.M. But the geese, as if bent upon anticipating the fate that was in store for them, waited with sardonic humour until deepest silence fell upon the night-watches. Then, as if by preconcerted signal, they raised their unmelodious voices, awaking sleepers fore and aft from deepest slumbers, and evoking the fiercest maledictions upon their raucous throats. Occasionally the shadowy form of some member of the crew, exasperated beyond endurance, would be dimly seen clambering up the end of the house, his heart filled with thoughts of vengeance. Armed with a wooden belaying-pin, he would poke and rattle among the noisy creatures, with much the same result as one finds who, having a slightly aching tooth, fiddles about with it until its anguish is really maddening. These angry men never succeeded in doing anything but augmenting the row tenfold, and they found their only solace in gloating over the last struggles of one of their enemies when the butcher was doing his part towards verifying the statement on the menu for the forthcoming dinner of “roast goose.”

But the chief interest of our farmyard, after all, lay in the sheep. How it came about that such a wasteful thing was done I do not know, but it very soon became manifest that some at least of our sheep were in an interesting condition, and one morning, at wash-deck time, when I was prowling around forrard to see that everything was as it should be, I was considerably amused to see one of the sheep occupying a corner of the pen with a fine young lamb by her side. While I watched the pretty creature, the butcher came along to begin his day’s work. When he caught sight of the new-comer he looked silly. It appeared that he alone had been sufficiently unobservant of his charges to be unprepared for this dénouement, and it was some time before his sluggish wits worked up to the occasion. Suddenly he roused himself and made for the pen. “What are you going to do, butcher?” I asked. “Goin’ to do! W’y I’m agoin’ ter chuck that there thing overboard, a’course, afore any of them haristocrats aft gets wind of it. They won’t touch a bit o’ the mutton if they hear tell o’ this. I never see such a thing aboard ship afore.” But he got no further with his fell intent, for some of the sailors intervened on behalf of the lamb, vowing all sorts of vengeance upon the butcher if he dared to touch a lock of its wool; so he was obliged to beat a retreat, grumblingly, to await the chief steward’s appearance and lay the case before him. When that gentleman appeared, he was by no means unwilling to add a little to his popularity by effecting a compromise. It was agreed that the sailors should keep the new-comer as a pet, but all subsequent arrivals were to be dealt with by the butcher instanter, without any interference on their part. This, the steward explained, was not only fair, but merciful, as in the absence of green food there could only be a day or two’s milk forthcoming, and the poor little things would be starved. Of course, he couldn’t spare any of Poley’s precious yield for nursing lambs, besides wishing to avoid the natural repugnance the passengers would have to eating mutton in such a condition. So the matter was amicably arranged.

Thereafter, whenever a lamb was dropped, and every one of those thirty ewes presented one or two, the butcher laid violent hands upon it, and dropped it overboard as soon as it was discovered. Owing to the promise of sundry tots of grog from the sailors, he always informed them of the fact, and pointed out the bereaved mother. Then she would be pounced upon, lifted out of the coop, and while one fellow held her another brought the favoured lamb. After the first time or two, that pampered young rascal needed no showing. As soon as he saw the sheep being held he would make a rush, and in a minute or two would completely drain her udder. Sometimes there were as many as three at a time for him to operate upon, but there never seemed to be too many for his voracious appetite. What wonder that like Jeshurun he waxed fat and kicked. He grew apace, and he profited amazingly by the tuition of his many masters. Anything less sheep-like, much less lamb-like, than his behaviour could hardly be imagined. A regimental goat might have matched him in iniquity, but I am strongly inclined to doubt it. One of the most successful tricks taught this pampered animal was on the lines of his natural tendency to butt at anything and everything. It was a joyful experience to see him engaged in mimic conflict with a burly sailor, who, pitted against this immature ram, usually came to grief at an unexpected roll of the ship; for Billy, as our lamb was named by general consent, very early in his career gat unto himself sea-legs of a stability unattainable by any two-legged creature. I often laughed myself sore at these encounters, the funniest exhibitions I had seen for many a long day, until one night in my watch on deck, during a gale of wind, I descended from the poop on to the main deck to hunt for a flying-fish that I heard come on board. I was stooping down, the water on deck over my ankles, to feel under the spare spars lashed alongside the scuppers, when I heard a slight noise behind me. Before I had time to straighten myself, a concussion like a well-aimed, hearty kick smote me behind, and I fell flat in the water like a plaice. When I had scrambled to my feet, black rage in my heart against things in general, I heard a fiendish cackle of laughter which was suddenly suppressed; and there, with head lowered in readiness for another charge, stood Billy, only too anxious to renew his attentions as soon as he could see an opening. For one brief moment I contemplated a wild revenge, but I suddenly remembered that my place was on the poop, and I went that way, not perhaps with the dignified step of an officer, because that demoniacal sheep (no, lamb) was behind me manœuvring for another assault. I lost all interest in him after that. A lamb is all very well, but when he grows up he is apt to become an unmitigated calamity, especially if sailors have any hand in his education. So that it was with a chastened regret that I heard the order go forth for his conversion into dinner. We were able to regale the pilot with roast lamb and mint sauce (made from the dried article), and the memory of my wrongs added quite a piquant flavour to my portion.

IV

It has always been a matter of profound thankfulness with me that my evil genius never led me on board a cattle-boat. For I do think that to a man who has any feeling for the lower animals these vessels present scenes of suffering enough to turn his brain. And it does not in the least matter what provision is made for the safe conveyance of cattle in such numbers across the ocean. As long as the weather is fairly reasonable, the boxed-up animals have only to endure ten days or so of close confinement, with inability to lie down, and the nausea that attacks animals as well as human beings. The better the ship and the greater care bestowed upon the cattle-fittings the less will be the sufferings of the poor beasts; but the irreducible minimum is soon reached, and that means much more cruelty to animals than any merciful man would like to witness. But when a gale is encountered and the huge steamer wallows heavily in the mountainous irregularities of the Atlantic, flooding herself fore and aft at every roll, and making the cattlemen’s task of attending to their miserable charges one surcharged with peril to life or limbs, then the condition of a cattle-ship is such as to require the coinage of special adjectives for its description. Of course it will be said that human beings used to be carried across the ocean for sale in much the same way, and men calling themselves humane were not ashamed to grow rich on the receipts from such traffic; but surely that will never be advanced as an excuse for, or a palliative of, the horrors of the live cattle trade. I have passed through an area of sea bestrewn with the bodies of cattle that have been washed overboard in a gale—hurled out of the pens wherein they have been battered to death—when the return of fine weather has made it possible, and I have wished with all my heart that it could be made an offence against the laws to carry live cattle across the ocean at all.

No, the nearest approach that ever I had to being shipmates with a cargo of live stock was on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, when, after bringing a 24-ton schooner from a little village up the Bay of Fundy to Antigua in the West Indies, I found myself, as you may say, stranded in St. John, the principal port in that island. The dry rot which seems to have unfortunately overtaken our West Indian possessions was even then very marked in Antigua, for there was no vessel there larger than a 100-ton schooner, and only two or three of them, all Yankees with one exception, a Barbadian craft with the queerest name imaginable, the Migumoo-weesoo. The shipping officer, seeing that I was a certificated mate, very kindly interested himself in me, going so far as to say that if I would take his advice and assistance I would immediately leave St. John in the Migum, as he called her, for that the skipper, being a friend of his, would gladly give me a passage to Barbadoes. I hope good advice was never wasted on me. At any rate this wasn’t, for I immediately went down to the beach, jumped into a boat, and ordered the darky in charge to put me on board the Migum. When we got alongside I was mightily interested to see quite a little mob of horses calmly floating alongside with their heads just sticking out of the water. The first thing that suggested itself to me was that if those horses got on board with their full complement of legs it would be little less than a miracle, the harbour being notoriously infested with sharks. But presently I reflected that there was really no danger, the darkies who were busy with preparations for the embarkation of the poor beasts kicking up such a deafening row that no shark would have dared venture within a cable’s length of the spot. Everybody engaged in the business seemed to be excited beyond measure, shouting, screeching with laughter, and yelling orders at the top of their voices, so that I could not see how anything was going to be done at all. The skipper was confined to his cabin with an attack of dysentery, and lay fretting himself into a fever at the riot going on overhead for want of his supervision. As soon as I introduced myself he begged me to go and take charge, but, although I humoured him to the extent of seeming to comply with his request, I knew enough of the insubordinate ’Badian darkies to make me very careful how I interfered with them. But going forward, I found to my delight that they had made a start at last, and that two of the trembling horses were already on deck. Four or five darkies were in the water alongside, diving beneath the horses with slings which were very carefully placed round their bodies, then hooked to a tackle, by means of which they were hoisted on board, so subdued by fear that they suffered themselves to be pushed and hauled about the decks with the quiet submissiveness of sheep. There were twenty of them altogether, and when they had all been landed on deck there was not very much room left for working the schooner. However, as our passage lay through the heart of the trade winds, and nothing was less probable than bad weather, nobody minded that, not even when the remaining deck space was lumbered up with some very queer-looking forage.

As soon as the horses were on board we weighed, and stood out of harbour with a gentle, leading wind that, freshening as we got farther off the land, coaxed the smart craft along at a fairly good rate. This lasted until midnight, when, to the darkies’ dismay, the wind suddenly failed us, leaving us lazily rocking to the gently-gliding swell upon the wine-dark bosom of the glassy sea. Overhead, the sky, being moonless, was hardly distinguishable from the sea, and as every brilliant star was faithfully duplicated beneath, it needed no great stretch of imagination to fancy that we were suspended in the centre of a vast globe utterly cut off from the rest of the world. But the poor skipper, enfeebled by his sad ailment and anxious about his freight, had no transcendental fancies. Vainly I tried to comfort him with the assurance that we should certainly find a breeze at daybreak, and it would as certainly be fair for us. He refused consolation, insisting that we were in for a long spell of calm, and against his long experience of those waters I felt I could not argue. So I ceased my efforts and went on deck to enjoy the solemn beauty of the night once more, and listen to the quaint gabble of the three darkies forming the watch on deck.

Sure enough the skipper was right. Calms and baffling airs, persisting for three days, kept us almost motionless until every morsel of horse provender was eaten, and—what was still more serious—very little water was left. All of us wore long faces now, and the first return of steady wind was hailed by us with extravagant delight. Continuing on our original course was out of the question under the circumstances, so we headed directly for the nearest port, which happened to be Prince Rupert, in the beautiful island of Dominica. A few hours’ sail brought us into the picturesque harbour, with its ruined fortresses, once grimly guarding the entrance, now overgrown with dense tropical vegetation, huge trees growing out of yawning gaps in the masonry, and cable-like vines enwreathing the crumbling walls. Within the harbour there was a profound silence; the lake-like expanse was unburdened by a single vessel, and although the roofs of a few scattered houses could be seen embosomed among the verdure, there was no other sign of human occupation. We lowered the little boat hanging astern and hastened ashore. Hurrying toward the houses, we found ourselves in a wide street which from lack of traffic was all overgrown with weeds. Here we found a few listless negroes, none of whom could speak a word of English, a barbarous French patois being their only medium of communication. But by signs we made them comprehend our needs—fodder for the horses, and water. After some little palaver we found that for a few shillings we might go into the nearest thicket of neglected sugar-cane and cut down as many of the feathery blades that crowned the canes as we wanted, but none of those sleepy-looking darkies volunteered their assistance—they seemed to be utterly independent of work. Our energy amazed them, and I don’t think I ever saw such utter contempt as was expressed by our lively crew—true ’Badians born—towards those lotus-eating Dominicans. We had a heavy morning’s work before us, but by dint of vigorous pushing we managed to collect a couple of boatloads of cane-tops, carry them on board, and return for two casks of water which we had left one of our number ashore to fill. Some deliberate fishermen were hauling a seine as we were about to depart, and we lingered awhile until they had finished their unusual industry, being rewarded by about a bushel of “bill-fish,” a sort of garfish, but with the beak an extension of the lower jaw instead of the upper. I offered to buy a few of the fish, but the fishermen seemed mightily careless whether they sold any or not. After much expenditure of energy in sign language, I managed to purchase three dozen (about the size of herrings) for the equivalent of twopence, and, very well satisfied, pushed off for the schooner, leaving the fishermen standing on the beach contemplating their newly-acquired wealth, as if quite unable to decide what to do with it.

It was worth all the labour we had expended to see the delight with which those patient horses munched the juicy green tops of the cane, and drank, plunging their muzzles deep into the buckets, of the clear water we had brought. And I felt quite pleased when, upon our arrival in Barbadoes two days after, I watched the twenty of them walk sedately up a broad gangway of planks on to the wharf, and indulge in a playful prance and shake when they found their hoofs firmly planted upon the unrocking earth once more.