A Whaleman's Wife

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Long before daylight they were aroused and started upon the tremendous task, too broken to give more than a passing regretful thought to the two favoured ones whose trials were over. This will, I know, strike many as an utterly uncalled-for exaggeration of horror, an incident that could only have occurred during mediæval times. I beg to say, however, that in the American whaleships mediæval disregard of life persisted as nowhere else among civilised peoples down to well within the latter half of the nineteenth century. Heroic figures the commanders were, brave beyond praise were the officers, but with that wonderful quality was, alas, too generally mingled an utter callousness to suffering—an utter disregard of the elementary rights of their fellow men which to a humaner age will hardly bear detailed description. And, of course, this was an exceptionally bad case. The cruelty of the Latin is inherent—generally speaking, he takes a greedy pleasure in the suffering of others; while the cruelty of the Teutonic races is incidental—an abnormality calling forth the fiercest reprobation from those of the same race to whom it becomes known.

For the next ten days the Grampus was a horrid shambles. She reeked in every part with blood and grease, and the blazing sun, pouring down upon her with never a cloud to temper his fierceness throughout the long and weary days, made her foul with a fœtor beyond description. Captain Da Silva and his Portuguese seemed to flourish and wax stronger among the awful vileness of stench and filth, even as do the Arabs of African coast-towns. But the American portion of the crew fell ill one by one. Although haggard and woe-worn, they stuck to their work until they fell at their posts. In this calamity Priscilla was involved. Indeed, it would have been a miracle had she escaped. The confinement alone in that terrible climate was sufficient to make anyone seriously ill, especially when the miserable food and lack of exercise were added, without the fearful foulness of that ten days.

The sickness of his crew gave the skipper no concern. He thought grimly of the splendid recruits he would by and by obtain, supposing all the cursed Americans were dead. But the illness of his wife gave him pause. In some inexplicable way, he—well, I cannot say loved or had a tenderness for her—I would not desecrate the holy word love by associating it with such a monster of evil as he was, but he did not desire to be without her. And so, cursing his ill-luck, he bore up under all sail for the Cosmoledo group of islands intending to spend there, amid the pure fresh breezes of the South-East Trade, and free from the miasmatic vapours of a great port, a sufficient time to rest his invalids, and by judicious distribution of quinine, fresh cocoanut, and fresh food to bring them round again. Strangely enough, this complication in the midst of his success, the dread presence on board of fever, and the illness of half his crew gave this extraordinary man no anxiety. He seemed to stand aloof from all merely human emotions except the viler ones, and as for fear he apparently knew not the meaning of the word. And his auxiliaries were the same. For them it was a time of rejoicing. They were the undoubted rulers of the vessel, and their superiority to the much-vaunted white man was overwhelmingly manifest.

Two more poor fellows succumbed to their burden before reaching port. One of them was the third mate. Their passing excited no comment, nor did their informal burial (they were just dumped like so much lumber) more than punctuate the day’s work. Then the vessel arrived, and was piloted in between the reefs with consummate skill by the skipper. Down went her anchor, and in the peaceful waters of a coral-locked lagoon the Grampus lay secure.

CHAPTER XVII

SALVAGE OPERATIONS

Thorough in all his undertakings, Captain Da Silva wasted no time after the vessel was well moored in carrying out the purpose for which he had visited this outlandish group of islands. Boats were at once lowered and loaded with all the requisite material for erecting tents ashore. Then while one party was sent to establish a temporary sanatorium on a high part of the largest island, a place where the sweet unceasing breeze should blow through the open doors of the tents, another party was detailed to catch fish, tortoises (for here are to be found still some of those most interesting survivals of a long-departed day, the gigantic tortoise), and to collect unripe cocoanuts, one of the most healthful of all foods as well as one of the pleasantest of drinks. The preparations were rapidly completed—when Captain Da Silva was around no one wasted time—the sick were transferred to the shore, and in business-like fashion attended to, as far as a change of diet and such primitive medicines as were available could be brought to bear upon them. Priscilla, much to the skipper’s concern, apparently took no interest in the proceedings at all. He was really alarmed to see how automatically she behaved and how attenuated was her once bonny form. He did not want to lose her—would rather have lost all hands—though he could not tell why. And therefore, having done all he could think of for her, and consequently much more for the other sufferers than he would otherwise have thought of doing, he turned from sheer need of occupation to the ship again; and his energy was such that all his innate power of command was needed to maintain discipline among his own countrymen. The Portuguese, like the Italian, can and does work for amazingly long periods at high pressure, always providing that the incentive is sufficiently powerful. But always these two races would rather loaf than work—would rather lie round in the sun and let the world wag as it will than put their shoulders to any wheel whatever. And they always make the severest task-masters, slave-drivers. There must be a deep delight for a truly lazy man in the power of compelling his fellows to stretch their sinews under his eye. Must be, because one sees so much of it in journeying around the world—the measureless content evidenced in the boss who lolls and shouts curses and commands at the toilers below him, with a very real satisfaction in the knowledge that any one of them would gladly trample his face into the mud they work in if only the chance came.

Captain Da Silva, then, having arranged for his invalids satisfactorily, and left the negro steward and one of his cronies to guard his wife in her lonely tent, returned on board and entered upon a furious campaign of scrubbing and disinfecting. His countrymen, who were practically the whole working gang, seconded his efforts splendidly, albeit with deep resentment, at first against him, but by his clever manipulation, afterwards against all the whites on board. ‘Why should these fellows be lyin’ up ashore while better men were doin’ the work?’ This with but little variation was the burden of the Portuguese song, and by a skilfully dropped word at well-chosen intervals Captain Da Silva fanned the incipient flames and made every Dago understand that the Grampus was a Dago ship from henceforth, and that, although the American flag flew overhead, her American crew were of no importance whatever. In spite of this satisfaction, however, the Dagoes were very sore at being worked so hard, and it needed all the great influence of the skipper’s master mind to prevent an outbreak. He kept them at work so steadily, too, that they got little or no chance to brood over their wrongs. The water in the casks below was started and run off, fresh, sweet water being brought on board to re-fill; and the newly emptied casks were all fresh scoured and fired within before replenishing. An enormous supply of wood was obtained, mostly drift-timber, for upon this little group of neglected islands the whorl of many currents centres, bringing flotsam from immense distances. And when nothing else was a-doing, the sick needed attention, and got it too, although of a horribly rough and grudging kind.

At last the discontent ran so high that it may reasonably be doubted whether even Captain Da Silva could have much longer held it in check, but then with his usual extraordinary good fortune there came a diversion that effectually settled all grumbling and put all hands in high feather. A huge four-masted iron ship, grossly under-manned as usual, came blundering up through the Mozambique Channel, bound for Diego Garcia with coal. The parsimony of her owners had provided her with but one chronometer, and her skipper was not only a poor man who couldn’t afford one of his own, but he was withal so poorly educated that he couldn’t have worked a lunar observation to save his life. Thus it came to pass that one night during a heavy thunderstorm, when the whole heavens were apparently draped with black velvet, he found his vessel bumping upon the reefs, not heavily, for there was but little wind or swell, but sufficiently forceful to make him feel that his command was doomed. And ships like the Warrior Queen are only manned for the finest of fine weather—when trouble of any kind comes they must needs trust to luck. Out of eighteen men in the forecastle, four were sailors, and they were old, the rest were just unskilled labourers, loafers, not worth their salt, whose one aim was to do as little as possible, and take the maximum time over it. There were eight apprentices, nice lads, each of whom had paid sixty guineas premium for the privilege of doing men’s work, and were expected to learn how intuitively, for no one ever showed them anything—no, not even how to live decently in their den of the halfdeck. These boys were really the backbone of the ship, for being all decently brought up young fellows they had not yet learned the vicious root-idea which is sapping the heart out of our workers—viz., that a man’s duty to himself is to study how best he can get money without working for it, and that his highest aim in life should be to give as little as possible in labour for the wages he receives.

In consequence of this wretched condition of things on board there was something very like a collapse of all the energies (not many at the best of times) of the crew. According to the novelists who write of the sea from the abyss of utter ignorance of sea conditions, the crew should now have raided the ‘spirit-room’ (there isn’t such a place in the great majority of merchant ships), and fearful scenes of bloodshed and anarchy would have ensued. As a matter of fact, the whole situation was peculiarly sordid and commonplace. There lay the great cumbrous tank upon the reef, canted to one side in a shamefaced manner as if acknowledging how much she owed to the sea for any gainliness of outline she ever possessed. Listlessly the crew slouched about the sloping decks, obeying such calls as were made upon them in a half or quarter hearted fashion and casting wistful eyes upon the sandy shore. They were a motley gang, and there was no prospect of immediate danger to life, only to property—and that, they knew, didn’t matter a row of pins to anybody: they had obtained sufficient smattering of insurance problems to tell them that.