THROUGH FIRE AND WATER
“What a clumsy, barrel-bellied old hooker she is, Field!”
Thus, closing his telescope with a bang, the elegant chief officer of the Mirzapore, steel four-masted clipper ship of 5000 tons burden, presently devouring the degrees of longitude that lay between her and Melbourne on the arc of a composite great circle, at the rate of some 360 miles per day. As he spoke he cast his eyes proudly aloft at the splendid spread of square sail that towered upward to a height of nearly 200 feet. Twenty-eight squares of straining canvas, from the courses, stretched along yards 100 feet or so in length, to the far-away skysails of 35 feet head, that might easily be handled by a pair of boys.
Truly she made a gallant show—the graceful ship, that in spite of her enormous size was so perfectly modelled on yacht-like lines that, overshadowed as she was by the mighty pyramid of sail, the eye refused to convey a due sense of her great capacity. And the way in which she answered the challenge of the west wind, leaping lightsomely over the league-long ridges of true-rolling sea, heightened the illusion by destroying all appearance of burden-bearing or cumbrousness. But the vessel which had given rise to Mr. Curzon’s contemptuous remark was in truth the antipodes of the Mirzapore. There was scarcely any difference noticeable, as far as the contour of the hull went, between her bow and stern. Only, at the bows a complicated structure of massive timbers leaned far forward of the hull, and was terminated by a huge “fiddle-head.” This ornament was carved out of a great balk of timber, and in its general outlines it bore some faint resemblance to a human form, its broad breast lined out with rude carving into some device long ago made illegible by the weather; and at its summit, instead of a head, a piece of scroll-work resembling the top of a fiddle-neck, and giving the whole thing its distinctive name.
The top-hamper of this stubby craft was quite in keeping with her hull. It had none of that rakish, carefully aligned set so characteristic of clipper ships. The three masts, looking as if they were so huddled together that no room was left to swing the yards, had as many kinks in them as a blackthorn stick; and this general trend, in defiance of modern nautical ideas, was forward instead of aft. The bow-sprit and jibboom looked as if purposely designed by their upward sheer to make her appear shorter than she really was, and also to place her as a connecting link between the long-vanished galleasses of Elizabethan days and the snaky ships of the end of the nineteenth century. In one respect, however, she had the advantage of her graceful neighbour. Her sails were of dazzling whiteness, and when, reflecting the rays of the sun, they glistened against the deep blue sky, the effect was so fairy-like as to make the beholder forget for a moment the ungainliness of the old hull beneath.
The wind now dropped, in one of its wayward moods, until the rapid rush past of the Mirzapore faltered almost to a standstill, and the two vessels, scarcely a mile apart, rolled easily on the following sea, as if in leisurely contemplation of each other. All the Mirzapore’s passengers, a hundred and twenty of them, clustered along the starboard poop-rail, unfeignedly glad of this break in what they considered the long monotony of a sailing passage from London to the colonies. And these seafarers of fifty-five days, eagerly catching their cues from the officers, discussed, in all the hauteur of amateur criticism, the various short-comings of the homely old tub abeam. Gradually the two vessels drew nearer by that mysterious impulse common to idly-floating things. As the different details of the old ship’s deck became more clearly definable, the chorus of criticism increased, until one sprightly young thing of about forty, who was going out husband-seeking, said—
“Oh, please, Captain James, do tell me what they use a funny ship like that for.”
“Well, Miss Williams,” he replied gravely, “yonder vessel is one of the fast-disappearing fleet of Yankee whalers—‘spouters,’ as they love to term themselves. As to her use, if I don’t mistake, you will soon have an object-lesson in that which will give you something to talk about all the rest of your life.”
And as he spoke an unusual bustle was noticeable on board of the stranger. Four boats dropped from her davits with such rapidity that they seemed to fall into the sea, and as each struck the water she shot away from the side as if she had been a living thing. An involuntary murmur of admiration ran through the crew of the clipper. It was a tribute they could scarcely withhold, knowing as they did the bungling, clumsy way in which a merchant seaman performs a like manœuvre. Even the contemptuous Curzon was hushed; and the passengers, interested beyond measure, yet unable to appreciate what they saw, looked blankly at one another and at the officers as if imploring enlightenment.