To-day we are fast approaching the maximum of comfort possible in a seafaring life and compatible with the earning power of a ship; that is, in the best type of ships. Of course there is a wide range, and undoubtedly there are still many vessels afloat in which the food and accommodation and the conditions of labour are no whit better than what was the rule thirty years ago, and is happily the exception now. There is, notwithstanding all this, much still to be done in order to bring the lot of our workers at sea up as nearly as possible to the standard obtaining on shore, and it is pleasant to know and realise that some of the most strenuous efforts in this laudable direction are being made by ship-owners themselves. Officers and seamen, too, are doing their share; and when once we can get the press generally to take an interest in our splendid mercantile marine, and deal with its stirring story from the point of view of knowledge, I believe that sea life will have little to fear by comparison with any other calling, as far as the lot of the seafarer is concerned.
With none of these matters, however, did our hero trouble his head. He was in the happy position of being in love with his work, healthy, full of energy, and of a temperament to make the best of everything. Added to this he was fortunate enough to be with men who appreciated him, and to be free also from the continual croaking of those confirmed human ravens so often met with on board ship, who take a sinister pleasure in dinning into a boy’s ears what a silly ass he is to come to sea. Soured in temper and stunted in mind, these old “growls,” as we used to call them, are undoubtedly the means of spoiling the promising career of many a bright young seaman, by making him feel that it is useless for him to go on with a profession which is being continually represented to him as the worst paid, and as having the least consideration of all open to a lad who wants to make his way in the world.
Moreover, in great contrast with the last voyage, everything seemed to go on greased wheels, as we say. The crew had settled down to their work in splendid fashion, the weather was all that it should be, and the Sealark came bowling along round the Cape in fine style before a steady, strong succession of westerly gales, never too strong for her to carry her maintopgallant sail. A deep content was visible on the face of the skipper. He was indeed a happy man. He had nobly won his position, and he was fully justified in the way he was holding it, while the elements themselves seemed to conspire in the determination to do him good. And so in comfortable fashion they ran down the long stretch of lonely ocean until they came in sight of the tiny island of St. Paul’s, and hauled up for the passage up the Indian Ocean.
CHAPTER X
A CATASTROPHE
When we consider the illimitable stretches of ocean over which a sailing ship has to work her way by grace and favour of the winds, and the innumerable possibilities, not merely of disaster but of adventure, befalling such a ship on account of the well-known variability of those invisible aids of commerce, it is nothing short of marvellous that there should be so many men afloat who will tell you with perfect truth that they have been sailing for so many years and have never met with an accident of any kind, nay, that they hardly know what bad weather means. To a man who can scarcely cross one ocean without meeting at least a heavy gale, and who looks for trouble as a necessary adjunct to his profession, this is a strong reason for belief in luck, since he cannot disbelieve that what so many of his co-workers tell him is true.
So far, I think Frank’s experiences had been about the average, but he was now to meet with something that some men who go all their lives to sea know nothing of—an East Indian cyclone. These terrific disturbances of the atmosphere are not peculiar to the Indian Ocean, but are also met with in the Atlantic and Pacific within the tropics, and are called cyclones, typhoons, or hurricanes, according to their locality. But the word hurricane, like “awful,” “shocking,” “terrible,” &c., has nearly lost its meaning owing to its being improperly applied very often by some excited passenger to what is really only a moderate gale, and thence getting into a newspaper. It has become suspect, like the oft-repeated phrase met with in print, “The captain said that in all his experience of —— years he had never known such a storm.” Captains may say that with a definite purpose in view to a persistent questioner whom they think will report their words, but if it were only partially true it would argue that storms were continually becoming so much more violent than of old that we are in danger of being swept off the surface of the globe altogether.
But the language of exaggeration can hardly be applied to a typical East Indian cyclone, because it is one of those appalling manifestations of Nature’s energy when man is made to feel his physical insignificance in the scheme of things, so that it is beyond all extravagances of description, which indeed only tend to disfigure and misrepresent its real proportions. So I shall endeavour to be quite simple in my description of the experience which Frank was now called upon to pass through. It began very quietly. They were just about in the heart of the Trade Winds, or about half-way up to Java Head from St. Paul’s, when one evening in the first dog-watch Frank, being at the wheel, noticed that the sun at setting had lost his usual splendid lustre, and seemed of a sickly greenish red. At the same time the steady genial breeze which had sent them speedily northward began to falter and die away.
Mr. Jacks lounged over the lee rail, his eyes fixed upon the western horizon. There was a profound silence only punctuated by the flap of the sails and the creak of the ropes as the ship rolled lazily on the swell in the dying breeze. Suddenly the skipper appeared up the companion and cast a comprehensive glance around and aloft. His face was set and stern, but showed no trace of hesitation such as he must have felt. Then he strolled over to where the second mate stood and said, “Looks queer, Mr. Jacks.”