Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Nor was this all. He learned here by practice how the trim of a vessel affects her sailing powers, a law which applies equally to the ship’s boat under sail and the 3000-ton four-master; learned how to dispose of his crew of two to the best advantage, and to study the effect that even their slight weight had upon the weatherly qualities of his boat or her speed with a free wind. Also he learned to command; to give no unnecessary orders, but to have such orders as he did give carried out instanter, or else to visit with condign punishment the slack offender.

But there is no doubt that he was heavily handicapped by the character of the two boys placed under his charge. They did nothing willingly. The only thing that appealed to them was fear of a punching from him, or of being reported to the skipper. Ideas of honour, truth, or honesty they had none, and Frank, who could not understand them at all, had to watch them like a warder watching convicts, or, when the boat was waiting at the bund in the Canash for the captain, to exercise constant vigilance lest they should run away into some of the filthy native quarters and get into serious trouble.

By all of which I do not mean to suggest that Frank was anything of a prig or a prude. He was essentially a manly boy, with a high sense of trustworthiness, and while, if he were on liberty with fellows of his own class and age, he would doubtless kick up his heels like a young colt in a meadow, yet when in a position of responsibility he was as sternly bent upon doing his duty to the best of his ability as any man old enough to be his father. Of course captain and officers noted this, and enjoyed it quietly, but after the manner of their kind said nothing, only occasionally showing by their actions how much they trusted him. And this only on his second voyage. True they were long voyages, and the circumstances highly educational, but still we must recognise the rapidity with which a lad of Frank’s type will rise, given fitting occasion.

The time spent by the Sealark in Manila was almost idyllic in its peace and simplicity. The weather was all that could be desired, the men were most tenderly handled by way of compensation for their enforced abstinence from the dubious delights of what sailors always term “the beach”; and owing to the complete division of the white portion of the crew from the Lascars, there was no friction there either. True, they had never yet been called to work side by side in a position of danger or emergency, but in the daily work of the ship harmony reigned. The ballast was discharged by native labourers, and the hemp began to arrive all in most leisurely fashion, for when did ever a Spaniard hurry except to fight.

But the chief thing was that no trouble ensued from either end of the ship; and when at last the flag was run up to show that the last bale of hemp was rammed into its place, and all that now remained was to carry it to New York, although some of the white men forward did certainly look longingly at the shore, there was no word of grumbling at the inevitable decision of the skipper that no leave should be granted. Johnson growled consumedly, telling Frank what a shame he thought it that his junior should be so privileged, just because he possessed a little knowledge of boat-sailing; but Frank speedily appeased him by repeating his asseverations of the absolute unattractiveness of the place, as far as he had been able to see it. Besides, the cholera was raging, and it would have been constructive murder to send fellows ashore on liberty in such a reeking hole.

Therefore, without any difficulty whatever, behold the Sealark at daybreak on a lovely Monday morning getting under weigh for her long long passage, her crew singing lustily at the windlass brakes, but without much concord, because the Lascars could not savvy English singing, and yet would try to assist, with the strangest and most unmusical results. The wind blew fair for the passage down the bay, and the men, if not exactly satisfied, were at least resigned to what they considered their loss of the pleasures (?) that Manila could afford. And such good progress did they make that before dusk they had passed out between the heads of the great bay, and saw the island of Luzon fade away like a huge blue-black cloud in the dim and indefinite distance. They got a fine offing, then the wind faltered and died away to a dead calm. The vessel lay listlessly rolling upon the black expanse of waters under a sky of deepest violet, while the stars shone down upon the unreflecting waters like pin-points of white-hot metal without a twinkle.

Then a strange transformation took place in that dark, placid sea. It began to be streaked with greenish lambent light in ridges, and little pools of glare appeared to rise from the inscrutable depths, so uncanny that it seemed impossible to give them the name of light. There was also a faint suggestion of rippling sound, as if the silken surface of the ocean were being disturbed by sudden currents. This extraordinary glare grew in intensity, until the awed observers noticed that the lustre of the stars paled to a dead white, and the beautiful violet of the sky, with its soft suggestions of after-glow, became of a velvety blackness, such as those who sail in far northern seas are wont to associate with the middle of the auroral arch.

Then through and through the growing whiteness of the sea there began to run bands of brighter light, that marked the passage of the sea creatures as they came and went in their never-ending quest for food. And occasionally a series of ripples, untraceable to any cause, would break against the vessel’s side, lighting it up with a ghostly glare, and reflecting upon the faces of the onlookers with something of the same effect which may be observed in a darkened room from the flare of burning spirit in a dish. This wonderful appearance of the ocean, which is known by the entirely inadequate name among sailors of a “milk sea,” lasted about four hours, and then passed away as suddenly as it had come, with no atmospheric disturbance following it except that there was a gentle breeze sprang up from the northward, which gradually freshened into a wind that carried the good ship along at the rate of five knots an hour directly on her homeward course.

And now, as I have the interests of my young readers at heart, I must pass very rapidly over the easy, eventless course of the next fifty days. They were easy days, for the winds blew generally fair if light, and the passage through the Sunda Straits, except for one terrific thunderstorm, was unmarked by any difficulty. The crew were contented, not too hard worked, but still kept fully employed during the watch on deck in the daytime, and the upper gear of the ship was put in as good repair as was possible to conceive of, the white men doing all the sailorising, sail-mending, &c., and the Lascars doing all the cleaning, scraping, &c., which demands not so much manual skill as patience and a complete indifference as to the nature of the work the man is engaged upon, an indifference which it is hard to find among men who put their brains into their work, as good sailors should.

So that there was absolutely nothing worth chronicling throughout the passage of the Indian Ocean, and even getting round the Cape was unattended by anything more exciting than a strong wind, not amounting to a gale. The only fact that I am obliged to record is that Captain Jenkins took it into his head to invite Frank and Johnson into the saloon in the second dog-watch to study navigation, and was immeasurably surprised to find that they knew the theory of it almost as well as he did. So he set them to practise with the sextant and chronometer, until, as he declared, they were as well able to navigate a vessel as he was.