As the result of a series of adventures while mate of an old Cumberland brig under the nominal command of one of the most besotted drunkards I have ever known, I found myself adrift in an Acadian coast village early in December, friendless and penniless. Already the icy barrier was rapidly forming which would effectually bar all navigation until the ensuing spring, and the thought of being thus frozen up in helpless idleness for months, coupled with the prospect of winter for my young wife in England without my support, was almost more than I could bear. Kismet threw in my way the commander, owner, and builder of a tiny schooner, who, disgusted with his “bad luck,” had freighted his cockleshell with the harvest of his farm, three hundred barrels of potatoes, and purposed sailing for the West Indies in order to sell vessel and cargo. Of ocean navigation he knew nothing, all his previous nautical experience having been confined to the rugged coasts of Nova Scotia, so that he was highly elated at the idea of engaging a mate with a London certificate. Not that he would have hesitated to launch out into the Atlantic without any other knowledge than he possessed, without chronometer, sextant, or ephemeris. Like many of the old school of sea-farers, now perhaps quite extinct, he would have reckoned upon finding his way to port in time by asking from ship to ship sighted on the passage, for he was in no hurry. I was in no mood for bargaining—a way of escape was my urgent need—and in a few hours from our meeting we were busily rowing the wee craft down the fast-emptying river. The crew consisted of the skipper, his ten-year-old son, myself, and a gawky, half-witted lad of sixteen, who strutted under the title of cook. Bitter, grinding poverty was manifest in every detail of our equipment, principally in the provisions, which consisted solely of a barrel of flour, a small tub of evil-smelling meat (source unknown), and a keg of salt flavoured with a few herrings. Of course, there was the cargo, and the skipper concealed, moreover, under his pillow a few ounces of tea, about 3 lb. of wet sugar in an oozing bag, and a bottle of “square” gin. “Medical comforts,” he explained, with an air of knowing what ought to be carried on a deep-water voyage.
For the first five hundred miles we groped our way through fantastic wreaths of frost-fog, its dense whiteness enclosing us like a wall, and its pitiless embrace threatening to freeze the creeping blood in our veins, while, invisible, the angry currents of the fiercest tideway in the world bubbled beneath us like a witch’s cauldron, whose steam was fluid ice, after whirling us top-wise in defiance of wind and helm. Strange noises assailed our ears, and a feeling of uncertain suspension as though sailing in the clouds possessed our benumbed faculties. But as if guided by an instinctive sense of direction, the skipper succeeded in fetching the New Brunswick shore, entering Musquash Harbour without hesitation, and anchoring a scant bowshot from the frozen strand. Wasting no time, very precious now, we landed, restoring our feeble circulation by felling a large number of beautiful young silver birches, which, like regular ranks of glittering ghosts, stood thickly everywhere. Our sea-stock of fuel provided, we broke up the armour-plated covering of ice over a swiftly-flowing streamlet and filled our solitary water-cask, an irksome task, since the water froze as we poured. With enormous difficulty we shipped these essentials, and in all haste weighed again, and stole seaward into the gathering gloom. Night brought a bitter gale, whose direction barely enabled us to creep under a tiny triangle of canvas towards the narrow portals of the Bay of Fundy. The flying spray clung to masts and rigging, clothing them with many layers of ice, till each slender spar and rope gleamed huge above our heads through the palpable dark. The scanty limits of the deck became undistinguishable from the levels of an iceberg, to which offspring of the sombre North our little craft was rapidly becoming akin. Below, in the stuffy, square den, the “cook” continually fed the ancient stove with crackling birchwood and made successive kettlesful of boiling burnt-bread coffee, while the half-frozen skipper and his mate relieved each other every half-hour for a brief thaw. In such wise we reached a sheltered nook behind Cape Sable, anchoring in a culminating blizzard of snow, and fleeing instantly to the steaming shelter below. Outside our frail shell the tempest howled unceasingly throughout the long, long night. When the bleak morning broke the little ship was perched precariously, like some crippled sea-bird, upon three pinnacles of rock. The sea had retreated from us for nearly a mile, and all the grim secrets of its iron bed lay revealed under the cold, grey dawn. Overhead hung gigantic icicles like sheaves of spears from the massive white pillars that concealed our identity with man’s handiwork, and at imminent risk we must needs break them down in order to move the vessel when the inrushing flood should again set her free. Presently it came, a roaring yellow mass of broken water, laden with all the varied débris of that awful coast. But we were ready for it, and by strenuous toil managed to get into a safe anchorage.
Seven short days and long ghastly nights we lay there waiting a chance to escape. Christmas came and went, bringing with it bitter thoughts of home, but no word was spoken on the subject. The skipper’s little son lay feverishly tossing in the delirium of measles, his father’s face an impenetrable mask, but whether of stoicism or stolidity I could not tell. At last the wind softened, changed its direction, and breaking up the gloomy pall of cloud, allowed a few pale gleams of sun to peep through, welcome as sight to the blind. Scrambling ashore, we cut down a widespreading young spruce-tree, and after a struggle of two hours succeeded in getting it on board with all its matted branches intact. Then, tearing out the anchor in a fury of energy and desire to be gone, we stood to the southward with our strange deck-load. A few short hours, and what a change! As if under the breath of some kindly angel, the ice and snow melted from around us, the pleasant thrill of expanding life returned. It was no new miracle, only the sweet influence of that mild but mighty ocean river, the Gulf Stream, into whose beneficent bosom we had crept like a strayed and perishing child. How we revelled in the genial warmth. With what delight we bathed our stiffened limbs in those tepid waters, feeling life and comfort surge back to us as if from their very source.
Just a little while for recovery, and then round swung the wind again. The dismal curtains of the sky were drawn, and the melancholy monotone of the advancing storm wailed through our scanty rigging. Right across the path of the great stream it blew, catching the waves in their stately march, and tearing their crests furiously backward. Fiercer and louder howled the gale, while the bewildered sea, irresistibly borne north-eastward by the current and scourged southward by the ever-increasing storm, rose in pyramidal heaps which fell all ways, only their blinding spray flying steadfastly to leeward. In that welter of conflicting elements, whence even the birds had fled, we were tossed like any other bubble of the myriads bursting around. Sail was useless to steady her, for the towering billows becalmed it; neither dared we risk our only canvas blowing away. So when it appeared that there was a little more truth in the trend of the sea, we moored the cable to the trunk of our tree and cast it overboard. And to that strangely transformed plant we rode as to a floating anchor, held up head to sea, save when the persistent swell rose astern in a knoll of advancing water and hurled us three hundred fathoms forward in a breath. Nine weary watches of four hours each did I stand by the useless wheel, breathlessly eyeing the tigerish leap of each monstrous wave until it swept by leaving us still alive. Yet while the skipper stood his watch I slept, serenely oblivious of the fearful strife without. So bravely, loyally did the little Daisy behave that hope rose steadily, until just as the parting clouds permitted a ray of moonlight to irradiate the tormented sea, there was a sudden change in her motion. As if worn out by the unequal strife, she fell off into the sea-trough, a mountain of black water towered above her, and in one unbearable uproar she disappeared. Blinded and battered out of all sense, I knew no more until I found myself clinging to the wheel with a grip that left indented bruises all over my arms. She had survived, and, as if in admiration for her valiant fight, the sea fell and left her safe. The tree-trunk had been sawn right through, but its work was done.
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Beneath pleasant skies we plodded southward to our destined port, arriving uneventfully at Antigua after a passage of thirty-five days.
VI
‘RUNNING THE EASTING DOWN’
Despite the inroads made upon sail by steam, a goodly fleet of sailing ships still survive, many of them magnificent specimens not only of marine architecture, but also of the cunning handiwork of the modern “rigger.” The enormous sail-area shown by some of these ships and the immense spread of their yards would have staggered the daring skippers of forty years ago, when the China tea-clippers were the greyhounds of the seas, and the Yankee flyers were wiping the eyes of their sturdy British compeers. But in order to see these majestic vessels at their best it is necessary to be on board one of them on a voyage to or from the Far East. Their troubles are often many and their hindrances great until they reach those Southern parallels where, after a spell of “doldrums” varying with the season, they pick up those brave west winds that, unhindered, sweep in almost constant procession around the landless Southern slopes of the world. This is no place for weaklings either among ships or men. If a passage is to be made and a vessel’s reputation for swiftness, apart from steam-power, to be either sustained or acquired, here is the field. There is none like unto it. Not only should canvas, hemp, and steel be of the best, but the skipper must be stout of heart, not to be daunted by threatening skies, mountainous seas, or wandering islands of ice. More than all these, he must to-day be prepared to face the probability of his scanty crew being quite unable to handle the gigantic pinions of his vessel should the favouring breeze rise, as it often does, to such a plenitude of power as to make it most dangerous for them to be longer spread.
To take a typical instance: the 5000 ton four-masted sailing ship Coryphæna, laden with general merchandise for Melbourne, reached the latitude of Cape Frio on the thirty-fifth day from London. Like all of her class, she was but weakly manned, but as if to provide against any possible emergencies of sail-carrying, her enormous masts of mild steel were quadruply stayed with steel cables, until they were almost like an integral part of the massive fabric herself. From truck to mast-coat not a shaking of hemp was used for cordage where steel wire rope or chain could be made available. Neither were any old-time lashings, lanyards, or seizings to be seen. Their places were filled by screws and levers, whereby one man could exert more power on a shroud or a guy than was formerly possible to a dozen, aided by a complicated web of tackles. And the sails, those vast breadths of canvas that, when set, made the mighty hull appear but a trivial thing beneath their superb spread, were of the heaviest quality woven, their seams, leaches, and roaches fortified by all the devices known to the sailmaker.