Hitherto I had not seen any deep-sea fishing; so, when one day a school of bonito came leaping round the bows, and the mate went out on the jibboom end with a line, my curiosity was at fever-heat. How ever I endured until eight bells I don't know. Once or twice the wrath of Jemmy was kindled against me for inattention, and I got a sharp reminder of my duties. At last eight bells struck. I had the dinner in the house in a twinkling, and in another minute was rushing out along the boom to where the mate had left his line while he went in to "take the sun." The tackle was simplicity itself, consisting solely of a stout line about the thickness of blind-cord, with an inch hook firmly seized to its end, baited with a shred of white rag. My fingers trembled so that I could hardly loose the neat coil the mate had left, for below me, gambolling in the sparkling foam beaten forward from the bluff bows, were quite a large number of splendid fish, although they did not seem nearly as large as they were in reality. At last I got the line free, and, bestriding the boom-end with my legs firmly locked between the jib guys, I allowed the lure to flutter away to leeward, jerking it gently so as to imitate a leaping squid or bewildered flying-fish. Splash! and the graceful curve of my line suddenly changed into a straight; I had hooked one. In a perfect frenzy of excitement I hauled madly, scarcely daring to look below where my prize dangled, his weight fairly cutting my hands. At last I had him in my arms, but such was the tremendous vibration of his massive body that, although I plunged my thumbs through his gills, I was benumbed from head to heel. All feeling left me, and my head was beginning to swim, when I bethought me of plunging him into the folds of the jib, which was furled on the boom. With a flash of energy I accomplished this, falling across the quivering carcase half dead myself. But before he was quite dead I had recovered, and, prouder than any victorious warrior returning from the hard-won field, I bore him inboard. I was received in the half-deck as a benefactor to my species, for had I not provided twenty pounds of fresh food. How welcome my catch was can hardly be comprehended by those who have never known what it means to subsist upon beef and pork, which when dry turns white and hard as salt itself, with the flavour of tar superadded, and that for many weeks. The first flush of excitement over, attention was called to my gory appearance. I had not noticed it before, but now I found that I was literally drenched in blood, black-red from the chin downwards. What of that? I had caught my first big fish, and nothing else mattered. Out I went again, succeeding in a few minutes in hooking another. But one of my watchmates must needs come interfering, and take it away from me, in spite of my protests. I was actually bold enough to tell him that the way he was carrying it was unsafe—the idea of me, with my five minutes' experience, dictating to an old "shellback" like Bradley. I was right though, for, when half way in, the fish gave a convulsive plunge and fell, leaving his gills in Bradley's fist. I didn't say anything, but, like the parrot, I did some tall thinking. All the fish left us instanter, attracted doubtless by the blood of their mutilated fellow; so, sulkily coiling up the line, I came in. There was a plentiful supper at four bells, and, though I should now pronounce the flesh of a bonito as dry and tasteless, then it was sweeter to me than I could express. While it was yet in my mouth, yea! ere it was chewed, retribution overtook me. I heard the watch on deck setting sail forward, and more conversation ensuing upon the performance than usual. Suddenly a shock-head thrust itself into the half-deck. The voice of Cæsar said ominously, "Tom, th' mate wanse yer!" With a thrill of dread crawling up the roots of my hair I obeyed, following the messenger forrard. There stood the port watch, grouped round the mate, gazing upward at the sail they had just been setting, the jib. Well they might. From head to tack down its whole length ran ghastly streaks and patches of gore, a sight that made my flesh creep. "Did you do that?" said the mate in an awful tone. There was no need for any answer; my guilt was manifest. Vengeance lingered not, and, in a few minutes, the manes of my first fish were propitiated. Lamely I retired to complete my supper with what appetite I could muster, and to vow that the next fishing I did I would take a sack out with me. But the evidence of my offence was permanent, surviving the bleaching of sun, rain, and spray throughout the whole of the voyage. My waspish little tyrant, the second mate, could hardly rope's-end me again for the same fault; but he made it an excuse for robbing me of a goodly portion of each day-watch below, keeping me on deck sorting the carpet-thrums of which he was for ever making hearthrugs. Oh, how I did hate his fancy-work and him too. But I dared not complain or refuse, although at night I was always getting into trouble for going to sleep, which I really couldn't help.
CHAPTER XV.
EIGHT WEEKS' CALM.
Leisurely as our progress had been hitherto, we had always managed to make some Southing each day. But now ensued a time unique in all my experience. What our exact position was I do not know; but I fancy it must have been somewhere near the Equator in the Atlantic. When the faltering, fitful breezes first failed us, a long succession of rain deluges set in, which at first were most heartily welcome. For, like many other ships of her class in those days, the Western Belle's store of water-tanks contained barely enough of the precious fluid to suffice us for half the voyage, even upon the regulation allowance of three quarts per man each day. Rain was depended upon to replenish them in time, and on such voyages, of course, seldom failed to afford a bountiful supply. Now, however, it fell for whole days in one solid, roaring downpour that, in spite of the many openings by which the decks were drained, filled them so that it was possible to swim from poop to forecastle in fresh water. Everybody turned out all their belongings that were washable, and a regular carnival of soap and water took place. Then the ports were opened and the decks cleared of water. It still poured over the front of the poop like a small Niagara, and from thence, as being the cleanest, we refilled all our tanks. Still the flood came down without a break, until the incessant roar became awe-inspiring. Many of the crew spoke of it as passing all their experience, even hinting at the possibility of another flood. It was so heavy that the experiment was successfully tried of scooping up drinkable water off the sea-surface, which was like a mill-pond for its level, although all a-foam with the falling torrent. The ship lay as nearly motionless as it is possible for a ship to be out in mid-ocean. For Coleridge's simile of "A painted ship upon a painted ocean" is only a poet's licence, and grates upon a seaman as the sole picture in that wonderful work which is not literally true. Admiral Wharton's remark that "In all the incalculable mass of the ocean not one particle is ever absolutely at rest," may strike most people as strange; but it is sober truth, and therefore it is impossible for a vessel at sea ever to be perfectly motionless.
Gradually the massive downpour abated, the sun peeped out, and the sodden decks and gear dried up. But there was no breath of wind. And as Captain Smith was a practical man, with all his patience, he decided to utilize this otherwise barren time in carrying out a scheme he had purposed leaving for some long spell of waiting in Indian harbours. We had on deck three huge, rough spars—long logs, in fact. These were loosed from their lashings and lifted on to the gallows, whereon the boats usually rested. A big rip-saw was produced—the only time I ever saw one on board ship—and the strange spectacle was witnessed of a ship's deck being turned into a saw-pit, sailors into sawyers. Thick slabs were sawn off the spars, after which the carpenter, and a couple of men who could handle axe and adze, set to work to fashion them into topsail-yards. Meanwhile, the rest of the hands toiled like beavers, unbending sails, sending down yards, and overhauling standing rigging, until the old ship looked as if she were in some snug dock-corner being dismantled. All day long this work went on, no one knowing or caring whose watch on deck it should be, and at night the weary workers lay around promiscuously, sleeping away the hours of darkness in calm certainty of being undisturbed. This curious interlude in an ocean voyage developed strange faculties in our men. The iron bands, which form part of the fittings of a ship's yards, were, owing to the skipper's desire to have heavier spars, found to be too small. No matter. An impromptu forge was rigged up on a barrel filled with sand, a most ingenious bellows was made by somebody, and, as if born and bred in a smithy, the bo'sun and two hands manipulated that ironwork in such workmanlike fashion that it answered its purpose as well as if turned out of a Blackwall foundry.
For many days this work went on, with apparently no more notice taken of its strangeness than as if it were the normal course of events. But gradually the deathly stillness of our surroundings, the utter absence of the faintest air of wind, or sign of any other vessel in a similar plight, began to tell upon everybody's nerves. Men took to gathering in twos and threes in the evenings to recount their experiences of lengthened calms, and the yarns they had heard of bygone tragedies connected with ships that had strayed into windless seas. Even the busy working-hours could not prevent the men from gazing uneasily over the side where the familiar, smiling face of the sea was undergoing a mysterious change. There is about the deep sea, even in the hottest weather, a delicious atmosphere of cool cleanliness, a searching purity, such as the earth can never yield, giving one the fixed idea that to this vast, unpollutable limpidity the nations owe their health. In some dim fashion this thought is present with all sea-farers, however dense and unnoticing they may be. Therefore, when that familiar freshness was found to be giving place to a stale, stagnant greasiness to which a mawkish, uninvigorating atmosphere clung, what wonder that uneasiness—all the more difficult to bear quietly because undefinable—became generally manifest. Adding to the sense of eerieness, was the fact that old Peter was failing fast. I have already mentioned how willingly his share of the common burden was borne by his shipmates, and how loyally they tended him, even though such service as he needed could not be spoken of without offence. But now his mind had completely gone. He lived in some misty past, about which he babbled unceasingly. Often, in the still evenings, all hands would gather round him, listening in perfect silence to his disjointed reminiscences of desperate deeds in the way of duty, of long-drawn-out debaucheries in filthy rookeries of home ports, as well as the well-known hells at Hong Kong, Calcutta, or Callao. They were strange scenes, those dog-watch gatherings, nothing distinctly visible but the red glow of the pipes—except when the sudden glare of a match, struck to light fresh tobacco, shed a momentary gleam over the group of haggard, bearded faces, each beclouded with an unwonted shadow. In the midst, a placid stream of sound, Peter's voice prattled on, its lurid language in the strangest contrast to the gentleness of his speech. Still the days dragged on and the faces grew longer. All the refitting was finished, and only the ordinary routine of ship-life was left to be carried on. Happily those duties are always, in the hands of capable officers, sufficiently onerous to prevent time ever hanging heavily. One of the strangest of all the strange notions current ashore about sea-life is that sailors have nothing to do but watch the ship go along, except during stormy weather. One would have thought that the never-ending, ever-beginning round of work in a house that is properly kept would have taught all landsmen and women that the great complicated machine called a ship would demand at least equal labours to keep it fit and in working order. But "watch and watch" was now restored, which, of course, threw a great deal of additional time upon the men's hands, since they could still sleep through the night, if they chose, without fear of being disturbed. So for hours, when unemployed, men took to hanging over the rail, watching, with an unnatural curiosity, the myriads of strange creatures that, lured from their silent haunts in the gloomy middle-depths of the ocean by the long-enduring stillness above, came crawling about, blinking glassily with dead-looking eyes at the unfamiliar light. Truly it was an uncanny sight. Not only fish of bizarre shape abounded, but vast numbers of great medusæ—semi-transparent simulacra of all the hideous things that ever haunted a maniac's dream—crawled greasily about us, befouling the once clear blue of the sea, and coating its sleek surface with stagnant slime. And, deeper down, mighty shadows passed sluggishly to and fro, filling the gazers with wordless terror as the days crept wearily away and those formless apparitions gradually chose higher levels. Overhead the sweet fathomless azure of the sky paled as if in sympathy with the silent sea. Cloudless, indeed, but overspread with a filmy veil of strange mist, that, while it robbed the sun of its glare, seemed to enclose us within a dome of heat, unventilated and stale. When night fell, instead of cool refreshment—such as comes, even in tropical calms, after sunset at all ordinary times—there arose a foul odour of decaying things that clung clammily to the palate like a miasma. The densely populated ocean beneath palpitated with pale fire, the gleaming of putrescence. Instead of the usual brisk movement seen among the glowing denizens of the deep, everything crawled languidly, as if infected with some universal pestilence. Moon and stars lost their strong silver glow, and were no longer reflected in the smoothness beneath as if shining in another heaven. And at moonrise, when the fantastic mist-wreaths writhed about the horizon, the broad red disc of the moon would be distorted into many uncouth shapes, or patterns of strange design were drawn across her paling surface.
At last, one night, when old Peter was holding his usual levee, he suddenly raised his voice, and authoritatively demanded that his auditors should bear him on to the forecastle head. They instantly obeyed, lifting him tenderly upon his mattress, and laying him gently by the side of the capstan. Then all hands gathered round him in the darkness, only the glow of the pipes fitfully illuminating the rugged countenances. Slowly the moon rose, but sent no silvery pathway across the sea, until suddenly, as if with a great effort, she broke through the hampering mist-wreaths that seemed to clog her upward way. A pure, pale beam shot right athwart our vessel, lighting up the little group of watchers on the forecastle, and lingering as if lovingly upon the withered, weather-scarred face of our ancient shipmate. As it did so he smiled—a patient, happy smile—his lips unclosed, and, with a sigh of relief like a weary child, he died.
Breaking the steadfast silence came the mate's mellow cry, "Square the mainyard!" As the men rose to obey, a gentle breath, welcome as the first thrill of returning health, kissed the tanned faces. Slowly the great yards swung round, a pleasant murmuring as of a mountain rivulet arose from the bows, and the long calm was over. In quiet attendance upon the dead came the sailmaker, with a roll of worn canvas under his arm in which the poor, shrivelled remains were reverently wrapped and neatly sewn up. A big lump of coal was found and secured to the feet, and the long parcel was borne gently aft to the gangway. There in the moonlight we all gathered, while the skipper, with faltering, unaccustomed voice, read the stately words of the Burial Service, all hands standing like statues as they listened to what all admit to be one of the most solemn as well as majestic selections known in our splendid language. Suddenly there was a pause; the skipper raised his hand, and those who supported the plank on which the worn-out tabernacle of old Peter lay, gently raised its inner end. There was a subdued s-s-s-h as the white fardel slid slowly seaward, followed by a sullen plunge. All rushed to the side, where an ascending column of green light marked the descent into those calm profundities of our dead. An almost inaudible sigh of relief escaped from every lip, as if a well-nigh intolerable burden had been removed. Undoubtedly that was the predominant feeling, intensified by the fact that a sweet breeze was now blowing steadily. In the blue dome above, the moon and her attendant stars were shining with their full splendour, and from the now sparkling face of the surrounding sea the sickly mist was rolled quite away.
Thenceforward, although our progress was wretchedly slow, of course, we were little troubled by calms. But our tribulations were not yet all over. Barber, the painter A.B., was taken ill; so ill as to be quite useless, nor did he ever again that voyage recover sufficiently to resume his place as an active member of the crew. And other men were grievously tried by scurvy, which, though in a mild form, was painful and weakening. How it was that they were no worse, I cannot think, for the food was bad enough truly for the development of that malignant disease in its worst form. But, somehow, we worried along in dogged fashion, every one showing rare patience under their unmerited sufferings.