But the look-out that was kept from that day forth, and the careful calculations of course and distance every watch, I have never seen equalled in a ship's fo'lk'sle before or since. And when at last the rugged burnt-up heap of volcanic débris appeared above the horizon right ahead, our relief was immense. Our simple preparations for anchoring were soon made, and our one serviceable boat cleared for hoisting out, for, like the majority of that class of vessels, the boats were stowed and lumbered up with all sorts of incongruous rubbish, as if they were never likely to be needed; and the long-boat—upon which, in case of disaster to the ship, all our lives would depend—was so leaky and rotten, that she would not have kept afloat five minutes in a millpond. As we opened up the tiny bay, where the Government buildings are clustered, we saw, fluttering from the flagstaff at the summit of a conical hill, most prosaically like a huge "ballast"-heap, a set of flags silently demanding our business. Our set of signals being incomplete, we could only reply by hoisting our ensign and standing steadily in for the anchorage. But before we came within a mile of it, a trim cutter glided alongside, and a smart officer in naval uniform sprang on board. With just a touch of asperity in his tone, he inquired our business, and, upon being deferentially informed by the skipper, immediately ordered the main-yard to be laid aback while he went below to inspect the contents of our store-room. Apparently his scrutiny was satisfactory, for, returning on deck, he ordered the main-yard to be filled again, and conned the ship up to the anchorage. He then re-entered his boat and sped away shoreward, while we, as soon as ever the ship had swung to her anchor, just clewed up the sails, and then made all haste to get the boat into the water. As soon as this was done, four hands and the skipper got into her and pulled for the shore; the old man's last words being, "I 'spect I shall be back in an hour."
To while away the time, pending their return, I started fishing; but I never want to get among such fish as they were again. Lovely in their hues beyond belief, but with nothing else to recommend them, they tried my patience sorely. I have since learned that they were a sub-variety of Chætodon, having teeth almost like a human being, but so keen and powerful that they were able to sever copper-wire. After losing most of my hooks, I at last "snooded" with a few strands of silk not twisted together. By this means I succeeded in getting half a dozen of the gorgeous creatures on deck. But their amazing colours, fearful spikiness, and leathery skin effectually frightened us from eating them, as most of us were painfully aware of the penalty for eating strange fish. The swelled and burning head, lancinating pains, and general debility afterwards, consequent upon fish-poisoning, make sailors very careful to taste none but known kinds of deep-sea fish, and any queer shape or colour among reef-fish is sufficient to bar their use as food.
At the expiration of two hours and a half our boat returned, laden to the gunwale with bags and cases, showing plainly that here, at any rate, the old man had not been permitted to exercise his own judgment as to what his requirements were likely to be. In feverish haste we got the stores on board, the skipper appearing in a high state of nervous apprehension lest the keen-eyed watchers ashore should deem him slack in leaving. Indeed, the report of the boat's crew was to the effect that the skipper had been treated with very scant courtesy—not even being allowed to say how much of this, that, or the other, he would take; and, when he was leaving, being sternly admonished to lose no time in getting under way, or he would certainly find himself in trouble. Such was the haste displayed all through, that, within four hours from the time of the officer's boarding us, we were off again, our head once more pointing homeward.
From that time onward, until our arrival in Falmouth, we never had cause to complain of bad food. Everything supplied us from the Naval Stores was the best of its kind—as, of course, it should be. It filled us all with respect for the way in which men-o'-war's men are fed, even without the many opportunities allowed them for exchanging the service rations for shore provisions. In consequence of this welcome change everything on board went on greased wheels. The old man effaced himself, as usual, never interfering with anybody, and, for a month, we were as quiet a ship as you would find afloat. Slowly we edged our way across the belt of calms to the northward of the Line, inch by inch, our efforts almost entirely confined to working the ship and making sennit. By-and-bye we came into a calm streak, where sea and sky were so much alike that it was hard to tell where one left off and the other began: weather beautiful beyond description, but intensely aggravating to men tired of the ship and the voyage, and exceedingly trying to the temper of all hands. For a week this stagnant state of things prevailed; and then, one morning, we were all interested to find another barque within a couple of miles of us. In that mysterious way in which two vessels will draw near each other in a stark calm, we got closer and closer, until at last our skipper took a notion to visit her. So the boat was got out, and we pulled alongside of her. She was the Stanley Sleath of London, from 'Frisco to London, one hundred and sixty days out. She was an iron vessel, and never shall I forget the sight she presented as she rolled her lower strakes out of water. Great limpets, some three inches across, yard-long barnacles, and dank festoons of weeds, clothed her below the water-line from stem to stern, and how she ever made any progress at all was a mystery. She smelt just like a reef at low water; and it looked as if the fish took her for something of that nature, for she was accompanied by a perfect host of them, of all shapes and sizes, so that she rolled as if in some huge aquarium. She certainly presented a splendid field for the study of marine natural history. None of us went on board but the skipper; but some of the watch below leaned over the rail as we swung alongside and told us a pitiful story. Through somebody's negligence the lid of their only water-tank had been left off, with the result that some rats had got in and been drowned. This had tainted all the water so vilely that no one save a sailor burning with thirst could drink it, and nothing would disguise that rotting flavour. The captain had his young wife on board, and she had been made so ill that she was delirious, her one cry being for "a drink of water." And no one seemed to have had sufficient gumption to rig up a small condenser! It hardly seemed credible, had it not been that similar cases were well known to most of us. We had plenty of good water, and our skipper sent us back on board with orders to the mate to fill a two-hundred-gallon cask, bung it up tight, and lower it overboard. We were then to tow it back to the Stanley Sleath. As a cask or tank of fresh water floats easily in the sea, this was not a difficult task, nor were we long in executing it. It was the best deal made by our old man for many a long day, for he got in exchange a fat sow, weighing about fifteen stone, two gallons of rum, and a case of sugar. Followed by the fervent thanks of her anxious commander, we rowed away from the Stanley Sleath, our approach to our own vessel again being heralded by the frantic squeals of our prize, who lay under the thwarts, her feet securely bound but her voice in splendid working order. That evening a breeze sprang up, and, slow as we were, we soon left our late consort hull down. Thenceforward for nearly a fortnight we saw nothing of our teetotal skipper. The rum had been given us in lime-juice bottles, packed in the original case, so that nobody knew but what a case of lime-juice had come on board. And yet, as we had an abundance of lime-juice, we wondered why the skipper had not chosen something else in payment for the water. The cabin-boy, as usual, got the first inkling of the mystery. Somehow he was a prime favourite with the old man, who, I suppose, turned to Harry in his loneliness and made something of a pet of him, getting, in return, all his little weaknesses reported verbatim to the fellows forrard every evening. Going to call the captain to supper on the same evening we visited the other ship, the boy noticed an overpowering smell of rum, and, upon tapping at the state-room door, he heard a thick voice murmur, "'Mnor vry well shevenin'; shlay down bit." That was enough for Harry. Peeping in, he saw the skipper lolling on his chest, a big black bottle wedged securely down by his side, and a glass in his hand. From that spell of drink he did not emerge until the last of the bottles was emptied.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
WHICH BRINGS US TO PORT AT LAST.
Fortunately for us the condition of the skipper didn't count for anything, as we made our usual progress homeward indifferent to his pranks. The north-east trades hung far to the eastward, allowing us to make an excellent course northward; but, as we were very light, our gain from their favouring cant was slight. Just upon the northern verge of the tropic we lost them altogether, and lay lolling about in windless, stagnating ease for another week, exasperating all hands at this unlooked-for extension of our already lengthy passage. But even this enforced wait had its advantages. We spoke another barque—homeward bound from Brisbane—and again our adventurous commander would go ship-visiting. In fact, he allowed it to become known that, but for our determined attitude about calling at Ascension, he had intended to beg his way home—a peculiarly irritating practice much fancied by men of his stamp, who thus levy a sort of blackmail upon well-found ships. They pitch a pitiful yarn about bad weather and abnormal length of passage, with such embroidery as their imagination suggests, and generally succeed in getting quite a lot of things "on the cheap."
What sort of a yarn our mendacious skipper spun to this last vessel we had no means of knowing, as the boat's crew were not allowed to board her; but he succeeded in getting a couple of cases of preserved beef and some small stores. Much to his disgust, however, there was no liquor of any kind to be had. The only thing that the other ship wanted was a few coals for the galley fire; so, while our skipper stayed on board, the boat was sent back for them. Now it was Sunday afternoon, and when Bill and I were ordered to go down into the fore-peak and fill three sacks with coal, we felt much aggrieved. So, grumblingly, we dived into the black pit forrard, and began to fill the sacks. But, suddenly, a bright idea struck us. The only pretence at ship-smartening we were likely to make was "holystoning" the decks, and, to this end, several lumps of sandstone had been saved ever since we left Sydney. Now, I have before noted in what abhorrence holystoning is held by all who have to perform it, and here was a heaven-sent opportunity to make the job impossible. So we carefully interspersed the lumps of stone among the coal in the sacks, taking every precaution to leave not a fragment behind. Away it went to the other ship; it was hoisted on board, our boat returned, a breeze sprang up and we parted company, seeing each other no more. Two or three days after the order was given to get up the holystones for cleaning ship. Words could not express the wrath of the mate when it was reported to him that none were to be found. Every bit of coal in the fore-peak was dug over under his immediate supervision, he getting in a most parlous mess the while, but in vain. I never saw a man get so angry over a trifle. He swore that they had been thrown overboard by somebody, being certain that there had been an ample store. Singularly enough, he never dreamed of the real way of their going, and the actual perpetrators of the certainly immoral act were never even suspected. We had to do the best we could with ashes and brooms, but they made a poor substitute for the ponderous scouring of the stones. I regret to say that neither of us felt the slightest remorse for our deed, and, when we heard the delighted comments of the men were more puffed up, I am afraid, than we should have been by the consciousness of having acted ever so virtuously.
And now, as we were approaching the area of heavy weather, and our stun'sails were worn almost to muslin, we began to send down the stun'sail gear. The first thing that happened: the ex-cook, in sending down one of the top-gallant stun'sail-booms (a spar like a smooth scaffold-pole), made his "rolling-hitch" the wrong way. Perfectly satisfied that all was in order he sung out to us on deck to "hoist away." The moment we did so, and the boom swung out of the irons in which it had been lying, it assumed a vertical position and slid through the hitch like lightning, just missing the rail, and plunging end-on into the sea alongside. We were going about four knots at the time, and when it sprang upwards again it struck us under the counter with a bang that almost stove in the outer skin of the ship. And, instead of being at all chagrined at such a gross piece of bungling, the offender simply exhausted his copious vocabulary of abuse when the "old man" ventured to rebuke him. Oh, our discipline was grand! Hardly an hour afterwards, in taking in the fore-topmast stun'sail, the halliards carried away. The tack and sheet, rotten as cobwebs almost, followed suit, so we lost that too. The rest of the rags were saved for the old-rope merchant.