Thompson laughed sarcastically. “A fat lot you know, nipper!” he cried. “Your lousy Scotch ship-owner puts in a donkey and cuts down the crew, but he gives orders to the skipper that the donkey is not to be used except on extra-special occasions. The donkey is the greatest curse of sailormen these days and the owner reaps the benefit. He cuts down the crew on the work it is supposed to do, and saves money in port by using it for loading and discharging cargo. That’s your labor-saving donkey for you!”
The two boys were in the half-deck changing their wet clothing and donning their oilskins for a “stand-by” until their watch was called at midnight, but Mr. Nickerson looked in and ordered them out. “Bear a hand an’ get that maint’gallan’s’l unbent from the yard an’ sent down. It’ll put ye in trim for Cape Stiff!”
The “pampero” was the first real dusting the barque had tackled, and the old timers shook their heads ominously and muttered dread prophecies of times to come. In the weight of the squalls blowing, and under heavy weather sail, she made a dirty job of it, and it took two men at the wheel, sweating, to try and steady her. Big seas piled up astern and, overtaking the sluggish, deep-laden barque, broke on both quarters and crashed aboard—filling the decks from fo’c’sle-head to poop deck. “A ruddy half-tide rock!” growled the men as they worked in water, waist-deep, handling the remains of the maint’gallan’s’l, a brand-new heavy weather sail, which had split in several places. “Cheap gear for a cheap ship!” commented the sailmaker.
By the time the pampero had blown its edge off, Donald returned to his binnacle-trimming and time-keeping job on the poop, and the barque, braced sharp up and with lower stays’ls set, was plunging and diving on her course to the Falklands and Cape Horn. There was a cold bite to the wind that Donald had never felt before—precursor of the bitter windy latitudes they were running into—and he scrambled into the kindly lee of the chart-house. The lee port-hole was open and Donald could hear the angry voice of the captain laying down the law to the second mate. “Ye wur asleep on watch, mister,” he was saying, “or ye’d ha’ seen that squall makin’ up. It’s a wonder tae me ye didny jump th’ masts oot of her.... She was in th’ thick of it afore ye sung out. Ye’re a damned worthless sojer—that’s whit ye are—an’ yer spell in jyle has made ye forget all th’ seamanship ye iver knew....” Donald opened his eyes. “Spell in jail?” He wondered, and as he had no respect for either the Old Man or Hinkel, he kept his ears agog for more. “Don’t gie me ony back chat!” the skipper was shouting, “or I’ll dis-rate ye an’ send ye forrard.... an’ ye know what th’ men’ll dae if they ken ye wur th’ man what....” The boy strained his ears to catch the remainder of the sentence when the mate’s strident voice interrupted with—“Boy! boy! Where’n Tophet has that ruddy young sojer skulked to? Oh, ye’re there, are ye? D’ye know it’s five minutes of eight bells? Look smart, naow, an’ call th’ starboard watch or I’ll trim yer hair for ye!”
Life under Mr. Nickerson’s command was Heaven compared to his watches with the bullying German, and Donald experienced a revival of spirits at the change. Not that the Nova Scotian was an easy task-master. By no means! But Nickerson was too much of a man to bully and ill-treat a boy, though he was not so particular with the ’fore-mast hands. He was a “driver” in every sense of the word and kept Thompson and McKenzie up to the mark, but he never set them at useless “work-up” jobs. Thompson, as an apprentice almost out of his time, he did not interfere with much—Thompson was an able fellow, anyway, and would make a smart officer when he got his ticket—but Donald was the mate’s particular protégé, and many a time the lad wished he did not stand so high in the officer’s favor.
“Boy,” said the mate one afternoon a day or two after the pampero, “I want to see ef ye’ve lost yer nerve after floppin’ off that there gaff th’ other day. Naow, son, d’ye think ye kin shin up to that main truck an’ reeve off a signal halliard?” Donald stared up at the dizzy height of the main-mast to where the truck capped it—a good one hundred and eighty feet above deck—and felt some trepidation at the thought of the job. Nickerson was watching him narrowly. “Haow abaout it, boy?” he said.
“Yes, sir!” answered Donald after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll go up, sir!”
“Well, then, ask th’ bos’n to give ye a coil o’ signal halliard stuff an’ shin it up. Sharp, naow!” Everything with the mate was “Look alive!” “Jump!” or “Nip along, you!” with a few blistering oaths added to put the proper amount of “go” into the command. Anything moving slow was the officer’s bete noir, and the men used to remark that he “sh’d ha’ bin a ruddy ingine-driver on a perishin’ mail train!”
Donald moved “sharp” and started aloft. There was a light breeze and enough swell to cause the masts to sway in an arc of ten degrees. He made the royal yard without difficulty—he had been up there often before and under worse conditions—and after his climb up the Jacob’s ladder, he rested with his feet on the yard and held on to the eyes of the royal rigging. From this giddy perch he had a wonderful view of the ship one hundred and fifty feet below, and the fore-shortening of her hull from this height made him feel as if this weight aloft would cause her to capsize. Below him the sails bellied out in a succession of snow-white curves—full and rounded with the wind and each silently pulling the ship along—and the spreading rigging looked like a spider’s web radiating from where he stood. All around was sea and sky and the wake of the barque could be seen making a foamy path through the greeny-blue of ocean, with a few sea-birds wheeling above it. A gull sailed past him—squawking as if in jealous anger at the boy invading its ethereal realm, then the mate’s stentorian voice floated up from below, “Nip up, naow! Ye’ve bin sight-seein’ long enough!”
Glancing up at the thrusting height of the sky-sail pole to the truck thirty feet above, a slight wave of fear came over him—an aftermath of his jigger-gaff experience—and he closed his eyes for a moment until his nerve returned. There was no skys’l yard crossed on the Kelvinhaugh and no means of getting up to the truck save by shinning up the greasy pole with the aid of the skys’l back-stay. With the halliard in his teeth, he took a long breath and grasping the stay with one hand and encircling the mast with his left arm and his legs, he started up and reached the eyes of the skys’l rigging, perspiring and gasping. From the eyes of the rigging, the pole up-thrust, smooth and bare, for about eight feet and, gulping a deep breath, he wriggled and grasped the smooth spar with his two hands. In a few seconds he brought the round sphere of the truck on a level with his head, and hanging on to the mast with legs and his left arm, he took the halliard from between his teeth and thrust it up through the sheave in the truck with his free hand.