Chiseled into one of the overhead beams ran the legend—“Certified to accommodate four seamen.” Thompson, with the aid of an indelible ink pencil had altered this to a more fitting rendition—“Certified to suffocate four seamen,” and in the stormy latitude of fifty-five south, with doors and ports tight shut, and bedding, blankets and clothing sopping wet and exuding their own peculiar aroma, mixed with those of the parrafin-oil lamp, tobacco reek, food, boot-grease and damp oilskins, the amended version was nearer the truth.
McKenzie’s companions, also, were “hard-bitten,” or had become so through the environment. Clad in filthy garments, and unwashed through lack of fresh water and opportunity, they wolfed their wretched food, cursed and blasphemed and bullied one another in a manner that would have shocked their parents. There was little consideration given them by their superiors and they, in turn, had but little consideration for each other, though all, except Moore, would do what they could for a ship-mate in sharing clothing and tobacco. It was a rough comradeship, but a true one, nevertheless, and while such weaknesses as sympathy or sentiment were tabooed, yet each would stand by each in a pinch or time of peril.
For a boy brought up as Donald had been, he had shaped up remarkably well. He had been bullied and knocked about a great deal more than any of the other apprentices on the Kelvinhaugh, but hardship seemed to have toughened him and he stood the physical grind as well as the best—sure evidence of untainted blood and wiry stock of Highland forebears. Mentally, he had received the greatest gruelling, but, in addition to quick wit and keen intelligence, he had the rare faculty of adaptability, and without losing his finer feelings or allowing them to become demoralized, he fitted himself to his environment, but kept a leash on his talk and actions which may be summed up in Thompson’s characterization of him—“a dashed clean, plucky little nipper who always plays the game!”
Clean, plucky, and “playing the game”—a delicately nurtured lad—a mother’s boy—but bred from good stock and holding to his ideals with true Scotch tenacity—was Donald McKenzie. The romantic aspect of a sea life had faded away, but there still remained the thought that he, a lad of sixteen had done things, could do things, that strong, grown men ashore would hesitate and refuse to tackle. The bitter grind of seafaring tempered his boyishness and taught him self-reliance and courage; the rigor of the discipline had taught him to obey without question, and when a man can obey, he is fitting himself for command. He had gone through the first degree; had been initiated into the great fraternity of seafarers, and he knew seafaring for what it was—shorn of its false romance—a gruelling grind which called for men of courage, men who were willing to cut themselves adrift from the comforts and allurements of the land, and who became as a race apart. With romance shattered, he was willing to stick to the end, to go through the mill until he reached the goal where he could take something from the sea which had exacted so much from him. It had ruthlessly claimed his father and seared the soul of his mother, but he, an apprentice seaman, was learning its ways, its varying moods, and as a seaman, he was acquiring the sea-cunning and strategy to use it for his will. That was his new ideal. He would take something from the sea which had already exacted so much from him!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Six weeks of desperate effort! Six weeks of plunging in Cape Horn “graybeards,” during which time the Kelvinhaugh’s crew plumbed the depths of physical and mental misery; physical—in the savagery of the weather, the ceaseless grind of back-breaking labor and the wretchedness of living conditions; mental—in the seemingly endless succession of gales thwarting their passage of the stormy corner at the foot of the world and the relentless tyranny of the hard-driving Nova Scotian mate. When they retired to the comparative comfort of their sopping bunks praying for a rest, it was Nickerson who roused them out and drove them from task to task with lurid oaths and fearful threats. And they knew his threats were not idle phrasings—many a skulker had felt the weight of his fist and boot. “Rest?” he would voice their mental desires. “Rest when ye’re dead. Ye’ll have rest enough then, by Godfrey!”
Day after day, with the yards on the backstays, clawing along in the teeth of the westerlies, under all the driving sail the wind would allow, the Kelvinhaugh traced a spider’s web of traverses in the area bounded by sixty and seventy degrees west longitude and fifty-four to fifty-eight south latitude, and failed to win past the desired meridian. Captain Muirhead proved in those days of stress to be “poor iron.” He was vacillating and easily discouraged, and, worst of all faults in a ship-master, he was endeavoring to stiffen his nerve with excessive drinking. When the whisky was in him he forgot his worries, and as the days crept along with no change in the weather, he betook himself more and more to his liquid solace, and left the sailing of the ship to the mate.
In the intervals between “bouts,” Captain Muirhead would show his weakness as a commander by seeking affirmative advice from the Nova Scotian. “Don’t ye think, mister, it would be a guid notion tae square away an’ mak’ a runnin’ passage of it to the east’ard by the Cape an’ across the Indian Ocean an’ th’ Pacific?” or “Would it no be better tae knock off an’ put in tae Port Stanley in th’ Falklands an’ lie there ’til the edge is aff this awfu’ weather?” To these suggestions the mate gave but one answer, “Sock it to her an’ drive her around!” To this the master would shrug his shoulders and protest querulously, “Ye canna do that wi’ this ship, mister! She’s no built fur drivin’! Ef she was a double-stayed ship an’ wi’ a big crowd for’ard, ye micht, but drive her, an’ she’ll shed her sticks or she’ll dive tae th’ bottom. She’s no sea-kindly. She’s a long, heavy, logey barge wi’ nae lift tae her. Pit sail tae her an’ she’ll jist scoff everything aff her decks. She’s a lubberly, meeserable bitch of a scow, an’ if it wasna that I was on a lee-shore an’ jammed in a clinch I’d never ha’ took her.... Nickerson, ma laud, never let an owner get a grup on ye! Ef ye do, ye’re done! Aye ... done!” When he had liquor in him, the Old Man was unusually talkative and hinted at things which Nickerson noted carefully.