The mate undertook to drive her one day when the skipper was below, “keeled over” by an unusually stiff bout with the bottle. Under three t’gallants’ls he was ratching her to windward in a heavy wind and a “nose-end” sea, when the barque took a dive into a towering “greybeard” which thundered over the fo’c’sle-head, buried the for’ard house and stove-in the fore-hatch. Another sea would have finished her had it been allowed to pour its tons of chilly brine down into the uncovered hold, but Nickerson had the helm up and the barque wore round and running before the wind ere such a disaster could happen. When the Old Man heard of it, he made a noisy, but weak, remonstrance, and celebrated the escape from Davy Jones’ locker by another solitary spree.
Under the grind of the ceaseless gales, the bitter cold, and the continual round of laborious work in water and wet clothing, the crew began to play out. Seldom a watch reported aft but one or two of their numbers were in their sodden bunks useless through rheumatism, cramps, sea-water boils, shivering fits, bruises or sheer exhaustion. The panderers to shore vices collapsed under the drilling of Cape Stiff and they received scant consideration. Nickerson or Martin would go for’ard and diagnose the case. If the sufferer was fit to pull on a rope—out he would have to come—sick or not. Skulkers and sufferers from “Cape Horn fever” had their ailment quickly cured by the “laying on of hands” or “repeated applications of sea-boot.” Sick men received the best treatment the medicine chest and the ship could afford—enough to bring them on deck when the necessity arose.
The former second mate, Hinkel, went through a severe drilling. Loathed and despised by the men among whom he was forced to live; bullied by the Britishers and treated with contempt by the “Dutchmen” and “Dagoes,” his watches below were but little better than his watches on deck under the eagle eye and scorching tongue of the young Nova Scotian mate. Nickerson roused him around with a vengeance, and the man had his crimes rowelled into him when the mate “rode him down” and used the spurs. Tender-hearted little McKenzie was really sorry for his late tormentor, but he had miseries of his own to keep his sympathies for.
The boy was suffering terribly through the wretched clothes he had been supplied with. He was never dry during the knocking about off the Horn, and his feet and fingers were chilblained with the cold. He had waited on the captain and asked for a re-fit from the slop-chest, but the Old Man curtly dismissed his plea by stating sourly, “Mister McKenzie told me that the rig he bought ye was tae do ye th’ trip until we were bound hame. He’ll no pay me for onything I may gie ye oot ma slop-kist. Awa’ wi ye an’ start a tarpaulin muster with yer pals in th’ hauf-deck!” Thompson and Jenkins spared what they could. The sullen Moore made no offers.
One bitter day the mate found him huddled in the lee of the chart-house crying with the misery of sodden clothing and aching fingers and toes. His sea-boots had burst from their soles and he had “frapped” and covered them with strips of canvas and old socks. His oilskins were patched and coated with pitch and oil to render them waterproof, and upon his hands he had a pair of discarded woollen socks as mittens. The officer stood and scrutinized the little pinched face peering from under the thatch of a painted sou’wester, and his eagle eye spied the tears and the make-shift clothing. “Hell’s delight, boy, but is that the best rig you kin muster for this weather? Hev ye bin pipin’ yer eye?” He spoke harshly.
“No, sir,” replied Donald, straightening up. “The wind was making my eyes water. I’m all right, sir!”
The young Nova Scotian looked at him for a moment and then his stern face lit up with a smile of almost brotherly affection—and smiles on Nickerson’s face were rare in fifty-six south. Stepping up to the lad, he put his arm over his shoulder in a big brotherly way. “Dern my stars’n eyes, son, but you’ve got grit, guts’n sand in that skinny carcase of yours. I like your style, sonny—blister me ef I don’t! Wouldn’t the Old Man give you a new rig from the slop-chest?” Donald told of the skipper’s charity and the mate’s face resumed its stern saturnine look. He was silent for a moment. “Come below with me, sonny, and we’ll try and square up that pierhead rig of yours.” And Donald followed him down to the saloon and along to the steward’s quarters.
“Looky here, Johnson,” said Nickerson sharply to that individual, “open up that slop-chest an’ give this nipper a full rig-out!”
The steward stared. “Why, sir, I—I cawn’t do that,” he stammered. “The slawps belong to the kepting, sir, h’an ’e gyve h’orders, sir, that McKenzie ’ere wos not to be h’allowed to dror anyfink—”
The masterful mate interrupted sternly, “Naow, looky-here, you stew-pot walloper, you’ll jest bloody well do as I tell you, or I’ll trim yer hair. I don’t care a tinker’s dam what the ‘kepting’ has said. I’m not agoin’ to allow this here youngster to freeze to death on a Scotch lime-juicer’s charity. You give him the duds pronto, an’ you kin charge them up to his uncle—the owner of this packet!” And he concluded by fixing the steward with a ferocious scowl and the familiar spur to action, “Look slippy naow!” And Donald went into the half-deck with a full kit of fairly good gear, which he donned with heartfelt thanks to the mate, and some little, but not much, trepidation as to what the captain would say about the forcible commandeering of his treasured “slops.”