However, as events turned out, the captain was put in a position where his remarks would carry but little weight. For weeks he had been drinking heavily and the navigation of the ship had been left almost entirely to the mate. He kept to his quarters in the after cabin, sitting before the stove soaking himself in whisky and hot water. When he came on deck, it was to curse the ship and the weather, and to suggest putting the barque before it for a run around the world to the east’ard, or to put into the Falklands. After making these suggestions, he would retire to the warm stove and the “mountain dew” again.
One morning at the change of the watch, when the barque was rolling scuppers-under in an ominous Cape Horn calm, Mr. Nickerson and Martin called their respective watches aft. The mate leaned over the poop rail and addressed them. “Men,” he said quietly, “the master of this hooker is continually drunk and incapable of handling the ship. Naow, we want t’ git along, and I cal’late I kin git her along. Mister Martin and I have talked the matter over, and we have come to the conclusion that it is the best for all hands if I take over the command of the ship. What d’ye say, men?”
The men may not have loved Nickerson as an officer, but they admired and respected him as a sailor. They all knew that the Old Man was a “rum hound” and a weakling, and they had already chewed the matter over in fo’c’sle parliaments and wished for something to happen to get them away from “Cape Stiff.” Nickerson couldn’t be any worse as master than as mate. The assent was unanimous.
“I will make the necessary entries in the ship’s log, and I will ask you men to come aft here an’ sign yer names to it,” said the Nova Scotian. “And, naow,” he added, “as I am in command of the vessel, I want some action. Ye’ll git those three r’yal yards crossed again right naow while this quiet spell lasts—” The men looked glum—royals prophesied more work setting and furling—“and as you men have to work hard, it is only right that ye sh’d be fed properly and have warm quarters. I’ll order the stoo’ard to improve your whack, and while we’re down south here I’ll see that ye git coal for yer stoves. Naow, turn-to both watches!” The glum looks were replaced by grins and appreciative smiles, and under the direction of Martin, now acting as mate, the men set to work getting the royal yards off the skids and up aloft on the masts where they belonged.
The senior apprentice, Thompson, was made acting-second mate and would be in charge of the starboard watch. Martin, the former bos’n, though uncertificated, was a first class seaman, and was quite capable of taking the mate’s place. McLean, of the cropped head—cropped no longer—was promoted to bos’n and donkey-man.
When Thompson came into the half-deck to remove his gear into the cabin, he had some interesting news. “The skipper was full as a tick when Nickerson and Martin broke the sad news to him. He kicked up an awful rumpus and lugged a revolver from under his bunk mattress, but our Bluenose mate rushed him and wrenched it out of his hand. Then Nickerson told him he had the choice of being carried to Vancouver in irons, or of staying in the after cabin, and the old soak took the best choice. He had three cases of whisky and a small keg of rum in his clothes cupboard, and the mate left him the whisky—telling him to enjoy himself for the rest of the passage lapping it up. It was a hot session, believe me, and old Muirhead cursed enough to blister the paint. That Limehouse wharf-rat of a steward kind of sided with the Old Man, but Nickerson settled his hash by telling him if he tried any monkey business he’d send him for’ard and ride him down like a maintack. So the skipper is a prisoner in his quarters and the steward is skipping around licking Nickerson’s boots. It’s a rare tear, my sons, and believe me, chums, we’re going to have some fun from ‘naow aout’ as our new skipper says.”
McKenzie and Jenkins expressed joy at the change in affairs—especially at the allowance of coal and improved grub—but Moore remarked that “Nickerson was exceeding his rights and had been tryin’ to run the ship ever since we left port!” This brought Thompson on him. “Listen, you moocher!” he said, threateningly. “You’re going to sweat in future! You came to sea to learn to be a sailor, and as long as you’re on this packet you’ll do your whack. You’ve been shoving it on to McKenzie and Jenkins all along, but you won’t now. You’re coming into the starboard watch with me, and I’m going to look after you. I’m not one of the half-deck gang now. I’m second mate of this hooker, and you’ll address me as ‘Mister Thompson’ and you’ll clap ‘sir’ on to your answers, and you’ll work, you bally sojer, or I’ll know the reason why.” And with a portentous look at the sullen apprentice, he left for the cabin.
The foggy calm lasted about eight hours, and while the big barque wallowed in the trough of the mountainous swells, the crew sent the royal yards aloft, shackled on the gear and bent the sails. A sight of the sun at noon and in the short afternoon placed the ship in 56° S. latitude, and 63° W. longitude—a poor showing for six weeks’ effort. But with the change in commanders and conditions, all hands hoped for better times and a fair slant to push the barque to the west’ard of the seventieth meridian. The older hands, however, knew the vagaries of the Horn latitudes, and calms were invariably the fore-runners of fiercer gales. By the manner in which Nickerson hovered around the mercurial barometer in the cabin entrance; his hopeful tapping of the glass to hasten its prophecies, and his continuous scrutiny of the sky and horizon, they knew he was looking for something to happen, and wondering where it was coming from.
The short day came to a close and tea-time found the barque rolling her lower yard-arms into the tremendous swells. The gear aloft banged and crashed and the sails flapped thunderously, while water spurted in through scupper hole and clanging wash-port and swashed across the decks. Lying thus, helplessly becalmed, in an atmosphere chill with winter cold, and under a sky as black as ink, they waited for the wind which they knew was coming.
At the close of the second dog-watch it began to snow, and within an hour the barque was filmed with the flakes and appeared as a ghost-ship in the velvet darkness. When the first flakes began to fall, Nickerson ordered the stowing of the cro’jack, the t’gallants’ls, the mains’l, and the mizzen upper-topsail. All fore-and-aft sails were down except the fore-top-mast-stays’l, which is seldom hauled down at sea. As the men rolled the canvas up on the swinging yards their voices floated down out of the blackness aloft like unto spirits crying in the dark. The swishing canvas and the falling of the snow in the windless air, combined with the aerial shouts to conjure a picture in McKenzie’s Celtic imagination as of “giants aloft sweeping the floors of Heaven with mighty brooms!”