Captain Nickerson drove the Kelvinhaugh in genuine “Down-east” fashion, and the big barque made the best speed it was possible to attain in such a model, and with such a weak crew. The cheap gear gave trouble, sheets parted, shackle-pins broke, braces carried away, and the sail-maker—who had looked for a fairly easy time in a new ship with new gear—was kept busy mending split sails, while the men had their fill of bending and unbending canvas. “Nah yer gets an h’idear o’ wot h’its like h’on them ruddy Bluenose packets!” growled a seaman. “Ye spends orl yer watches h’on deck wiv the hand-billy and the strop and ascrapin’, apaintin’ and apolishin’ h’of ’em, and orl yer watches below sendin’ dahn, amendin’ and abendin’ th’ bloomin’ canvas they busts h’in their sail draggin’. Ho, them’s th’ perishin’ packets for ’ard work, me sons! Them Bluenose mytes, like h’our fella there, lies h’awake nights thinkin’ up work for the ’ands, they does, bli’me!”
“A reg’lar plug!” Nickerson would growl, when, with a stiff breeze and under all the sail she’d stand, the log would only record a speed of nine or ten knots. These were records for the Kelvinhaugh! Her usual gait was around five and six sea miles per hour with breezes in which a clean-lined British or American clipper would be running her two hundred and forty miles from noon to noon.
The Nova Scotian was no believer in ambling along. He slept during the day and kept the deck at night, driving the big barque along by every trick of wind-coaxing he knew. In the “variables” off the Chilean coast he box-hauled her in the flukey airs, and when the squalls came down, it would be—“Stand by yer r’yal halliards!”—but no command to “clew up and let go” would be given unless the skipper judged the weight of the wind to be too much for sail and mast to stand. Nickerson would sooner split a sail than take it in—so the hands averred—but headway is more often made at the expense of canvas than by mothering it, as the Yankee clipper ship records show.
From the strenuous, desperate labors of the high latitudes, the crew progressed to the monotonous grind of scraping, chipping rust, and painting. Decks were sanded and scrubbed clean to new wood and then oiled; rigging was set up and “rattled down,” or rather “up,” as the fashion now is, and Donald, with the other two boys, had his fill of tarring and slushing. Nickerson’s liberal use of the ship’s paint would have caused David McKenzie to sweat blood could he have seen it, but by the time the barque had crossed the Pacific equator, she was scraped, scrubbed, painted and varnished until she looked like a yacht inboard. The running gear was overhauled from spanker-sheet to flying-jib down-haul; the standing rigging was tarred down and set up bar taut, and the brass-work—what there was of it—shone until it glittered like new-minted gold in the sun. All of this spelt “work,” and Martin and Thompson would feel that they had done all they could do in “sprucing her up,” but the artistic eye and labor finding imagination of the skipper would suggest some other job “to keep the hands from gittin’ hog-fat an’ lazy”—even to the extent of polishing “Charley Noble”—the galley funnel.
Through the sweltering heat of the “Line” and its heavy down-pours and thunderstorms, the Kelvinhaugh was coaxed into the north-east trades again, and when the Tropic of Cancer had been crossed, the crew felt that they were almost in port and they fervently longed for the day when they could set foot on shore once more. Would they ship in the Kelvinhaugh again? Not by a perishin’ condemned sight! They had had enough of her—these lean, taut-muscled sea-wolves. Their voyage in the ship had been a nightmare, and their desire to “hit the beach” was accentuated by the daily lessening quantity and bad quality of the beef, pork, flour and biscuit which was being served out. The voyage had been over-long and food was running low. Fresh water had been secured in the tropical down-pours, but the tanks were foul through want of liming. Even the lime-juice—a feature of British sailing-ships on long voyages—was scarce and only served to those men who showed symptoms of scurvy.
McKenzie—the pale-faced, sensitive little mother’s boy of six months back—had developed into a lithe, hard-muscled youth—“tough as a church rat,” as the skipper remarked—and he had thrived wonderfully in the cruel grind of “lime-juice” seafaring. As a sailor, he was far ahead of the other two boys—thanks to Hinkel’s hounding and Nickerson’s drilling. Moore was useless, and would never amount to anything at sea. He was the stuff “they don’t make sailors of,” as Martin sarcastically remarked, while Jenkins, though a willing lad and of considerably more sea experience than McKenzie, was slow to learn and was of the kind that acquired knowledge in time through sub-consciousness of repeated lessons and dint of much driving them in. Compared with his previous voyage on another ship, his experiences in the Kelvinhaugh had sickened him, and he talked of “cutting his stick” and serving the balance of his time before the mast in another ship.
In the less strenuous hours of the tropic latitudes, Donald had time to think, and he made up his mind not to remain by the Kelvinhaugh. His life on her had knocked his ideas of the future “galley west,” and while he intended to remain at sea-faring, he did not plan to serve out his time under the McKenzie house-flag. Nickerson’s ominous advice had impressed him. He felt that the skipper knew more than he cared to tell him, and if the Nova Scotian would keep his word, he would follow his fortunes and take a chance on his future. In common with the inmates of fo’c’sle, half-deck and cabin, Donald looked forward to the end of the voyage. “The more the days, the more the dollars!” sailors say, but none of the Kelvinhaugh’s crowd were anxious for a long voyage pay-day.
As they crawled up the North Pacific, gossip fore-and-aft wondered what would become of Captain Muirhead. He had “lapped up” all his supply of spirits and was now sullen, sober and sick looking. For a while each day he appeared on deck, and the men wondered at Nickerson’s charity in allowing the deposed master such freedom, but the Bluenose evidently had Muirhead “jammed in a clinch,” for he made no move to secure his usurped position either by word or deed. The dis-rated Hinkel was for’ard again with his arm in a sling, and useful only to the cook. The fo’c’sle would have none of him. He was a veritable ocean leper, and ate in the galley and slept in a berth intended for a painter.