Six months and ten days out from Greenock, the Kelvinhaugh stood in and raised the land. When the hail came from a man who had been making up gaskets on the foret’gallant-yard, all hands tumbled up for a look. There was a light wind from the nor’west and they ambled towards the high coast line, which stretched as far as the eye could discern. When darkness fell it gave them a definite position in the flashing light on Estevan Point, Vancouver Island. Thrice welcome beam! Harbinger of the seaman’s yearning for stable earth, trees, grass and flowers, cosy homes, bustling streets and the concomitants of the land!
During the night, as they drifted down the coast towards the Straits of San Juan de Fuca, the crew roused a big towing hawser up onto the fo’c’sle-head; knocked the plugs out of the hawse-pipes, rove the chains through them and shackled on the anchors under the auspices of “chips” the carpenter. Overhauling the ground-tackle! Happiest of deep-sea tasks—fore-shadowing of a voyage’s end.
Dawn found them standing in between the land, with a flood tide aiding the light wind in squared yards. With the breeze fair for a run up the Straits, Nickerson intended to save a stiff tow-bill, and they held along past the Vancouver Island shore in a drizzle of rain—typical fall weather on the West Coast. Shipping was more numerous now and tramp steamers with lumber deck-loads, and three-masted schooners forged out of the haze outward-bound from British Columbian and Puget Sound ports. Early morning brought them the sight of a beautiful clipper-bowed, two-funneled Canadian Pacific liner, which flashed past them, bellowing raucously in the mist. A lithe, white-painted ghost of a ship she appeared as she slipped along at fifteen knots. “She’s bound for Yokohama, Shanghai and Hong Kong—Japan and China,” remarked Thompson to Donald. “Japan and China?” echoed McKenzie dully. “Ah, yes.... Japan and China!” Romance to him was dead, and the mention of these far-off destinations in the mystical Orient failed to awaken a spirit of world-wandering. Different, indeed, from the time, six months back, when he dreamed glorious imaginings of the coming voyage “out west,” and when the words, “Aye, I’m sailing to-morrow. ’Round the Horn to Vancouver...” conjured a wonderful vista of romantic sights and experiences.
Aye! aye! he had been around the Horn and Vancouver was a mere jog ahead, but the youthful glamor of his shore dreams was gone. To realize his dreams he had experienced hard work, hard fare and hard knocks, and the price was too heavy for the realization of the ideal. A sailor’s life...? He found himself unconsciously echoing his father’s words, “It’s a dog’s life at the best of times!”
Still, he ruminated, maybe he hadn’t been given a square deal? Maybe he had struck it tough? He thought over the yarns of his shipmates for opposition reasonings, but a mental summary of their reminiscences failed to bring up any expression from them of infatuation for a seafaring life. “Seafarin’? Aye, mate, it’s all segarry in yer bloomin’ yacht when you is the bloomin’ owner; when you lies in yer blinkin’ bunk ’til nine an’ presses th’ button for the stoo’ard to bring yer blushin’ cawfee; when you lolls around in a deck-chair or an ’ammick under an awnin’ aft an’ has another flunkey amixin’ ye up gin an’ bitters, an’ arfs-an’-arfs, an’ whiskies an’ sodies, an’ when ye’re sick o’ rollin’ about, ye jest ups an’ tells th’ skipper to run yer boat inter th’ nearest pleasant ‘arbor. That’s real seafarin’! Any other way is plain hell!” So Cock-eyed Bill expressed his ideas one night, and the growl of assent which came from the audience seemed to confirm the sentiments. To them it was all “a hard drag”—a monotonous round of drudgery in an unstable ship-world in climates torrid, temperate and frigid, and punctuated by spells of desperate effort and nerve-breaking thrills. When sailors talked of good times, they were memories of shore jaunts and sprees. The fun and pleasant memories of those sea-toilers invariably savored of “the big night we had at Red Riley’s place in ’Frisco,” or “Larrikin Mike’s dance hall in Sydney”—never at sea! And yet, in spite of it all, men would go back to the sea and the ships again—tire of “the beach” and sign and ship for another spell of knocking about. What was it? he asked himself. What was the indefinable something which irresistibly drew men back to sea-faring after drinking deep of its cup of loneliness, monotony, hardship and misery? He could not answer—not yet. He was but an initiate in the lodge of the sea. He had other degrees to master and he had not yet been ashore and alone with his sea memories. When the voyage was over and he was free from the ship and his shipmates; when he was safe on the beach and fraternizing with landsmen who knew nothing of the degree he had worked, nothing of the sea and sailormen—then would old ocean’s magical lure get aworking. His time would come—some day—if he were of the genuine Viking blood.
The wind died in the forenoon watch and in an “Irishman’s hurricane” of up-and-down drizzle, the Kelvinhaugh drifted, tide-borne, on a glassy sea. Far to the west a square-rigger was lying becalmed; the C.P.R. liner’s smoke hung low along the horizon, and the serrated peaks of the Olympics loomed high to starboard. The waters of the Straits were dotted, here and there, by fishing boats, and slabs of bark and huge tree-roots drifted past with the tide or current. Nickerson relaxed his work-bill for once, and the crew, except the wheelsman and look-out, took shelter from the rain and discussed the future.
Poor sea-children—they had all been burnt by the fire of their experiences, and all were for “slingin’ their hook” from the Kelvinhaugh. They had it all planned out. Some of the Scandinavians had friends in the fisheries and they would look them up and land a job handling salmon nets or halibut trawls. No more wind-jammering deep-water for them “by yiminy!” A green hand announced his intention of making for the Klondyke gold fields—that being the incentive which sent him fore-the-mast on the Kelvinhaugh. Some of the others planned getting work ashore, or, failing that, they would make for Puget Sound ports or San Francisco “where the boarding-house masters treat a feller right an’ a man could take a pick o’ ships to sail in ef he didn’t get drunk!” That was the ticket! ’Ware mean Scotch barques with ornamental donkey-boilers and four heavily-sparred masts and eight able seamen’s bunks forever empty in the fo’c’sles. They knew the Scotch shipowner, by cripes! It was them that invented hard work and small pay. Didn’t they start the donkey-boiler dodge? Didn’t they invent these four-masted hookers with their fore, main and mizzen sails all the same size, so that the tops’l of the one could be used on the tops’l of the other, thus saving a spare suit of sails for every mast—a Scotch money-saving dodge! And they brag of the handy four-mast barque which could carry a whacking big cargo and only needed, with the donkey, a small crew to work the ship! More Scotch shrewdness! Aye, they sat in their offices in Bothwell street, and Hope street and Neptune Chambers and thought these schemes out! The Kelvinhaugh was a sample, and when Cock-eyed Bill admitted with pride that “doin’ twelve months hard in Barlinnie Jail was a blushin’ holiday compared with this v’y’ge,” they perished and blistered their sanguinary eyes and cursed Scotch economy in ships, food, and creature comforts. Young McKenzie, listening, felt a pang of shame for the economical characteristics of his countrymen.
The muggy night found the barque still with the wind “up and down the mast.” For’ard, the crew were packing their bags and having a sing-song—the first for months. Aft, McKenzie, Jenkins and Moore (sullen no longer) yarned of their experiences and discussed the future. Donald was non-committal—“he probably would stick by the ship”; Jenkins was going to “fly the coop between two suns—clothes or no clothes” and put his time in on some other ship as a seaman ’fore-the-mast, and take his chance on securing a clean discharge. Moore had enough of the Kelvinhaugh and a sea-faring life to last him the rest of his days. He would cable “Pa” from Vancouver to send him the price of a ticket home. After a month or so’s rest, he would enter the brewery’s office, where he could make up invoices instead of gaskets. No more “Up you go, you skulker, and overhaul and stop the royal buntlines!” and perching and hopping around the lofty branches of the trees which grew from a windjammer’s decks. “It’s all right for a bally bird,” he said, and the other two loathed him for lack of sand. A “stuck sailor,” forsooth, and the beer factory would suit him handsomely!
A light southerly sprung up with the cessation of the rain in the middle watch, and “Lee fore-brace!” roused the hands out to haul the yards aft and trim sail to the wind. Early morning found them around Beechy Head, Race Island, and off Royal Roads at the entrance to Victoria Harbor, and they backed the main-yard while a pilot boarded them. He was a brother Bluenose and scrambled up the Jacob’s Ladder with a “Got here at last, cap’en!” as if he had long been expecting the ship. His boat’s crew hove up a bundle of newspapers, which Captain Nickerson took and failed to read, as they were filched shortly afterwards by the half-deckers—hungry for news and wondering if Canadian papers contained British football and cricket results.