The greetings done with, the pilot glanced around. “Cal’late, cap’en, ye’d better bring-to here in Royal Roads an’ let go yer killick. Carmanah got yer number yesterday and your Vancouver agents are sending over a big tug to lug you in. Devil of a current runs through the channel hereabouts ... pull you through them at slack water. Better clew up yer muslin naow an’ edge in an’ let go off th’ shore there. Th’ quarantine people will look ye over here, but I guess there ain’t much ailin’ your crowd but hard muscles and empty bellies.” And he chuckled reminiscently.
The barque glided slowly in to the anchorage as sails were being clewed up and the yards lowered. “Come-to hereabouts, cap’en,” said the pilot. The helmsman put the wheel over, and when the ship lost headway, the skipper sung out, “Leggo y’r anchor!” The carpenter, in the eyes of her, swung his maul and knocked out the pin of the chain-stopper, shouting “Stand clear!” as the mud-hook plunged into the water with the chain thundering and rattling through the hawse-pipe. Then came a moment of silence—a further rattle of heavy cable-links—and a jarring tremor betokened that the ship had taken up the chain and that the anchor had bitten the bottom. “Anchor’s holding, sir!” came the hail from for’ard. “Alright!” grunted Nickerson, and to Martin he said, “Naow, git her canvas stowed ... an’ make it a harbor furl. She’ll not need sail for a while naow!” His lean young face had a complacent grin as he puffed on a cigar. He had worked the old scow in, and the Kelvinhaugh had completed her first voyage under canvas—a passage of one hundred and ninety-five days.
Nickerson and the pilot went below, and the men working on the poop noticed that both they and Captain Muirhead were sitting around the saloon table chatting away in the most friendly manner. “A rum go!” they remarked. “What’s in the wind?” But the young Nova Scotian was evidently playing a game of his own. “Yes,” he was saying to the pilot, “Captain Muirhead has been a very sick man. Knocked out down south ... have had to take his place ever since. Second mate fell from aloft ... hurt....” The pilot was murmuring his sympathies and Muirhead was shaking his head as if in corroboration of Nickerson’s testimony. In truth, he did not look a well man. The long confinement had washed the sea-tan off his pock-marked features and, no doubt, his heavy drinking had affected his system.
With the rest of the hands, Donald was aloft helping to furl the sails into that neat uncreased roll which is known as a “harbor stow.” They took their time at the job. None of your lump, bulgy furls, like “a bunch of tricks,” with a bunt like a balloon and clew-lugs sticking out like a whale’s flukes, in a harbor stow. That sort of thing was all right for Cape Horn, where it was roll ’em up anyhow and get the gaskets ’round them, but the last furl had to be a furl where the canvas would lie, without a crease, like a white ribbon along the yard, and the gaskets would be passed like unto a neat serving. With sails stowed, they clambered to the deck and braced the yards faultlessly square; took up the slack in running gear and faked it down on the belaying pins in neatly stopped coils. When this was done, the Kelvinhaugh looked, in the placid water of the Roads, a proper picture of an inward-bound deep-waterman. No seaman could mistake the clean paintwork and scrubbed decks inboard and the taut rigging and well-furled sails aloft for an outward-bounder. The chafing gear on the stays and the rusty, sea-washed and red lead patched hull told its unmistakable story, for every sailor knows a wind-jammer goes to sea with a clean hull, but with cluttered decks and riggers’ snarls and “Irish pennants” (loose ends) aloft, and a ship is in her best trim after her sailormen have toiled on her between port and port.
A launch brought the port doctor out and he glanced perfunctorily at the lean, hungry-looking mob lined up on the deck for inspection. He examined Hinkel’s mended bones and muttered, “A good job—well done!” A professional compliment to Nickerson’s surgery, truly! He then went into the cabin, and when he came up again, Thompson heard him say to Nickerson, “Your skipper has a bad liver ... been drinking too much, I’m afraid.... Sick man ... better be careful!” And he went over the rail.
Shortly after the man of medicine departed, a big deep-sea tug came around a point and forged towards them. She had a huge rope fender over her bows and several wooden ones trailing along her sides. A wheel-house was perched forward on her superstructure, and it was profusely ornamented with nameboards in gilt and a spread-winged eagle crowned its roof. Donald had never seen such a tug before and he was interested in the fine points of difference between it and the low-riding, paddle-wheeled craft which had hauled them to sea over six months agone. She ranged handily alongside, with her skipper half in and half out of the wheel-house. He was in shirt-sleeves and wore a hard bowler hat, and looked like a drygoods clerk, but he knew how to handle his craft. When she was fast alongside, he sung out to the pilot, “Better get yer hook hyak (quick)!” he drawled—masticating a quid with jaws that never ceased to work. “I wanna git this big hooker through in slack water afore them skookum (strong) currents start arunnin’! This one’ll be a sight worse’n any raft o’ big timber by th’ looks o’ her, I reckon!” Punctuating his conversation with Chinook idioms, he chewed and yarned with the pilot and Nickerson while the crew prepared to get under way again.
McLean had steam up in the donkey, and it hove the anchor short amid fervent comment from the barque’s crowd. “Fust time that ruddy ornament has worked sence we left for out!” they remarked. “Pity they couldn’t ha’ used it them times we was doin’ ruddy watch-tackle drill or handlin’ them cussed yards!” Aye, but coals cost money and muscle-power was cheaper, and these were days of low freights.
In tow of the steamer, the Kelvinhaugh, with a man at her wheel, glided out of the Roads, rounded Discovery Island and pulled into Haro Strait. The pilot and Nickerson paced the poop exchanging news and views, and Nickerson evidently astonished his fellow countryman, judging from the “Waal, I swan’s!” and “Th’ hell ye say’s!” which came from the pilot’s lips. “Aye ... lucky to get here ... a slow ship,” the captain was saying.
The pilot glanced around. “New ship, too ... ye hev her spruced up. Not like aour old Bluenose packets, whittled out of the bush above tide-water, eh? A lime-juicer for discomfort ... no wheel-house to keep the man at the wheel out of the cold and the wet. Stand in the open an’ freeze an’ be damned to you! That’s th’ lime-juice way for ye!” The tug was plucking the big barque along at a faster clip than she usually made under sail and the reek of her Nanaimo coal gave the barque’s crew a tantalizing memory of Glasgow’s bituminous atmosphere. The tide was running in strong astern of the ship and helped to shove her along, but soon it was noticed to slacken when they hauled through the island-studded channels.