“Run along you an’ get your weather braces off the pins!” shouted the Starbuck’s. “You’re due for another slew around if your mate’s awake!”
They had no sooner shouted this jeering advice before a bellow from the ship’s poop echoed along her decks. “Round in your weather braces!” At which the schooner’s crew laughed noisily. The Helen Starbuck glided ahead with Donald jocularly coiling up the main-sheet and heaving it over the taff-rail—suggestive of a tow.
From the blistering heat of the Line they slid into the “Variables” and picked up the dying breath of the Southeast Trade winds. For two days they trimmed sheets to the ever-increasing puffs—each watch betting with the other as to who would have the log spinning for at least an hour of steady going—and it was “Lucky” McKenzie who picked the wind up and won the tobacco. It came after a heavy rain-storm in the middle-watch, and he was standing naked at the wheel enjoying a wash and a cooling-off at the same time. When the rain died away the sails flapped to a cool southerly breeze. The skipper was below, but when he heard Donald singing out to Hansen to “sheet in jib and fores’l” he came up on deck and assisted in bringing the main boom aboard. Light at first, the breeze stiffened until the schooner was snoring along with a flash of hissing foam streaming aft, and Donald was shivering at the wheel. “That’s right, son,” said the captain, jocularly. “You jest coax her along as you are. Anytime we want to raise wind you’ll shed your duds.” And for an hour he kept Donald steering in his nakedness.
With the steady Trade shoving them along on the starboard tack they crossed the latitude of 25° south, and one morning at dawn Donald came on deck to find the skipper gazing through his binoculars at a black spot abreast of the rising sun-glow. “What is that, sir? A ship?”
The captain handed the glasses over. “That’s Easter Island, son! Have a squint, for it’s the last land you’ll see between here an’ Cape Horn!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Joak McGlashan’s troubles started when the Starbuck crossed 45° south. The pleasant zephyrs of the Trades were a memory of the past; the gentle undulations of the fine weather latitudes which hove the schooner gently along their swelling bosoms gave place to long rollers, which had the vessel sliding down their declivities and almost standing on her bowsprit, and then climbing up a watery hill with her long toothpick looking for the Southern Cross.
Joak had to work around his stove during this ocean fandango; he had to cook and prepare meals with his galley floor sliding and sloping under him at angles which called for gimballed joints and adhesive feet. When they swung into the “Roaring Forties” the skipper had given Joak a warning of what was to come. “Mouse your pots an’ kettles, cook, the Starbuck’s bound to the east’ard!” he said with a grin. “See all yer cut glass an’ silver well stowed, chocked up, tommed off, an’ shored, for she’ll do some queer prancing from now on!”