From ploughshare to pulpit

by Gordon Stables

There were games—chess, draughts, &c.—below for evening enjoyment, and there were games for daytime also on the upper deck, peg on the ring, sea-quoits, and several others that helped to while away the time.

The first mate, second mate, Willie, and Midshipman Murray played at leap-frog. Sandie, too, would fain have given a back, and taken one also, but the skipper would not permit him.

Nor did he allow him to engage in a mad harum-scarum game of football, that young Murray had invented, and which really caused no end of fun and amusement, to say nothing of barked shins and a sprained ankle or two.

Sandie used to delight to watch the sea-birds that, the ship being well on towards the east shores of America, came floating or hovering round the ship. The two most remarkable were the frigate-bird and the albatross. It is supposed that either bird can fly hundreds of miles an hour. The frigate-bird really can go to sleep in the air, and for days and weeks it never alights. Far away on some solitary rock or island, in the spring season, the female bird, and at times the male, sits on their single egg, and at this time they are so tame that the natives can catch them with the hand.

But what shall we say about the albatross, or how describe that great eagle of the sea? The powers of flight of this wondrous bird are marvellous in the extreme. No golden eagle in Scotland ever swept down from the sky with more arrow-like speed than does the albatross on a ship; then he goes sailing round it and round it, apparently without effort, hardly a wing moving, hardly a feather, but the great head, with its weird wild eye, keenly alert all the time. Next moment, in the very teeth of the wind, he goes dashing off, and is seen like a lark against the clouds miles and miles astern. The wind is this bird’s slave; it obeys him, carries him hither and thither with lightning speed, and seems ever ready at his beck and call. Truly a marvellous bird is the albatross!

But there were strange fishes and creatures in the sea that Sandie delighted to watch as well. Sometimes they saw a great lonesome whale ploughing his way through the vastness of the mighty deep, going straight as an arrow, but whither and how guided no one ever could tell. At other times and frequently a shoal of dolphins would cross bows or stern. They took no notice of the brave barque; they had their own life and business to attend to. But surely a right merry life it was, seeing the way they jumped and plunged, even cooing in their glee, and turning somersaults in the air.

Then there was the barracuta, a fish of immense size, not unfrequently observed. He too used to leap out of the water, but with no apparent sense of enjoyment.

The skip-jack leapt from wave-top to wave-top, as if he was learning to fly, and might in course of time become a bird.

The flying gurnet had already learned to fly, and could support himself quite a long time in the air.

At night the men hung lights about the bows, and these flying-fish flew on board and flopped about the decks in desperation, till caught and killed. The wings were kept by the men as souvenirs of the voyage, but the fish was always fried for the saloon breakfast; and very delicious eating they were, in flavour not unlike herring, or even salmon trout, but much more delicate than either.