In the Misty Seas: A Story of the Sealers of Behring Strait

by Harold Bindloss

It is probable that every man on deck was asking the same question, for the heads of all were turned towards the poop, and nothing would have induced one of them to speak when the skipper appeared out of the companion. He stood quite still for several minutes, and then nodded to the officer of the watch as though contented, but no one moved on deck when he went below, and the attitude of the men suggested what they felt. They were, it seemed, not round Cape Horn yet, and the Aldebaran still held on plunging through the white-topped rollers close-hauled. Hour after hour dragged by, and all on board bore them in tense expectancy, until at last, when the watch was changed again, the skipper came forward to the edge of the poop with a little sour smile on his face. He spoke ostensibly to the mate close by him, but it is possible he meant his voice to carry further.

"Get a pull on the weather-braces, and the topgallants loosed. We'll make a fair wind of it," he said.

The mate came forward shouting, and for once he was very willingly obeyed. Both watches were on deck, for the one relieved had not left it yet, and the men fell over each other in their eagerness to get at the ropes, while Appleby felt his pulses throbbing and the blood surge to his face, as he watched the figure aft pulling at the wheel.

Round went the long, slanting yards, stopped, swung further, and stopped again, while the Aldebaran hove herself more upright and shook the salt wash from her as she brought the wind upon her quarter. Then there was a scurrying of agile figures, stripped of their oilskins now, for the high top-gallant yards, and when the loose canvas blew away from them, wet and weary men broke into a breathless song as they swung and fell about the feet of the masts. They had hoarse voices, and the lips of some were rent and cracked. Their bodies were raw from the constant lash of brine, but there was a light in their gaunt faces and the ring of triumph in their song. Its words were senseless rubbish, but through them the spirit of those who sang was clear, and it was the pride that comes of a hardly-won victory. They had borne almost all that flesh and blood could bear, and now they had won the gale they had defied and beaten was their ally. The Aldebaran seemed to know it, and swept north-west faster at every roll, hurling off vast folds of froth from her hove-up bows, while the foam seethed and flashed past, lapping in places almost to her rail. Still, for a ship will carry more canvas going free than she will close-hauled, her crew were not contented, and while they coiled the ropes away still watched the motionless figure on the poop expectantly.

Once more he raised a hand, and there was another scramble, more eager than before, and a rush towards the weather-shrouds, while presently great folds of canvas came dropping from the long lower yards. They spread out in a vast curve from rail to rail, and the Aldebaran, quivering to the drag of them, sped on faster than ever, with a wake that swirled and seethed far back across the long seas that now came rolling up behind her.

Then a Breton Frenchman solemnly danced upon the deck, and a little Italian cackled with shrill laughter, while a half-articulate growl of victory that was not a cheer went up from the British sailormen. They were flying faster than any but a very fast steamer, away from cold and wet and hunger, northwards towards the sun again.

For two days the Aldebaran drove along, swept by spray, at a pace which occasionally exceeded twelve miles an hour, and then, though her decks dried up and the foam sank lower beneath her rail, the pace did not diminish appreciably, for as the wind fell lighter there was a crowding on of sail. The royals were shaken out in turn, stay-sails in rows swelled between the masts, and while the long heave that was smoother now and dazzlingly blue came rolling up on her beam, she swung along, three towering spires of canvas above a froth-licked hull, with her jibboom pointing to the midday sun. It grew warmer every day, oilskins, pilot-coats and long boots were flung aside, wet berths and saturated bedding dried, and there was no more dining on pulpy biscuit because a sea had washed out the galley as well as the fire.

Then there might have been peace and contentment on board the Aldebaran had not the mate's temper apparently grown worse as the weather grew finer, until the half-cowed, sullen crew were glad to crawl away below out of the reach of his beady eyes when the watch was done. They were kept hard at work at something all day long, chipping iron, painting, scraping spars down, and the man who had only a bitter jibe for the most willing and scurrilous abuse for the tired generally contrived when nothing more unpleasant suggested itself that Niven or Appleby should carry the tar pot, while the blood would surge to their faces at the words which followed, if at any time they let fall one splash of it where it was not wanted.

The work began as soon as there was light enough to see by, and was never done. A good deal of it was brutal and much unnecessary, and it went on without intermission under the scorching sun of the equator, and was apparently no nearer finished when reaching in close-hauled one day they had their first glimpse of the great, snow-crested mountains that rise above the forests of Washington. Then the apprentices envied the men who had only signed on to Vancouver, because they at least would soon be free of the ceaseless small-persecution and hateful tyranny.

At last as they worked into the Straits of San Juan the pines of Vancouver Island lifted themselves above the horizon, and a day or two later the Aldebaran came to an anchor off Port Parry, which is where the warships lie and close to Victoria City. Vancouver, where she was to unload, stands on the Canadian coast about a day's sail with a fair wind further east, but the straits are sprinkled with islands and swept by tides, and because the wind was easterly and the sky dimmed by smoke, the skipper had gone ashore that morning to send off telegrams and if possible engage a tug. He did not return all day, and when evening was closing in Appleby and Niven sat outside the deckhouse, while the mate stood up on the poop apparently to see if there was any signal from the shore.