“The mate’s a bluenoser, too, bit longer ’n a belayin’-pin, with no ’air under ’is cap, an’ no sailorman. Oo ever seen a bald-’ead as was? ’E ain’t been caught ’igher aloft these two year ’n the spanker-boom.
“Second mate’s a Irish lad, just got ’is papers an’ a good seaman, but hazin’ the boys like all these youngish chaps. The doctor’s a Swede, Chips comes from the same island, an’ Sails is a Dutchman. Then there’s seven men in the port watch an’ five in the second mate’s, ten apprentices amidships, only three of ’em big enough t’ be more ’n in the way, an’ ‘Carrot-top,’ the cabin boy. The skipper’s wife—if she is—is a scrawny heifer you wouldn’t be seen walkin’ down the Broomielaw with; a bluenoser, too, some says, but there’s no knowin’, for not a ’and ’as she spoke these two year. An’ there you ’ave the outfit, four less ’n when she shipped ’er mud-hook—after losin’ one off the Horn, two clearin’ out in Chilly, an’ plantin’ my mate in the English cementery up there on the Bluff.”
By the time my clothes were dry the second mate came forward to assign me to the starboard watch, and I turned in with my new messmates. That we were not called until dawn was a sure sign that the day of sailing had not come. After breakfast four apprentices rowed the captain and his wife ashore, and we spent the day painting over the side.
Once turned in again, it barely seemed possible that I had fallen asleep when there came a banging on the iron door of the forecastle and a blatant bellow of:—
“All hands! Up anchor, ho!”
With only five minutes’ grace to jump into our clothes, we tumbled out precipitately. Twenty-two men and boys, their heads still heavy with sleep, grasped the bars of the capstan on the forecastle-head just as five bells sounded, and for four hours we marched round and round the creaking apparatus. One man at a steam winch could have raised the anchor in ten minutes, but here everything was entirely dependent on man-power; the Glenalvon had not so much as a donkey-engine.
Dawn found us still treading the never-changing circle in time to a mournful dirge sustained by long-winded members of the crew. The sun rose and the sweat ran in streams along the bars. Hunger gnawed us inwardly. The skipper turned out for his morning constitutional, a steamer slipped by us, at every revolution I caught myself gazing regretfully across the bay at the flag-pole of the Russian consulate.
Then all at once the second mate, peering over the side, raised a hand.
“Belay all!” bellowed the skipper, from the poop. “Lay aloft, all hands! Shake ’em out! Man the wheel!”
The crew sprang into the rigging. We loosened a dozen sails and, leaving a man on each mast to clear the downhauls, slid down on deck again and sheeted home the topgallants and the lower topsails. Then came a more arduous task,—to hoist the upper topsail yards. Every human being on board except the captain and his wife tailed out on the rope; even then we were not enough. The massive iron yard rose, but only inch by inch, and every heave seemed to pull our arms half out of their sockets.