Officially my presence on board was still unknown. Next morning, as the starboard watch was about to turn in, I received an order to lay aft. The skipper was sitting at the cabin table with the open log before him.
“Here’s the entry I’ve just made,” he said, as I stepped in. “This morning, soon after losing sight of land, a stowaway was discovered on board, who gives the name of H. Franck, nationality, American, and profession, seaman. He has been turned to with the crew and entered on the articles with the rating of A.B., at one pound a month”—my shipmates drew three—“under the maritime regulations covering such cases.”
I touched the pen with which the captain had inscribed my name on the articles, muttered a “thank you,” and returned to the forecastle.
Yokohama street decorated for the Taft party. The display is entirely private and shows the general good will of the Japanese toward the United States
My signing on was by no means the last episode to break the monotony of the voyage. In fact, unexpected episodes came with such frequency during the trip that even they in time grew monotonous. First of all, the breeze that had held us bottled up for twelve days shifted to a head wind that soon increased to a gale. For more than a week it blew steadily from the same quarter, varying only in violence. Rain poured almost incessantly. Lashed by the storm, the sea rose mountains high, and the ship, being in ballast, reared like a cowboy’s broncho, or lay on her beams’ ends like a mortally wounded creature. There was no standing on the deck. The best pair of sealegs was as useless as the wabbly shanks of a landlubber. We moved about like chamois on a mountain peak, springing from bollard to bulwarks and from bulwarks to hatch combing, or dragging ourselves hand over hand along the braces to windward. A steady gale would have made life less burdensome, for so erratic was the weather that every square of canvas from the mizzen-royal to the flying-jib must be furled, reefed, and shaken out again a dozen times a day. The bellow to lay aloft was forever ringing in our ears; we lived in the rigging, like apes in their tree tops. If the trimming of sails languished for a moment, there was a standing order to go about ship as often as men enough for the manœuvre reached the deck.
It was a submarine task, this wearing ship. The lee braces rarely appeared above the water line, and, once tailed out on them, every man clung to his rope like grim death, for it was literally his only hold on life; to let go meant a short shift to Davy Jones’ locker. With every roll the sea swept high above our heads and left us floundering in the scuppers like fish strung on a line. There were no rousing “chanties” to cheer us on, for not even the sailmaker could air his vocal accomplishments to advantage under water. But even without such inspiration no man thought of loafing at the lee braces; and more than once we took “a long pull and a strong pull” before the ship righted and brought us sputtering and choking to the surface. Out on the jib-boom the duckings were of even longer duration, for there one went down, down, down into the cool, green depths of the sea until the world above seemed lost to memory.
There were chronic pessimists on board the Glenalvon, there were several who posed as infallible prophets in maritime matters; but it is certain that not one of the ship’s company had anticipated any such trip as this. Word drifted forward that the “old man” swore never before to have known such weather on the north Pacific. All hands took solemn oath that rounding the Horn had been a house-boat excursion in comparison. In the forecastle the conviction grew that there was a “Jonah” on board. The identity of the culprit came to be the question of the hour. Gradually the crew broke up into three contending factions. One group accused me, as a newcomer, of being the hoodoo, another regarded the bald-headed mate as the source of evil, while the suspicions of the third fell on the one-eyed goat. The varying notions gave rise to many a heated debate, to mutual vituperation, and occasional blows; but the real cause of our misery was never clearly established.
The head wind, the pouring rain, and the intermittent gales continued, not only for days but for weeks. The weather turned bitter cold. Unable to hold to her course, the Glenalvon ran “by the wind” far to the north. One night on the second week out the one-eyed goat froze to death. With only my khaki uniform I should have suffered a similar fate but for the kindness of a shipmate, who, having purchased at auction the clothing of the man lost off the Horn, and being deterred by a seaman’s superstition from wearing a “dead man’s gear” on the same voyage, put the garments at my disposal. In the thickest raiment we shivered at noonday; no man’s chest contained sufficient wardrobe to keep him warm during the long night watches.
A mere enumeration of the hardships and misfortunes that befell the Glenalvon during that voyage would draw out this yarn to unprecedented length. We slept in wooden bins with a sack of chaff at the bottom, and lashed ourselves fast to keep from being thrown out on the deck. The condition of the beds mattered little, though, for we rarely found opportunity to occupy them. The skipper worked his crew like galley-slaves because it was his nature to do so; the bald-headed mate kept the starboard watch on deck two-thirds of the time because he had a grudge against the second mate that included even the men under him.