The Concordia was a steel barque of eight hundred and seventy-four tons register, Clyde built, and modelled upon lines that combined a very fair cargo-carrying capacity with high speed possibilities. She was a very handsome vessel to look at, and Captain William Roberts, who had commanded her since she left the stocks some two years prior to the date at which we make his and her acquaintance, was inordinately proud of her, sparing no pains either to himself or his ship’s crew—and especially, his boatswain—to keep her as trim and neat as a man-o’-war. The decks were regularly holystoned every morning when the ship was at sea—to the intense disgust of the crew—the brasswork was as regularly polished, not with the usual rottenstone and oil, but with special metal polish provided out of the skipper’s private purse; and there was no more certain way of “putting the Old Man’s back up” than for a man to allow himself to be seen knocking the ashes of his pipe out against any portion of the ship’s painted work. It was even asserted of Captain Roberts that, so anxious was he to maintain the smart appearance of the ship, he would, whenever she ran into a calm, have the quarterboat lowered and manned, in order that he might pull round his vessel and assure himself that her masts were all accurately stayed to precisely the same angle of rake; and woe betide the unhappy boatswain if there seemed to be the slightest occasion for fault-finding.
The Concordia was a beamy ship in proportion to her length, and she carried a full poop extending forward to within about twenty feet of her mainmast, underneath which was a handsome saloon, or cuddy, fitted with berth accommodation for twenty passengers; for although the steam liners have, for all practical purposes, absorbed the passenger traffic, there still remains a small residue of the travelling public who, either for health or economy’s sake, choose a well-found, well-built sailing clipper when they desire to make a sea voyage.
Such was the vessel in which young Dick Maitland was to make his first, and, as he hoped, his only, essay as a seaman before the mast, and after the slight sketch which has been given of her and her skipper, it will be readily seen that he could scarcely have hit upon a craft where he would be likely to have more hard work, or better opportunities for the acquirement of a large measure of seafaring knowledge in a very short time.
Mr Sutcliffe, the chief mate, had been favourably impressed by Dick from the moment when the two had encountered each other at the shipping office, and Mr Sutcliffe’s method of showing his favour was to provide his favourites with an ample sufficiency of work to do. The ship had, therefore, not been out of dock half an hour when Dick was sent aloft with an able seaman named Barrett to get the fore and main royal-yards across; and so eager was the lad to learn as much as he could that Barrett very willingly permitted him to do all the work, merely directing him what to do and how to do it, and at the same time instructing him as to the nomenclature and purposes of the various parts of the gear which were manipulated during the operation. Naturally, Dick, being a novice, took about twice as long as his companion would have taken over the job; but so eager was he to learn and such aptitude did he exhibit that he won the unqualified approval of Barrett, as well as of Mr Sutcliffe, who had been keeping a sharp eye upon what was going on aloft. As for Dick, although it was the first time that he had ever been aloft in anything deserving the name of a ship, and although the hull upon which he looked down seemed ridiculously inadequate to support the lofty spar upon which he was working—suggesting the idea that unless he exercised the utmost caution in the disposition of his weight he must inevitably capsize the entire complicated structure—he felt neither giddy nor nervous, but went about his work with all the coolness and confidence of a thoroughly seasoned hand.
Arrived off Gravesend, the anchor was let go, and the ship swung to the now fast ebbing tide, the quarterboat was lowered, and the skipper was rowed ashore, while Mr Sutcliffe went the rounds of the decks and satisfied himself that everything had been done to make the Concordia perfectly ready to get under way at a moment’s notice; the yards were accurately squared by the lifts and braces, the running gear hauled taut and neatly coiled down, the decks once more swept; and then the worthy mate found himself compelled to admit, with a sigh, that nothing more could be done, at least to advantage, until the passengers should have come off and the ship be once more under way. These two events happened late in the afternoon, and meanwhile the occupants of the forecastle were sent below to snatch a few hours’ rest in preparation for the coming night, during which Dick Maitland had an opportunity to become better acquainted with his messmates. For a wonder these proved to be without exception British, consisting of two Irishmen, five Scotchmen, and one Welshman, while the rest were English. There was nothing very remarkable about any of them, they were all just ordinary average sailormen, but it did not take Dick very long to make up his mind that, with the possible exception of the carpenter, and Barrett, the A.B. who had been his companion and instructor aloft during the morning, the five Scotchmen were the pick of the bunch. But all hands seemed to be very decent fellows in their own rough way, now that they had had time to recover from their previous day’s debauch, and manifested a distinct disposition to be friendly toward the young greenhorn whom they found in their midst, especially as they had already had an opportunity to see that the greenhorn’s greenness was not of such a character as to entail upon them very much extra work.
The afternoon was well advanced when at length the passengers, seventeen in number, came off to the ship; and the moment that they and their baggage were embarked the anchor was hove up, the tug once more came alongside and took the towrope, and the Concordia proceeded upon her voyage, the hope being freely expressed, both fore and aft, that there would be no more anchoring until the ship should have arrived under the shadow, so to speak, of Natal Bluff. As soon as the ship was fairly under way, and the anchor at the cathead, the chief and second mates picked the watches, and Dick, to his satisfaction, found himself picked by Mr Sutcliffe as a member of that officer’s watch.
As the ship drew down toward the lower reaches of the river she met a slight breeze breathing out from the north-east, to which she spread, first, her fore-and-aft canvas, and, later on, her square sails, so that by the time of her arrival off Deal, near midnight, she was practically independent of the tug, which at that point cast her off. Here also the pilot left her, taking with him a goodly packet of letters from the passengers to their friends ashore; and the Concordia, spreading her studding-sails, swept on into the broadening waters of the English Channel. With the other letters went one from Dick to his mother and another to Dr Humphreys, written during his watch below.
The fair wind which the Concordia fell in with at the mouth of the Thames lasted long enough to carry the ship, not only clear of the Channel, but also well to the westward of Ushant, Captain Roberts having availed himself to the utmost of the opportunity to make as much westing as possible, as his experience had taught him that at that season of the year the prevailing winds which he might expect to meet with to the northward of Madeira would most probably be strong from the south-westward. And the event proved the correctness of that mariner’s surmise, for on his seventh day out from Gravesend he fell in with the expected shift of wind, and four hours later the Concordia was fighting her way to the southward, under double-reefed topsails, against a heavy and fast-rising sea.
Those seven days had made a vast amount of difference to Dick Maitland, so far as his usefulness as a seaman was concerned. In that comparatively brief period he had contrived not only to learn the name and function of every bit of running rigging in the ship, but also to lay his hand unerringly upon any required halyard, brace, sheet, downhaul, clewline, or other item of gear in the darkest night; he was as active and almost as handy aloft as the smartest A.B. in the ship; and he proved to be a born helmsman, standing his “trick” at the wheel from the very first, and leaving a straighter wake behind him than any of the other men, even when the ship was scudding before a heavy following sea. Mr Sutcliffe, the chief mate, was delighted with his young protégé, and declared, in unnecessarily picturesque language, that he would qualify the boy to perform the duties of an able seaman before Natal Bluff should heave in sight.
But Dick was to prove his mettle in quite another fashion before long; for the strong south-westerly breeze which the Concordia encountered on her seventh day out rapidly developed into so furious a gale that, after battling with it for some fourteen hours, Captain Roberts decided to heave-to under close-reefed fore and main topsails, and at eight bells—noon—the order was accordingly given to clew up and furl the already reefed courses, and to haul down and stow the fore-topmast staysail. This, under the weather conditions of the moment, was a task requiring the services of all hands, and by the orders of the chief mate, who was conducting the operations, Dick was stationed at the weather fore clew-garnet, with three other hands. The men, having gone to their stations, were waiting for the word of command when suddenly the chain main-tack carried away, and the part attached to the sail, acting like a whip, struck one of the men who was standing by to ease it away, smashed the poor fellow’s right arm above the elbow, shattered his jaw, and laid open his right cheek from the turn of the jaw to the right ear, which was all but torn away from the man’s head; the force of the blow also was such as to dash the unfortunate fellow against the bulwarks so violently that he instantly fell to the deck senseless.