The Cruise of the "Esmeralda"

by Harry Collingwood

The weather, meanwhile, was fast moderating; so much so that during the second dog-watch we took a good drag upon the topsail halliards, and set the foresail and mizzen; the wind gradually hauling round further from the northward and breaking us off until we headed north-east by compass. The mercury was rising almost as rapidly as it had fallen, and there was every prospect of a fine night. Cooper, the late mate of the Golden Gate, offered to do duty as second mate, while the cook of the craft expressed his desire to continue the functions of his office; the remainder of the men declared their readiness to go to work forthwith; and that night, accordingly, we once more kept two watches, each consisting of an officer and four men, while I, who had been on deck almost continuously for thirty hours, turned in and, with a mind intensely relieved by the acquisition of so much valuable help, slept like a log until seven o’clock the next morning.

I awoke of my own accord, and had no sooner opened my eyes than I knew, without any need of telling, exactly how we were situated. The ship was rolling, with a long, steady, even swing, from side to side, with an occasional heave and settlement of her quarter as the swell took her; the canvas was alternately flapping out with rifle-like reports, and thundering against her masts as she rolled; the bulkheads were creaking and groaning; the cabin-doors were rattling upon their hooks; the wheel-chains were clanking as the rudder kicked to the wash and swirl under the counter; and there was a gurgling, dripping wash of water along the bends, without any seething sound in it, that told me, apart from the other noises of the ship, that we were again becalmed. The sun was streaming brilliantly in through the porthole of my cabin, flooding the little apartment with warmth and golden light; and the swishing and scrubbing sounds overhead told me that the hands were busy at the job of washing decks. It was a welcome, joyous sound, as evidence of the fact that we once more had a crew on board us; and I thrust my feet into my slippers and went on deck to get my morning bath with a feeling of gaiety and blithesomeness that taught me, for the first time, how heavy had been the load of anxiety that I had lately borne, and that had slipped from my shoulders with the arrival of the Golden Gates crew on board.

It was a glorious morning, with a clear, brilliantly blue, cloudless sky overhead, out of which the sun, though only an hour high, already blazed with an ardour that gave promise of a scorching day; the sea was oil-smooth, with a glittering sheen like that of quicksilver in the wake of the sun, while away to the westward of us it flashed and gleamed in hues of the softest, purest, opalescent blue to the side of the ship with the running of the swell. There was not a breath of wind, nor the remotest sign of any; so I ordered the lighter canvas and the courses to be hauled down and clewed up, to save them from thrashing themselves to rags; and, having revelled in the luxury of a shower-bath of cool, sparkling brine from the hose, left the ship under the topsails and fore-topmast staysail, and went below to dress for breakfast.

The calm that had now fallen upon us lasted unbroken for five full days, during which we sweltered, day and night, in the melting heat of the tropics, with the blazing sun right overhead every day at noon, and a waning moon soaring into the heavens later and still later each night to render the hours of darkness magical with the witchery of her beauty and mystery. And during the whole of this time we never shifted our position by so much as a single mile a day. At length, however, on the sixth day, a few cat’s-paws came playing at intervals over the surface of the glass-smooth water, momentarily ruffling it into little evanescent patches of tender blue, and causing a transient ripple to play over the stagnant cloths of our canvas. As the day wore on the cat’s-paws increased in frequency, in area, and in strength; and shortly before sundown a gentle, dainty little air of wind came stealing softly up from the eastward, to woo which we joyfully spread every rag of canvas we could show to it: and oh! how ineffably pleasant and delightful was the sound of the first faint liquid tinkling ripple that broke from our cutwater, and gushed gently past the bends in a stream of tiny bursting air-bells, as the beautifully moulded hull yielded to the faint impulse of the soft breathing and began to move under it with the languorous motion of a sleeping swan! Then, as the soft, warm, star-spangled darkness of the tropics closed down upon us and wrapped us within its impalpable folds, the breeze gathered strength and weight by imperceptible degrees, until the scarcely audible tinkle under the bows merged into the sound of a knife shearing through a tautly stretched silken web, with a musical fountain-like plashing at the cutwater and a crisp, gushing curl of the glassy wave under the lee bow as it broke and hurried past into our wake in a lacework of creamy swirling froth, gemmed with countless glittering foam-bubbles; while the log told us that the ship was slipping her way through the small wrinklings of the brine at a speed of fully six knots in the hour.

By-and-by the moon—her orb now reduced to less than half its full dimensions—stole ghostlike above the horizon; and by her wan light we saw that a host of soft, fleecy clouds—shaped like the smoke belched from the mouth of a cannon upon a windless day—were mustering their squadrons in the eastern quarter; and we knew them for the welcome trade-cloud, the sure indication that the breeze we now had would be a lasting one.

And so it proved; for the fleecy masses soared upward until they overspread the whole of the visible sky; and as they soared so the breeze hardened, until at length, by the time that the middle watch drew toward its close, the saucy Esmeralda, with the wind well over her starboard quarter, and everything packed upon her, from the royal studding-sails down, was storming through it at a pace nearer to sixteen than to fifteen knots in the hour, while the wild weird melody of a hundred harps singing through the taut mazes of her rigging aloft mingled with the roar of the wind out of the great spaces of her straining canvas, and the deep, continuous thunder of the bow wave, raising a concert of such mad, soul-stirring harmony as causes the sailor’s heart to leap and bound within him in ecstatic exultation to the swift, buoyant leaps and plunges of the good ship beneath him.

This truly royal breeze continued to blow with scarcely diminished strength, enabling us to reel off our fifteen knots per hour for hours at a time, while our speed seldom sank below twelve; the result of which was that a little before midnight of the fifth day from its first reaching us we glided into the roadstead of Honolulu, and came to an anchor.

On the following morning, immediately after breakfast, I went ashore, taking with me my passengers and Cooper, the mate of the Golden Gate; and while Sir Edgar with his party made their way to the best hotel in the place, preparatory to the planning of an expedition which would permit of their seeing as much as possible of the beauties of the island during our stay there, Cooper and I sought out our respective consuls. Neither of them were difficult to find; and while I partook of a second breakfast with our hospitable British representative, I learnt from him—after telling him as much of my story as I deemed needful—that an Aberdeen ship had unfortunately driven ashore and gone to pieces there only a fortnight previously, and that her crew were then awaiting an opportunity to work their way home, the master and chief mate having already left for England via San Francisco, in a steamer. Upon further inquiry I found that there were thirteen of the crew in all, namely, the second mate, steward, cook, and ten seamen. This suited me exactly; for, although there were more men than I really needed, we had accommodation for an even greater number in the Esmeralda’s roomy forecastle and deck-house. Moreover, I had had all that I wanted of such an unpleasant experience as that of being short-handed. I therefore determined to ship them all, if they were willing, and recompense myself for my recent hardships by enjoying the luxury of a fully manned ship. The men were easily found—were indeed on the lookout for me, having learned early in the morning that an English barque had arrived in the roadstead some time during the night—and upon interviewing them I learned that they were, one and all, most anxious to make a start for home. They were as quiet, sober, and steady-looking a crew as I could possibly desire to meet with, or have under me; I therefore shipped the whole of them, on the spot, and directed them to hold themselves in readiness to join the ship as soon as they should receive instructions from me to that effect.

Meanwhile, Cooper had had an interview with his consul, the result of which was an arrangement that the crew of the Golden Gate should land forthwith, as there were several American vessels in the port, and, consequently, ample facilities for despatching the men home. As a consequence of this the Americans left the Esmeralda that same afternoon, while the new crew went on board and took up their quarters on the following morning.

The luncheon hour had arrived by the time that all these arrangements were completed, and I therefore hastened away to Sir Edgar’s hotel for the double purpose of satisfying a certain inward craving that had already begun to make itself felt, and of acquainting the baronet with the character of the business upon which I had been engaged during the morning. The several members of the party were, naturally enough, much pleased to learn that there was to be no undue detention among the lovely Sandwich Islands; but, on the other hand, they expressed so earnest a desire to see something of Oahu, now that they were actually upon it, that I cheerfully consented to delay my departure until the evening of the third day. A tour of the island was thereupon arranged, in which I was very cordially invited to join, and a most delightful excursion was the result; but as this is not a guide-book, and nothing out of the ordinary way occurred during its progress, I will not inflict the details of it upon the indulgent reader. Upon our return to the ship we found that Forbes, following my instructions, had re-watered her, and laid in a generous supply of fruit, pigs, poultry, and other necessaries; our crew were all on board, and there was nothing to detain us longer in this Pacific paradise; we therefore got our anchor forthwith, and stood out of the roadstead in the crimson wake of the setting sun just as that luminary sank magnificently beneath the horizon, painting the whole western sky with the flaming hues of his dying effulgence.