We found Snip—by the way, that was the tailor’s actual name, and not a nickname, as I had at first imagined—comfortably ensconced in a little, well-lighted workroom under the topgallant forecastle. He quickly took my measure, promising, somewhat to my amazement, to have my working uniform ready for me to try on as early on the following morning as I chose to come aboard—the earlier the better, he assured me. This matter settled, the purser—to whom I took an immediate liking—led me aft and down below to the wardroom, where we found Mr Neil Kennedy, the chief officer, Mr Alexander Mackenzie, the chief engineer, and Doctor Stephen Harper, the ship’s medico, chatting and smoking together. To these I was introduced by Grimwood; and I was at once admitted as a member of the fraternity with much cordiality.
I liked those three men immensely. Neil Kennedy was a huge man, standing six feet three in his socks, as I afterwards learned, and being bulky in proportion, was the sort of man that a “hazing” skipper would at once have singled out as eminently suited to keep a refractory crew in order and get the last ounce of work out of the laziest skulker. But it happened that Kennedy was not that sort of man at all. Although admirably fitted by Nature for the part, he was not the typical quarterdeck tyrant and bully, but a genial, merry, great-hearted Irish-American of the very best stamp. He could, however, if occasion demanded it, display a sternness and severity of manner well calculated to subdue the most recklessly insubordinate of mariners. His voice was like the bellow of a bull, and could be heard from the taffrail to the flying jib-boom end in anything short of a full-grown hurricane.
The doctor was quite another type of man—tall, lean, clean-shaven, slightly bald, with a pair of piercing black eyes that seemed to look a man through and through. Possessed of a quiet, well-modulated and cultured voice, and a deliberate yet firm manner of speaking, he was apparently a man of high attainments, and unmistakably a gentleman.
As for Mackenzie, the chief engineer, he was but a trifle less formidable in appearance than Kennedy—red-haired, with a shaggy red beard and moustache, the former of which he had a trick of pushing up over his mouth and nose when he was meditating deeply, and immense hands as hairy as a monkey’s. He was apparently between forty and fifty years of age, and had been domiciled in America for the last twenty years, which he had spent in Mr Vansittart’s workshops, but his accent was as broad as though he had just come straight from Glasgow. He happened to make some passing reference to a certain Mackintosh as being busy with “the engines down below”; and when I enquired with some surprise what engines he referred to, he exclaimed:
“Hoots, laddie! D’ye no’ ken that we’re an auxiliary-screw, then?”
“Auxiliary-screw!” I ejaculated. “No, certainly not. I had a good look at the craft before I came aboard, but I saw no sign of a propeller. And besides, where is your funnel?”
“Funnel, man!” he retorted. “We ha’e no need o’ a funnel. Our engines are operated by gasoline, and we ha’e ane o’ twa hunner and feefty horse-power, giving the ship a speed o’ seven knots, forbye anither ane o’ a hunner and feefty to drive the dynamos and work the capstan and winches. Man, I tell ye this bonnie boat is richt up-to-date, and dinna forget it. As to the propeller, naiturally ye wadna see’t, the watter bein’ sae thick.”
At Kennedy’s pressing invitation I remained aboard to dine, and incidentally to be introduced to the remaining members of the wardroom mess—Mr Samuel Briscoe, the second officer, and Mr Robert Mackintosh, the second engineer. Before the meal was over I had come to agree with the purser that in selecting Briscoe for her second officer Mrs Vansittart had not been quite so happily inspired as in the case of the other members of the mess. He was a pasty-faced fellow of about forty years of age, baggy under his watery-looking, almost colourless blue eyes, slow in his movements, glum and churlish of manner, and unpolished of speech; also I had a suspicion that he was more addicted to drink than was at all desirable in a man occupying such a responsible position in such a ship. He would doubtless have done well enough as “dicky” in an ordinary wind-jammer, but on the quarterdeck of such a craft as the Stella Maris I considered he was distinctly out of place.
During the progress of the meal I learned that, as I had already suspected, the yacht was a brand-new ship, this being her first voyage. Her exact measurement, it appeared, was two thousand six hundred and seventeen tons. She had originated in the office of Herreshoff, the world-famous yacht designer, and embraced in her construction every last refinement known to the most up-to-date naval constructor. She had been built to the order of Mr Julius Vansittart, the multi-millionaire engineer and steel magnate, as a birthday present to his wife. Mrs Vansittart’s passion was yachting, and she was wont to knock about New York Bay, the Hudson River, and Long Island Sound, with occasional adventurous stretches down the coast as far as Delaware Bay, or even to Baltimore, in a sturdy little ten-ton sloop, the while she studied seamanship and navigation and Mr Vansittart attended to his business.
I further learned that the lady’s boast to me, that she was captain of the yacht in fact as well as in name, was literally true, she having not only picked and shipped the entire crew, officers as well as men, but taken command of the ship when the pilot left her, and sailed and navigated her across the Atlantic and up the English Channel with no more assistance from her officers than a shipmaster usually receives.