After scrubbing decks, each watch alternately had breakfast; and then, as now, when the wind was fair and hardly a brace or rope required to be handed from morning till night or from night till morning, we and the rest of the crew were set to work unravelling ends of junk and picking oakum, like convicts.
After being thus disintegrated, the tow was spun into sennit or fine twine and yarn which is always of use on board, quantities of it being used in “serving” and “parcelling” for chafing gear.
At noon, the crew had their dinner, watch in and watch out, but we apprentices had to wait till the captain and mates had theirs; although, as I’ve already mentioned, we saw little of the delicacies of the cabin table except occasionally of a Sunday, on which day, sometimes, Captain Gillespie’s heart was more benevolently inclined towards us apparently. During the afternoon watch on week-days we were allowed to amuse ourselves as we liked, and I frequently took advantage of this opportunity to learn all that Tim Rooney and Adams could teach me forward—the two being great cronies, and busying themselves at this period of the day, if there were nothing to call their attention elsewhere, in doing odd jobs on the forecastle, the one in the sailmaking line and the other attending to his legitimate occupation of looking after the weak points of the rigging, all concerning which came within his special province as boatswain.
After tea, all hands were allowed to skylark about the decks below and aloft until the end of the second dog-watch at “eight bells;” when, the night being fairly on us in the southern latitudes we were traversing, those whose turn it was to go below turned in, and the others having the “first watch” took the deck until they were relieved at midnight and retired to their well earned rest. But, of course, should “all hands” be called to take in sail, on account of the wind shifting or a sudden squall breaking over the ship, which fortunately did not happen at the time of which I am speaking, those who might only have just turned in had to turn out again instanter. In the same way, I may add, had the weather been stormy and changeable all of us would have had plenty to do in taking in and setting sail, without leisure for sennit reeving and yarn spinning and playing “Tom Cox’s traverse” about the decks from morning till night, as we did in those halcyon days between the tropics.
We sighted Martin Vas Rocks, to the eastward of Trinidad Islands, in latitude 20 degrees 29 minutes south and longitude 28 degrees 51 minutes west, a little over a week from our leaving the Line, having made a very good passage so far from England, this being our thirty-sixth day out.
Soon after this, the south-east trades failing us and varying westerly breezes taking their place, we hauled our wind, altering our course to south-east by south, and making to pass the meridian on the forty-seventh parallel of latitude. This we did so as to get well to the southward of the Cape of Good Hope, between which and ourselves a long stretch of some three thousand miles of water lay; although both Captain Gillespie and Mr Mackay appeared to make nothing of this, looking upon it as the easiest part of our journey.
Indeed, the latter told me so.
“Now, it’s all plain sailing, my boy, and we ought to run that distance in a fortnight or so from here, with the strong westerly and sou’-western winds we’ll soon fetch into on this tack,” said he; “but, wait till we come to the region of the Flying Dutchman’s Cape, and then you’ll make acquaintance with a sea such as you have never seen before, all that we’ve gone through as yet being merely child’s play in comparison.”
“What, worse than the Bay of Biscay?” I cried.
“Why, that was only a fleabite, youngster,” he replied laughing. “I suppose you magnified it in your imagination from being sea-sick. The weather off the Cape of Storms, however; is a very different matter. It is quite in keeping with its name!”