So long as the wind blows, whether favourably or not, there is something to do. If it be fair, there is the cheering prospect of counting the number of knots run when the log is hove, and knowing that one is getting each hour so much nearer one’s destination; while, if King Aeolus be unpropitious, there is all the excitement of fighting against his efforts to delay the vessel, and the proud satisfaction of making way in spite of adverse breezes.
But, in a calm, nothing can be done excepting to wait patiently, or impatiently, for the wind to blow again; and, consequently, all is dreary stagnation and dead monotony—the captain ever pacing the poop in not the best of tempers, with the men idling about the decks, or else occupied in the unexciting task of unreeving rope yarn, to keep their hands from mischief, and, perhaps, polishing up the ring-bolts as a last resource!
Under such circumstances, it is not at all to be wondered that the crew of a vessel usually get discontented; and, should her officers be in the least inclined to be tyrannical, an ill feeling is produced which sometimes leads to an outbreak.
Hardly a single mutiny ever occurred on a ship at sea save in calm weather; at other times the hands have too much to do even to grumble, in the way that sailors love to do ashore, comparing their nautical experience to “a dog’s life”—albeit they never give up the sea all the same!
On board the Josephine, however, all went along pleasantly enough, although we were becalmed and the seamen, had plenty of leisure time for airing their grievances.
Captain Miles, it is true, did not come on deck looking jolly and beaming with good-humour, as he used to do when we were bowling along before a stiff breeze; but he was not a bit cantankerous, and if there was no legitimate work to occupy the crew with, he did not go out of his way unnecessarily to “haze” them by inventing new sorts of tasks, as a good many other masters of vessels are in the habit of doing in similar cases. As for Mr Marline, he was of a most even disposition, taking all things that came with his usual equanimity and never giving a rough word to anyone.
Davis, the second mate, whom I have already mentioned as having been promoted from the fo’c’s’le, was a very different sort of man; for, being without education and any good principle, he took advantage of his position, whenever the captain’s eye was not upon him, to bully those with whom he had previously associated on an equality. He was “very much above them now,” he thought, and showed it as it was in the nature only of a low-minded fellow to do.
Like most “Jacks in office,” he was always trying to assert his position; and, as a natural result, he was not by any means in good favour with the men, who resented his overbearing way all the more from the fact of their having formerly been hail-fellow-well-met with him, which of course they could not readily forget, if he did.
Still, things went on pretty smoothly on board while the calm lasted, despite the little roughnesses which the second mate’s way of evincing his authority produced—and which I could not avoid noticing, for I’m sure he used to be “down” on me whenever he had a chance of calling me to account for going where I had no business to, as I confess I sometimes did, although I used to be encouraged by the men, and Mr Marline would wink at my escapades. We all found it terribly dull, though; for, even the fish were too lazy to come to the surface to be caught, and so we were deprived therefore of our old pastime of angling for them from the bowsprit in the afternoons and evenings.
Day after day, the Josephine rolled her hull from port to starboard and then back again to port on the tumid sea, which, save throbbing with a dull heavy swell, had now lost all its life and action:—day after day we looked in vain for a breeze from sunrise to sunset; day after day our watchful longing was all in vain; there, day after day, for over a week, we rolled and lay!