“‘That’s it, my beauty! Look how she rides, the darling, like a duck! What a clipper she is, to be sure; so easy to handle! a child could steer her with a piece of thread!’
“When, p’raps it took all one man’s strength, and perhaps two, to bring up the beast a single point to the wind!
“In spite of Cap’en Jiggins’ praise, I never sailed in such an out-and-out obstinate craft as that identical Cranky Jane. She seemed to have been laid down on the lines and constructed, plank by plank, especially to spile a man’s temper! Somehow or other, with the very lightest of breezes—except, as I’ve said before, we had the wind right dead aft—we could never get her to lay to her course and keep it. She was always falling off and breaking away in every way but the right one, and wanting to go just in the very opposite direction to what we did; exactly like Paddy’s pig when he’s taking it to market, and he has to whisper in its ear that he’s going to Cork, when he really wants to meet the dealer at Bandon!
“This peculiarity of the brig, of course, very naturally set the men against her; as, although what is usually called a ‘dry ship’—that is, the hands could sleep comfortably in the forecastle, instead of being drenched through day and night, by the seas she took in over the bows, as is the case in some clippers I’ve sailed in—she was so dreadfully hard to steer that a man’s trick at the wheel was like going on the treadmill! And yet, that very peculiarity and contrariness that made us cuss and swear too, only induced Captain Jiggins to say occasionally when she was most outrageous wide in her yawing, ‘Pretty dear!’ or some such trash—this very peculiarity, I say, saved all our lives from the most dreadful fate, and brought us home safe to England after encountering one of the most deadly perils of the deep. Curious, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you all about it. Here goes for the yarn.
“We had done the voyage out in pretty fair time from London to Port Philip; for, most of the way, the wind was fair and almost dead aft from the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope, down in the ‘roaring forties,’ till we got to the Heads. Consequently, the brig couldn’t help herself but go straight onward, when the trades were shoving her along and while nobody wanted her to tack, or beat up, or otherwise perform any of those delicate little points of seamanship which a true sailor likes to see his ship go through, almost against his own interest, sometimes, as far as hard work is concerned in reefing and furling and taking in sail, or piling on the canvas and ‘letting her rip.’ So long as nothing of this sort was wanted from her the brig was as easy-going as you could wish and all probably that Cap’en Jiggins thought her; but, you had only just to try to get her to sail up in the wind’s eye or run with the breeze a bit ahead of the beam, and you’d soon have seen for yourself how cantankerous she could be!
“No, it was all plain sailing to Port Philip Heads; and even after we had unloaded our home cargo, and went round, first to Sydney, and afterwards to the Fiji Islands—I shan’t forget Suva Suva Bay in a hurry, I can tell you. So far, everything went serene; for, no matter where we wanted to go—and you see, the skipper wasn’t tied to any especial port to seek a cargo, but being part owner, could please himself by going to the best market; which, being a shrewd man, with his head screwed on straight, you can bet he did!—no matter where we wanted to go, as I say, the wind seemed to favour us, for it was always right astern, and everything set below and aloft, and the wind blowing us there beautifully right before it all the way—just as the old Jane liked it, sweet and not too strong!
“So far, going out to Australia, and looking in at Sydney and Fiji and the islands for cargo, and loading up choke-full with just everything that our skipper counted at the highest freight, with no dead weight to break the brig’s back—so far, everything went ‘high-falutin’’ as the Yanks say; but when we came to leave Polynesia—it ought to be christened Magnesia, I consider, for it contains a bigger continent, with a larger number of islands than Europe—and shape a course homewards to the white cliffs of Old Albion, that we longed to see again after our long absence, for we were away good two years in all, the cap’en thinking nothing of time, being his own charterer, so long as he got a good cargo from port to port, and we were engaged on a trading voyage, and not merely out and home again directly—then it was that the Cranky Jane came out in her true colours, and made us love her—oh yes! just as the skipper did—over the left!
“Why, sir, she was that aggravating, that, as Bill the boatswain and I agreed, we should have liked to run her ashore on the very first land we came to, beach her and chop her up there and then for firewood; and we wouldn’t have been content till we had burned up the very last fragment of her obstinate old hull!
“After leaving Suva Suva Bay, Fiji, where we filled up the last remaining space in the Cranky Jane’s hold with copra—which is a lot of cocoa-nuts smashed up so as to stow easy, out of which they make oil at home for moderator lamps—we went south further than I ever went before in any ship. Captain Jiggins, as I heard him explaining to the first officer when I was taking my trick at the wheel, and blessing the brig as usual for her stiff helm, intended making the quickest passage that ever was made, he said, by striking down into them outlandish latitudes before he steered east and made the Horn; and I suppose he knew what he was about, as he was as good a navigator as ever handled a sextant. He called it great circle sailing; but I called it queer-sailing; and so did most of the hands, barring Bill the boatswain, who said the captain was right; but anyways, right or wrong, it led us into an ugly corner, as you shall hear.
“Well, we went down the latitudes like one o’clock, the brig, running free before the north-east monsoon as if she were sailing for a wager in a barge-race on the Thames; and the weather as fine as you please, warm and sunny—too much so, sometimes—so that a man hadn’t to do a stroke of work on board, save to take his turn at the wheel. Watch on deck, and watch below, we had nothing to do but loll about, with a stray pull at a brace here and a sheet there, or else walk into our grub and then turn into our bunks; for Cap’en Jiggins was the proper sort of skipper. None of your making work for him when there was nothing to do; but when the hands were wanted, why he did expect them to look alive, and have no skulking—small blame to him, say I, for one!