Under the mizzen mast: A voyage round the world

by Nehemiah Adams

God can reveal to thee treasures of darkness;

Then welcome the darkness; thrice welcome the light.

THE BOAT’S CREW

There were four young men, and one who was an occasional substitute, who served the six months that we were in Hong Kong harbor, and at other times, in rowing us ashore and in our visits to ships. Sometimes the service took several hours; the distance was now and then great. When we went ashore at Anjer we were rowed four miles; when we went to church we were each time absent from the boat on shore two hours; calls, shopping, business, made large drafts on their patience; for though our visits ashore gave them also opportunity to supply some wants as well as to gratify their curiosity, still there were unavoidable delays on our part which could not have been to the young crew always pleasant. In no instance did they manifest that they felt these visits to be irksome. In looking back upon their unwearied, prompt, always cheerful service, I feel that we owe them more than thanks; but I fear to write this lest I incur the disapprobation of some of the officers, who would be moved to tell me that the young men had as easy a time as though they had been tarring down, mending sails, scrubbing brass; that passengers must be careful how they praise sailors. This shall be remembered and duly practised on board ship; but on shore the names of Parslow, Twichell, Coffin, Ryder and Treadwell, will always be associated with happy hours. May the young men be successful master mariners, and while they are mates may they know how to mingle kind words with discipline.

“HOLD THE REEL.”

During the whole voyage from first to last, it was always exciting to hear the mate issue this summons. Generally, we knew by it that the ship was going at such a quickened speed that the mate wished to verify it by measurement. When the order was given, two of the boys came aft; one of them took from the locker the reel which had on it a line of several fathoms; the other held the glass. The end of the line which was thrown into the water had on it a wide piece of thin wood, triangular. The line was fastened to it through each of the angles, so that the piece of clapboard stood upright in the water, thus feeling the draft as the ship went on. The reel was held by the boy in both hands over his head to keep the line from running foul. Pieces of tape were tied into the line twenty-two and a half feet apart. The glass ran fourteen seconds. When it was empty the boy cried, “up;” and the mate knowing how many knots had passed through his hand in fourteen seconds, easily reckoned how many knots (or miles) an hour the ship was running. We never went over thirteen and a half; sometimes only two; and in a dead calm a reel could not have turned; our rate of motion would have been 0. Perhaps in a short time a breeze would be setting us forward, so that the mate would call out, “Hold the reel.”

GALES OFF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

It may have been fancy, but the gales at the Cape of Good Hope impressed me differently from those at Cape Horn. The latter place, and the associations with it, make one feel that there is more of a sub base in its winds and waters. There, two oceans form and go apart to either side of a continent; you are near the polar regions, the realms of snow and ice. You expect every manifestation of sublimity, but not of caprice; the awful forms of nature, grandeur with stillness; or, when storms are summoned, there is a heavy tread in their battalions. Off the Cape of Good Hope we had the impression that the wind was as fierce, its rate of motion perhaps greater, but we could not tremble before it as we did at Cape Horn. Two gales off the Cape of Good Hope gave us good specimens of the violent weather in that region. The sun was nearly out on each of the two days, but the wind, though not as fitful as in a typhoon, was as violent as in a typhoon gale in the China Seas. A British ship as large as ours was near us the whole of one day, so that we saw by the way in which the gale was serving her, how we probably appeared to our neighbor. At one time she seemed to be moored on a mountain top; in a few moments she was lost to sight, but this of course was owing as much to our depression and elevation as to hers. There was so much regularity in our motion that it awakened no fear. My daughters were captivated by the wildness of the scenery, but the roll of the ship was so great that it was not easy to keep upright; so the captain had pillows brought on deck, and by passing ropes around the passengers, and making them fast, the pillows and they were secure against the lee and the weather roll, and for a short time they kept their lookout. That the scene was less terrific than corresponding tempests at Cape Horn was owing in part to our having more experience on reaching the eastern continent, but mostly, as it seemed to me, to the more awful grandeur of the Cape Horn region.

WERE WE NEVER AFRAID AT SEA?

I will begin by relating an incident in the sea-faring experience of Dr. Lyman Beecher, who preached in my pulpit one Sabbath soon after returning from England, and related this incident, using it to enforce the text: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He said that while a storm was raging, he heard a lady enter a room adjoining his and address some one in these words: “Mary, how can you be sitting there in your rocking-chair, as though nothing was going to happen? Do you know that we may all be at the bottom of the sea in five minutes? Stir about and do something. Pray do not sit there rocking and singing.”