The weather had grown stormy, the sea rough, and the Bertha Clay was rolling badly. She pitched, tossed and rolled so much, in fact, that the "A. B." had "callouses" on his hips through being slammed back and forth against the sides of his bunk in the chart room.
Masters of ships usually have an easy time at sea. After they have left a port, the next few days are occupied in straightening their accounts. From then on, if the weather be at all favorable, little work is done save at noontime, when the sun is sighted, by which means alone the course is maintained. Each officer has a sextant, and from two to four of these are pointed sunward from ten to fifteen minutes before the orb has reached the zenith.
A captain of a tramp ship is generally sent from port to port by cable from the owners to their agent. After the cargo has been unloaded, he may remain in a port for days, or even weeks, waiting for orders to sail; but sometimes he has little idea to what part of the world he may be directed to go. The cable directions may read "Capetown." He heads his ship for that port, but does not know whence he will be sent until given instructions by the company's agent on arrival.
The salary paid some sea captains is small, compared to the responsibility assumed. English and other European shippers pay masters of tramp ships from $100 to $130 a month, while captains of American ships receive double that sum. Perquisites, however, may come to a skipper in connection with his calling. Coal firms generally give the master of a ship a commission on fuel supplied, and chandlers maintain the same custom when furnishing stores.
Sea charts with which captains are furnished are marvels of exactness to a landsman, shoals, rocks, lights, jutting points of land, sea currents and courses being as clearly marked as are rivers, turnpikes and railways on land maps. With a good navigator there is little danger of getting off the course if the sky be clear at noontime. It is in cloudy periods, when officers cannot get their bearings from the sun, that danger may occur.
Rainy weather and clear days are the same to a sailor aboard merchantmen. Though sailors on a tramp ship rest on Sunday, firemen and officers have no day off. Chinese, Arabs and Indians, the latter called "lascars," form the crew of a large number of British ships. From $12 to $16 a month were the wages then paid. On American ships white sailors receive $40 a month.
Two hundred miles a day was all the Bertha Clay was traveling. Her smoke funnel was white with salt from the waves of the sea dashing against it. Some of the officers gathered in the little saloon every evening, when the hours were whiled away until bedtime by indoor amusements.
Sea birds of the Southland are different from those that accompany ships above the equator. No traveler who has the noble albatross as a companion can refrain from devoting hours and hours of time during a voyage to watching and admiring the smooth, graceful movements of this large bird. Sometimes as many as a hundred of these handsome soarers may be seen encircling the ship for as long as an hour at a time, seldom flapping their wings. In far southern waters the albatross generally joins an outgoing vessel from 200 to 400 miles from shore, and is not seen when a ship is the same distance from land at the other side of the ocean, although companions for weeks before. Its color is generally gray and white, but some are snow white, and occasionally brown-colored ones are seen with the others. These birds are as large as a swan, some measuring twelve feet from wingtip to wingtip. But many a sailor has lost his life when falling from a vessel in parts of the sea inhabited by the albatross. The great bird will pounce on anything it sees in the water, and, being so strong, the beak will penetrate the skull of a person at the first attack. Navigators say that it will not live during transit across the equator. The mollemoke is another companion sailors have with them when traveling south of the equator. This bird, while not so large, resembles the larger specie both in poise and color, and also mingles with the albatross during a voyage. Feeding on garbage thrown from the ship seemed to be the chief attraction to the fowl. A very pretty sea bird seen in far southern waters is the Cape pigeon. The pigeon is as large as a sea-gull, but in color is like the guinea fowl—spotted white and black—but of much brighter color. The snowbird is another companion that follows a ship in the southern seas, but only in sections where the weather has become chilly. The petrel is also found in these parts, and still another, a small, dark colored bird, no larger than a swallow, appears in large numbers at intervals. Sailors call these Mother Carey's chickens. All these fowl are one's unfettered companions while traveling through watery Southland, save an occasional whale. Sea-gulls do not appear.
It was eighteen days since we sailed from Buenos Aires, and twelve of these had been stormy. The "A. B." was near the captain while he studied the chart, at 9 o'clock one evening, when the mate came into the chart room. "Mr. Jones," said the captain to the first officer, "keep a sharp lookout, as we should see the Cape of Good Hope light by 10 o'clock, or thereabouts." "Aye, aye, sir," he replied, as he passed out, and then scaled the ladder to the bridge. The sea had calmed as we neared the African coast. Less than an hour later the skipper and the "A. B." were chatting, when the door opened. The mate, putting his head between the door and jamb, in sea manner, announced: "Flash light port abeam, sir!" It was the Cape of Good Hope light. We had reached another continent—the African.
For five more days we sailed in sight of the green, treeless hills of South Africa, using glasses frequently, as may be imagined, eager to see houses, cattle and grain fields. Finally we came in sight of the Bluff, the beacon of Port Natal. Soon we were opposite the entrance channel to the harbor, when anchor was cast. Shortly after a harbor boat was seen coming through the channel. Later a rowboat, manned by Zulus, headed toward the Bertha Clay, in which was a white man dressed in a white suit. The captain shouted to the man in white, asking if we could get into the harbor before night. It was then nearly sunset. The answer from the rowboat was, "I'm coming." This was the skipper's first trip to a country where white clothes were worn, and he mistook the man in the rowboat to be the port doctor. One unfamiliar with customs in that part of South Africa—or, in fact, anywhere—would never dream of seeing a grizzled sea pilot dressed in an immaculate white suit of clothes. It proved to be the man who was to steer our ship safely to harbor. "All well?" he inquired—the usual salute—when his rowboat had reached speaking distance of the tramp ship. "All well," replied the master of the Bertha Clay. When the pilot had drawn alongside our vessel, he began to wriggle up the rope ladder at the side of the ship, the usual means of boarding and disembarking under such circumstances.