The Strife of the Sea

by T. Jenkins Hains

During many lonely hours the master tried to reconcile the dog to the newcomer. The old wolf spirit bred through thousands of generations of the land animal was not easy to pacify. It was the old spirit of suspicion for strangers based upon the experience of hundreds of ancestors, who had perhaps trusted not wisely but too well in the days when all living things were at war with each other and only the strongest and most cunning might survive. It was as evident in the dog as in the men of the forecastle, and the master studied carefully and comprehensively to subdue it, or at least pacify it to an extent that strife might be averted. Kindness and unselfishness were the two antidotes he would employ.

The great bird was not slow to notice his friendship. After a day or two he was on the lookout for the master, who appeared regularly to take his morning observation for longitude, and he walked laboriously up to him in spite of the dog’s yelping. There was something in the man’s behavior that made him instinctively his friend. Finally even the dog’s suspicions were allayed, and instead of seizing the bird’s feathers in the rear to jerk them and then dodge the snap of the beak, he met the bird face to face and refrained from either a bite or bark. The two became reconciled.

During several days the albatross waddled about the quarter-deck and was fed, until the captain, fearing that he would grow so fat he would be unable to fly, finally took him in his arms one day and placed him upon the rail. Then he tied a bit of fancy red cord about his leg so that he might distinguish him from other birds that would follow in the ship’s wake. The great bird had long ago learned to eat from the man’s hand and took care not to chop too close to the fingers with his powerful beak. The master would stroke the beautiful white head and smooth the snowy feathers until the petting became a thing looked forward to. It was a smooth day in the latitude of the Falklands when he determined to set the captive free, and the dark water seemed less attractive than usual under the gloom of the overcast sky. The lonely cry of a stray penguin broke now and again upon the ears of the listening seaman and had a depressing effect.

With a last caress he gave the pet a gentle push to start him. The great black eyes looked hard at the sailor, and then, with the giant wings outstretched, he swung off in a graceful swoop, curving upward as the falling body nearly touched the sea. He was gone.

That night it came on to blow hard from the westward. The ship, nearing the latitude of the Horn, was shortened down to her lower topsails, and with the wind snoring away under them and past each taut downhaul, clewline, and halyard, she was hove to. It was necessary to try to keep her from sagging off to the eastward, for in this latitude every mile counts.

During the morning watch the mate had reason to call the captain, for with a falling glass and shifting wind, he was on the lookout for a definite change.

The captain came on deck and took in the situation. It was still dark, but the growing light on the horizon told of the approaching day. He stood near the man at the wheel a moment and the mate went forward where the green seas sometimes rose above the topgallant rail and fell upon the deck as the staggering ship plunged into the trough. Through the dim, misty light of the early morning he saw the watch turning out to clew down the foretopsail, and as the foremost man took the ratlines he turned and walked to the binnacle to watch the shifting course.

The increasing gale and gloomy prospects had caused the grumbling element among the crew to be more careless than usual, in spite of the master’s efforts to pacify them. The leader of the malcontents came aft with two others to take a pull in the spanker sheet, for upon the boom had been bent the storm trysail to hold the vessel’s head up to the gale while hove to. The men hauled surlily upon the line, but it came in so slowly that the mate came aft and spoke to them to stir them up. Then they flattened it in, but the stout landsman, or ordinary seaman, who was taking in the slack upon the cleat, failed to catch a turn. A tremendous sea hove the ship to leeward almost upon her beam-ends. The struggling men were hove against the lee rail, and the sheet, whirling loose from the fellow’s hands, caught a turn about his body and in an instant he was flung over the side. The captain, who had just stepped out from the wheel-house, made a grab to seize him, and a turn of the now flying line caught him around the ankle and jerked him also over the rail into the sea. Then followed the dreaded cry of “man overboard” and the confusion of a crew of men without a leader.

The mate with ready knife cut away the lashings of the quarter-buoys and let them go overboard. Then he tried to fling a line, but the ship was moving too fast. She was forereaching heavily, but in that sea it was madness to think of trying to stop her by laying the yards aback, or losing control of her in any way. She must go on. They might shorten her down enough to stop her, but even if they could do so within half an hour she would be too far away to see a man in the water and the sea too heavy to think of lowering a small boat.

Daylight was breaking over the stormy ocean and the roar from aloft was sounding louder with the increasing gale. Many of the men forward had not seen the incident and the cries of those upon the foretopsail yard to those on deck could be heard. From a bunch at the weather clewline came a faint strain of a “chanty”: