The Land of the Kangaroo / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent

by Thomas Wallace Knox

“We had a good breeze,” continued Harry, “until we got to within four degrees of the Equator; then the wind died out and left the sea as smooth as glass, without the least motion upon it anywhere. We seemed to be running through an enormous plate of glass, polished until it shone like the most perfect mirror ever made. As we looked down from the rail into the depths of the sea our faces were reflected, and there seemed to be a counterfeit presentment of ourselves gazing at us from the depths below, and, oh, wasn’t it hot, blistering, burning hot! The sun poured down so that the heat pierced our awnings as though no awnings had been there, and the breeze which the ship created by her motion seemed like the blast from a furnace. The pitch oozed from the seams of the planking on the deck, and the deck itself became blistering hot to one’s feet. There was not the least stir of the sails and only the faintest motion of the ship from side to side. Respiration became difficult, and, as I looked about, I could see the passengers and sailors yawning and gaping in the effort to draw in their breath. All the metal about the ship became hot, especially the brass. If you touched it, it almost seemed to raise a blister, and the spot with which you touched it was painful for hours.

“We passed a ship becalmed in the doldrums, as this region is called, and she looked more like a painted ship upon a painted ocean than any other craft I ever saw. Her sails were all hanging loose, and so were all the ropes, and lines, and halyards from one end of the ship to the other. She was as motionless as if she were tied up to a dock in harbor, and there was very little sign of life about her anywhere. I asked one of our officers how long that ship had probably been there and how long she was liable to stay.

“‘That’s a question, young man,’ he replied, ‘that I can’t answer very surely. She may have been there a day or two only, and may stay only a day or so, and then, again, she may have been there a week or a month; we can’t tell without speaking her, and we are not particularly interested in her, anyhow.’”

Then he went on to explain that ships have been becalmed at the Equator for two months and more, lying all the time in a dead calm, just like the one through which we were passing.

“Two weeks,” he said, “is a fair time for a ship to stay in the doldrums, and you can be sure it is quite long enough for passengers and crew.

“Passengers and crew sometimes die of the heat, and existence under such circumstances becomes a burden. There are stories about ships that have been in the doldrums six or eight months at a time, but I am not inclined to believe them; for a man to stay in this terrific heat for that length of time would be enough to drive him crazy.

“The steamer was three days in the calm belt of the Equator before we struck the southeast trades, and had a breeze again. I don’t want to repeat my experiences with the doldrums.

“One day I heard a curious story about an incident on board an American ship not far from the Cape of Good Hope. She was from Calcutta, and bound to New York, and her crew consisted of American sailors, with the exception of two Indian coolies who had been taken on board at Calcutta because the ship was short-handed. One of these coolies had been put, one in the starboard and the other in the port watch, and everything had been quiet and peaceable on board the ship until the incident I am about to describe.

“One night the ship was sailing quietly along, and some of the men noticed, or remembered afterwards, that when the watches were changed, the coolie who had been relieved from duty remained on deck. Shortly after the change of watch, the two mates of the ship were standing near the lee rail and talking with each other, when the two coolies came along and one of them made the remark that he was sick. This remark was evidently a signal, for instantly one of the coolies drew a knife and stabbed the first mate to the heart, while simultaneously the other coolie sprang with a knife at the second officer and gave him several stabs in the chest.

“The first mate fell dead at the stroke of the knife, but the second mate had sufficient strength left to crawl to the companionway leading to the captain’s room, where he called out, ‘Captain Clark!’ ‘Captain Clark!’ and then ceased to breathe.