And when we arrive at Plymouth Docks,
The pretty little girls come round in flocks,
And one to the other they do say:
‘Oh, here comes Jack with his three years’ pay;
For I see he’s homeward-bou-ou-ound,
For I see he’s homeward-bound.’
But still, as I say, things had not gone well with us. We had speedily left the warmth of tropical weather, and had gradually found it colder and colder each morning as we made our way down south towards the dreaded Cape of Storms. That was natural, and we were prepared for it; but no sooner had we got to the latitude of the Cape itself, than the wind had shifted, and we had it day after day, night after night, a hard gale right in our teeth. Bitter cold it was too, with tearing storms of snow and hail—heavy thundering seas sweeping us fore and aft, bursting in upon our weather-bow, and covering us with spray, that froze ere it fell upon our decks. Up aloft, everything frozen hard—running rigging as stiff and unmanageable as a steel hawser; blocks jammed with ice and snow; canvas as unyielding as a board; men up aloft for an hour or more trying to take a reef in the fore-topsail, and then so stiffened with cold themselves, as to be unable to come down without assistance: while below, the close, musty, damp, dark ship was the picture of discomfort, her decks, main and lower, always wet, often with an inch or two of ice-cold water washing about on them; soaking clothes hung up all over the place, in the wild hope that they might eventually get dry; ports and scuttles tight shut, to keep out the seas that thundered ceaselessly at them as the ship plunged and wallowed in the angry element; no fires allowed anywhere except at the cook’s galley, which was always fully occupied; and no warmth to be obtained anywhere except in your hammock, and even this, in most cases, what with faulty stowage and leaky decks, was wet through.
Day after day, night after night, this state of things kept on, until there gradually crept in among the men—started, no doubt, by the older hands, always and deeply imbued with the spirit of superstition—a sort of dim suspicion that the ship was under a ban—bewitched, in fact; that, as they said, there was a Jonah aboard; and until he went overboard, we should never weather the dreaded Cape, but were doomed to thrash continually to windward, never gaining an inch on our way. Strange as it may seem, there were many, very many, among our blue-jackets who held this belief firmly, and expressed it openly. We, of course, in the midshipmen’s berth, careless and light-hearted from our extreme youth, laughed at the solemn tones of the old quartermasters, who employed their hours of midnight watch on deck in narrating to us similar instances of vessels which had been thus doomed to struggle with the storm until some unknown criminal had either confessed his crime, or had voluntarily paid the penalty of it. But, as the bad weather continued, and the ship seemed quite unable to advance upon her homeward track, some of us, too, began to allow our minds to be influenced to a certain degree by the mysterious language and ominous hints of these men, so much our elders in years, and our superiors in practical experience.
Matters had got to this pitch, and no change appeared about to take place in the aspect of the weather or the direction of the wind, when one wild and wretched forenoon at seven bells (eleven-thirty) the men were piped to muster on the main-deck for that one drop of comfort which they could look forward to in the day—the serving out of each man’s ‘tot’ of grog. Faces which at other times wore a look of gloom, were brightening under the influence of the spirit; the ever-present growl was stilled for a while; the joke began to pass around as the blood warmed and flowed more rapidly through the veins, when a whisper—a sort of muttered suggestion, made at first with a kind of apologetic reluctance, but with growing confidence and insistence as it gained ground—passed through the throng of men that one of their number was missing. Such a whisper makes its way through a ship’s company, however large, like a current of electricity, and so it was in this case; but at first the men kept it to themselves. It could not long, however, be concealed; and presently it spread to the midshipmen’s berth; next, the wardroom heard it; and soon the captain himself was made aware of the suspicion. Well I remember, how, as we sat in the cold, damp, comfortless, dirty berth, discussing the matter with boyish eagerness, the sudden shrill pipe of the boatswain’s mate burst upon our ears, followed by the hoarse cry of: ‘Hands muster by open list!’ So, then, the captain thought it important enough to make serious and official inquiry into. Then came the calling over of those five hundred names, with most of which we had been familiar for three years or more of our commission in the Pacific. But I am wrong—not quite all of those five hundred. There came a time when the name of one, a petty officer, was called; but no reply came to the call, and a dead silence reigned over the ship—a silence, I mean, as regards human speech or sound: the gale and the thundering seas never for a moment ceased their tumult. Then followed the grave and searching investigation into the mystery. Who had seen him last? Where was he then? In what state? How long ago was it? and so on, and so on; until at last the whole ship’s company knew that one of their number had gone overboard—presumably in the morning watch; probably swept off by a peculiarly heavy sea, well remembered in that watch. But unknown, unheard, unseen—his cry for help, if such a cry he gave, utterly drowned and smothered in the ceaseless roar of the sea, the shriek of the wind. And so the men were dismissed, each to his special duty; and the paymaster was directed to see that the fatal letters D.D. (Discharged dead) were placed against the unhappy man’s name in the ship’s books.
And now occurred a circumstance which took the whole ship by storm, as it were, and which, mere accident and coincidence as it was, made all the old seadogs nod their heads and eye the younger men meaningly, as who would say, ‘What did I tell you?’ while they, on their part, were firmly impressed with the lesson in cause and effect thus so pointedly placed before them. It was close upon noon when the fact of a man being lost was clearly established; and ere the afternoon watch was over, the sky had cleared, the storm had dropped, the wind had shifted right round, and was now blowing dead fair! There was no room for more argument—the oldsters had it all their own way; the scoffers were silenced.