The day came when the holds were stowed and the sails bent, and we were all ready for sea. My father arranged for the pilot to come on board for us to sail the next morning; but, unfortunately, that very same day Mr. Hammond broke his leg, and his berth as mate had to be filled up at a moment’s notice. His place was taken by one Simon Pentlea, a Cornish man, who had capital papers from the master of the last ship he had sailed in, and who was evidently a thorough seaman. But he was as different in manner as possible from the open-hearted, sunny-tempered Mr. Hammond, being a silent, taciturn man, who never seemed to look one straight in the face, but at the same time managed to see all that was going on, and when speaking, one felt as if his shifty eyes were fathoming the very depths of one’s heart and spying out one’s inmost thoughts.
My father had not time to make further inquiries into the antecedents of Mr. Pentlea, who said all his other papers were at his home in an outlying village in Cornwall, where the post seldom went, and that it would be impossible for him to say how soon he would be able to get them; and as he had not sailed out of Bristol before, he could give no references in that town. However, as the papers he had from the master of the British Queen of Liverpool, which had been engaged in the West African trade, said he had given full satisfaction for two years, and fully understood the African trade, and was acquainted with the different anchorages in the Bight of Benin, my father thought himself lucky to be able at once to secure so good a substitute for Mr. Hammond.
Nothing worthy of note happened during our departure, and a fresh easterly wind carried us out of the Bristol Channel, past Lundy, and well out to sea beyond the Admiralty Bank. I was not at all seasick, and I was delighted to see the Petrel, with all her snowy canvas set, slipping through the water, and passing a number of colliers and coasting craft, and I felt very proud of being one of her crew.
The Petrel, indeed, was a vessel of which any one might be proud. For a brig, she was a very large craft, being three hundred and fifty tons burden, and a very handsome one into the bargain; and my father insisted on her being kept in such perfect order that she was often taken for a man-of-war, and as she carried four twelve-pound carronades on either side the mistake was a very natural one. The crew consisted of my father, the two mates, Simon Pentlea and my brother, and sixteen men before the mast, including Jack Adams, who was called the boatswain; Sam Peters, who was sailmaker; the cook, Black Bill, who had many years before been picked up on part of the wreck of a slaver by my father; Tom Sentall, the carpenter; besides myself and another apprentice, James Harris, whom we always called Jimmy Duds, and a steward, a black Sierra Leone man, named Augustus Warspite, the latter name being that of a man-of-war which had captured a Spanish slaver, of which he formed part of the cargo. My father, with Willie and Mr. Pentlea, had berths in the cabin, which was right aft; and forward of this was an open space bulkheaded off from the hold, which was called the trade-room, and here Adams, Peters, Sentall, Jimmy Duds, and I had our chests, and messed and slept. Black Bill and Augustus had a berth each in the galley, which was on deck just forward of two large surf-boats which we carried on skids before the mainmast. The rest of the men had their berths below forward; but there was a fine roomy top-gallant forecastle, under which they could sleep in the tropics, whilst aft there was a small monkey-poop running ten feet from the taffrail, which was useful for the officers in hot weather. Besides the surf-boats, we carried two cutters and a gig; and as is the good custom in the Bristol trade, there was a library on board, which was kept in a cupboard in the trade-room, and which my father put under my charge. We were also provisioned differently from ordinary merchant-ships, many little extra luxuries being provided, to cheer the lot of the men during the monotonous days that must be spent off the African coast in waiting for trade.
All the men were regular Bristol men, and the work went easy enough, for every man pulled his pound; and though I had just the same work to do as Jimmy Duds, and had to stand my watch and take my turn at the look-out, and always in my watch to help in furling and loosing the upper sails, yet my father found time for me to learn how to use my quadrant and to teach me navigation.
CHAPTER III.
UNPLEASANT NEWS.
Our voyage to the West Coast was unchequered by any incident. We ran past Madeira and Teneriffe, and sighting Cape Verde and Sierra Leone, we first anchored off Solymah, a place on the African coast, where my father left some goods on trust, the country produce in payment for which was to be ready for us on our return. The chiefs with whom he traded, he said, could be thoroughly relied on, though they also had many dealings with slave-traders. The next place off which we anchored was Cape Mount, where Captain Caillaud, a notorious slave-trader, had his head-quarters, and where our appearance at first caused a scare on board two Spanish schooners which were lying there, and which, as soon as we hove in sight, made sail and got under way. But when they saw that we did not chase them, they lay-to in the offing; and signals being made to them from Caillaud’s barracoons that we were not to be feared, they returned to the anchorage and came-to alongside of us.
ISLAND OF TENERIFFE.