Chapter VIII
In Which It Seems That a Prophecy Will Be Fulfilled
We wallowed through the seas, but with comparatively fair winds, for two days. The Seamew would stand off on one tack, we on the other; and by and by we would lose her below the horizon; but, standing in, after some hours, we found her again and were glad to see that she had not pulled so very much ahead of us. But it made Captain Joe awful fidgety, and he certainly did keep the men hopping—reefing and letting go the topsails, and working every moment to gain a bit over his antagonist. Why, we might as well have been sailing a crack yacht for the America’s cup!
All this activity was very well during bad weather; but the men began to get pretty sore when the hard work continued throughout the hours of fair days too. The Gullwing was, as I have said, short-handed. The sea laws cover such cases as this; but there are so many excuses masters may give for going to sea without sufficient hands to properly manage the ship that it is almost impossible to get a conviction if the case is carried to court.
Besides, it is the law that, if a case is not proved against the master of a vessel, the men bringing the suit must pay all the costs. Jack Tar knows of something else to do with his small pay without giving it to “landsharks of lawyers.” That is why being a sailor and being a slave is an interchangeable term. Many legislators, having the welfare of seamen at heart, have tried to amend the laws so that the sailor will get at least an even break; but it seems impossible to give him as fair a deal as the journeyman tradesman in any other line of work obtains.
Old Captain Joe Bowditch, as decent a master as he really was, had a streak of “cheese-paring” in him that made him delight in saving on the running expenses of his ship. Besides, he probably knew his employers, Barney, Blakesley & Knight. Many a sea captain takes chances, and runs risks, and sails in a rotten ship with an insufficient crew, because he needs to save his job, and if he doesn’t please his employers, some other needy master will!
Although the Gullwing was so large a ship, there are larger sailing vessels afloat, notably some engaged in the Atlantic sea-board trade, and a fleet of Standard Oil ships that circumnavigate the world. These are both five and six masted vessels; but many of them are supplied with steam winches, steam capstans, and various other mechanical helps to the handling of the sails and anchors. The Gullwing had merely a donkey-engine amidships, by which the anchors could be raised, one at a time, or to which the pumps might be attached. The great sails on her lower masts had to be raised by sheer bull strength.
But in our watch old Tom Thornton was a famous chantey-man, and the way we hauled under the impetus of his rhythm, and the swing of the chants (“shanties,” the sailor-man calls them) would have surprised a landsman. I learned that “a strong pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether” would accomplish wonders.
We were now down in the regions where the tide follows the growing and waning of the moon exactly. Indeed, the great Antarctic Basin, south of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, is the only division of the seas where the tide follows the moon with absolute regularity. This is because the great sweep of water here is uninterrupted by land.
The enormous wave, raised by the moon’s attraction, courses around the world with nothing to break it. Here in our northern hemisphere immense masses of land interfere with the coursing of this tidal wave; and the shallow seas interfere, too. In the Mexican Gulf, for instance, the tide seldom rises more than two feet, while up along our north Atlantic shores it often rises six and eight feet, while everybody has heard of the awful tidal wave of the Bay of Fundy.