From Sea to Sea; Or, Clint Webb's Cruise on the Windjammer

by W. Bert Foster

To my surprise I found aboard of her, under the name of “Bodfish,” my cousin, Paul Downes. Fearing punishment for cutting my sloop adrift, when his crime became known, Paul had run away from home and had worked his way as far as Buenos Ayres on a Bayne Line Steamship. There Captain Rogers of the whaling bark had found him in a crimp’s place and had bailed him out and taken him aboard the Scarboro. Paul didn’t like his job, and demanded that I pay his fare home on the steamship, but I believed that a few months’ experience with the whalers would do my cousin no harm, and should have refused his demand even had I had money enough for both our fares. The details of these adventures are related in full in the first volume of this series, entitled, “Swept Out to Sea; or, Clint Webb Among the Whalers.”

Because I refused to aid Paul he threatened again to “get square,” and he certainly made good his threat. I was to remain but two nights at Punta Arenas and had already paid my passage as far as Buenos Ayres on the Dundee Castle; but Paul got in with some men from the sealing steamer, Gypsey Girl, and they shanghaied me aboard, together with a lad from Georgia, Thankful Polk by name, who had tried to help me. Our adventures with the sealers, and our finding of the whaleship Firebrand frozen in the ice and deserted by her crew after her cargo of oil was complete, is related in number two of the series, entitled, “The Frozen Ship; or, Clint Webb Among the Sealers.”

During those adventures I learned that Adoniram Tugg’s partner, Professor Vose, escaped death at the hands of the Patagonians, had joined forces with the animal catcher again, and in the Sea Spell they likewise had sought and found the frozen ship and her valuable cargo. Professor Vose boarded the abandoned ship and remained by her when the Sea Spell lost most of her spars and top-hamper and Tugg was obliged to beat into port to be refitted. Meanwhile, from the deck of the Gypsey Girl, I saw the vast field of ice and bergs in which the Firebrand was frozen break up in a gale; was horrified by the overwhelming of the frozen ship, and had the evidence of my own eyes that, whether the mysterious man in whom I was so greatly interested was merely Vose, Jim Carver, or my own father, he had sunk with the Firebrand under the avalanche of ice.

Later the captain of the Gypsey Girl, a Russ named Sergius, and Thankful Polk and I were lost from the sealing steamer and are picked up by the Scarboro which was on her way to Valpariso to refit after the gales she had suffered on the South Pacific whaling grounds. Captain Rogers, knowing my exceeding anxiety to return home, got a chance for Thank and I to work our passage on the Gullwing, which was just setting sail from Valpariso as the Scarboro arrived at that port.

And here we were on the deck of the handsome schooner, homeward bound; but before I had been here half an hour, it seemed, my ill-luck had followed me. I was enmeshed in a quarrel with the bully of the fo’castle, and could look forward to suffering a most finished trouncing when the sails were all set, the deck cleared, and the captain’s watch was piped below.

“I’ve got a good mind to give one of the mates warning,” muttered Thank, in my ear, as the bully went grumbling away at some call to duty by the dapper little second mate, whom I already judged to be Mr. Barney.

“Don’t you dare!” I admonished. “That’s no way to start. We’d have all the men down on us, then. And we don’t know how many weeks we may have to sail with them aboard of this windjammer.”

When they began to clear up the litter made by the work of getting under weigh, Thank and I saw where we could lend a hand, and we did so. We learned, by talking with the men, that the Gullwing was short-handed, and that is why Captain Bowditch, shrewd old Down East skipper as he was, had so willingly given two rugged boys, with some knowledge of seamanship, their passage home. Two men had deserted at Honolulu, and another had to be taken ashore to the hospital at Valpariso.

The ship, we learned, was well found, and the men gave the officers a good name. Most of the crew had been with her more than this one trip. She was owned by the Baltimore firm of Barney, Blakesley & Knight, and her run had been out from her home port, touching at Buenos Ayres, at Valpariso and thence on to Honolulu and from there to Manila. On her return voyage she made Honolulu again, Valpariso, and now hoped to not drop her anchor until she reached the Virginia Capes.

It was the captain’s watch that was short and we were turned over to Mr. Barney, the smart young second mate. He was a natty, five-foot-nothing man, whom, if he had voted once, that was as much as he’d ever done! But the men jumped when he spoke to them, and he had a blue eye that went right through you and Thank declared—made the links of your vertebrae loosen.