At last it ended. The ship came upright, we got canvas on her, and found that we were not very far from land. It is really comical the manner in which sailors take things for granted. I should not have dared to ask the skipper to see the chart, and had we all known of the danger it would have done no good, so perhaps it was for the best.
The following story I believe to be true, it was told me by Captain Ballard, C.M.G., in these words: “Once in a cyclone the —— was off Mauritius; we could not help ourselves, and I saw we must be swept upon —— Island, when it would all have been over. I went aft to tell the people in the saloon, but stopped half-way; I thought it could do no good, and would only worry them before it was necessary; but she was either swept over the island by the tidal wave or else we missed it.”
But what an awful mess that ship was in; as a rule she was spic and span, the acme of neatness, but now a survey of our state was pitiable. The laniards of the lower rigging on the lee side were so chafed that it was doubtful if they would last to port, and altogether the rigging had suffered greatly. But Providence was good to us, and we got in without much more trouble, although it was a beat up the China Sea.
When I speak of the customary neatness of our rigging I in no way exaggerate. As an instance of my meaning, most people know that to save chafe on the backstays in the way of the lower yards, wooden battens are usually seized to the backstays. That was far too rough a method for us. We had the backstays served with unlaid strands of wire rigging, and if any one wishes to try his hand at putting that on, he is welcome to the job so far as I am concerned, for it came to my lot frequently to have to show men that the operation of serving with stiff wire was a possible one.
It was early winter when we arrived at Shanghai and fairly cold. There were a lot of ships in the harbour, and among them was the Lauderdale, of which George Davies was now mate. We renewed our friendship, and had lots to talk over. I think he obtained command of that ship on her next voyage, and was never again heard of. There was also a ship called the Loudoun Castle, whose skipper had the dire misfortune to incur the enmity of our mate, which led to disagreeables for the following absurd reason. A party of skippers were with our old man talking in the cabin, and the topic of discussion was the writing of letters home to the owner, an operation sometimes considered a difficulty. One of the guests happened to say that when he wrote home he turned the mate out of the cabin, imagined he had the owner opposite him, and then wrote as if he were speaking to him. There was no great harm in that, one would say, but our mate heard it, and attributing it rightly or wrongly to the captain of the Loudoun Castle, made it a personal matter that a mate should be asked to leave the cabin. There was considerable trouble over the matter, and I very stupidly went to a lot of trouble to make peace in a business in which I had no concern whatever.
We discharged our cargo in due course, and in spite of the bucketing we found there had been no leaking or damage to speak of. Then we commenced preparing for the homeward cargo of tea. Now, as all people know, tea is a very light commodity, and the ship had to be ballasted to stiffen her. The second mate is supposed to supervise the stowage, but in this case the mate did. To save space he did not leave a sufficient thickness of ballast on the turn of the bilge, and so some tea was spoiled. I heard afterwards it was put down to the fault of “that second mate,” although I had nothing whatever to do with it. It is one of the prettiest operations conceivable to see Chinamen stowing a cargo of tea—great heavy mallets are used, and the tiers are built up with almost mathematical accuracy.
We carried several boats bottom upwards on skids, and these were filled with every article we could bring up from any place below where tea could be stowed, and with the cargo work went on the repairing of the rigging. Here I can illustrate how splendid a sailor the mate was. We rove new laniards to the lower rigging fore and aft. It was bitterly cold weather, yet such care was taken over the business that they did not require to be set up again when we got into warm weather, or touched for the remainder of the voyage, and let no man say he stretched the rope to ruin, for it was not so, but the strain was put on properly.
We had rather a good day’s leave on shore there. Pony-riding seemed the correct thing to do, and most of us were duly shot off by the sudden swerve of the beast into some haunt of seamen with which we were unacquainted. We also foregathered with some of the officers of the old P. & O. paddler Ganges. Nothing of note occurred, however, and in due course the ship was fully loaded, all the officers were given the usual bounty of tea as a present, and we prepared to make the start homewards.
We had taken on board three passengers, a clergyman and his wife and child. A lady at table was a novelty for us, but they were nice people, and I in my spare time got the loan of many books, and for the first time made acquaintance with a series of back numbers of the Saturday Review. I can remember a lot of the smart and caustic writing they contained even now.
We had to beat out to sea, and in doing so discovered that the ship was rather tender with a beam wind, the royals made an appreciable difference, but thus it was and we had to make the best of it. To beat out was fairly hard work, for we had to tack so frequently that there was no time to coil the braces down; as they came in, so they went out. But the pilot was a smart fellow and handled the ship beautifully.