Once outside there was a fair wind down the China Sea and we started to make the best of it. We carried royal stunsails and let very little wind get past us. The canvas was good, the gear was good, not a moment was lost in trimming or making sail, and we did well.
One morning, it was my watch, I had rather a scare, for I suddenly made out breakers on the port bow and I had not the least idea that there was land in the vicinity. I yelled down the skylight for the skipper, and at once began to brace up and haul off. The old man came on deck in a hurry, and was graciously pleased to consider that I had done well to avoid running on top of the Pescadore Islands, which with a slack look-out might easily have happened.
There was a certain amount of confusion in getting clear, and to make matters more complex we heard a great riot going on in the cabin, and clouds of steam were arising therefrom. It seems that as we came to the wind, the cabin stove fetched way to leeward and capsized, scattering the lighted coals. The crash brought the parson out of his cabin and he promptly made use of all the liquids he could lay hands upon, thus creating a condition combining safety with a filthy smell.
The skipper was good enough to say that we kept a very good look-out in my watch, even if the proverbial second mate’s slackness was apparent in other matters, but looking back at this little episode after the lapse of years, it seems to me there was no excuse for not warning the officer of the watch that there was a possibility of the ship making a bad course. I trust that a different order of things now exists, but in that ship it would have been little short of sacrilege to ask to see a chart, or to inquire as to the ship’s position. I should have been informed with biting sarcasm, “When I want you to navigate the ship, Mr. So-and-So, I will let you know, meantime, I am quite capable.”
We had great luck down the China Sea, through the straits and as far as St. Helena, which we made in sixty days from Shanghai. But when we reached the line our troubles began. There we ran into a stark calm that lasted for three weeks, and tried the patience of all. More especially did it affect the captain, as was but natural, and his extravagances were at times very comical. On the first part of the trip, when all had gone well, no one concerned themselves about the proverbial ill-luck which attends the carriage of parsons by sea, but it now seemed to have improved by keeping. It had been the custom of the skipper to make up a dummy whist party with the parson and his wife, but this was now discontinued, and the old man’s text as he tramped the poop was loudly spoken and often. “Oh, if the Lord will only forgive me this once for carrying a parson I’ll never do it any more.” One night he solemnly brought up a pack of cards and consigned them with many varied and choice imprecations to the deep. I cannot, however, consider that he was an artist in the use of language—there was too much sameness and repetition about it.
Whether it was owing to the foregoing incantation I do not know, but we did eventually get away from the line. Our passage, however, was completely spoiled, and at the end of it we were shamefully outsailed by that celebrated clipper the Jerusalem. We were going up-Channel with a fine southerly wind that was about a-beam, but, as I have said before, we were a bit tender and could not usefully under those conditions carry all the sail we should have wished. The Jerusalem passed us to windward under all plain sail, and we felt the beating badly, for we could not carry our royals without burying the lee side to the detriment of our speed. Off Beechy Head, however, we took on board a hoveller as a Channel pilot, and I can hear even now the sigh of relief the old man gave as he welcomed him on board.
There is nothing more to chronicle of that ship; I had made up my mind she did not suit me—nor I her—so we parted with scant regret on either side.
There was in the East India Docks a vessel called the Albuera. She belonged to the firm of John Willis & Co., and rejoiced in a double row of painted ports. To her I transferred my services. Her captain, Gissing by name, was a nice fellow, and we should have got on together, but my fortune was now in the ascendant, and I left her to take up the berth in steam that was then becoming the ambition of all young seamen. The Suez Canal was open, and it required no great prescience to foresee the end of sails. The modern sailing-ship that was then being built, however, was very beautiful. Let me instance one as an example, the Lothair; she was afterwards commanded by Tom Boulton, but she was built on the lines of a yacht and was as beautiful, although the modern ship never had the stately grace of the old frigate-built Indiaman.