Round the Galley Fire

by William Clark Russell

But the ship is being overdriven. At one bell it was a dead calm; it is not three bells yet, and here is the sea white with wind, and the vessel roaring through the smother with the blast thundering like a hurricane in the sails.

“In main royal and mizzen topgallant sail.”

The canvas rattles like an old waggon over a stony street as the clewlines are manned, and whilst furling it the foretopgallant halliards are let go. What other sails are taken in you do not know, for the ship wants much clever watching, and the skipper is at hand to bring you up with a round turn if the vessel should be a quarter of a point off her course. Being eased, she steers more comfortably, but whole topsails and courses and main-topgallant sail are rushing her through it fiercely; the water on her lee quarter is pretty nearly as high as her main brace bumpkin, and the billow there goes along with her as if it were a part of the vessel; the main tack groans under the tearing and rending pull of the huge convex surface of canvas; now and again the blow of the swell which the racing vessel hits laterally makes her tremble fore and aft like a house under a clap of thunder. But she is to have all she can bear; the spell of dead calm is to be atoned for; and so on through the shrilling and echoing darkness rushes the great fabric, sweeping her pallid canvas through the folds of gloom like the pinions of some vast spirit of the deep, making the water roar past her as she goes, breaking the dark swell into fire and foam as she rushes through the liquid acclivities with her powerful stem, with notes of mad laughter and lamentable wailing in her rigging, and with streaming decks which hollowly echo the fall of the solid bodies of water which shoot up just before the weather fore-rigging, and roll in a rush of creaming white into the lee scuppers as far aft as the break of the poop.

At last you hear the welcome sound of four bells; your trick is up, the wheel is relieved, and catching your jacket off the grating abaft the helm you walk forward, wiping the perspiration from your forehead; and, dropping down the fore scuttle, grope about for your pipe, which you light at the slush lamp that swings from a grimy beam, and returning on deck squat somewhere out of the way of the wind and wet, earnestly hoping that if it is to be a case of “reef topsails” there will be time for you to have your smoke out before the order is thundered forth.

THE BAILIFF AT SEA.

Some time ago I heard that a bailiff had been carried off to sea whilst in the execution of his duty. Anxious to learn the nature of his voyage, how he fared, and what condition he was in, mentally and physically, when restored to his anxious relatives, I made inquiries, and my diligence was at last rewarded by meeting the mate of the vessel that had sailed away with the man. Truth obliges me to own that this mate was not what might be considered a very gentlemanly person. It was not his velvet waistcoat, nor a rather vicious squint, nor a striking-looking bald head ringed with a layer of red hair like a grummet of rope yarns; the want of genteelness was noticeable in his abundant use of what is called “langwidge.” “If I were a bailiff,” thought I, as I glanced at his immense hands and huge arms which swelled out his coat-sleeves like the wind in a sailor’s smallcloths drying in a strong breeze on the forestay, “I should not like to be put ‘in possession’ of a house occupied by you, my hearty.”

I took a seat opposite him and said, “So you’re the mate of the vessel that stole away the county court man?”

“Right,” said he looking at me, without a move in his face; “but don’t you go and say that I’m the mate as gave him up again. If I’d had my way he’d be in charge o’ any goods he might have come across in the inside of a whale by this time. I’d ha’ chucked him overboard, as sure as that there hand’s on this table,” and down came a very leg-of-mutton of a fist with a blow that jerked his tumbler into the air. It was as good as a hint that the glass wanted filling; and when this was done, my companion opened the top buttons of his warm and tight velvet waistcoat, and composed himself into a posture for conversation.

“How,” asked I, “came your skipper to have a bailiff aboard his vessel?”

“You may ask how,” he growled; “what I say is, what right had he to come? I’ve got nothing to say against the law as it works for them as lives ashore—for them as are in fixed houses, and can’t sail away with any blooming old rag of a chap, in a greasy coat, as come in with a bit of paper, and takes a cheer, and says, ‘Here I sit, mates, till I’m paid off.’ But what has the likes of such scowbanks got to do with sailor men when once they’re aboard? What I say is, that when a man’s on the water, his chest stowed away, articles signed, all the law that consarns him is in the cabin. The capt’n’s the law; and not only the law, but judge, magistrate, bailiff, husher, registrar, high chancellor, and Lord Mayor o’ London on top of it; and my argument is that any man as takes the liberty to walk over a wessel’s side and order the captain about, and sing out contrairy orders, and threaten to have him purged (I heard that very word. ‘Ye’ll have to purge for this,’ says the bailiff. Did ye ever hear such language applied to a captain?)—any man, I say, as takes such a liberty as that ought to be dropped overboard without asking ‘by your leave,’ and, as I said before, left to take possession of any goods he come across in the inside of a fish or at the bottom of the ocean.”