“You Want Us To Lose This Race, You Sawney!” He Exclaimed.
(From Sea to Sea) (Page [135)]

From Sea to Sea

Or
Clint Webb’s Cruise on the
Windjammer

By
W. BERT FOSTER
Author of
The Frozen Ship; or, Clint Webb Among the Sealers.
Swept Out to Sea; or, Clint Webb Among the
Whalers. The Ocean Express; or, Clint
Webb and the Sea Tramp.

Chicago
M. A. Donohue & Co.

Copyright 1914
M. A. Donohue & Company
Chicago

CONTENTS

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

Chapter I

In Which I Shield a Friend and Make an Enemy

The after port anchor had come inboard before I stepped over the rail of the Gullwing, and leaped to the deck. The starboard and port bowers were both catted and fished and the stay-fore-sail had filled to pay off her head.

The wind was blowing directly on shore; the current ran parallel with the land; there was no choice of direction in getting the big four-master under weigh, and she was headed into the stream.

A clarion voice shouted from the poop:

“Haul main-tack!

“Come aft with that sheet!

“Set jib and spanker! Look alive there!

“Mr. Gates! see if you can’t get some action out of your watch!”

“Aye, aye, sir!” from the mate.

“Helm a-lee! hard a-lee!”

“Hard a-lee she is!” growled the helmsman, a great, hairy, two-fisted salt, with an enormous quid of tobacco in one cheek, a cast in his eye, and his blue shirt so wide open at the throat that we could catch a glimpse of a dashing looking mermaid, in blue and red, upon his chest.

“Set fore-sail! Be alive, there, Mr. Barney. Those men of yours act as stiff as Paddy’s father—and him nine days dead!”

The stamping of the men on the deck as they hauled on the ropes, a confusion of cries from those in the tops, the squeal of the cables running over the drum, the coughing of the donkey-engine amidships by which the huge anchors had been started from the bottom of Valpariso roadstead, and the general bustle and running about, kept Thankful Polk—who had followed me aboard the big, four-stick schooner—and I right there by the rail, where we would be out of the way. Thankful gave me a sly glance, as he whispered:

“I reckon we’ve caught a Tartar in Cap’n Joe Bowditch—what?”

But I had noted the lines about the skipper’s mouth and the wrinkles at the corners of his quick, gray eyes. Those lines and wrinkles had not been graved in the old sea-captain’s face by any long-standing grouch. Captain Bowditch was a man who liked his joke; and even his voice as he bawled orders from the quarter had a tang of good-nature to it that was not to be mistaken.

“I reckon we’ll get along all right with him, if we play the game straight,” I observed to my chum, and turned then to wave my cap to Cap’n Hi Rogers, of the whaling bark Scarboro, who was now being rowed back to his own ship after leaving us to the tender mercies of Cap’n Bowditch.

“By hickey!” exclaimed the boy from Georgia, glancing now along the deck, “ain’t she a monster? Looks a mile from the wheel to the break of the fo’castle.”

It was the largest sailing vessel I had ever been aboard of myself. The Scarboro was a good sized bark, but as we crossed her stern we could look down upon the whaler’s deck and wave our hats to the friendly crew that had been so kind to us. Only a single scowling face was raised to ours as the Gullwing swept on, a creamy wave breaking either side of her sharp bow. This face belonged to my cousin, Paul Downes, who scowled at me and shook his fist. But I merely smiled back at him. I thought that—at length—I could afford to laugh at my cousin’s threats. I was bound straight for home aboard the Gullwing; he had eighteen months, or more, to serve aboard the whaling bark.

Seeing that both the captain and the mates were too busy just then to bother with us, Thank and I strolled forward. It was a long, long deck—and the boards were as white as stone and water could make them. There was some litter about just now, of course; but from the look of the whole ship I made up my mind right then and there that if Captain Bowditch was a martinet in anything, it was in the line of neatness and order. The slush tub beside the galley door was freshly painted and had a tight cover; there was no open swill bucket to gather flies; the cook’s wiping towels had been boiled out and were now hung upon a patent drying rack fastened to the house, and were as white and clean as the wash of a New England housewife. Every bit of brightwork shone and where paint was needed it had been newly put on with no niggard hand. As the sails were broke out and spread to catch the light wind, many of them were white-new, while those that were patched had been overboard for a good sousing before being bent on again. Oh, the Gullwing was a smart ship, with a smart skipper, and a smart crew; one could appraise these facts with half an eye.

“Makes you think you ought to have wiped your feet on the mat before stepping in, eh?” chuckled Thank. “I bet we got to a place at last, Sharp, where we’re bound to work. That old feller with the whiskers up there could spot a fly-speck on the flying jib-boom. I wonder he don’t have brass cuspidors setting ’round for the deck-watch!”

Compared with the frowzy old vessels, captained and manned by foreigners, that make American ports, this American ship, American skippered, and American manned, was a lady’s parlor. “She’s a beauty,” I said. “We may work for our pay—whatever it is to be—but thank’s be ’tis no sealing craft. The stench of the old Gypsey Girl will never be out of my nostrils.”

We stood about for a few minutes longer, trying to keep out of the way of the busy crew; but one husky, red faced fellow came sliding down the backstays and landed square on Thank’s head and shoulders, pitching him to the deck.

“Get out o’ the way, you two young sawneys!” growled this fellow. “Don’t you know enough to keep out from under foot?”

Thank had picked himself up quickly and turned with his usual good-natured grin. It was hard for anybody to pick a quarrel with Thankful Polk.

“My law-dee, Mister” he exclaimed. “Is that the way you us’ally come from aloft? Lucky I was right here to cushion ye, eh?”

The red faced fellow, without a word, swung at him with his hard fist doubled. I was a pretty sturdy fellow myself, with more weight than my chum, and I saw no reason for letting him receive that blow when interference was so easy. I stepped in and the bully crashed against my shoulder, his blow never reaching Thank. Nor did he hurt me, either. His collision with my shoulder threw him off his balance and he sprawled upon the deck, striking his head hard. He rolled over and blinked up at me for half a minute, too stunned to realize what had happened to him.

The encounter was seen by half a dozen of the men, but none of the officers spied us. The spectators laughed as though they hugely enjoyed the discomfiture of the bully.

“Sarves ye right, Bob Promise,” muttered one of the A. B.s; “I bet ye got more than ye bargained for in that youngster.”

“Caught a Tartar, eh, Bob?” scoffed another man.

The fellow on the deck “came to” then, and sprang up with every apparent intention of attacking me. I had shielded my chum, but it was plain that I had made an enemy.

“I’ll teach ye, ye young swab!” Bob ejaculated, and started for me.

But the others interfered. Several hustled the bully back.

“None o’ that, Bob Promise!” exclaimed the first speaker. “We’ll have the old man down here in a second.”

“I’ll break that feller’s neck!” cried Bob.

“I dunno whether ye will or not—in a stand up fight,” drawled another of his shipmates. “He looks like he could take care of himself.”

I had involuntarily fallen into an attitude of self-defense. That is where I had the advantage of Thank; I knew something about boxing, and although the bully was heavier and older than I, it was pretty certain that he had no science. At any rate I wasn’t going to let him think I was afraid of him.

“You wait!” growled Bob Promise. “You stand up to me in the watch below, and I’ll eat you alive.”

I had an idea that if he did I should disagree with his stomach badly; but I did not say this. I don’t think I am naturally a quarrelsome fellow, if I am impulsive. Nor did I wish to get in bad with the captain and officers of the ship by being mixed up in a fight.

“Oh, pshaw!” I said, mildly. “I don’t want to fight you, Mister. Thank didn’t intentionally get in your way, and I didn’t mean——”

“You struck me, you white livered——”

“I didn’t,” I denied. “You ran against me.”

“Don’t you give me no back talk,” snarled the fellow, but looking out watchfully for the officers now.

“Don’t be mad,” I said, with a smile. “I’m sorry if I hurt you——”

I guess that wasn’t a wise thing to say, although I did not mean to heap fuel on the flames of his wrath. He gave me a black look as he turned away, muttering:

“Wait till I git you a-tween decks, my lad. I’ll do for you!”

Thank and I looked at each other, and I guess my countenance expressed all the chagrin I felt, for my chum did not smile, as usual.

“You butted in for me, Sharp,” he said, gloomily, “and now that big bruiser will beat you up, as sure as shooting.”

Chapter II

In Which I Relate My History and Stand Up to a Bully

A fine introduction to my readers! That is the way I look at it. It does seem to me, looking back upon the last few years of my life, that my impetuosity has forever been getting me into unpleasant predicaments. Perhaps if I wasn’t such a husky fellow for my age, and had not learned to use my fists to defend myself, I should not have “butted in,” as Thankful Polk said, and so laid myself open to a beating at the hands of Bob Promise, the bully of the Gullwing’s fo’castle.

A quarrel with my cousin, Paul Downes, on a certain September evening more than a year and a half before, had resulted in a serious change in my life and in a series of adventures which no sensible fellow could ever have desired. For all those months I had been separated from my home, and from my mother who was a widow and needed me, and at this particular time when I had come aboard the Gullwing, my principal wish and hope was to get back to my home, and that as quickly as possible. That the reader may better understand my situation I must briefly recount my history up to this hour.

Something more than fifteen years previous my father, Dr. Webb, of Bolderhead, Massachusetts, while fishing from a dory off shore was lost overboard and his body was never recovered. This tragedy occurred three weeks after the death of my maternal grandfather, Mr. Darringford, who had objected to my mother’s marriage to Dr. Webb, and who had left his large estate in trust for my mother and myself, but so tied up that we could never benefit by a penny of it unless we separated from Dr. Webb, or in case of my father’s death. Dr. Webb had never been a money-making man—not even a successful man as the world looks upon success—and he was in financial difficulties at the time of his fatal fishing trip.

Considering these circumstances, ill-natured gossip said that Dr. Webb had committed suicide. I was but two years old at the time and before I had grown to the years of understanding, this story had been smothered by time; I never should have heard the story I believe had it not been for my cousin, Paul Downes.

Mr. Chester Downes had married my mother’s older sister, and that match had pleased Mr. Darringford little better than the marriage of his younger daughter. But Aunt Alice had died previous to grandfather’s own decease, so Mr. Downes and Paul had received but a very small part of the Darringford estate. I know now that Chester Downes had attached himself like a leech to my weak and easily influenced mother, and had it not been for Lawyer Hounsditch, who was co-trustee with her, my uncle would long since have completely controlled my own and my mother’s property.

Chester Downes and his son, who was only a few mouths older than myself, had done their best to alienate my mother from me as I grew older; but the quarrel between Paul and myself, mentioned above, had brought matters to a crisis, and I believed that I had gotten the Downeses out of the house for good and all. Fearing that Paul would try to “get square” with me by harming my sloop, the Wavecrest, I slept aboard that craft to guard her. At the beginning of the September gale Paul sneaked out of the sloop in the night, nailed me into the cabin, and cut her moorings. I was blown out to sea and was rescued by the whaling bark, Scarboro, just beginning a three-years’ voyage to the South Seas.

I was enabled to send home letters by a mail-boat, but was forced to remain with the Scarboro until she reached Buenos Ayres. The story of an old boatsteerer, Tom Anderly by name, had revived in my mind the mystery of my poor father’s disappearance. Tom had been one of the crew of a coasting schooner which had rescued a man swimming in the sea on a foggy day off Bolderhead Neck, at the time—as near as I could figure—when my father was reported drowned. This man had called himself Carver and had left the coasting vessel at New York after having borrowed two dollars from Tom. Years afterward a letter had reached Tom from this Carver, enclosing the borrowed money, and postmarked Santiago, Chile. The details of the boatsteerer’s story made me believe that the man Carver was Dr. Webb, who had deserted my mother and myself for the obvious reason that, as long as he remained with us, we could not benefit from grandfather’s estate.

While ashore at Buenos Ayres I was accosted by a queer old Yankee named Adoniram Tugg, master and owner of the schooner Sea Spell, but whose principal business was the netting of wild animals for animal dealers. He called me “Professor Vose,” not having seen my face, and explained that my voice and build were exactly like a partner of his whom he knew by that name. The character of this Professor Vose, as described by Captain Tugg, as well as other details, led me to believe that he was the same man whom the boatsteerer aboard the Scarboro had known as Jim Carver, and the possibility of the man being my father took hold of my imagination so strongly that I shipped on the Sea Spell for Tugg’s headquarters, located some miles up a river emptying into the Straits of Magellan.

But when we reached the animal catcher’s headquarters we found the shacks and cages destroyed and it was Tugg’s belief that his partner—the mysterious man I had come so far to see—had been killed by the natives. Making my way to Punta Arenas, to take a steamship for home, feeling that my impulsiveness had delayed my return to my mother unnecessarily, I fell in again with the Scarboro.

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.

Meanwhile the Gullwing began to travel. Unless one has stood upon the deck of a great sailing ship, and looked up into the sky full of sails that spread above her, it is hard to realize how fast such a craft can travel through the sea under a fair wind. Many a seaworthy steamship would have been glad to make the speed that the Gullwing did right then, with but a fairly cheerful breeze. She made a long tack to seaward and then a short leg back, and in that time the Valpariso roadstead was below the horizon and the outline of the Chilean coast was but a faint, gray haze from the deck.

We went below, leaving the mate’s watch to finish the job. “Now for it,” I thought, for Bully Bob had kept his eye on me most of the time, and he crowded down the stairs behind me when I entered the well-lighted and clean fo’castle of the four-stick schooner. I expected he might try to take me foul; for I knew what sort of fighters these deep-sea ruffians were. As a whole the crew of the schooner seemed much above the average; but I believed Bob Promise needed a good thrashing and I wished with all my heart that I were able to give it to him.

But if I could keep him off—make him fight with his fists alone—I believed I at least might put up so good a fight that the other men would interfere when they considered Bob had given me my lesson. I hated the thought of being knocked down and stamped on, or kicked about the fo’castle floor. I had seen two of the men fight aboard the Gypsey Girl and a more brutal exhibition I never hope to witness.

So I kept my eye on Bob, as he watched me, and drew off my coat and tightened my belt the moment I got below.

“Getting ready for that beating are you?” he demanded, with an evil smile.

“I hope you won’t insist,” I said. “But if I’ve got to take it, I suppose I must. All I have to say, is, that I hope you other men will see fair play.”

“You can lay to that, younker,” declared the big fellow who had held the wheel. He was an old man, but as powerful as a gorilla. “Give ’em room, boys, and don’t interfere.”

Scarcely had he spoken when the bully made for me. His intention was, quite evidently, to catch me around the waist, pinion my arms, and throw me. But I determined to be caught by no such wrestler’s trick. The ship was sailing on an even keel and I was light of foot. Just before the bully reached me I stepped aside and drove my right fist with all my might into his neck as he passed me.

Goodness! but he went down with a crash. Big as he was I had fairly lifted him from his feet. The men roared with delight, and slapped their thighs and each other’s backs. I could see that they were going to enjoy this set-to if I lasted any length of time against my antagonist.

“Hold on!” I cried, before Bob Promise had managed to pick himself up, and believing that my first blow had won me the sympathy of the majority. “This man has all the advantage of weight and age over me. If he’ll stand up and fight clean with his fists, I’ll do my best to meet him. But I won’t stand for rough work, or clinches. He’ll best me in a minute, wrestling.”

“The boy speaks true,” declared the hairy man. “And I tell you what, mates. It ain’t clear in my mind what the fight’s about, or who’s in the wrong. But the lad shall have his way. If you try to grab him, or use your feet, Bob, I’ll pull you off him with my own two hands and break you in two! Mark that, now.”

“Hurrah!” cried the irrepressible Thank. “Go to it, Sharp! I believe you can win out.”

Chapter III

In Which the Bubble of My Conceit Is Pricked

Now this is no place to report the details of a fight of this character. It is all well and good for a boy to learn to box; it is one of the cleanest sports there is. It teaches one to be quick of eye and foot, inculcates courage, gives even a naturally timid person confidence, and aids wind and muscle. But the game should be played only with soft gloves—never with bare fists.

Maybe once or twice in the average boy’s life will he need the knowledge gained in the gymnasium to save himself from a beating. I think now I should have sidestepped this trouble with Bob Promise, and could have done so with no loss of honor or self-respect.

But as I saw how lubberly the fellow was, and how clumsy he was on his feet, I was fired with the conceit that I had a chance to hold my own in the contest. And so I did.

I passed my watch to Thank and claimed two-minute rounds; he acted as timekeeper while the gorilla man was referee. We fought altogether five rounds, and during that time my antagonist only managed to reach me half a dozen times, and only once did he knock me to the deck.

I was pretty fresh at the end of this time, while Bob was blowing like a porpoise, I had closed one of his eyes, and his face was bleeding where my knuckles had cut him deeply. During the last round I noticed that the men had kept mighty quiet, and as the big fellow stepped in between us when Thank announced the end of the round, I saw Mr. Barney, the second mate, standing behind me.

“I reckon that’s enough, boys,” said the little second mate, good-naturedly enough. “They’re not matched by the rules you are following. This young fellow will soon have Bob groggy. The boy’s got all the science and Bob has no show.”

This was putting it in a light that vexed me. I had thought I was the one to earn sympathy, not the bully.

“Why,” I complained, “he pitched on me for nothing. And he outweighs me thirty pound.”

“And you outweigh me twenty pound, you young bantam, you!” laughed the second mate. “Come! I’m a better match for you than Bob is.”

I flushed pretty red at that, for although I saw Mr. Barney was a man to respect, I did not think he handled his watch by the weight of his muscle.

“If you don’t think so, put up your hands again, and we’ll try a bout,” said Mr. Barney, still laughing. “If you give me the kind of an eye Bob has, I won’t chalk it up against you. The boys will tell you that if there’s anything aboard the old Gullwing, it’s fair dealing.”

“And that’s right for ye, Mr. Barney!” exclaimed the gorilla man. Then he winked at me. “Hit him as hard as ye kin, boy!” he whispered.

“Come on,” said the mate, buttoning his jacket tight and taking his position. “You won’t have to fight the whole crew to get a standing.”

I saw he meant it, and I knew by his smile that he was a fair-minded man and wished me no harm. I secretly thought, too, that I was as good as he was.

“Time!” called Thank, rather shakily.

The very next second something happened to me that I hadn’t expected. I thought I could parry his first blow, at least; but it landed under my jaw and every tooth in my head rattled. I leaped back and he followed me up with a swiftness that made me blink.

I parried several more swift blows and then hit out myself when I thought I saw my chance. He just moved his head a trifle to one side and my fist shot by. My whole weight went with it and I collided against him. He only rocked a little on his feet, and as I dodged back he struck me a blow on the chest that drove me half a dozen yards into the arms of the spectators.

“If I had placed that higher up—as I might—you would have been asleep, my lad,” he said, coolly. “Don’t you believe it?”

“I do, sir,” I said, panting.

“I am just as much better than you, as you are than Bob,” he said, laughing again. “He has no science and you have a little. But I have more science and so we’re not fairly matched. And now, boys, that’s fun enough for to-day,” and he turned on his heel and went up on deck.

I tell you right now, I felt pretty foolish. But the men didn’t laugh. The big man, whom I learned later was Tom Thornton, said:

“He’s a smart little bit of a man, is Mr. Jim Barney. You might be proud to be put out by him.”

“Excuse me!” I returned, feeling to see if all my teeth were sound. “No kicking mule has got anything on him when he hits you.”

“And his brother Alf, on the Seamew, is a match for him,” said another of the men. “There’s a pair of them—brothers and twins, and as much alike as two peas in a pod. I mind the time they was looking for some men down in a joint on Front Street, Baltimore, and a gang started in to clean ’em up. Thought they was dudes trying to be rounders. The Barney boys held off a dozen of them till the police came, and neither of them even showed a scratch.”

I pulled myself together and went over to Bob, who was swabbing his face in a bucket of water. I held out my hand to him, and said:

“The second mate was right. If we’d fought rough and tumble you could have easily fixed me. But you’ve got lots of muscle and I bet that second mate doesn’t sail without a set of gloves in his cabin. If he’ll lend ’em to us I’ll teach you what little I know myself about boxing.”

“That’s fair enough!” shouted Tom Thornton. “The boy’s all right.”

“I’m game,” growled Bob, giving me his hand. “But I don’t like fresh kids.”

“That’s all right,” said I. “Mebbe I’ll get salted a little before the voyage is over.”

And so the affair ended in a laugh. But I guess I learned one lesson that I was not likely to forget in a hurry.

And both Thankful Polk and I had a whole lot to learn about this big ship. Although my chum had been five years from home (leaving his native village in the hills of Georgia when he was twelve) he had learned little seamanship. Nowadays ships do not receive apprentices as they used to in the palmy days of the American merchant marine, which is a regrettable fact, for it was from the class of apprentices that most of our best shipmasters came.

A seaman—a real A. B.—must know every part of the ship he serves, its rigging and whatnot, just as any other journeyman tradesman must know his business. It is not necessary that an able seaman should be a navigator; but every navigator should be an able seaman. Such a man likewise should be something of a sailmaker, rigger and shipbuilder. In these days when the work of a crew is so divided that men are stationed at certain work in all weathers few men before the mast are all-round seamen. And this is likewise regrettable.

In the months I had spent upon the Scarboro I had learned much—and in that I had the advantage of Thank. Captain Rogers and Mr. Robbins were both thorough-going seamen, and when we were not chasing whales I had been drilled by the mate, and by young Ben Gibson, the second officer, in the ropes, the spars, the handling of gear, and taught to take my trick at the wheel with the best man aboard.

And I was thankful for all this now, for although the Gullwing was a much larger ship, and differently rigged from the whaler, I could catch hold now pretty well when an order was given. I knew, too, that men like Captain Bowditch and Mr. Gates and Mr. Barney liked their hands to be smart, and I was not afraid to tackle anything alow or aloft.

The men told me, too, that “the old man” (which is a term given the captain aboard ship not at all disrespectful in meaning) was a terror for crowding on sail. Besides, there was a deeper reason for Captain Bowditch wishing to put his ship through the seas and reaching Baltimore just as soon as possible.

“Ye see,” said old Tom Thornton, in the dog-watch that afternoon, “the firm owns another ship like the Gullwing—the very spittin’ image of it—the Seamew. They’re sister ships; built in the same dockyard, at the same time, and by the very same plans. A knee, or a deck plank, out o’ either one would fit exactly into the similar space in the other—and vicy varsy.

“They was put into commission the same month, and they make the same v’yges, as usual. Cap’n Si Somes, of the Seamew is about the same age as our skipper. They was raised together down east; they went to sea together in their first ship. And they got their tickets at the same time, since which they’ve always served in different ships, one mounting a notch when the other did. Rivals, ye’d call them, but good friends.

“But they’re always and forever trying to best each other in a v’yge. They races from the minute they cast off moorings at Baltimore to the minute they’re towed inter their berths again. They crowd on sail, and work their crews like kildee, and stow their cargoes, and unload the same like they was racin’ against time. And now, this trip, they’ve got a wager up,” and old Tom chuckled.

“It was this here way: We battened down hatches the same morning the Seamew did at Baltimore, and the tugs was a-swinging of us out. Cap’n Si sung out from his poop: ‘Joe! I bet ye an apple I tie up here afore you do when the v’yge is over.’

“‘I take ye,’ says our skipper, ‘pervidin’ it’s a Rhode Islan’ Greenin’—I ain’t sunk my teeth into no other kind for forty year—it’s the kind I got my first stomach-ache from eatin’ green, when I was a kid.’

“And that settled it. The bet was on,” chuckled Tom. “And we fellers for’ard have suffered for it, now I tell ye! The Seamew beat us to Buenos Ayres by ten hours on the outward v’yge. We caught her up, weathered the Horn and was unloading at Valpariso when the Seamew arrived. But, by jinks! she beat us to Honolulu.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“Made a better passage. We got some top-hamper carried away in a squall. To tell you the truth, Cap’n Joe carried on too much sail for such a blow. But we weren’t long behind her at Manila, and my soul! how Cap’n Joe did make those Chinks work unloadin’ an’ then stowin’ cargo again when we started back.

“The Seamew got away two days before we did. But we left Honolulu a few hours ahead of her, and she has to touch at Guayaquil—up in Equidor. As far as time and distance goes, however, both ships is about even. We had to unload a lot of stuff back there at Valpariso, and load again. Both are hopin’ not to touch nowheres till we git home. And it wouldn’t surprise me none if we sighted the Seamew almost any day now, unless she’s clawed too far off shore.”

This good-natured competition between the two big ships had, I believe, something to do with the smart way in which the crew of this one on which I sailed went about their work. Jack Tar is supposed to be a chronic grumbler; and surely the monotony of life at sea may get on the nerves of the best man afloat; but I seldom heard any grumbling in the fo’castle of the Gullwing.

However, there was another rivalry connected with this voyage of the sister ships—a much more serious matter—and, indeed, one that proved tragic in the end, but of this I was yet to learn the particulars in the eventful days that followed.

Chapter IV

In Which Captain Bowditch Crowds On Sail and There Is Much Excitement

In writing a story of the sea—even a narrative of personal experiences—it is difficult to give the reader a proper idea of the daily life of the man before the mast. It naturally falls that the high lights of adventure are accentuated while the shadows of monotony are very faint indeed. But the sailor’s life is no sinecure.

Saving on occasion the work on shipboard is not very hard. The watch-and-watch system followed on all ships makes the work easy in fair weather; and foul weather lasts but for short spells, save in certain portions of the two hemispheres.

“Eight bells! Rise and shine!”

This order, shouted into the fo’castle at four o’clock in the morning, roused Thankful Polk and I from our berths. No turning over for another nap—or for even a wink of sleep—with that command ringing in one’s ears. We tumbled out, got into our outer clothing, ran our fingers through our hair (no chance for any fancy toilets at this hour) and went on deck with the other members of the captain’s watch.

There was plenty of light by which to chore around, and Mr. Barney’s sharp voice kept us stirring until five when we lined up at the galley door and each man got a tin of hot coffee—and good coffee it was too, aboard the Gullwing. Then buckets and brooms was the order and the ship began to be slopped and scrubbed from the bowsprit to the rudder timbers. No housewife was ever half as thorough as we had to be to satisfy Mr. Barney and the old man. Thank and I learned that Captain Bowditch made a tour of the deck every morning after breakfast, and if there had been any part of the work skimped he would call up the watch and have the whole job done over again.

“But that don’t happen more’n once on a v’yage,” chuckled Tom Thornton, working beside us. “The feller that skips any part of the work he’s set to do on this here packet, gets to be mighty onpopular with his mates.”

Thus warned, we two boys were very careful with our share of the scrubbing—and likewise the coiling down of ropes which followed. I can assure the reader that, when we were through, everything in sight was as spick and span as it could be—every stain was holystoned from the deck, the white paint glistened, and the brasswork shone.

At seven-thirty the watch below was given breakfast and at four bells—eight o’clock—we were relieved and went below to our own breakfast; and that was not a bad meal aboard the Gullwing. There are no fancy dishes tacked onto Jack Tar’s bill of fare—nor does he expect it; but on this ship food was served with some regard to decency.

On the Gypsey Girl “souse” was served in a bucket, set down in the middle of the long fo’castle table, and every man scooped his cup into the mess, broke in his hardtack, and inhaled it a good deal after the style of a pig at a trough. But for breakfast on this ship there was more good coffee, tack that was not mouldy and scraps of meat and potatoes fried together—a hearty, satisfying meal.

Each man washed and put away his own cup, plate and knife and fork. Some used their gulleys, or sheath-knives; but Thank and I had brought aboard proper table tools in our dunnage bags. After the breakfast was cleared away, and the fo’castle itself tidied up, the watch below busied itself in mending, sock darning, and such like odd jobs. A sailor has got to be his own tailor, seamstress and housewife; and even such a horny-handed and tar-fingered giant as Tom Thornton was mighty handy with his needle and “sailor’s palm.”

Some of the men shaved at this time, one cut another’s hair and trimmed his beard. The crew of the Gullwing respected themselves; the deck of the fo’castle was kept as well scrubbed as the deck above. Nobody came to the table without having scrubbed his face and hands clean; nor was the men’s clothing foul with tar or the grease of the running gear. They may all have been “sword-swallowers” when it came to “stowing their cargo ’tween hatches,” but cleanliness was the order, and the ordinary decencies of life were not ignored. These men may not have been particularly strong on etiquette, and were not “parlor broke,” as the saying is; but they were neat, accommodating, cheerful, and if they skylarked some, it was fun of a good-natured kind and was not objectionable.

I liked old Tom Thornton, for despite the cast in his eye, and his gorilla-like appearance, he was good hearted. He was just about covered with tattooing, I reckon. As he said, if he’d wanted to take any more indigo into his system he’d have to swallow it! Most of the work had been done on him by a South Sea Islander who had sailed in whaling ships and the like and made a little “on the side” by tattooing pictures on foolish sailors.

“’Taint done now, no more,” old Tom said, shaking his head. “But when I was a youngster it was the fashion. Poor Jack can’t afford to buy picters and have a family portrait gallery, or the like. But he used to be strong for art,” and the old man grinned.

“I was wrecked with this here nigger-man I tell you about. About all he saved from the wreck was his colors and bone needles, and the patterns he outlined his figgers from. We was held prisoner on that blamed reef, living on stuff from the wreck, for three months. There wasn’t nothing else to do. His tattooing me kept him from going crazy, and the smart of the thing kept me alive. So there you have it—tit for tat! He never charged me nothing for his work, neither, and I allus was a great lad for gittin’ a good deal for my money.”

Tom’s legs were mural paintings of serpents and sea monsters. He had anklets and bracelets worked in red and blue. On his back was a picture of three gallows with a man hanging in chains from the middle one. I believe that it was the ignorant South Sea native’s idea of the story of Calvary, for there was the typical cross and crown worked above it at the back of Tom’s neck. The mermaid on Tom’s chest could have won a job as fat woman with a traveling circus; but then, Tom had an enormous chest which had given the tattooer plenty of space to work on. Around his waist was tattooed a belt like a lattice-work fence. When he stripped to “sluice down,” as he called his daily bath, he looked as gay as a billboard.

At ten o’clock (six bells) of the forenoon watch most of the watch below turned in for a nap, and at half past eleven we answered the call to dinner. At noon we were on duty again until four o’clock. In pleasant weather this afternoon watch is a mighty easy one. Besides the man at the wheel and the two on lookout, the others haven’t much to do but tell stories, play checkers, or read. As long as everything was neat and shipshape the old man did not hound us to work at odd jobs as some masters do.

From four to eight p. m. the time is divided into two dog-watches, although the second half of that spell is the actual dog-watch. “Dog” is a corruption of “dodge,” the object of this division being to make an even number of watches to the twenty-four hours so that there will be a daily changing or shifting, thus dodging the routine. For example, the watch that goes below one day at noon will the next day come on deck at that hour.

At five-thirty our watch had supper and at six we took the deck once more until eight o’clock. Then we could sleep until midnight and from thence had the watch until four in the morning. It is a monotonous round—especially in fair weather. We were like to welcome a bit of a blow now and then, although the Gullwing was such a big ship, and her crew was so small, that all hands had to turn out to shorten or make sail. On some ships this fact would have made the crew ugly but these boys had even a good word for the cook or “doctor,” and usually Jack looks upon that functionary as his natural enemy.

But during those first few days of the run down the coast of Chile it was seldom that we were called on to shorten sail. Captain Bowditch was living up to his reputation; the Gullwing foamed along through the short green seas with every sail she would bear spread to the favoring gale. With her four whole sails on the lower spars and all her jibs set, she spread a vast amount of canvas to the wind. And the only changes we made were in her topsails. Those the skipper kept spread every moment that he dared; and it took a pretty strong gust to make him give the order to reef down.

When he left the deck himself, either day or night, he instructed his mates to call him before they took in an inch of cloth. And Mr. Gates and Mr. Barney were just as hungry for speed, as the old man. The Gullwing was heavily laden, but there was probably few stiffer vessels at sea that day than she. With plenty of ballast there was no gale or no sea that could capsize her.

She took cheerfully all the wind and all the sea could give her. A little loose water flopping around her deck didn’t trouble Captain Bowditch. “Tarpaulin her hatches, clamp ’em down, and let her roll!” had been his order when we had got well away from our anchorage at Valpariso. We had good weather, however, as I have said, for some days.

Then suddenly, one afternoon in the first dog-watch, it came on to blow. Carefully as the captain watched the glass, I do not think this squall was foretold. A more cautious navigator might have been better prepared for a squall. He wouldn’t have had his topsails spread in any such gale as had been blowing. And when all hands were called to go aloft, the wind shrieked down upon us and the foretopsail and two staysails were blown clean out of the boltropes before the men could get at them.

“What are ye about, ye sawneys!” yelled Captain Bowditch, dancing up and down on the deck and shaking his fists at the men above. “Save my sails for me! Think I’m made o’ sailcloth? And them right new fixin’s, too! Git busy there!”

Oh, we were busy! I had been sent aloft and so had Thank. We were nimble enough in the shrouds; but we were not as smart about handling the stiff canvas as some. I found my chum beside me as we hauled down the stiff canvas upon the spar, and threw ourselves upon the folds to hold them till they could be secured.

“My law-dee!” gasped the Georgian boy, grinning. “Jest as lives try to pin an apron around the waist of a baby hippopotamus—what?”

I saw his wet, red, grinning face for a moment looking across at me. Then, suddenly, the ship keeled over, the rope on which we stood overhung those leaping, green, froth-streaked waves—waves which seemed hungrily trying to lap our feet. Thank disappeared! Something gave way, his weight left the sail to me alone. And perhaps, fearful for my chum, I bore off the canvas myself to look for him.

The next instant I was cast back by the wind tearing under the canvas and lifting it in a great balloon.

“Swish—r-r-rip!”

Like a banshee on a broomstick that sail kited off to leeward, and I was left hanging desperately to the shrouds, with the wind booming in my ears so that I could not even hear the angry roaring of the skipper below.

And all the time this question kept thumping in my head: “Where was Thankful Polk?”

Chapter V

In Which We See a Ship Sailing in the Sky

I had forgotten my own peril. Indeed, so disturbed was I for the moment for my chum’s safety that I cared nothing for the lost sail. I yelled for Thank at the top of my voice, though doubtless the shrieking of the wind drowned all sound of my cries. And Thank, for all I knew, was already far to leeward, fighting in that tempestuous sea.

And then suddenly, through a rift in the flying spray that stung my face so cruelly and almost blinded me, I beheld something swinging from the ropes on which I stood. The ship was almost on her beam-ends and the waves broke just below me. There Thank hung by his foot, which had twisted in the ropes and was held firm, his head and shoulders buried in the foaming sea at every plunge of the laboring Gullwing!

I shrieked again and, clinging with one hand with a desperate grip, I sought to seize him as he swung, pendulum-like, to and fro. I could not reach him.

But now the brave ship was righting herself. We rose higher and higher from the leaping waves. Thank swung back and forth and, as we came inboard, I feared he would batter his poor brains out against the wire cables, or against some spar.

He was unconscious. He was helpless. And it seemed as though I was helpless as well. Those few momentous seconds showed me plainly how deeply I loved the youth who had been my comrade in adventure and labor and peril during these last few months. I had never had a chum before of my own age—not one whom I had really cottoned to. Thank was as dear to me as a brother would have been.

As we rose higher and higher another fear smote me. If his foot loosened now and he fell, he would be dashed to death upon the deck below. In my struggles my hand found a loose rope. I hauled it in quickly, hung to the spar by my elbows while I formed a noose in the end, and was unsuccessfully trying to get this over Thank’s head and shoulders when another man sprang to the footrope beside me.

“Git down there and grab him!” yelled this individual in my ear. “I’ll hold you both.”

It was Bob Promise and although he was the man aboard whom I least liked, he was an angel of mercy to me just then. I knew his muscle and vigor. With one hand he clung to the rope and seized my belt with his other paw. I knew that belt would hold, and I swung myself, without question, head-downward.

It was only for a moment that he had to be under the strain of all my weight and Thank’s as well. Then I had scrambled back to the footrope, and held my chum in the hollow of my arm. Thank was half drowned, but his eyes opened and he gasped out something or other before Bob steadied us both again upon the footrope. Later I realized that he tried to say, in his cheerful way: “That’s all right, Sharp!”

Between us Bob and I managed to get him down to the deck. We should not have been able to do that without a sling had the squall not passed away and left the old Gullwing once more on a comparatively level keel.

When we landed upon the deck boards, Thank managed to stand erect. And we three shook hands with a sort of grim satisfaction. I don’t think any of us ever spoke of the event thereafter, and our mates had not seen our peril, but we three were not likely to forget it.

The old man was still careening around the quarter, like a hen on a hot skillet, fussing about the lost sails. And scarcely had the squall passed when he was ordering up new ones to replace those that had been lost. We went to work bending on the fresh sails while it was yet blowing so hard that most captains would have kept their crews out of the rigging.

I began to see that Tom Thornton had not been joking when he said that the men were paying the penalty for the skipper’s betting an apple with Captain Si Somes, of the Seamew. Had it been a thousand dollars at stake, Captain Bowditch would have been no more earnest in his determination to beat the Gullwing’s sister ship.

But the wind was little more than a stiff gale when the new sails were set and the ripping repaired. We drove along until night and then the air became very light. During the night a fog began to gather and when our watch was called at eight bells in the morning it was pretty thick.

“Looks like a Cape Horn soup,” growled old Tom, as he stepped on deck. “Though we’re a good bit of a ways from that latitude yet.”

As we stumbled around the deck, doing that everlasting cleaning up that Mr. Barney watched so sharply, the fog began to thin and waver. Somewhere overhead there was a breeze; but it was pretty near a dead calm down here on the deck of the Gullwing.

By the time the sun began to glow upon the edge of the sea, looking like a great argand lamp in the fog; overhead the billows of mist were rolling in imitation of the long, swinging swell of the sea itself. At first those billows in the sky glowed in purple, and rose hues, ever changing, magnificently beautiful! It was a seascape long to be remembered.

The sun rose higher. Its rays shot through the rolling mist like arrows. Now and then the breeze breathed on our sails and the Gullwing forged ahead at a better pace. The fog left us. We were sailing in an open space, it seemed, with the mist bank encircling us at a distance on a few cable-lengths, and the billows still rolling high above the points of our masts.

And then, to the westward, the curtains rolled back as it seemed for the scene that had been set for us. Like the stage of a great theatre, this setting of cloud and mist and heaving sea appeared, and there, sailing with her keel in the clouds, and her tapering masts and shaking sails pointing seaward, was a beautiful, misty, four-stick schooner.

“What do you know about that?” demanded Thankful Polk. “Do you see what I see, Sharp, or have I ‘got ’em?’ That ship’s upside down.”

“It’s a mirage,” I murmured.

“It’s a Jim Hickey of a sight, whatever the right name of it is,” he rejoined.

Everybody else on deck was aware of the mirage, and a chorus of exclamations arose from the watch.

“It’s the Gullwing herself!” ejaculated Bob Promise. “Of course it is! It’s a four-sticker.”

“How do you make that out?” demanded Thank. “I know derned well I ain’t standing on my head, whatever you be.”

“It’s her reflection, sawney!” said somebody else.

“Oh! well I reckoned that I knew whether I was on my head, or my heels,” chuckled the boy from Georgia.

But I had been watching the mirage very sharply. I knew just what sails were set upon the Gullwing, and I counted those upon the ship in the sky. Misty as the reflection was I could distinguish them plainly. And suddenly I saw a movement among those sails. Sharply defined figures of men swarmed into her rigging.

“That’s not the Gullwing at all!” I shouted.

“That boy’s right,” said Mr. Barney sharply, coming out of the afterhouse with his glass, and with the captain right behind him. “You’ve got good eyes on you, Webb.”

“By jinks! It’s the Seamew!” roared our skipper, the moment he set his eyes upon the mirage. “And if she’s sailing that way, she’ll never beat us to the Capes of Virginia.”

A roar of laughter greeted this joke. But the ship in the sky began immediately to fade away, and it had soon disappeared, while the wind freshened with us and we forged ahead still faster. When the fog completely disappeared there was not a sail in sight anywhere on that sea, although Mr. Barney went into the tops himself and searched the horizon with a glass.

But I know that they made a note of the appearance on the log. Some of the sailors thought the Seamew couldn’t be far from us, either head or astern; but I knew that the mirage might have reflected our sister ship hundreds of miles away. The incident gave us a deal to talk about, however, and an added savor to the race we were sailing half around the globe.

Chapter VI

In Which the Gullwing Suffers a Ghostly Visitation

“The words of Agur, the son of Jaketh.... There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea....”

That old fellow whose wise sayings make up the final chapter of the Book of Proverbs had a deal of experience and knowledge; but navigation was a mystery to him. And to see a great ship sailing straight away on her course, in the midst of the sea, without a sign of land anywhere about, is like to make one think of the wonder of it.

We picked up many a sail after the mirage of our sister ship, during the next few days; but none of them were the Seamew. The wind increased and the Gullwing went snoring through green seas, her bow in a smother of foam and a good deal of loose water inboard on occasion. But that did not bother the captain. We were speeding up toward the Horn and little else mattered.

We were getting into a colder latitude, too. Now we were down about to the line where the Gypsey Girl had steamed in and out of the channels after seals. But we never saw the land. The Gullwing was keeping well off shore.

The keen wind blew a fitful gale. We were glad to get into the lee of the deck-houses when we were on duty. Thanks to Captain Rogers of the Scarboro, however, my chum and I were well dressed for colder weather; but we got each a suit of tarpaulins and hip boots from Captain Bowditch, for we had not owned them. We could safely dress in these water-shedding garments every watch above, when the weather was not fair; for the schooner was bound to ship a deal of suds.

In our watch besides old Tom Thornton, was another ancient mariner, and the only man not an American born aboard the Gullwing—August Stronson. He was a queer, gentle old man with the marks of dissipation strong upon his face, although most of his spare time below he sat and read a well-thumbed Swedish Bible. He was a man in whom Alcohol had taken a strangle hold on Will. A more than ordinarily good seaman, when ashore he soon became a derelict along the docks, finally ending in some mission or bethel where he would be straightened out and a berth found for him again. He was only safe aboard ship. Eternally sailing about the Seven Seas was his salvation.

He was aboard the Gullwing, as Thank and I were, merely by chance. And his reason for wishing to make the port of Baltimore was a curious one—yet one that gives a sidelight upon the sailor’s character. As a usual thing, Jack is grateful to anybody who does him a kindness, and he does not often forget a favor done him. Besides, he prides himself on “being square.” Yet it seemed to me that old Stronson was carrying that trait farther than most seamen.

He had been picked up at Honolulu by Cap-Bowditch, after the two men before mentioned had deserted the Gullwing to go with a native trader into the South Seas. Stronson had already traveled by one craft and another from Australia and would have traveled, when he reached Baltimore, all of ten thousand miles to see just one man. He told me this story in one watch below and I think it worth repeating.

“Captain Sowle, who iss de superintendent of that mission where dey iss so goot to sailormans, lend me a dollar five years ago when I was sick. I ban goin’ to pay dat dollar, me! I ban going to Baltimore to pay him.”

“But why didn’t you send it to him by mail?” I asked the old fellow.

“Captain Sowle, gif me dat dollar in his own hand, and I haf to give it back to him mit mine. I could nefer forget his kindness—no. In many foreign ports I thought of him—how goot he wass. I long carry that dollar note in my shirt—yes. In Sydney I went to the sailor’s mission one night and heard an old song das Captain Sowle sung to me and odders in Baltimore. I had that dollar note I haf saved mit me den. Why! I ban shipwrecked once and safe only dot dollar and a jumper. Luck foller me mit das dollar.

“I says to my mate dere in Sydney, ‘Bill,’ I says, ‘I got de old man’s dollar yet. Meppe he need it for de poys when he sing dot old hymn to-night over seas.’

“‘Do you feel uneasy like?’ Bill asks me.

“‘No,’ says I, ‘but I seems to hear the old man singing and I’m minding the old Bethel and the winter night he ban givin’ me de dollar.’ ‘Well,’ says Bill, ‘you must bring your cargo to port and get a discharge. You must show de old man dat you sail straight. That’s my verdict.’

“So we shook hands undt I go find me a berth to Manila—best I can do just then. I makes Honolulu on a Pacific Mail; but she drops me there. Then I finds de Gullwing. She iss de ship for me,” added Stronson, smiling in his simple way. “She carry me straight for Baltimore, undt I pay das dollar to Captain Sowle.”

Some of the men made a good deal of fun of Stronson because he was slow of intellect; but he was an able seaman and even the sharp-spoken Mr. Barney seemed to bear easy on the old man. He was stiff in his joints at times, for the sailor’s chief enemy, rheumatism, had got a grip on Stronson. Thank and I saved him many a job aloft, and in return he patiently set about teaching us all he knew about splicing and knotting—which was no small job for either the old man or for us.

It was soon after this that we got the four days’ gale that I, for one, shall not soon forget. The wind, however, did not increase so suddenly as before, and Captain Bowditch took warning in time and had the small sails furled. But when the gale fairly struck us we had enough lower canvas set in all good conscience. The ship fairly reeled under the sudden stroke of the blast.

With the wind, too, came the snow. Such a snowstorm I had not seen for several years, for we had had two or three mild winters in New England before I had gone to sea. We were forced to reef down the big sails, though every order from the skipper to this end was punctuated by groans. The canvas was stiff and the snow froze on it, and we had a mess. Glad was I that the work was not to be done in the tops.

A smother of snow wrapped the Gullwing about and we plunged on without an idea as to what was in our path. The lookout forward could not see to the end of the jib-boom. The sea was lashed to fury and, again and again, a wave broke over our bows and washed the deck from stem to stern. To add to the wonder of it, somewhere in the depths of the universe above us an electrical storm raged; we could hear the sullen thunder rolling from horizon to horizon. At first I had thought this was surf on the rocks and believed we were going head-on to death and destruction; but the officers knew where we were and they assured us that the chart gave us an open sea.

The decks were a mess of slush and it was dangerous to go about without hanging to the lifelines that checkrowed the Gullwing from forward of the fo’castle to the after companionway. Yet how the staunch craft sailed! She shook the waves off her back like a duck under a waterspout, and seemed to enjoy the buffeting of the sea like a thing alive.

While the storm continued we got just such food as we could grab in our fists. Nothing was safe on the table. The doctor kept the coffee hot in some magic way; yet there were times when the ship rolled so that the lids flew off his stove and the fire was dumped on the deck of the galley.

Sixty hours and more of this sort of weather dragged past. I once said to Tom Thornton:

“It’s a pity the skipper didn’t try for the Straits, isn’t it?”

“And what would the Gullwing be doing in the Straits, in a blow like this, my lad?” he demanded. “A big ship like her in that narrow way has little chance in a storm. The tail of such a gale as this would heave her on the rocks. There’s not seaway enough there for anything bigger than a bugeye canoe.”

“But the Scarboro made a fair course through it,” I said.

“That greaser!” snorted the old A. B. “She can loaf along as she pleases. Sea-anchor, if there’s a bit of a gale. But the Windjammer has to make time. These days the big sailin’ ships hafter compete with them dirty steam tramps. We can’t risk bein’ becalmed in any narrow waterway—no, sir!”

It was on the fourth night, with the wind blowing a hurricane and the snow as thick about us as a winding-sheet, that our watch had come on deck at midnight. I was sent as second man with Bob Promise to the wheel. It took both of us to handle the steering gear when the old schooner kicked and plunged so.

We were under close-reefed mainsail and jibs and were battling fearful waves. The sleet-like snow drove across her deck and all but blinded us. I had to keep wiping the slush off the binnacle, or the lamp would have been completely smothered and we could not have seen the trembling needle.

Sometimes the officer on the quarter was hidden from our eyes, but his voice reached us all right:

“Steady your helm! You lubbers act like your muscles were mush. Keep off! Can’t you hear that sail shaking? You’ll have us under sternway yet. Call yourselves sailors? You’re a pair of farmers! What d’ye think you’re doing? Plowing with a pair of steers? Steady!”

Bob muttered imprecations on Mr. Barney’s head; but I knew better.

“He’s nervous, that’s all,” I said. “He’s always so when the skipper ain’t on deck.”

“All he thinks of is whether we’re beatin’ the Seamew, or not,” growled Bob.

“I notice that bothers him,” said I. “But he hasn’t bet a Greening apple on the race, has he?”

“It’s bigger than that, I reckon. They say it’s something betwixt him and his brother Alf. They’ve been sore on each other for a year or more.”

I knew Mr. Alfred Barney was second mate of the Seamew, and I wondered what the trouble was between the twin brothers.

But just as this moment something happened that gave our minds a slant in another direction. The snow squall had thinned. We could see pretty near the length of the deck from where we stood—Bob and I—at the wheel.

Suddenly my mate uttered a stifled yell and his hands dropped from the spokes.

“Looker there!” he gasped.

I hung to the wheel, although a kick of the schooner near sent me on my head.

“Catch hold here, confound you!” I bawled.

“There!” he cried again, pointing with a terror stiffened arm into the forerigging.

I saw a flash of light—a glow like that of a big incandescent lamp bulb. It hung for fully thirty seconds to the very tip of one of the fore-topmast spars. Again, another flashed upon another point of the rigging. Bob Promise crouched by the wheel; he fairly groveled, while I could hear cries and groans from many of the hands on deck.

“What’s the matter with you? What is it?” I demanded, still fighting with the wabbling wheel alone; and I am afraid I kicked him. “Catch hold here!”

“Corpse lights!” groaned Bob, not even resenting my foot. “We’re all dead men. We’re doomed.”

Chapter VII

In Which Is Pictured a Race in Mid-Ocean

There was a snapping and crackling in the air over the laboring ship. It sounded as though the taut stays were giving way, one after another. For the moment, what Bob said about “corpse lights” I did not understand; I was mainly giving my attention to the wheel.

But the ship came to an even keel for a minute and I was able to hold her on her course, and get my breath. Then I beheld the strange lights shining here, there, and everywhere about the rigging, and I was amazed. Not that I was frightened, as Bob and some of the others of the watch appeared to be. The sailor is a very superstitious person; and let him tell it, there are enough strange things happen at sea to convince a most philosophical mind that there is a spirit world very, very close to our own mundane sphere. There’s a very thin veil between the two, and at times that veil is torn away.

But I knew in a minute that what Bob meant by “corpse lights” were corposant lights and were an electric display better known as “St. Elmo’s fire.” The lights were globular in shape, and about four inches in diameter. There were apparently a score of them all through the rigging, and they appeared at intervals of a minute, or two. The driving sleet could not hide them, and the fires illuminated the ship and the sea for some distance around her.

It certainly was a queer sight, and the brilliance of the corposant lights was very marked. I heard Mr. Barney shouting from his station:

“Keep your shirts on, you hardshells! They won’t bite—nor none o’ you ain’t got to go aloft to put ’em out. There’s one sure thing about them lights—they won’t set the rigging afire.”

“Get up and take hold of this wheel, Bob,” I exclaimed, “or I’ll yell for help. I can’t handle her proper if she plunges again.”

He got up shakingly and took hold. When the sea was sucked away from the bow of the Gullwing next time we held her on her course. But my companion was still frightened and looked at the glowing lights askance.

“Holding your own there at the wheel, boys?” demanded Mr. Barney.

“Aye, aye, sir!” I replied, but Bob didn’t even whisper.

Suddenly the last light disappeared—as suddenly as the first had appeared—and immediately there was a loud explosion over our heads and Mr. Barney pitched down the ladder to the deck. Several of the other men were flung to the deck, too, and Bob gave another frightened yell and started forward on a dead run.

He collided with Captain Bowditch, who had just shot up through the companionway.

“What’s this, you swab?” yelled the skipper, grabbing Bob by the collar with one hand and seizing a rope with the other, as the ship staggered again. “What d’ye mean?”

Then he saw Mr. Barney just scrambling to his feet.

“What’s this mutinous swab been doing, sir?” added the captain.

The second mate explained in a moment. But Bob suffered. The old man was in a towering rage because he had left his post.

“You flat-footed son of a sea-cook!” he bawled, shaking Promise, big as he was, like a drowned kitten. “What d’ye mean by leaving the wheel? That boy yonder kept his place didn’t he? Scared of a light, be ye? Why, if a sea-sarpint came aboard that wouldn’t be no excuse for your leaving the helm. Git back there!”

And when he started Bob aft again he accelerated his motions with a vigorous kick in the broad of the seaman’s back. Bob grabbed the spokes of the wheel, and braced himself, with a face like a thundercloud. I crowded down my amusement and perhaps it is well I did. The fellow was in no mood for enduring chaffing. When a man is both angry and scared a joke doesn’t appeal to him—much.

I am reminded that this is a sorry scene to depict. Yet Captain Bowditch was a kindly man and not given to unjust punishments. And I believe that Bob got only what he deserved. Even terror cannot excuse a man for neglecting his duty, especially at sea. It is like a private in the ranks enduring the natural fear of a first charge against the enemy. No matter what he may feel in his trembling soul, for the sake of the example he sets the man next to him, he must crowd down that fear and press on!

The storm had broken, however. At daylight we found that four feet of the fore-topmast had been snapped off short, whether by the electrical explosion, or by the wind, we could not tell. But that was the end of that bad spell of weather, thanks be! The Gullwing sailed through it, we spliced on a new spar, trimmed our sails, and tore on, under a goodly press of canvas, for the Horn.

But several of the crew remained gloomy because of the “corpse lights.” Something was bound to happen—of course, something unlucky. The lights had foretold it. And Stronson, with Tom Thornton and other of the old salts, told weird tales in the dog-watch.

In spite of the hurricane we had made good time in this run from Valparaiso. As far as I could see, however, nothing momentous happened at once; and the next important incident that went down in the ship’s log was the sighting of the Seamew.

We really saw her this time—“in the flesh,” not a ghostly mirage. She came out of the murk of fog to the south’ard at dawn and, far away as she was, the lookout identified her.

“Seamew, ahoy!” he yelled.

It brought all hands upon deck—even the mate himself who had just turned in, and the captain, too. There the sister of the Gullwing sailed, her canvas spread to the freshening morning breeze, her prow throwing off two high foamy waves as she tacked toward us.

She was on one tack; we were on the other. Therefore we were approaching each other rapidly. And what a sight! If a marine artist could have painted the picture of that beautiful ship, with her glistening paint, and pearl-tinted sails, and her lithe masts and taut cordage, he would have had a picture worth looking at. And from her deck the Gullwing must have seemed quite as beautiful to those aboard the Seamew.

The two ships were the best of their class—more trimly modeled than most. I had not realized before what a beautiful ship the Gullwing was. I saw her reflected in the Seamew.

She carried an open rail amidships; and her white painted stations, carved in the shape of hour-glasses, with the painted flat handrail atop, stood clearly and sharply defined above her black lower sides and the pale green seas.

Not that either ship showed much lower planking, saving when they rolled; they were heavily laden. With all her jibs and all her whole sails on the four lower spars, and most of the small sails spread above, our sister ship certainly was a beautiful picture.

But the old man wasn’t satisfied. Through his glass he saw something that spurred him to emulation.

“She’s got all her t’gallant-sails set, by Pollox!” he bawled. “Mr. Gates! what are you moonin’ about? Get them men up there in short order, or I’ll be after them myself.” And as we jumped into the rigging, I heard him growling away on the quarter: “That’s the way Cap’n Si beats us. He crowds on sail, he does. Why, I bet he never furled a rag durin’ that four-day breeze we just struck, and like enough had the crew pin their shirts on the wash line inter the bargain.”

Two vessels may be rigged alike and built alike, but that doesn’t mean that they will sail exactly alike. The Seamew was a shade faster in reaching and running than the Gullwing. Mr. Barney told me that.

“But to windward we have the best of her. And that’s not because of our sailing qualities. The difference is in the two masters,” the second mate said. “Captain Joe can always get more out of his ship than Captain Si can out of his when the going is bad. In fair weather the Seamew will beat us a little every reach. But it isn’t all fair weather in a voyage of ten thousand miles, or so,” and he smiled—I thought—rather nastily.

I was reminded of the hint Bob Promise had given me that there was bad blood and no pleasant rivalry between our second mate and the twin who held the same berth on our sister ship. Mr. Barney was in the tops studying the Seamew a good deal through the glass that day, too. I wondered if he was trying to see if his brother was on deck.

For we did not run near enough to her that day for figures to be descried very clearly either on her deck or in her rigging.

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.