Chapter Ten.
Crossing the Line.
“Humph!” grunted Captain Gillespie, astounded by this information. “That’s the joker, is it?”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” said Tim Rooney, thinking he was asked the question again as to the other’s identity; “it’s him, sure enough.”
“Then I should like to know what the dickens he means by such conduct as this? The beggar first comes aboard my ship without my leave or license, and then tries to break his neck by going aloft when nobody sent him there!”
“Arrah sure, sorr, the poor chap ownly did it to show his willin’ness to worruk his passige, sayin’ as how Mr Mackay tould him ye’d blow him up for comin’ aboard whin he came-to this arternoon, sorr,” pleaded Tim, not perceiving, as I did, that all the captain’s anger against the unfortunate stowaway had melted away by this time on learning that he had shown such courage. “Begorra, he would cloimb up the shrouds, sorr, whin ye tould the hands to lay aloft; an’ the divil himsilf, sorr, wouldn’t ’a stopped him.”
“He’s a plucky fellow,” cried the captain in a much more amiable tone of voice, to Tim’s great surprise.
“Send him aft, bosun, and I’ll talk to him now instead of to-morrow, as I said.”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” replied Tim; and, presently, the stowaway, who looked none the worse for his fall, came shambling sheepishly up the poop ladder, Tim following in his wake, and saying as he ushered him into the captain’s presence, “Here he is, sorr.”
“Well, you rascal,” exclaimed Captain Gillespie, looking at him up and down with his squinting eyes and sniffing, taking as good stock of him as the faint light would permit, “what have you got to say for yourself—eh?”
“Oi dunno,” answered the ragged lad, touching his forelock and making a scrape back with his foot, in deferential salute. “Of’s got nowt ter say, only as Oi’ll wark me pessage if you’ll let me be, and dunno put me in that theer dark pit agin.”
“Do you know you’re liable to three months imprisonment with hard labour for stowing yourself aboard my ship?” replied Captain Gillespie, paying no attention to his words apparently, and going on as if he had not spoken. “What will you do if I let you off?”
“Oi’ll wark, measter,” cried the other eagerly. “Oi’ll wark loike a good un, Oi will, sure, if you lets Oi be.”
“Ha, humph! I’ll give you a try, then,” jerked out Old Jock with a snort, after another nautical inspection of the new hand; “only, mind you don’t go tumbling off the yard again. I don’t want any accidents on board my ship, although I expect every man to do his duty; and when I say a thing I mean a thing. What’s your name—eh?”
“Oi be called Joe Fergusson, measter,” replied the shock-headed fellow, moving rather uneasily about and shuffling his feet on the deck, the captain’s keen quizzical glance making him feel a bit nervous. “My mates at whoam, though, names me, and the folk in Lancacheer tew, ‘Joey the moucher.’”
“Oh, then, Master Joey, you’ll find you can’t mooch here, my lad,” retorted Old Jock, glad of the opportunity of having one of his personal jokes, and sniggering and snorting over it in fine glee. “However, I’ll forgive you coming aboard on the promise of your working your passage to China; but, you won’t find that child’s play, my joker! Fergusson, I’ll enter you on the ship’s books and you’ll be rated as an able seaman, for you look as if you had the makings of one in you from the way you’ve tried already to earn your keep.”
“Thank ye koindly, measter,” stammered out the redoubtable Joe, seeing from the captain’s manner that his peace was made, and that nothing dreadful was going to be done to him, as he had feared from all that Tim Rooney and the hands forward had told him of Old Jock’s temper—although he did not understand half what the captain said—“Oi’ll wark, measter.”
“There, that will do,” said Captain Gillespie interrupting him ere he could proceed any further with his protestations of gratitude; “the proof of the pudding lies in the eating, and I’ll soon see what you’re made of. Bosun, take him forrud and rig him out as well as you can. I’ll send you an old shirt and trousers by the steward.”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” answered Tim obediently, pleased at “the ould skipper behavin’ so handsomely,” as he afterwards said; “an’ I’ll give him an ould pair av brogues av me own.”
“You can do as you like about that,” said Captain Gillespie, turning on his heel and calling the watch to tauten the lee-braces a bit, telling the men at the wheel at the same time to “luff” more; “but, you’d better let the chap have a good lie-in to-night and put him in the port watch to-morrow so that Mr Mackay can look after him.”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” replied Tim, leading his charge down the poop ladder again. “I’ll say to that same, sorr.”
“And, bosun—”
“Aye, aye, sorr.”
“Just see if those pigs in the long-boat got damaged by that fellow tumbling on top of them. His weight ought to have been enough to have made pork of some, I should think!”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” said Tim as he went off laughing; and I could hear his whispered aside to Adams, who was standing by the deck-house. “Begorra, I’d have betted the ould skipper wouldn’t forgit thim blissid pigs av his. He wor thinkin’ av thim all the toime that poor beggar wor fallin’ from aloft, I belave!”
Much to the captain’s satisfaction, though, the grunting inhabitants of the long-boat were found to be all right, escaping as harmlessly as Joe Fergusson; and so, with his mind relieved Old Jock went below soon after “six bells,” or two o’clock, leaving the charge of the deck to Mr Saunders—who, grumbling at the captain’s rather insidious usurpation of his authority, had betaken himself to the lee-side of the taffrail, whence he watched the ship’s wake and the foaming rollers that came tumbling after her, as she drove on before the stiff nor’-wester under reefed topsails and courses, the waves trying to poop her every instant, though foiled by her speed.
So things went on till midnight, when the men at the wheel were relieved, as well as the look-out forward, and the port watch came on deck; while, the starbowlines going below, Mr Mackay took the place of the second mate as the officer on duty. Tom Jerrold, too, lugged out Sam Weeks and made him put in an appearance, much against his will; but nothing subsequently occurred to vary the monotony of the life on board or interfere with the vessel’s progress, for, although it was blowing pretty nearly “half a gale,” as sailors say, we “made a fair wind of it”—keeping steadily on our course, south-west by west, and getting more and more out into the Atlantic with each mile of the seething water the Silver Queen spurned with her forefoot and left eddying behind her.
The wind, somehow or other, seemed to get into my head, like a glass of champagne I had on Christmas-day when father and all of us went to Westham Hall and dined with the squire. I can’t express how jolly it made me feel—the wind I mean, not the champagne; for it was as much as I could do to refrain from shouting out aloud in my exultation, as it blew in my face and tossed my hair about, pressing against my body with such force that I had to hold on by both hands to the weather bulwarks to keep my feet, as I gazed out over the side at the magnificent scene around me—the storm-tossed sea, one mass of foam; the grand blue vault of heaven above, now partially lit by the late rising moon and twinkling stars, that were occasionally obscured by scraps of drifting clouds and flying scud; and, all the while, the noble ship tearing along, a thing of beauty and of life, mastering the elements and glorying in the fight, with the hum of the gale in the sails and its shrieking whistle through the rigging, and the ever-murmuring voices of the waters, all filling the air around as they sang the dirge of the deep!
“You seem to like it, youngster,” observed Mr Mackay, stopping his quarter-deck walk as he caught sight of my face in the moonlight and noticed it’s joyous glow, reflecting the emotions of my mind. “You look a regular stormy petrel, and seem as if you wanted to spread your wings and fly.”
“I only wish I could, sir,” I cried, laughing at his likening me to a “Mother Carey’s chicken,” as the petrel is familiarly termed, a number of them then hovering about the ship astern. “I feel half a bird already, the wind makes me so jolly.”
Mr Mackay quietly smiled and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Take care, my boy,” said he good-humouredly, “you’ll be jumping overboard in your enthusiasm. You seem to be a born sailor. Are you really so fond of the sea?”
“I love it! I love it!” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “Now, I can imagine, sir, the meaning of what I read in Xenophon with father, about the soldiers of Cyrus crying with joy when they once more beheld the sea after their toilsome march for months and months, wandering inland over a strange and unknown country without a sight of its familiar face to tell them of their home by the wave-girt shores of Greece!”
“You’re quite a poet, Graham,” observed Mr Mackay, laughing now, though not unkindly. There was, indeed, a tone of regret and of sadness, it seemed to me, in his voice. “Ah, well, you’ll soon have all such romantic notions taken out of you, my boy, when you’ve seen some of the hardships of a sailor’s life, like others who at one time were, perhaps, as full of ardour for their profession at the start as yourself.”
“I hope not, sir,” I replied seriously. “I should never like to believe differently of it to what I do now. I think it is really something to be proud of, being a sailor. It is glorious, it—it—it’s—jolly, that’s what it is, sir!”
“A jolly sight jollier being in bed on a cold night like this,” muttered Weeks, who was shivering by the skylight, the tarpaulin cover of which he had dragged round his legs for warmth. “Don’t you think so, sir?”
“That depends,” replied Mr Mackay on Sammy putting this question to him rather impudently, as was his wont in speaking to his elders, his bump of veneration being of the most infinitesimal proportions. “I think, though, that a fellow who likes being on deck in a gale of wind will turn out a better sailor than a skulker who only cares about caulking in his bunk below; and you can put that in your pipe, Master Sam Weeks, and smoke it!”
This had the effect of stopping any further conversation on the part of my fellow apprentice, who retired to the lee-side of the deck in high dudgeon with this “flea in his ear;” and, it being just four o’clock in the morning now and the end of the middle watch, eight bells were struck and the starbowlines summoned on deck again to duty, we of the port watch getting some hot coffee all round at the galley and then turning in. For this I was not sorry, as I began now to feel sleepy.
“I’d rather be a dog with the mange than a sailor,” yawned Tom Jerrold when Sam Weeks roused him out of his nice warm bunk to go on duty in the cold grey morning. “Heigh-ho, it’s an awful life!”
So, it can be seen that all of us were not of one opinion in the matter.
But, in spite of sundry drawbacks and disagreeables which I subsequently encountered, and which perhaps took off a little of the halo of romance which at first encircled everything connected with the sea in my mind, I have never lost the love and admiration for it which I experienced that night in mid Atlantic when I kept the middle watch with Mr Mackay, nor regretted my choice; neither have I ever felt inclined, I may candidly state, to give an affirmative answer to Tim Rooney’s stereotyped inquiry every morning— “An’ ain’t ye sorry now, Misther Gray-ham, as how ye iver came to say?”
The next day, our third out from the Lizard, we spoke the barque Mary Webster from Valparaiso for London, sixty days at sea.
She signalled that she had broken her chronometer and had to trust only to her dead reckoning, so Captain Gillespie hove-to and gave them our latitude and longitude, 45 degrees 15 minutes North and 10 degrees 20 minutes West, displaying the figures chalked on a black-board over our quarter, in order that those on board the other vessel might read the inscription easily with a glass, as we bowed and dipped towards each other across the rolling waves, both with our main-topsails backed.
Before the following morning we had weathered Cape Finisterre, Mr Mackay told me, having got finally beyond the limits of the dread Bay of Biscay, with all its opposing tides and contrary influences of winds and currents which make it such a terror to navigators passing both to and from the Equator; and, in another two days, we had reached as far south as the fortieth parallel of latitude, our longitude being now 13 degrees 10 minutes west, or about some five hundred miles to the eastward of the Azores, or Western Islands.
As we worked our way further westwards I noticed a curious thing which I could not make out until Mr Mackay enlightened me on the subject.
On my last birthday father had given me a very nice little gold watch, similar to one which he had presented to my brother Tom, much to my envy at the time, on his likewise obtaining his fifteenth year.
This watch was a very good timekeeper, being by one of the best London makers; and, hitherto, had maintained an irreproachable character in this respect, the cook at home, whenever the kitchen clock went wrong, always appealing to me to know what was the correct time, with the flattering compliment that “Master Allan’s watch, at all events,” was “sure to be right!”
But now, strange to say, although my watch kept exactly to railway time up to the day of my arrival in London and while we were on our way down the river, I found that, as we proceeded into the Channel and out to sea it began to gain, the difference being more and more marked as we got further to the westward; until, when the captain, after taking the sun on our fifth day out, told Tom Jerrold who was on the deck beside him to “make it eight bells,” or strike the ship’s bell to declare it was noon, I was very nearly an hour ahead of that time—my watch, which I was always careful about winding up every evening as father enjoined me when giving it to me, pointing actually to one o’clock!
I could not understand it all.
Mr Mackay, however, made it clear to me after a little explanation, showing me, too, how simple a matter it was with a good chronometer to find a ship’s position at sea.
“For every degree of longitude we go westwards from the meridian of Greenwich, which is marked with a great round 0 here, you see, my boy, we gain four minutes,” said he, pointing out the lines of longitude ruled straight up and down the chart as he spoke, for my information; “and thus, the fact of the hands of your watch telling, truly enough, that it is now about eight minutes to one o’clock in London, shows that we are thirteen degrees further to the west than at the place where your time is set—for we are going with the sun, do you see?”
“Yes, I see, sir,” said I; “but suppose we were going to the east instead of the west?”
“Why then, my boy,” he replied, “your watch, in lieu of gaining, would appear to lose the same number of minutes each day, according to our rate of sailing. A ship, consequently, which goes round the world from the east to the west will seem to have gained a clear day on circumnavigating the globe; while one that completes the same voyage sailing from the west continually towards the east, loses one.”
“How funny!” cried I. “Is it really so?”
“Yes, really,” said he; “and I’ve seen, on board a ship I was once in, the captain skip a day in the log, to make up for the one we lost on the voyage, passing over Saturday and writing down the day which followed Friday as ‘Sunday’—otherwise we would have been all out of our reckoning with the almanac.”
“How funny!” I repeated. “I never heard that before.”
“Probably not, nor many other things you’ll learn at sea, my boy, before you’re much older,” answered Mr Mackay, as he turned to the log slate on which Captain Gillespie had been putting down his calculation about the ship’s position after taking the sun and working out his reckoning. “Let us see, now, if your watch is a good chronometer for telling our longitude. Ha, by Jove, 13 degrees 10 minutes west, or, nearly what we made out just now. Not so bad, Graham, for a turnip!”
“Turnip, sir!” cried I indignantly. “Father told me it was one of Dent’s best make, and to be careful of it.”
“I’m sure I beg both your father’s and Dent’s pardon,” said Mr Mackay, laughing at my firing up so quickly. “I was only joking; for your watch is a very good one, and nicely finished too. But I must not stop any more now. I hope you won’t forget your first lesson in navigation and the knowledge you’ve gained of the difference between ‘mean time’ and what is called ‘apparent time’ on board a ship, and how this will tell her correct longitude—eh?”
“Oh, no, sir,” I answered as he went off down the companion way below, to wind up the chronometers in the captain’s cabin, a task which he always performed every day at the same hour, having these valuable instruments under his especial charge; “I won’t forget what you’ve told me, sir.”
Nor did I.
Shortly afterwards Mr Mackay showed me how to use the sextant and take the sun’s altitude, on his learning that I was acquainted with trigonometry and rather a dab at mathematics, the only portion indeed of my studies, I’m sorry to confess, in which I ever took any interest at school. I was thus soon able under his instruction to work out the ship’s reckoning and calculate her position, just like the captain, who sniffed and snorted a bit and crinkled his nose a good deal on seeing me engaged on the task; although he gave me some friendly commendation all the same, when he found that I had succeeded in actually arriving at a similar result to himself!
Wasn’t I proud, that’s all.
But, before advancing so far in my knowledge of navigation, I had to be initiated into my regular duties on board, and learn the more practical parts of seamanship; however, having willing tutors in Mr Mackay and the boatswain, and being only too anxious myself to know all they could teach me, it was not long before I was able to put it out of the power of either Tom Jerrold or Weeks to call me “Master Jimmy Green,” as they at first christened me—just because they had the advantage of going to sea a voyage or two before me! I may add, too, that my progress towards proficiency in picking up the endless details of nautical lore was all the more accelerated by the desire of excelling my shipmates, so as to have the chance of turning their chaff back upon themselves.
Spurred on by this motive, I quickly learnt all the names of the ropes and their various uses from Mr Mackay; while Tim Rooney showed me how to make a “reef knot,” a “clove hitch,” a “running bowline,” and a “sheep-shank,” explaining the difference between these and their respective advantages over the common “granny’s knot” of landsmen—my friend the boatswain judiciously discriminating between the typical peculiarities of the “cat’s-paw” and the “sheet bend,” albeit the one has nothing in connection with the feline tribe and the other no reference to one’s bed-covering!
The wind moderated when we got below the Azores, while the sea also ceased its tumultuous whirl, so that we were able to make all plain sail and carry-on without rolling as before; so, now, at last, I was allowed to go aloft, my first essay being to assist Tom Jerrold in setting the mizzen-royal. Really, I quite astonished Tom by climbing up the futtock shrouds outside the top, instead of going through “the lubber’s hole,” showing myself, thanks to Tim Rooney’s private instructions previously, much more nimble in casting off the gaskets and loosening the bunt of the sail than my brother mid expected; indeed, I got off the yard, after the job was done, and down to the deck a good half minute in advance of him.
On our sixth day out, we reached latitude 35 degrees north and 17 degrees west, drifting past Madeira a couple of days later, the temperature of the air gradually rising and the western winds growing correspondingly slack as we made more southing; until, although it was barely a week since we had been experiencing the bitter weather of our English February, we now seemed to be suddenly transported into the balminess of June. The change, however, took place so imperceptibly during our gradual progress onward to warmer latitudes, that, in looking back all at once, it seemed almost incredible.
I found the work which we apprentices had to do was really very similar to that of the hands forward, Tom Jerrold and I in the port watch, and Weeks and Matthews—who, although styled “third mate,” had still to go aloft and do the same sort of duties as all the rest of us—in the starboard watch under the second mate, having to attend to everything connected with the setting and taking in of sail on the mizzen-mast, as well as having to keep the ship’s time, one of us striking the bell every half-hour throughout our spell on deck.
After the first few days at sea, too, I came to the conclusion that if our work was like that of the sailors our food was not one whit the better; albeit, one of the stipulations in the contract when my father paid the premium demanded by the owners of the ship for me as a “first-class apprentice,” was that I should mess aft in the cabin.
I certainly did so, like Tom Jerrold and the two others; but all that either they or I had of cabin fare throughout the entire voyage was an occasional piece of “plum duff” and jam on Sundays—on which day, by the way, we had no work to do save attending to the sails and washing decks in the morning; while, in the afternoon, Captain Gillespie read prayers on the poop, his congregation being mainly limited to ourselves and the watch on deck, the crew spending their holiday, on this holy day, in mending their clothes in the forecastle.
Yes, our rations were the same as those of the ordinary hands; namely, salt junk and “hard tack,” varied by pea-soup and sea-pie occasionally for dinner, with rice and molasses as a treat on Saturdays. Our breakfast and tea consisted of a straw-coloured decoction known on board-ship as “water bewitched,” accompanied by such modicums of our dinner allowance as we were able to save conscientiously with our appetites. This amounted to very little as a rule, for, being at sea makes one fearfully hungry at all hours, and, fortunately, seems to endow one, also, with the capacity for eating anything!
Really, if it had not been by currying favour with Ching Wang and bribing the steward, Pedro Carvalho, between whom there were continual rows occurring about the provisions, which it was the duty of the Portuguese to serve out, we must have starved ere reaching the Equator; for Captain Gillespie, in order to “turn an honest penny” and make his Dundee venture prove a success, persuaded the men forward and ourselves to give up a pound and a quarter of our meat ration for a pound tin of his marmalade, which he assured us would not only be more palatable with our biscuit, being such “a splendid substitute for butter,” as the advertisements on the labels say, but would also act as an antiscorbutic to prevent the spread of scurvy amongst us—it being, as he declared, better than lime-juice for this purpose!
The hands consented to this arrangement at first as a welcome change; but, when they presently found themselves mulcted of their salt junk, they grumbled much at Old Jock for holding us all to the bargain, and he and his marmalade became a by-word in the ship. I did not wonder at all, after a bit, that Pedro the steward got into the habit of venting his wrath when vexed by kicking the empty tins about!
I cannot say, however, that I disliked my new life, in spite of these drawbacks in the way of insufficiency of food and constancy of appetite, throughout which Ching Wang remained my staunch friend, bringing me many a savoury little delicacy for supper when it was my night watch on deck. These tit-bits in the “grub” line I conscientiously shared with Tom Jerrold, who received similar favours from the steward, with whom he was a firm favourite, the only one, indeed, to whom the Portuguese appeared to take kindly on board.
No, on the contrary, the charm of being a sailor grew more and more upon me each day as the marvels of the deep became unfolded to me, and the better I became acquainted with the ship and my companions.
All was endless variety—the sky, the sea, and our surroundings changing apparently every moment and ever revealing something fresh and novel.
It did not seem real but a dream.
Could that be the Madeira I had read about in the distance, and that the Bay of Funchal of which I had seen pictures in books; and that the little nautilus or “Portuguese man-of-war” floating by the side of the vessel, now almost becalmed, with its cigar-shaped shell boat and pink membraneous sail all glowing with prismatic colouring? Was it an actuality that I saw all these things with my own eyes; or, was I dreaming? Was it really I, Allan Graham, standing there on the deck of the good ship Silver Queen, or somebody else?
An order from the captain, who came up from his cabin just then and caught me mooning, to go forward and “make it eight bells,” stopped my reflections at this interesting point; and the next moment I was more interested in a most appetising odour of lobscouse emanating from Ching Wang’s galley than in poetical dreams of Atlantic isles and ocean wonders!
On passing Madeira, we soon got out of the Horse Latitudes, a soft breeze springing up from the west again towards evening, which wafted us down to the Canaries within the next two days. Here we picked up the north-east trades south of Palma, just when we could barely discern the Peak of Teneriffe far-away off high up in the clouds, and then we went on grandly on our voyage once more with every sail set, logging over two hundred miles a day and going by the Cape de Verde Islands in fine style. We did not bring up again until we reached “the Doldrums,” in about latitude 5 degrees north and 22 degrees west, where the fickle wind deserted us again and left us rolling and sweltering in the great region of equatorial calm. The north-east and south-east trades here fight each other for the possession of their eventful battle-ground, the Line, and old Neptune finds the contest so wearisome that he goes to sleep while it lasts, the tumid swelling of his mighty bosom only showing to all whom it may concern that he merely dozes and is not dead!
The temperature of the sea seemed to increase each day after we lost sight of the Peak of Teneriffe until it was now lukewarm, if one drew a bucket from over the side; although Captain Gillespie said it was “quite cold” for that time of year!
Talking about this, Mr Mackay told me that sea-water is composed of an awful lot of things such as I would not have supposed—oxygen and hydrogen, with muriate of soda, magnesia, iron, lime, copper, silica, potash, chlorine, iodine, bromide, ammonia and silver being amongst its ingredients, and the muriate of soda forming the largest of the solid substances detected in it. With such a mixture of things as this, it is not surprising that it should taste so nasty when swallowed—is it?
With the enforced leisure produced by the calm, I had plenty of opportunity for observing the various strange varieties of animal life which came about the ship—the flying-fish with beautiful silvery wings that sparkled in the sunlight coming inboard in shoals, pursued by their enemies the albacores, who drove them out of the sea to take refuge in the air; besides numbers of grampusses and sharks swimming round us. Adams, the sailmaker, killed one of these latter gentry with a harpoon, spearing him from the bowsprit as he came past the ship. He looked up with his evil eye, fancying perhaps that he would “catch one of us napping,” but no one was unwary enough to get within reach of his voracious maw; and Mr Shark “caught a tartar” instead and got a taste of cold steel for his pains, much to our delight, though the captain was chagrined at the loss of the harpoon, the shark parting the line attached to it in his death struggles, and carrying it below with him when he sank. The brute, to end the story, was eaten up at once by his affectionate comrades, the sea being dyed red with his blood.
We had not all leisure, though, thus hanging about the Equator under the scorching sun, now at noon precisely perpendicular over our heads, the heat at night too being almost as stifling and the stars as bright as moons; for Captain Gillespie took advantage of our inaction to “set up” the rigging, which had slackened considerably since we entered the tropics, the heat making the ropes stretch so that our masts got loose and the upper spars canted.
While doing this, of course, I had another practical lesson in seamanship, learning all about “double luffs” and “toggles,” “salvagee strops” and “Burton tackles,” and all the rest of such gear, whose name is legion.
But I must go on now to a more important incident.
One morning, about a week after the wind left us, with the exception of an occasional cat’s-paw of air which came from every point of the compass in turn, we ultimately drifted to the Line; accomplishing this by the aid of the swell ever rolling southward and the eddy of the great south equatorial current, setting between the African continent and the Caribbean Sea. This meets the Guinea current running in the opposite direction in the middle of the Doldrums, and helps to promote the pleasant stagnation, of wind and water and of air alike, of this delightful region so dear to mariners!
I recollect the morning well; for the night was unusually oppressive, the heat between the middle watch and eight bells having been more intense than at any period, I thought, during the week.
So, after tossing about my bunk, unable to get to sleep I was only too glad when the time came to turn out for duty, the task of washing decks and paddling about in the cool water—for it was cool at the earlier hours of the morning if tepid at noon—being something to look forward to.
I forgot, however, all about the terrible rites of Neptune for those crossing the Line for the first time, and neither Tom Jerrold nor Weeks, naturally, enlightened me on the subject; so that I was completely taken by surprise when a loud voice hailed us from somewhere forward, just about “four bells,” as if coming from out of the sea.
“What ship is that?”
“The Silver Queen,” answered Mr Saunders, who was on the poop and of course in the joke, answering the voice, which although portentously loud, had a familiar ring about it suspiciously like Tim Rooney’s Irish brogue. “Bound from London to Shanghai.”
“Have ye minny of me unshaved sons aboard?”
“Aye, two,” shouted back Mr Saunders, “a stowaway and an apprentice.”
“Ye spake true,” returned the voice. “I knows ’em both, Misther Allan Gray-ham an’ Joe Fergusson. I will come aboard an’ shave ’em.”
Then it all flashed upon me, and I tried to run below and hide; but two of Neptune’s tritons seized me and pushed me forward to where the boatswain, capitally got up in an oakum wig with an enormous tow beard, was seated on the windlass, trident in hand. Joe Fergusson, who had been made prisoner before me, lay bound at his feet, close to an improvised swimming bath made out of a spare fore-topsail, rigged up across the deck on the lee-side and filled with water to the depth of four feet or more.
The ceremonies were just about to begin; and, I could readily imagine what was in store for both me and my companion in distress, the ex-bricklayer, who, like myself, having never been to sea before would have to go through the painful ordeal as well as being made fools of and laughed at by all our grinning shipmates around; so, seeing Tom Jerrold and Sam Weeks conspicuous right in front of me, and Mr Saunders looking on too with much gusto, I made another desperate attempt to free myself from those holding me, urging on Joe Fergusson to try and save himself and me too.
Our struggles were in vain; but, strange to say, help came for us from a most unexpected quarter.
As I have said before, the night had been extremely hot and the morning lowering; and now, all at once, a violent squall caught the ship in the midst of Neptune’s carnival.
“Stand by your royal halliards!” roared out Captain Gillespie, who coming up quickly behind Mr Saunders on the poop made him jump round in consternation at his neglect in not keeping a look-out overhead while watching the game going on in the bows amongst the crew.
Neptune darted down from his perch instanter in the most ungodlike fashion; and, the rest of the men rushing to their stations, left Joe Fergusson and I rolling on the deck.
“Let go!” next cried the captain; adding a moment later, “Bosun, go forward and slack off the head sheets!”
And then the rain came down in a perfect deluge, as if it were being emptied out of a tub, and as it only can pour down in the tropics; and that is how we “crossed the Line!”
Chapter Eleven.
“One Piecee Cock-Fightee.”
The ship had nearly all her canvas spread, so as to take advantage of the first puff of air which came to waft us beyond the Doldrums towards the region of the south-east trades, then beginning to blow just below the calm belt; consequently, it took all hands some time to clew up and furl all the light upper sails, and squall after squall burst over us ere we could reduce the ship to her proper fighting trim of reefed topsails and courses, our outer jib getting torn to shreds before it could be handed.
“Begorra, it’s a buster an’ no mishtake!” exclaimed Tim Rooney coming off the forecastle as soon as he had seen the other head sails attended to, and setting me free from the lashings with which his whilom tritons had bound my hands and legs. “Sp’ilin’ all av our fun, too, Misther Gray-ham, jist whin I wor goin’ to shave ye!”
I did not regret this, though, I’m sure. Still, I did not stop to answer him, being in too great a hurry to join Tom Jerrold and the others aft in taking in the mizzen-royal and topgallant—my fellow apprentices having had time already to get aloft while I was rolling on the deck forward like a trussed fowl!
“Take it aisy, me darlint,” shouted Tim after me as I rushed up the poop ladder and swung myself into the shrouds; but, I was half-way up the ratlines before he could get out the end of his exordium, “Aisy does it!”
I was too late to help hand the royal, my especial sail since I had got familiar with my footing aloft; but the mizzen-topgallant sheets, bowlines and halliards having been hardly a second let go, and the men on the poop having only just begun to haul on the clewlines and buntlines, I was quite in time to get out on this yard. My aid, indeed, came in usefully in assisting to stow the sail; although, in my haste not to be eclipsed by Tom Jerrold, I nearly got knocked off my perch on the foot-rope through the canvas ballooning out, in the same way as it did when Joe Fergusson so narrowly escaped death only three weeks or so before!
The fright, as I clutched hold of a rope and saved myself, made my heart come in my mouth; and what with this, and the turmoil of the elements around me as I clung to the yard, with the deck of the ship so small and far-away below, and saw the immense area of the swelling sea as far as the eye could reach—now chopped up into short rolling waves, crowned with foam, almost in an instant, and the black cloud-covered dome of the heavens that was almost as dark as at midnight—I could not help thinking of the grandeur of the works of God, and the insignificance of man and his pigmy attempts to master the elements.
For, beyond the quick sharp puffs of wind that came with the squalls of rain from almost every point of the compass in succession, the downpour which descended from the overcast sky was accompanied with terrible ear-splitting peals of thunder. This seemed to rattle and roll almost immediately above our heads, as if the overhanging black vault was about to burst open every moment; while dazzling forked flashes of bluish lightning zigzagged across the horizon from the zenith, first blinding our eyes with its brilliancy for a second and then making the darkness all around the darker as the vivid glare vanished and the accompanying thunderbolt sank into the sea—providentially far off to leeward, where the full force of the tropical storm was spent, and not near our vessel.
The sight was an awful and magnificent one to me suspended there in mid-air, as it were; but I confess I was not sorry when, presently, the mizzen-topgallant was snugly stowed, with the gaskets put round it, and I was able to get down to the more substantial deck below, where I was not quite so close to the cloud war going on above!
When I reached the poop, as the Silver Queen was now stripped of her superfluous canvas and ready for anything that might happen should the squalls last, Mr Mackay seeing that I was wet through told me that I might go down and change my clothes. This I gratefully did, feeling all the better on getting into a dry suit, over which I took the precaution before coming out of the deck-house again of rigging my waterproof and a tarpaulin hat; for the rain was still coming down in a regular deluge, “as if the sluice-valve of the water tank above had somehow or other jammed foul, so that the water couldn’t be turned off for a while”—this being Tom Jerrold’s explanation of it.
Feeling chilled from the damp after the great heat of the morning, as soon as I had doffed my wet things I went round to the galley to see if I could discover a drop of hot coffee knocking about, as it was getting on for tea-time, being now late in the afternoon; but when I got there, instead of finding Ching Wang, who was always punctuality itself in the matter of meal-times, busy with the coppers, there he was flat on his stomach on the floor of his caboose, with a hideous little brass image or idol, which might have been Buddha for all that I know to the contrary, set up in the corner—the Chinese cook being so actively engaged in salaaming in front of this image, by touching the deck with his forehead and burning bits of gilt paper before it, as incense I suppose, that he did not notice me.
“Hullo, Ching Wang,” I said, “what are you about?”
“Me chin chin joss, lilly pijjin,” he answered, turning to me his round, unconscious, and imperturbable face as if he were engaged in some ordinary occupation of everyday life. “Me askee him me watchee if kyphong catchee ship, no sabey?”
The poor fellow evidently believed more in his god than I did in mine; for here he was in a moment of danger, as he thought, praying for help, while I, who had almost lost my life when I so nearly escaped tumbling from the topgallant yard only a moment or so since, had thoughtlessly forgotten Him who had saved me!
I think of this now, but I didn’t then. Nay, I even laughed at Ching Wang’s ignorance when speaking to Tim Rooney, whom I met as I retreated from the galley, telling him that I wondered how the generally astute Chinaman could really fancy he was propitiating Buddha, or whoever else he believed in as his sovereign deity, by burning a few scraps of tinsel paper to do honour to the senseless image.
“Be jabers, though,” argued Tim on my giving him this opinion of mine, “I can’t say, sorr, as how we Christians be any the betther.”
“Why!” I exclaimed indignantly. “How can you say so?”
“Begorra, sure we all thry to have our ray-ligion as chape as we can,” replied he coolly. “Don’t we, Cath’lics an’ Protistints aloike, for there’s little to choose atwane us on the p’int, contint oursilves wid as little as we can hilp, goin’ once to chapel or church, mebbe, av a Sunday an’ thinkin’ we’ve wiped out all the avil we may a-done in the wake, an’ have a clane sheet for the nixt one—jist as this poor ig’rant haythin booms his goold paper afore his joss an’ thinks that clears off all his ould scores. I say no differ, sure, mesilf, Misther Gray-ham, atwane us, that same, as I tould ye.”
I did not answer Tim, but his words affected me more than any sermon I ever heard from the pulpit; and, as I went back to my cabin I determined to try and keep to something I had promised father before parting from him, and which I had neglected up to then—my promise being never to forget my daily prayer to “Him who rules the waves,” even should I have no time to look at my Bible.
The weather cleared up before sunset, and the wind subsequently began to blow steadily from the southward and eastward, showing that we had at length got into the wished-for “trade;” so the ship soon had all plain sail set on her again, now heading, though, sou’-sou’-west on the port tack, and making a bee-line almost for the island of Trinidad off the South American coast.
Having lost our outer jib, however, from its blowing away in the first squall, a new one had to be fitted and bent on; and as we were hoisting studding sails, too, the jewel block on the main-topsail yard carried away. So, another block had to be got up and secured to the end of the yard-arm before the halliards could be rove afresh for getting up the stu’n’sail; and, I had opportunities in both instances for acquiring better knowledge of seamanship—gaining more by watching Adams the sailmaker and Tim Rooney at work on their respective jobs, than I could have obtained in a twelvemonth by the perusal of books or from oral information.
We had long lost sight of our old friend the North Star and his pointers, who guide the mariner, should he be without a compass, in northern latitudes, making acquaintance now with a new constellation, the Southern Cross, which grew more brilliant each night as we ran further and further below the Equator. Other stars, too, of surpassing brightness made the heavens all radiant as soon as the sun set each evening, there being no twilight to speak of—the night and its glories coming upon us as quickly as the last scrap of daylight fled. In the morning it was the same, the firmament being still bright with starlight when the glorious orb of day rose in all his majesty and paled into insignificance his lesser rivals, who, however, twinkled up to the very last.
This was by far the jolliest part of our voyage; for, although the weather was nice and warm, it had not that disagreeable, clammy heat we experienced at the Line, on account of the fresh south-east breeze tempering the effect of the sun, which, however, still shone down on us at noon with tropical force, its rays being as potent almost as at the Equator.
But the sea had lost all that glassy brazen look it had in the calm latitudes, now dancing with life and as blue as the heavens above it; while as our gallant ship sailed on, running pretty large on the port tack with everything set that could draw—skysails being hoisted on top of the royals and staysails, and trysails on every mast, with the foretopmast staysail, jib and flying jib forward, and upper and lower stu’n’sails spread out to windward—she looked like some beautiful bird in full flight with outstretched wings, her motion through the water being so easy and graceful, while the sparkling spray was tossed up sometimes over the sprit-sail yard as she ever and anon dipped her bows, as if curtsying to Neptune. It seemed to me the most delightful thing in the world to be there, ship and sea and air and sky being all alike in harmony, expressing the poetry of progression!
My work, too, although we had plenty to do, to “keep us out of mischief,” as the captain said, was not too hard, especially at this period.
In the morning, after an early coffee, when few thought of turning in again although it might be their watch below, the weather was so enjoyable, the order was given for “brooms and buckets aft,” and the first duty of the day was attended to. This was to scrub decks, just as in a well-ordered household the servant cleans the door-step before anyone is astir; the decks of a ship giving as good a notion of what her commander is like, as the door-step of a house does of its mistress!
For this job the men forward rigged the head pump and sluiced the forecastle and main-deck; while we apprentices had to wash down the poop, having a fine time over it dowsing one another with buckets of water, and chasing each other round the mizzen-mast and binnacle, or else dodging the expected deluge behind the skylight—sometimes awaking Captain Gillespie up, and making him come up the companion in a towering rage to ask “what the dickens” we were “kicking up all that row for?”
Once, as he came up in this way, Tom Jerrold caught him full in the face with a bucket of water he was pitching at me; and wasn’t there a shindy over it, that’s all! “Old Jock” was unable to find out who did it, for of course none of us would tell on Tom, and the water in the captain’s eyes prevented him from seeing who was his assailant; but, he immediately ordered Tom, as well as Weeks and I, all up into the cross-trees, Tom at the fore, Sam at the main, and I on the mizzen-mast, to “look out for land,” instead of having our breakfast.
As we were some hundreds of miles off the nearest coast, our task of looking out for land was entirely a work of supererogation; still, we did not realise this, and strained our eyes vainly until we were called down from aloft at “two bells,” after the hands had all had their breakfast and there was nothing left for us. This was “Jock’s” satisfaction in return for the shower bath he had been treated to so unceremoniously. Tom Jerrold afterwards said that he did not notice Jock coming up the companion way, and that of course he would never have dreamt of treating the captain so disrespectfully; but, as Master Tom invariably grinned whenever he made this declaration, Weeks and I, as well as Tim Rooney, who somehow or other got hold of the yarn, all had our suspicions on the point.
However, this is a digression from the description of our daily duties.
After scrubbing decks, each watch alternately had breakfast; and then, as now, when the wind was fair and hardly a brace or rope required to be handed from morning till night or from night till morning, we and the rest of the crew were set to work unravelling ends of junk and picking oakum, like convicts.
After being thus disintegrated, the tow was spun into sennit or fine twine and yarn which is always of use on board, quantities of it being used in “serving” and “parcelling” for chafing gear.
At noon, the crew had their dinner, watch in and watch out, but we apprentices had to wait till the captain and mates had theirs; although, as I’ve already mentioned, we saw little of the delicacies of the cabin table except occasionally of a Sunday, on which day, sometimes, Captain Gillespie’s heart was more benevolently inclined towards us apparently. During the afternoon watch on week-days we were allowed to amuse ourselves as we liked, and I frequently took advantage of this opportunity to learn all that Tim Rooney and Adams could teach me forward—the two being great cronies, and busying themselves at this period of the day, if there were nothing to call their attention elsewhere, in doing odd jobs on the forecastle, the one in the sailmaking line and the other attending to his legitimate occupation of looking after the weak points of the rigging, all concerning which came within his special province as boatswain.
After tea, all hands were allowed to skylark about the decks below and aloft until the end of the second dog-watch at “eight bells;” when, the night being fairly on us in the southern latitudes we were traversing, those whose turn it was to go below turned in, and the others having the “first watch” took the deck until they were relieved at midnight and retired to their well earned rest. But, of course, should “all hands” be called to take in sail, on account of the wind shifting or a sudden squall breaking over the ship, which fortunately did not happen at the time of which I am speaking, those who might only have just turned in had to turn out again instanter. In the same way, I may add, had the weather been stormy and changeable all of us would have had plenty to do in taking in and setting sail, without leisure for sennit reeving and yarn spinning and playing “Tom Cox’s traverse” about the decks from morning till night, as we did in those halcyon days between the tropics.
We sighted Martin Vas Rocks, to the eastward of Trinidad Islands, in latitude 20 degrees 29 minutes south and longitude 28 degrees 51 minutes west, a little over a week from our leaving the Line, having made a very good passage so far from England, this being our thirty-sixth day out.
Soon after this, the south-east trades failing us and varying westerly breezes taking their place, we hauled our wind, altering our course to south-east by south, and making to pass the meridian on the forty-seventh parallel of latitude. This we did so as to get well to the southward of the Cape of Good Hope, between which and ourselves a long stretch of some three thousand miles of water lay; although both Captain Gillespie and Mr Mackay appeared to make nothing of this, looking upon it as the easiest part of our journey.
Indeed, the latter told me so.
“Now, it’s all plain sailing, my boy, and we ought to run that distance in a fortnight or so from here, with the strong westerly and sou’-western winds we’ll soon fetch into on this tack,” said he; “but, wait till we come to the region of the Flying Dutchman’s Cape, and then you’ll make acquaintance with a sea such as you have never seen before, all that we’ve gone through as yet being merely child’s play in comparison.”
“What, worse than the Bay of Biscay?” I cried.
“Why, that was only a fleabite, youngster,” he replied laughing. “I suppose you magnified it in your imagination from being sea-sick. The weather off the Cape of Storms, however; is a very different matter. It is quite in keeping with its name!”
But, still, for the next few days, at first proceeding close-hauled on the starboard tack and then, as the wind veered more round to the west, running free before it, with all our flying kites and stu’n’sails set, the time passed as pleasantly as before; and we had about just as little to do in the way of seamanship aboard, the ship almost steering herself and hardly a tack or a sheet needing to be touched. I noticed, though, Adams a little later on with a couple of men whom he requisitioned as sailmakers’ mates busy cutting out queer little triangular pieces of canvas, which he told me were “storm staysails,” the old ones having been blown away last voyage; while I saw that Tim Rooney, besides assuring himself of the security of the masts and setting up preventer stays for additional strength by the captain’s orders, rigging up life-lines fore and aft, saying when I asked him what they were for, “To hould on wid, sure, whin we toombles into Cape weather, me darlint!”
There were no signs of any change yet, though; and the hands got so hard up for amusement with the small amount of work they had to perform, in spite of Captain Gillespie hunting up all sorts of odd jobs for them to do in the way of cleaning the brass-work of the ship and polishing the ring-bolts, that they got into that “mischief,” which, the proverb tells us, Satan frequently “finds for idle hands” to do.
Tom Jerrold and I were in the boatswain’s cabin one afternoon teaching the starling to speak a fresh sentence—the bird having got quite tame and learnt to talk very well already, saying “Bad cess to ye” and “Tip us yer flipper,” just like Tim Rooney, with his brogue and all; when, all at once, we heard some scrambling going on in the long-boat above the deckhouse, and the sound of men’s voices whispering together.
“Some of the fellows forrud are having a rig with the skipper’s pigs,” cried Tom. “Let us watch and see what they’re up to.”
“They can’t be hurting the poor brutes,” said I, speaking in the same subdued tone, so as not to alarm the men and make them think anyone was listening; “I’m sure of that, or they would soon make a noise!”
“I suppose I was mistaken,” observed Tom presently, when we could not hear the sailor’s whispering voices any longer nor any grunting from the pigs; although we kept our ears on the alert. “I fancy, though, they were up to something, from a remark I heard just now when I passed by the fo’c’s’le as the starboard watch were having their tea.”
“What was that?” I asked. “Did they speak of doing anything?”
“No-o,” replied Tom hesitatingly, as if he did not quite like telling me all he knew, being afraid perhaps of my informing Mr Mackay, from the latter and I being now known to be close friends albeit I was only an apprentice and he the first mate. “I only heard them joking about that beastly marmalade the skipper has palmed off on them, and us, too, worse luck, in lieu of our proper rations of salt junk; and one of them said he’d ‘like to swap all his lot for the voyage for a good square meal of roast pork,’ that’s all.”
“Why, any of us might have said that,” cried I laughing, and not seeing any harm in the observation. “I’m sure I would not object to a change of diet.”
Later on in the evening, though, what Tom had related was brought back to me with much point; for, a curious circumstance occurred shortly after “four bells,” when it was beginning to get dark after sunset, the night closing in so rapidly.
The captain was then on the poop talking to Mr Saunders about something or other in which they both seemed deeply interested, the one sniffing and twitching his long nose about, and the other wagging his red beard as he moved his jaws in talking. I was just above their heads in the mizzen-top, my favourite retreat of an evening, whither I had taken up a book to read, although I could barely distinguish the print by this time, daylight had disappeared so quickly on the sun’s sinking in the deep astern; when, all at once, a violent squealing and grunting broke out from the long-boat, sufficient for more than a herd of porkers all in their last agony, instead of its coming from one or even all three of the pigs Captain Gillespie had stowed there, fattening them up until he thought them big enough to kill for the table.
“Who the dickens is that troubling my pigs?” roared the captain, clutching hold of the brass rail of the poop in front of him, and squinting forwards as well as he could in the dim light to where the clew of the main-sail just lifting disclosed the fore part of the deck-house with the long-boat on top. “None of your sky-larking there, d’ye hear? Leave ’em alone!”
But, there was no one to be seen either on top of the deck-house or in the long-boat, although the squealing still continued.
“D’ye hear me there, forrud?” shouted Captain Gillespie again in a voice of thunder, having now worked himself up into one of his tornado-like rages. “Leave those pigs alone, I tell ye!”
“Sure, sorr, there’s nobody there,” said Tim Rooney, who was on the main-deck below, just under the break of the poop. “There’s divil a sowl botherin’ the blissid pigs, sorr, as ye can say for y’rsilf. Faix, they’re ownly contrary a bit, sorr, an’ p’raps onaisy in their moind!”
“Nonsense, man!” cried Captain Gillespie stamping his foot. “It is some of those mutinous rascals carrying on their games, I—I know! Just look, will ye, bosun?”
“There ar’n’t a sowl thare, I tell ye, sorr,” protested Tim, rather a bit vexed at his word being doubted, as he turned to go forward where the row was still going on. “Ain’t I jist come from there, sorr, an’ can’t I say now wid me own eyes there ain’t nobody not nigh the long-boat nor the pigs neither—bad cess to ’em!”
He muttered the last words below his breath, and getting up into the main-rigging he climbed half-way up the shrouds, so as to be able to drop from thence on to the deck-house, this being his quickest mode of reaching the roof of that structure; and from thence, as he knew, he would of course be able to see right into the long-boat as well as inspect its four-footed tenants.
“There’s not a sowl in the boat or near it, sorr, at all, at all, cap’en dear, barrin’ the pigs sure, as I towld ye,” he repeated on getting so far; and he was just proceeding to lower himself down to the top of the deck-house by a loose rope that was hanging from aloft, when he swung himself back into the rigging in alarm as a dark body jumped out of the long-boat right across his face, uttering the terrified ejaculation, “Murther in Irish! Howly Moses, what is that?”
It was one of the pigs, which, giving vent to a most diabolical yell, appeared to leap from the long-boat deliberately over the port side of the ship into the sea, sinking immediately with a stifled grunt, alongside.
Then more weird squeaking was heard, and a second pig imitated his comrade’s example, jumping also from the boat overboard—just as if they were playing the game of “follow my leader” which we often indulged in when sky-larking in the second dog-watch!
This was no sky-larking, however, for the captain on the poop, as well as Mr Saunders and myself up in the mizzen-top, had witnessed the whole of the strange occurrence the same as Tim Rooney, and all of us were equally astonished.
As for Captain Gillespie, being a very superstitious man, he seemed strongly impressed by what had happened. His voice quite trembled as he called out to Tim Rooney after a moment’s pause, during which he was too much startled to speak:
“Wha—what’s the matter with them, bosun?”
“Sorry o’ me knows,” replied Tim in an equally awestruck voice, either full of real or very well assumed terror, “barrin’ that the divil’s got howld av ’em; an’ it’s raal vexed I am, sorr, av spakin’ so moighty disrespectful av his honour jist now. Aye, take me worrud for it, cap’en, they’re possiss’d, as sure as eggs is mate!”
“I think the same, and that the deil’s got into ’em,” said Captain Gillespie gravely, wrinkling up his nose so much and nodding his head, and looking so like an old owl in the bright light of the moon which had rapidly risen, and was already shining with all the fulness and brilliancy it has in these southern latitudes, that it was as much as I could do to keep from bursting out laughing and so betraying my presence in the top above his head. I was all the more amused, too, when “Old Jock” turned to the second mate and added: “I look upon this as a visitation, and am glad I never killed the animals; for I would not touch one now for anything! Have the remaining brute chucked overboard, Saunders; it would be unlucky to keep it after what has happened. I’m sure I could not bear the sight of it or to hear it grant again!”
So saying, Captain Gillespie went below and took a stiff glass of grog to recover his nerves. He must then have got into his cot for he did not appear on deck again until the middle watch—a most unusual thing for him to do.
“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,” however, and the aptness of the adage was well illustrated in the present instance, the men feasting on roast pork, besides putting by some tit-bits salted down for a rainy day, at the expense of “Old Jock’s” superstitious fears.
It was wonderful, though, how many legs were owned by that one “last pig” which the captain had ordered to be chucked overboard, and which Mr Saunders had, instead, given over to Ching Wang’s tender mercies for the benefit of himself and the crew, stipulating, however, that he was to have one of the best pieces stuffed and baked, the second mate being a great glutton always, and fond of good living. Yes, it was wonderful for one pig to have no less than twelve legs!
I will tell you how this was.
Tom Jerrold let me into the secret. It seems that the apparent suicidal tendencies of the pigs who jumped into the sea in that mysterious way was caused by the fore-topgallant stu’n’sail halliards being dexterously fastened round them by a couple of the hands previously in sling fashion; and when the poor brutes were jerked overboard by the aid of these, they were allowed to tow under the keel of the ship until their squeals were hushed for ever, and then drawn inboard again and cut up in the forecastle. When they were carved properly into pork, the men thought them none the less delicious because they had come to their death by water instead of by the ordinary butcher’s knife; and, as I had the opportunity of testing this opinion in a savoury little pig’s fry which Ching Wang presented me with the same evening for supper, I cannot but acknowledge that I agreed thoroughly with the judgment of the hands in the matter of “spiflicated pork,” as Tom Jerrold called it.
“Dick, Dick, what do you think of it all?” said I, chirping to the starling, who was whistling wide awake when I turned out next morning at “eight bells” after dreaming of the poor murdered pigs, on my way to the galley to get some hot coffee. “What do you think of it all—eh, Dick?”
“Tip us your flipper!” hoarsely croaked the bright-eyed little bird with the voice of Tim Rooney, only seeming to be a very long way off. He also seemed to have the nose of Captain Gillespie, which we all said his long beak strongly resembled. “Tip us your flipper!”
That was all I could get out of him; but I thought that, really, a wrong had been righted, and the captain’s marmalade imposition on us and on the hands forward been amply avenged.
Poor “Old Jock’s” live stock of late appeared to be in a very bad way; for, not only was he deprived of his favourite pigs so unfortunately, but since we had begun to run more to southward after leaving the Line, his supply of eggs from the collection of hens he had in the coops on the poop daily dwindled down to nothing, although they had previously been good layers.
Somehow or other the fowls seemed to have the pip, while the three cocks, one a splendid silver and gold fellow, who lorded over the harem of Dorkings and Brahmas, all looked torn and bedraggled as if they had given way to dissipated habits. Besides this, they took to crowing defiance against each other at the most unearthly hours, whereas, prior to this, their time for chanticleering had been as regular as clock-work, in the afternoon and in the “middle watch” generally.
Captain Gillespie couldn’t make it out at all.
One fine morning, however, coming on the deck through the cuddy doors below the break of the poop instead of mounting up to the latter by the companion way as usual, before the time for washing down, he surprised a number of the men assembled about the cook’s galley.
There was Ching Wang in the centre of the group, holding Captain Gillespie’s pet gold and silver crower and urging it on to fight one of the other cocks, which the carpenter was officiating for as “bottle holder” in the most scientific way, he apparently being no novice at the cruel sport.
The captain did not see what they were about at first; but the delinquent was soon pointed out by Pedro Carvalho, between whom and the Chinaman the most deadly enmity existed, and who had indeed already informed the captain of the cook’s treatment of his fowls, the Portuguese steward doing this with much alacrity, as if proud of being the informer.
“Look dere, sah!” cried Pedro. “Dere is dat Ching Wang now, sah! Oh, yase, dere he was, sah, as I say, killin’ your cockles magnificent—oh!”
The captain’s appearance at once broke up the ring, the carpenter dropping his bird incontinently and fleeing into the forecastle with the other men; but, the Chinaman never moved a muscle of his countenance when he turned his round innocent-looking, vacuous, Mongolian face and caught sight of “Old Jock’s” infuriated look bent on him.
He did not even let go the gold and silver cock, whose plumage had been sadly tarnished by a previous tournament with the Dorking which the carpenter had squired. No, he held his ground there before the galley with a courage one could not but admire, the only sign he gave of an inward emotion being the occasional twinkling of his little beady Chinese eyes.
“Wh–wha–what the dicken’s d–d–d’ye mean by this?” stuttered and stammered Captain Gillespie, his passion almost stopping his speech. “Wh–wh–what d’ye mean, I say?”
“Me only hab piecee cocky-fightee,” answered Ching Wang as calmly as possible. “Me chin chin you, cap’en.”
Captain Gillespie fairly boiled over with rage.
“This beats cock-fighting!” he cried, stating the case inadvertently in his exclamation. “I thought it was those confounded cats we have aboard the ship that ill-treated the poor fowls and prevented them from laying me any eggs, till Pedro here told me it was you, though I didn’t believe it. I wouldn’t have believed it now if I hadn’t seen you at it. By jingo, it’s shameful!”
Ching Wang, however, paid no attention to this violent tirade, only salaaming humbly and looking the very picture of meekness and contrition.
But his eyes, as I could see, being close by, having been attracted by the row as most of us were, had altered their expression, now flashing with a peculiar glare as the Chinaman, with a more abject bow than before to the captain, asked him deferentially:
“And dis one manee you tellee Ching Wang cocky-fightee one piecee—hi?”
“Yes, Pedro told me,” replied Captain Gillespie, sniffing and snorting out the words. “And a good job too; for, else, I wouldn’t have known of your goings on!”
Ching Wang’s yellow face almost turned white with anger.
“Hi, blackee-brownee manee,” he yelled, springing upon Pedro like a tiger. “You takee dat number one, chop chop!”