The Young Supercargo: A Story of the Merchant Marine

CHAPTER VII.
KIT BECOMES A SUPERCARGO.

TO have another run out to Huntington when the North Cape returned from Nassau, was something that Kit had been looking forward to. Not for a week this time, for he could not expect to have a week’s holiday at the end of every voyage; but for two nights and a day, perhaps; long enough to see the familiar faces and the old place.

But three days, four days, passed, and he was still acting as steward; and he could not ask for leave of absence while he had that work to do. And whether he ought to ask for the place permanently or not, he could hardly make up his mind. He felt the need, more than ever before, of some one to go to for advice and counsel. Tom Haines was a good friend, but Tom could hardly advise him in such a matter; and to apply to the Captain was out of the question. So he did not know whether to feel glad or sorry when on the fourth day Captain Griffith brought a stranger into the cabin and introduced him as the new steward.

“You know the lay of the land in the pantry, Christopher,” he said, “so you can show him where things are kept.”

And that was the end of his dream of becoming steward of the North Cape!

“I think I am rather glad than sorry,” he soon said to himself; “but if I had really wanted the place, this would really serve me just right for not making up my mind about it. Chances don’t wait for a fellow if he does not seize them when they offer. So I am still the cabin boy, and will still have a chance to copy the manifests and go ashore to check off cargo. And maybe this will give me a chance for my visit home.”

That evening he walked the deck a little in the cold moonlight, deliberating whether he should ask for a furlough or not; and he had no sooner made up his mind to do it than he started for the Captain’s room, having seen enough of the dangers of delay. But before he reached the head of the companionway the Captain’s bell rang for him.

“Come in and shut the door, Christopher,” Captain Griffith said. “I have something to say to you.” Then when the door was closed, he continued, “How old did you tell me you are?”

“I am past seventeen now, sir,” Kit answered.

“You have done very good work for me, Christopher,” the Captain went on, “but still I am going to take your name off the crew list. I shall have to have a new cabin boy.”

“I hope not, sir!” Kit answered; “I have tried to give you satisfaction.”

“You have done very well, I must admit,” the Captain said; “but you are not exactly fitted to the place. You are too bright for a cabin boy, and there is no better berth in the crew that I can give you.”

So saying, he took out the book in which he kept the crew list and the wages account, ran his finger down to Kit’s name, and took up his pen.

“I see there is seven dollars and a half due you,” he went on, “but we will call it ten dollars on account of the extra work you have been doing. So now I erase your name, and you are no longer a member of the crew;” and he ran his pen through Kit’s name with a big, broad mark.

For a moment Kit felt as if a flash of lightning had come into the stateroom and struck him.

“I hope you will tell me what I have done, to be sent away, Captain,” he said, in a voice that was not altogether steady.

“Well, sit down, Christopher, and I will tell you,” the Captain said, swinging his chair around as Kit took a seat. “I could not well invite my cabin boy to sit down here for a talk, but as you are my cabin boy no longer, I can invite you now. I see you take it very much to heart, so I will tell you in few words.”

It seemed to Kit at first as if a judge were about to pronounce sentence upon him; but something in the Captain’s face gave him a little hope.

“The North Cape has been chartered by the big firm of Hunter & Hitchley for a long voyage. She is to go first to Barbadoes with a general cargo, there take on a cargo of sugar for London, and return from London to New York with another general cargo. Such a voyage requires a supercargo; and when the firm asked me to recommend one I recommended Christopher Silburn. So it means that instead of being the cabin boy you will be the supercargo as soon as you go over to Hunter & Hitchley’s office and sign the contract.”

“Oh, Captain!” Kit exclaimed; he did not see how he could say anything more at the moment.

“Your pay will be only eighteen dollars a month for the present, on account of your youth; and that is small pay for supercargo; but it is better than six dollars as a cabin boy.”

“I should think so, sir!” Kit declared; “and I don’t know how I can ever thank you for such a kindness.”

“Never mind about that,” the Captain laughed. “And now, Mr. Supercargo, you must leave me to my work, for I have a great deal to do to-night. Do you think you could find me a good cabin boy to take your place?”

“Yes, sir, I think I could,” Kit answered; and he thought immediately of Harry Leonard, of Huntington.

“Then I will leave that matter with you,” the Captain said, turning again to his work.

Kit had to go on deck again for a little fresh air after this sudden change in his fortunes, and in his rapid march to and fro he met Tom Haines, and was on the point of telling him the news, but stopped himself. “I must tell the folks at home first of all,” he thought; and after a little chat with Tom about other matters, in which Kit hardly knew what he was talking about, he went down to the cabin to write a letter.

“I hoped to be with you in Huntington by this time,” he began, “but you will have to put up with a ten-dollar note and a bit of good news.”

Then he told the story of his promotion as plainly as his excited mind would permit, and added, “Don’t mind taking the money, for I have a little more, and of course I will get an advance for a long voyage like that. I shall need some new clothes; for what is good enough for a cabin boy would hardly be decent for a supercargo.”

And at the end he sent a message for Vieve to take to Harry Leonard. “If he’s not second mate of that bark yet, maybe he would like to be cabin boy of the North Cape at six dollars a month. I can get him the place if he wants it, but he must come or let me know the very day you get this, or it will be too late. And now for Barbadoes, folks, and London! across the big ocean and back again! I was hoping for that, you know. I’ll write again, of course, before we sail.”

Kit’s interview with Hunter & Hitchley next day was something of an ordeal, for after the contract was signed they had endless instructions to give him. A hundred things he must attend to with the greatest care; and another hundred things he must avoid; and such and such firms must be seen in New York, and so and so in Barbadoes, and in London.

“You are very young for this work,” Mr. Hitchley told him, “but Captain Griffith has recommended you highly. We take you altogether on his recommendation.”

“I will do my best to give satisfaction, sir,” Kit answered. He had made the same promise on becoming a cabin boy, and kept it, and was determined to keep it again.

His new position brought many minor changes that he had not had time to think of yet. When the cabin dinner bell rang that day he did not quite know what to do, so he wisely waited and did nothing, and in a few minutes the Captain sent for him to come down to dinner.

“The supercargo eats with the Captain, Silburn,” Captain Griffith said. “I neglected to tell you that. And he is always ‘Mister’ to the crew; but for my part I shall call you Silburn, because you are so young.”

It was odd enough to be eating there with the Captain and first officer at the table he had helped to wait on before, but he soon grew accustomed to it, just as he did to being called Mr. Silburn by everybody but the Captain. In a few days he appeared in a new suit of dark blue cloth and a cap to match, with a single gilt button on each side; a costume in which he looked as nautical and business-like as any young supercargo could desire.

Doing the clerical work in getting together and loading the cargo was mere routine business for him now, thanks to the experience he had had in former voyages; and by the time the North Cape was ready for sea again he felt considerable confidence in himself in his new position. The non-arrival of Harry Leonard made him a little uneasy, for it would not do to fail to have a cabin boy ready on sailing day. Harry had written that he would be on at once, but nearly a week had passed. He arrived, however, just as Kit was thinking of looking for another boy.

“Oh, say, what a swell you are, Kit!” he exclaimed, “in that uniform. I must have one like that some day. But I’ll take a shy at your old place first, for a voyage or two. That’s good enough to begin on, I suppose. Say, what does a fellow get promoted to from there? Does supercargo come next?”

“Not always,” Kit answered. He could not help seeing that Harry’s ideas were up too near the top-masts, and would have to come down nearer the keel before long. “But it’s very pleasant work in the cabin of the North Cape, as long as you don’t give the Captain any occasion to use his rope’s-end on you.” Kit did not believe much in teasing the new boys on board, but Harry was so full of his own importance that he could not resist the temptation to frighten him a little.

“No! say, does he though?” Harry asked, in alarm. “Does he whack you very hard?”

“Oh, not so very!” Kit laughed; “anyhow, you don’t mind it much after you get used to it. Come down to the cabin; he told me to bring you down to him when you came.”

“This is the boy I spoke to you about, sir,” Kit said to the Captain. “His name is Harry Leonard.”

“I tried to come as soon as I got Kit’s letter,” Harry broke in, “but I had to have some clothes made.”

“What’s that!” Captain Griffith exclaimed, looking at the new boy sharply. “If you mean the supercargo, his name is Mr. Silburn. Don’t forget that. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry answered quite meekly; and Kit thought that a good time for him to withdraw, when the interesting process of training a willing but conceited boy was beginning.

There was a large streak of good nature in Harry, however, as well as a stock of humor; and he felt that he had wiped out this rebuff when he went up to Kit on deck on the third day out, and, touching his hat very formally, said:—

“Mr. Silburn, the Captain wishes to see you below, sir, if you please;” then drew his left eye down into a wink that was big enough for a dozen winks, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and strutted off whistling “Yankee Doodle.”

Every day Kit was busy for some hours with his manifests, which he worked at in the afternoons now instead of the evenings. And it was fortunate for him that he wasted no time at the start; for on the eighth day, when they were expecting every moment to sight Sombrero Key, the first land since leaving New York, they ran into a little tropical hurricane that tossed up a tremendous sea, and kept Captain Griffith on the bridge for nearly ten hours without rest. He did not stop his writing when the confusion on deck told him that they were preparing the ship for rough weather; but in a few minutes his head began to ache, and he closed his eyes to rest them. Then a chilly feeling ran down the back of his neck; he felt as if he must have taken a mixture of chicken salad, mince pie, ice cream, and soda water for dinner, and began to wonder whether a siege of illness was coming on. A minute later, however, Harry Leonard ran out of the pantry, holding both hands against his stomach.

“Oh, Kit!” he cried, “or Mr. Silburn, or Supercargo, or whatever your blessed name is, I’m so sick! oh, I wish you’d let me stay at home!” and he threw himself on one of the sofas and lay moaning.

That told Kit what was the matter with him; it was no tropical fever coming on, but a plain case of sea-sickness! On his third voyage, when he had risen to be a supercargo, he was desperately seasick for the first time, simply because it was the first really rough weather he had encountered.

The heavy rolling and pitching of the ship in that howling wind and tremendous sea, the incessant rattling and breaking of dishes in the pantry, the creaking of joiner work, the shouting of orders on deck, the men running to and fro to execute them, the whir and jar of the screw when a lunge of the bow raised it out of the water, combined to give Kit his first real idea of bad weather at sea. He went on deck, and the fresh air made him feel better; and he exercised his privilege as supercargo and went up on the bridge, where he instantly saw by the anxious faces of the Captain and first officer that they were worried. He knew that the storm alone was not sufficient to put the ship in danger; but they were in the neighborhood of Sombrero and other small islands of that group, night was coming on, and as there was no sun that day for an observation they were not sure of their position, and the outlook was not encouraging.

No supper was prepared in the cabin that evening, for neither the Captain nor his mate had time to eat; but sandwiches and hot coffee were put on the table; and when the Captain came down to swallow a cup of coffee in haste he merely shook his head in reply to Kit’s questions.

Late in the evening Harry still lay groaning on the sofa, and Kit was in and out, for neither of the boys felt inclined to turn in. About eleven o’clock a terrible pounding began on deck. It sounded almost as if one of the iron masts had fallen and was rolling about the deck. First there was a thumping from port to starboard that seemed enough to crush in the deck, followed by a moment of quiet, and then, as the ship rolled again, the rolling went from starboard to port. Harry sprang up in alarm.

“Kit, we’re goners!” he exclaimed; “the ship’s going down!”

“I don’t believe it,” Kit answered, “but something has carried away.”

They both ran for the companionway and scrambled on deck, where the terrific wind almost tore them off their feet. Everything was dark as pitch except for the light of a solitary lantern, and by that faint light they saw that in the heavy rolling one of the winches had broken loose and was rolling from side to side of the deck, to the imminent danger of both deck and rail; and men were trying to lasso it with heavy ropes, for no one could approach it without risking his life. While they watched, the winch was caught and secured, and they returned to the cabin.

“I don’t like being off a rocky coast on a bad night,” the Captain said. “The North Cape is good for any kind of weather, but the ship has not been built yet that will stand a night’s pounding on the rocks. Now by afternoon we should be off St. Kitts, and from that all the way down to Barbadoes you will see some of the finest sights you ever saw in your life. I have seen the Alps and most of the best scenery in Europe, but never anything to equal these beautiful islands we will soon pass—St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Martinique, Dominica, and several more. Most of them are mountain peaks rising from the sea and touching the clouds. Barbadoes itself is flat and uninteresting, except for being the most thickly populated bit of land on the globe. It contains only about forty square miles, and has forty thousand inhabitants, or a thousand to a square mile, mostly negroes. But you will soon see for yourself. I feel quite ready for a sleep. Good-night, Silburn.”

“Good-night, sir,” Kit answered; and he made his way across the unsteady cabin by holding on to the backs of seats, and was soon in his own berth.

By the middle of the afternoon the young supercargo learned another of the advantages of being in his new position. They were then skirting the coast of the British island of St. Kitts, having left the storm and the worst of the rough sea in their wake. Instead of taking a hurried look at the shore over the rail, with both ears open for the Captain’s bell, as the cabin boy must generally do, he could go up on the bridge and take a good look through the Captain’s glasses; and he was soon convinced that Captain Griffith had not at all exaggerated the beauty of the scenery. He was used to high hills, for Huntington is surrounded by them, but not hills like these.

“To think of a mountain coming right up out of the water,” he said to himself, “and going on up and up till the peak is in the clouds, and looking as green and smooth as the grass in a park—though I know it’s not grass, for the Captain says it is fields of sugarcane below, and trees toward the top. And the way those clouds gather around the peak! It seems to catch them as they float by, and they grow thicker and blacker every minute till there is more water than they can hold, and it comes down without warning in a deluge of rain, and then the sun shines again! I never saw anything like it.”

Then the next day he was equally enthusiastic over the French island of Martinique, which is much larger and has many peaks instead of a single one; and soon afterward the British Dominica, with scarcely any inhabitants in its high mountains but the fragments of the once-powerful race of Caribs, who live now by making baskets so tight that they will hold water and are used for trunks. As they passed the little port of Roseau, the capital of Dominica, they saw a large steamer lying at anchor, which Kit learned was the New York mail steamer the Trinidad, bound like themselves for Barbadoes; and within the next hour she was under way and following in their wake.

In a longer race the North Cape would have had little chance against the speedier Trinidad; but the distance from Dominica to the roadstead off Bridgetown, Barbadoes, is so small that the two vessels dropped anchor there almost at the same moment, the North Cape as near to the breakwater as safety allowed, and the Trinidad farther out. As the day was about closing, Captain Griffith was in no hurry to enter his ship at the Custom House, for in any case he could not begin unloading until the next day; but it was different with the other steamer, which had passengers on board who were anxious to land. So it happened that the boat in which Kit was set ashore to pay an early visit to his agent, reached the landing-steps almost at the same moment as the boat that carried the Trinidad’s purser.

Kit was first up the steps, followed by the well-fed purser, who, although not a tall man, weighed something over two hundred pounds.

“Just my luck!” the fat purser panted, as he looked about the large open square. “If I—huh, ahuh, huh—if I didn’t want a—huh, huh—want a carriage, the square would be full of them; but when I want one in a—ah!—in a hurry, there’s none here. Here it’s four minutes to six; and how’s a man of my—huh, huh—of my size going to get to the Custom House before they close at six o’clock, I’d like to know!”

“Maybe I can be of use to you, sir,” Kit said, stepping up to him. “I am supercargo of the North Cape, and I’m a pretty good runner. I’ll take your papers up to the Custom House for you if you like.”

“Oh, thank you,” the purser panted, looking very much relieved. “I’ll be a thousand times obliged to you. Here they are, then, all ready; all you have to do is to shove them under the clerk’s nose.”

Kit made a hurried inquiry about the direction of the Custom House and started on a run, and had the satisfaction of delivering the papers just half a minute before business closed for the day. He next visited his agent and arranged for lighters in the morning; and an hour later he met the Trinidad’s purser again, not quite so short-breathed and red in the face this time.

“Here we are again, supercargo!” he exclaimed, seizing Kit’s hand. He had a very jolly manner, and seemed as free with Kit as if they had been acquainted for years. “You can’t miss anybody in this hole of a place. They call it a town, but I call it a hole. I’m just going in here to get something to cool me off, and I want you to come along.”

“I’m just as much obliged,” Kit answered; “but I suppose you mean something to drink, and I never drink anything.”

“I suppose you’ve made a mistake, for the first time in your life,” the purser rejoined, with a laugh that shook him all over. “I mean something to eat; a big heaped-up plate of the coldest ice cream this side of New York. We’re right in front of the ice-house, where I always eat a lot of ice cream for the fun of hearing it sizzle as it goes down. By the way, my name’s Clark; what’s yours?”

“Silburn,” Kit replied. “But the ice-house? This looks like a store.”

“So it is,” said the purser, as they climbed the stairs to a big restaurant where scores of people were eating. “It’s store, restaurant, ice-house, furniture-shop, a dozen things combined. I thought everybody knew the Bridgetown ice-house. Ice is a government monopoly here, you know, and these fellows buy the privilege of selling all that is used on the island. Hello here, Snowflake” (to one of the black waiters; he seemed to know every one in the place), “bring us two platters of your best ice cream; platters, do you hear? Not saucers, or plates, but the biggest platters you have.”

Kit found the ice cream excellent, and the purser a very entertaining companion. He was full of good sea-stories, and knew how to tell them in an interesting way. And he wanted to know all about the young supercargo.

“You’re very young for such a place,” he said; “at your age I was sweeping the cabin and brushing the Captain’s clothes.”

“So was I,” Kit laughed, “until this voyage;” and he had to tell how he became a supercargo, after describing his rescue by Captain Griffith from a Brooklyn policeman.

“Well, you’ll make your way, if you take care of yourself,” Mr. Clark said, after Kit had finished his story and his ice cream together. “Just you let drink alone and don’t get anything into your pockets that belongs to some other fellow. It’s rum that spoils a good many young fellows at sea, and you can’t keep too far away from it. I know appearances are rather against me” (and his fat sides shook again); “they tell me a man with my red face has no business to give temperance lectures; but to tell the truth, I never drink any liquor, though I’ll own up to being fond of good eating. Here, Snowflake, two more platters of ice cream; and don’t stop to warm it.”

Kit soon found that notwithstanding his free-and easy manner and his almost continual laughter, his new companion was a man of great sense and good judgment, thoroughly acquainted with the work of both purser and supercargo.

“I’m glad we ran across each other,” Mr. Clark said, as he shook the young supercargo’s hand. “We’ll meet again sometime, certain sure. Don’t forget me; and remember that when you need a friend you’ll always find one in the purser of the Trinidad.”

That was another of the advantages of being a supercargo; he could make friends and associate with people who would not have paid much attention to a cabin boy. But he had more things to learn before the day was over; for when he returned to the ship he found Captain Griffith preparing to go ashore, and the Captain invited him to go along and meet some of the merchants with whom he would have to do business. They went to the Mercantile Club, where he found the latest English and American newspapers, and news telegrams posted from London and New York, and met some of the principal business men of Bridgetown, and several large sugar planters who went “in to town” in the evenings to hear what was going on in the big outside world. The conversation was all about business and the price of sugar and the state of the crops and the price of freights; and it did not take him long to realize that with his new associations he was no longer a boy, but a young man of affairs who must keep his eyes and ears open and inform himself about a great many things that he had paid no attention to before.

For nearly a week the young supercargo was so busy with getting his cargo ashore and delivered that he had no further chance of seeing the city or the island; but when it came to loading he had more time to himself. The sugar came in slowly, and there were days when there was not enough on the wharf to keep the lighters busy. On such days he had several times to drive out to large plantations to hurry the work, and the planters always treated him with the greatest hospitality. Every night he had some new entry to make in the journal that he began to keep when he became a supercargo—a journal that he refused to call a diary, because he had no intention of writing in it regularly, but only when he had something worth writing. Captain Griffith found the little book lying on his desk one day and wrote on the fly-leaf, “Kit Silburn, His Log”; and after that it was always known as “The Supercargo’s Log.” Some of his entries tell in very few words the story of part of his first long voyage.

“Feb. 12.—Still at Bridgetown, Barbadoes. Took in 146 hogsheads of sugar to-day, with 12 lighters. The sugar is all done up in hogsheads, weighing something over a ton each. It is black-looking stuff as it comes from the mills, and has a sweet, sickish smell. The colored people like to lie on the wharf in the sun and lick up the molasses that leaks out of the casks. We have now 821 hogsheads on board.

“Feb. 13.—Still at Bridgetown. No lighters at work to-day, as there was no sugar ready. Went out to three plantations to hurry things. At the Sea View plantation Mr. Outerbridge took me all over the place, and made me stay to dinner. (P.S. He has a beautiful young daughter, Miss Blanche, and after dinner we had a pony race. She beat me.) They say this sun would kill a white man in three months if he worked in the cane-fields, but it does not hurt the negroes. Saw how they squeeze out the cane-juice between big rollers, and then boil it down into sugar. The planters promised me 150 hogsheads by to-morrow.

“Feb. 14.—Got 122 hogsheads sugar on board, and plenty promised for to-morrow. Very curious thing happened to me to-day. When I came aboard ship to supper, found a letter for me, though no mail steamer in. Opened it, and found a handsome valentine. Can’t imagine who could have sent it.

“Feb. 15.—Only 30 hogsheads loaded to-day, on account of heavy rain.

“Feb. 20.—Loaded 82 hogsheads. Have now 1455 on board. We hope to sail for London on Saturday. Miss Blanche Outerbridge has invited me to a lawn party at their plantation to-morrow. Half afraid to go, for never was at a lawn party in my life.

“Feb. 21.—No sugar to-day. Went to the lawn party, and had splendid time. The Governor was there, and Mr. Outerbridge introduced me to him.

“Feb. 23.—Loaded 160 hogsheads to-day. Sugar coming with a rush now.

“Feb. 25.—Sailed for London at two o’clock this afternoon, with 2415 hogsheads of sugar, making about $120,000 worth of cargo that I have to look after. Must keep my eyes open. Will see no more land now till we sight the Scilly Islands, off the English coast.

“March 15.—Expect to sight the Scillys to-morrow morning. Have had a fairly good voyage so far, with some bad weather, but no hard gales. A long stretch of water, this, from Barbadoes to England; but the seas are no higher in the middle than along the coast. Cargo in good order.”