The Project Gutenberg EBook of Overdue, by Harry Collingwood This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Overdue The Story of a Missing Ship Author: Harry Collingwood Illustrator: W. Herbert Holloway Release Date: April 13, 2007 [EBook #21067] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVERDUE *** Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England Harry Collingwood "Overdue" Chapter One. The “Mercury” appears. This is a yarn of the days when the clipper sailing-ship was at the zenith of her glory and renown; when she was the recognised medium for the transport of passengers—ay, and, very frequently, of mails between Great Britain and the Colonies; and when steamers were, comparatively speaking, rare objects on the high seas. True, a few of the great steamship lines, such as the Cunard and the Peninsular and Oriental, were already in existence; but their fleets were only just beginning to compete, and with but a very limited measure of success, against the superb specimens of marine architecture owned by the Black Ball and other famous lines of sailing clippers. For the Suez Canal had not yet been dug, and—apart from the overland journeys to India—travellers bound to the East were compelled to go south-about round the Cape of Good Hope, whether they journeyed by steamer or by sailing-ship; and it was no very uncommon thing for the latter to beat the former on the passage to India, China, or Australia. Moreover, the marine steam engine was, at that period, a very expensive piece of machinery to operate, developing only a very moderate amount of power upon an exceedingly heavy consumption of coal; hence it was only the nabobs who could afford to indulge in the then costly luxury of ocean travel by steam. The occurrence which I regard as the starting-point of my extraordinary yarn happened on the 27th day of October, in the year of grace 18—; the Salamis—which was the ship in which it originated— being, at noon of that day, in latitude 30 degrees south, and longitude 23 degrees west, or thereabout; thirty days out from London, on a voyage to Melbourne. The Salamis, I may explain, was a full-rigged clipper ship of 1497 tons register, classed 100 A 1; being one of the crack vessels of the celebrated Gold Star Line, outward bound to Melbourne, as I have said, with a full complement of saloon and steerage passengers, and a general cargo that, while it filled her to the hatches, was so largely composed of light merchandise that it only sank her in the water to her very finest sailing trim; of which circumstance Captain Martin, her commander, was taking the fullest possible advantage, by “carrying on” day and night, in the hope of making a record passage. I, Philip Troubridge, was one of her midshipman-apprentices, of whom she carried six, and I was seventeen years of age on the day when the occurrence happened which I have alluded to above, and which I will now relate. T he Salamis carried three mates: chief, second, and third; and the accident happened in the first watch, when Mr Moore, the second mate, had charge of the deck. The wind was out from about nor’- nor’-west, and had been blowing very fresh all day, notwithstanding which the ship was under all three royals, and fore and main topgallant studdingsails, her course being south-east. There was a heavy and steep sea following the ship on her port quarter, which not only made her motions exceedingly uneasy, but also caused her to yaw wildly from time to time, despite the utmost efforts of two men at the wheel to keep her true to her course. It was during one of these wild sheers that the main topgallant studdingsail-boom snapped short off by the boom-iron; and there was immediately a tremendous hullabaloo aloft of madly slatting canvas and threshing boom, as the studdingsail flapped furiously in the freshening breeze, momentarily threatening to spring the topgallant yard, if, indeed, it did not whip the topgallant-mast out of the ship. Then something fouled aloft, rendering it impossible to take in the sail; and, the skipper being on deck and manifesting some impatience at what he conceived to be the clumsiness of the men who had gone up on the topsail yard, Mr Moore, the second mate, sprang into the main rigging and went aloft to lend a hand. Just precisely what happened nobody ever knew; one of the men aloft said that the broken boom, in its wild threshing, struck the mate and knocked him off the yard; but, be that as it may, one thing certain is, that the poor fellow suddenly went whirling down, and, without a cry, fell into the boiling smother raised by the bow wave, and was never seen again! I happened to be on the poop at the moment, and, despite the darkness, saw the falling body of the mate just as it flashed down into the water, and guessed what had happened even before the thrilling cry of “Man overboard!” came pealing-down from aloft. I therefore made a dash for one of the lifebuoys that were stopped to the poop rail, cut it adrift, and hove it, as nearly as I could guess, at the spot where the mate had disappeared, while one of the men on the forecastle, anticipating the skipper’s order, called all hands to shorten sail. The whole ship was of course instantly in a tremendous commotion, fore and aft. The rest of the studdingsails were taken in as quickly as possible, the royals and topgallantsails were clewed up, a reef was taken in the topsails, and the ship was brought to the wind and worked back, as nearly as could be, to the spot where the accident had happened, and a boat was lowered. Although the skipper had displayed such nice judgment in determining the precise spot where the search should begin, that the crew of the boat dispatched to search for the mate actually found and recovered the lifebuoy that I had thrown, no sign of the lost man was ever discovered. The assumption was that he had been stunned by the blow that had knocked him overboard, and had sunk at once. This occurrence cast a gloom over the ship for several days; for poor Moore was probably the most popular man in the ship, highly esteemed by the passengers, and as nearly beloved by the crew as one of the afterguard can ever reasonably hope to be. The skipper, in particular, took the loss of this very promising officer deeply to heart, not only because of the esteem in which he held him, but also, I fancy, because he was worried by the conviction that the accident was very largely due to his own propensity to “carry on” rather too recklessly. On the ninth day after this unfortunate occurrence, and on our thirty-ninth day out from London, we found ourselves in the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope, and in latitude 37 degrees 20 minutes south, with a whole gale of wind chasing us, which blew us into latitude 39 degrees south, and longitude 60 degrees east before it left us, ten days later, stark becalmed. The calm, however, lasted but a few hours, and was succeeded by a light northerly breeze, under the impulse of which, with all plain sail set, the Salamis could barely log six knots to the hour. This lasted all night, and all the next day; but before that day had sped, the second incident occurred, that resulted in plumping me into the adventure which is the subject of this yarn. The heavy sea which had been kicked up by the gale subsided with extraordinary rapidity, and when I went on duty at eight bells (eight o’clock) on this particular morning the weather was everything that the most fastidious person could possibly desire, saving that the sun struck along the weather side of the deck—when he squinted at us past the weather leach of the mainsail as the ship rolled gently to the heave of the swell—with a fierceness that threatened a roasting hot day, what time he should have worked his way a point or two farther round to the nor’ard. The swell which lingered, to remind us of the recent breeze, was subsiding fast, and the ocean presented one vast surface of long, solemn-sweeping undulations of the deepest, purest sapphire, gently ruffled by the breathing of the languid breeze, and ablaze in the wake of the sun with a dazzle that brought tears to the eye that attempted to gaze upon it. The ship’s morning toilet had been completed, and the decks, darkened by the sluicing to which they had been lavishly subjected by the acting second mate and his watch, were drying fast and recovering their sand-white colour in the process. The brasswork, freshly scoured and polished, and the glass of the skylights, shot out a thousand flashes of white fire, where the sun’s rays searched out the glittering surfaces as the ship rolled. The awning had already been spread upon the poop, in readiness for the advent of those energetic occupants of the cuddy who made a point of promenading for half an hour in order to generate an appetite for breakfast; the running gear had all been bowsed taut and neatly coiled down; and the canvas, from which the dew had already evaporated, soared aloft toward the deep, rich azure of the zenith in great, gleaming, milk-white cloths of so soft, so tender, so ethereal an aspect, that one would scarcely have been surprised to see the skysails dissolve in vapour and go drifting away to leeward upon the languid breeze. The main deck was lively with the coming and going of the steerage passengers as they went to the galley to fetch their breakfast; and there must have been between twenty and thirty children chasing each other fore and aft, and dodging round their elders in their play, filling the rich, sweet, morning air with the music of their voices. There was a soft, seething sound over the side as the ship slid gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at frequent intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the bows and go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a shower of brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old Father Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and a great clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and the hum of lively conversation, accompanied by sundry savoury odours, came floating up through the open skylights, when the chief mate’s eye happened to be attracted toward a gasket, streaming loose like an Irish pennant from the fore topgallant yard, and he sang out to one of the ordinary seamen to jump aloft and put it right. The fellow made his way up the ratlines with extreme deliberation—for, indeed, a journey aloft in such scorching heat was no joke —made up the loose gasket, and was in the very act of swinging himself off the yard when, happening to be watching him, I saw him suddenly pause and stiffen into an attitude of attention as, holding on to the jackstay with one hand, he flung the other up to his forehead and peered ahead under the sharp of it. For a full minute he stood thus; then, twisting his body until he faced aft, he hailed: “On deck there!” “Hillo!” answered the mate. “There’s a biggish ship away out yonder, sir,” reported the man, “under her three taups’ls and fore topmast staysail; and by the way that she comes to and falls off again I’d say that she was hove-to.” “How far off is she?” demanded the mate. “’Bout a dozen mile, I reckon, sir,” answered the man. “Um!” remarked the mate, as much to himself as to me, it seemed. “She is probably a whaler on the lookout for ‘fish’. I believe they sometimes meet with rare streaks of luck just about here. All right,” he added, hailing the man aloft; “you can come down.” Shortly afterward we made out the stranger’s upper spars from the deck; and from the rapidity with which we raised them it soon became apparent that, if she had really been hove-to when first seen, she had soon filled away, and was now standing in our direction. By five bells she was hull-up; and while the skipper and mate were standing together eyeing her from the break of the poop—the latter with the ship’s telescope at his eye - I saw the ensign of the stranger float out over her rail and go creeping up to her gaff-end. “There goes her ensign, sir,” I shouted to the mate, who responded by remarking dryly: “Yes; I see it.” Then, turning to the skipper, he said: “There’s something wrong aboard that craft, sir; they’ve just hoisted their ensign, jack downward!” This, it may be explained to the uninitiated, is a signal of distress. “The dickens they have!” exclaimed the skipper. “Just let me have a look at her, Mr Bryce.” The mate handed over the telescope, and the skipper raised it to his eye, adjusting the focus to his sight. “Ay, you are quite right,” he agreed, with his eye still peering through the tube. “The jack’s downward, right enough. Wonder what’s wrong aboard of her? her hull and spars seem to be all right, and I don’t see any water pouring from her scuppers, as there would be if she had sprung a leak and the hands were working at the pumps. Well, we shall soon know, I suppose. Let our own ensign be hoisted in acknowledgment, Mr Bryce.” “Ay, ay, sir,” answered the mate. “Troubridge,”—to me—“jump aft and run our ensign up to the peak, will ye?” I went aft to the flag locker, drew out the big ensign, bent it on to the halyards, and ran it up to the gaff-end, where there was just wind enough to blow it out and make it distinguishable for what it was. The news that the stranger in sight was flying a signal of distress soon spread among the passengers, and in a few minutes every telescope in the cuddy was upon the poop and being eagerly focused upon the approaching vessel, which had by this time revealed herself as a full-rigged ship of some 800 tons measurement, of wholesome, motherly build, but certainly not a whaler, as could be seen by the model of the boats which she carried, and by the absence of certain characteristics which proclaim the whaler, and are apparent almost from the moment when she heaves into full view. There was, naturally, a vast amount of speculation, not only on the part of the skipper and mate, but also among our passengers, as to the precise character of her distress; but probably not one of us came anywhere near guessing at its extraordinary nature. Approaching each other, as the two vessels were, it did not take us very long to close with the stranger; and as we drew near to her it became apparent that her people were preparing to lower a boat. At the proper moment, therefore, our mainyard was laid aback, the stranger followed suit, and a minute or two later the two craft came to a stand abreast of each other, the stranger about a hundred fathoms to windward of us, near enough, indeed, for us to read with the unaided eye the name Mercury upon her head-boards. Then one of her two port quarter boats was lowered and hauled to the gangway, and with three men pulling, and one in the stern-sheets grasping the yoke lines, she shoved off and pulled away towards us, the mate hailing them to come to the lee gangway, where a side ladder had been dropped over for their use. Her main deck was crowded with people—men and women—all hanging over the rail and staring at us with that idle curiosity which is so characteristic of the uneducated classes. Mr Bryce at once unhesitatingly pronounced them to be emigrants, an opinion which the skipper as unhesitatingly endorsed. The men in the approaching boat were all forecastle hands, the one steering having the appearance of being either the boatswain or the carpenter of the ship, and this it was that gave me—and no doubt the skipper and mate also—the first specific hint of what was actually wrong aboard the stranger. Nothing, however, was said; and presently, when the boat came rounding under our stern, Captain Martin and Mr Bryce descended to the main deck and awaited our visitors at the gangway, our own steerage passengers, who had crowded the lee rail to see the strange boat come alongside, respectfully making way for them. One only of the boat’s crew—the man in the stern-sheets—ventured to come on deck, the other three staring up at the heads peering down at them from our rail, without saying a word in reply to the multitude of questions that were fired into them, beyond remarking that “the bo’sun will tell your skipper all about it.” The boatswain of the Mercury—for such the newcomer proved to be—passed through our gangway, pulled off the knitted woollen cap which decorated his head, and at once addressed himself to the skipper. “Mornin’, sir,” he remarked. “My name’s Polson—James Polson, and I’m bo’sun of the Mercury, which ship you see hove-to yonder,”—with a flourish of his hand in the direction of the vessel named. “Yes?” said the skipper enquiringly, as the man paused, apparently waiting to be questioned after this introduction of himself. “I see you have a signal of distress flying. What’s wrong with you?” “Well, the fact is, sir, as we’ve lost our cap’n and both mates—” answered the man, when the skipper struck in amazedly: “Lost your captain and both mates! How in the name of Fortune did that happen?” “Well, sir, you see it was this way,” was the reply. “W hen we’d been out about a week—we’re from Liverpool, bound to Sydney, New South Wales, with a general cargo and two hundred emigrants— ninety-seven days out—when we’d been out about a week, or thereabouts—I ain’t certain to a day or two, but it’s all wrote down in the log—Cap’n Somers were found dead in his bunk by the steward what took him in a cup o’ coffee every mornin’ at six bells; and Mr Townsend—that were our chief mate—he took command o’ the ship. Then nothin’ partic’lar happened until we was well this side o’ the Line, when one day, when all hands of us was shortenin’ sail to a heavy squall as had bust upon us, Jim Tarbutt, a hordinary seaman, comin’ down off the main tops’l yard by way o’ the backstays, lets go his hold and drops slap on top o’ Mr Townsend, what happened to be standin’ underneath, and, instead of hurtin’ of hisself, broke t’other man’s neck and killed him dead on the spot! Then,” continued Polson, regardless of the ejaculations of astonishment and commiseration evoked by the recital of this extraordinary accident, “then Mr Masterman, what were origin’lly our second mate, he up and took charge, and navigated us to somewheres about where we are now. But four nights ago come last night—yes, that’s right, it were four nights ago—’bout three bells in the middle watch, while it were blowin’ hard from the west’ard and we were runnin’ under single-reefed topsails, with a very heavy sea chasin’ of us, the night bein’ dark and thick with rain, somebody comes rushin’ out of the poop cabin yellin’ like mad, and, afore anybody could stop him, sprang on to the lee rail, just the fore side of the main riggin’, and takes a header overboard!” More exclamations of astonishment from the listeners, amid which Polson triumphantly concluded his gruesome narrative by adding: “Of course we couldn’t do nothin’, and so the poor feller were lost. And when Chips and I comed to investigate we found that the unfortunit man were Mr Masterman, he bein’ the only one that was missin’!” “Well!” ejaculated the skipper, addressing himself to Mr Moore, our chief mate; “I’ve heard a good many queer yarns in my time, of maritime accident and disaster, but this one tops the lot. The captain and both mates lost in the same voyage, and, so far as the two last are concerned, by such queer accidents too! Did you,”—turning to Polson—“find anything in Mr—what’s his name!— Masterman’s cabin to account for his extraordinary behaviour in rushing out on deck and jumping overboard in the middle of the night?” “No, sir,” answered Polson with much simplicity. “He’d been drinkin’ a goodish bit, and there were a half-empty bottle of rum under his piller; but—” “A–ah!” ejaculated the skipper with a whole world of emphasis; “that may account for a good deal. Well, what happened next?” “Oh, nothin’ else haven’t happened, thank God!” exclaimed the boatswain piously. “But ain’t that what I’ve already told ye quite enough, sir? W hat’s made it so terrible awk’ard for all hands of us is that we’re now without a navigator, and have lost our reckonin’. So, after Chips and I had confabulated a bit, we comed to the conclusion that, knowin’ as we was well in the track of ships bound to the east’ard, the best thing we could do was to heave-to and wait until somethin’ comed along that could spare us somebody to navigate the ship for us to Sydney. Chips and I are men enough to take care of her—to know when to make and when to shorten sail—but we don’t know nothin’ about navigation, ye see, sir.” “Ay, I see,” answered the skipper. “Well, I think you acted very wisely, boatswain, in heaving-to; I don’t know that you could have done anything better, under the circumstances. But, as to sparing an officer to navigate you—I have had the misfortune to lose one of my own mates this voyage, and,”— here his eye happened to fall on me, and he considered me attentively for several seconds, as though he felt he had seen me before somewhere, and was trying to remember who I was. Then his countenance lit up as an idea seemed to strike him, and he addressed me briskly: “W hat d’ye say, Troubridge? You’ve heard this man’s yarn, and understand the fix that they’re in aboard the ship yonder. You are a perfectly reliable navigator, and a very fair seaman; moreover, the boatswain says that he and the carpenter are seamen enough to take care of the ship, which I do not for a moment doubt. Do you feel inclined to undertake the job of navigating the Mercury from here to Sydney? It ought to be a very good thing for you, you know. I have no doubt that the owners—” I did not wait for him to finish; I knew enough to understand perfectly well what a splendid thing it would be for me, from a professional point of view, if I should succeed in safely navigating such a ship as the Mercury to Sydney; and I had no shadow of doubt of my ability to do so; I therefore cut in by eagerly expressing my readiness to undertake the task. “Then that is all right,” remarked the skipper. Turning to Polson, he said: “This young gentleman is Mr Philip Troubridge, one of my midshipman- apprentices. He has been with me for a matter of three years; and he is, as you just now heard me say, an excellent navigator, and a very good seaman. I have not the least doubt that he will serve your purpose quite as well as anyone else that you are at all likely to pick up; and if you care to have him I shall be pleased to spare him to you. But that is the best that I can do for you; as I told you, a little while ago, I have lost one of my mates—” “Say no more, sir; say no more,” interrupted Polson. “Your recommendation’s quite sufficient to satisfy me that Mr—er—Troubridge’ll do very well; an’ since he’s willin’ to come with us we’ll have him most gratefully, sir, and with many thanks to you for sparin’ of him to us.” “Very well, then; that is settled,” exclaimed the skipper briskly. Then, turning to me, he said: “Cut away at once, Troubridge, and get your chest over the side as quickly as possible. If you are smart you may get aboard your new ship in time to take an observation at noon and check your own reckoning by ours.” Then, as I rushed off to the after-house, where we apprentices were berthed, he turned to Polson and proceeded to question him further relative to the extraordinary series of fatalities that had occurred on board the Mercury. Chapter Two. The shadow of coming events. It took me less than ten minutes to bundle my traps into the waiting boat alongside; and then, having already said goodbye to my shipmates in the apprentices’ berth, I stepped up to the skipper and chief mate to say the same, and to thank the former for giving me this splendid chance. He was very kind in bidding me farewell; told me I had given him every satisfaction while I had been with him; gave me a few words of caution and advice; and wound up by saying: “The boatswain, here, tells me that the chronometer aboard the Mercury has unfortunately been allowed to run down; when, therefore, you get aboard, and have taken your meridian altitude, you had better wind the chronometer and then set it to Greenwich time, which I will give you; after which you should experience no difficulty in finding your way to Sydney, to which port I wish you a prosperous and pleasant voyage. Of course I quite reckon upon arriving two or three weeks ahead of you; but unless you have an exceptionally protracted passage you ought to arrive in good time to return home with us. Unless, therefore, the Mercury’s agent in Sydney wishes you to return to England in the ship, you had better make your way to Melbourne as soon as you have settled up, and go back with us.” I thanked him for the kindly send-off that he was giving me, and then, after a final shake of the hand, followed Polson down the side, seated myself in the stern-sheets, and—the boatswain pulling stroke while the other three oarsmen shifted one thwart forward—shoved off, the crew and passengers of the Salamis giving me a little cheer to speed me on my way. The cheer was at once vociferously responded to by the people crowding the Mercury’s rail. No doubt they were greatly relieved at the thought that there was to be no more aimless drifting about the ocean for them, but that at last they were to find themselves again heading intelligently toward their port of destination. By the time that I had arrived alongside the Mercury and mounted to her deck it was getting so close toward noon, that I had only barely time enough to get my traps out of the boat before the moment arrived when I must get to work with my sextant to secure the sun’s meridian altitude, from which to deduce the ship’s latitude. Then there was an even more important job to be done, namely, to start and set the chronometer; therefore, as soon as I had secured my meridian altitude and made it noon aboard the Mercury, we wore ship, and coming up alongside the Salamis—that lay patiently waiting for us with her main topsail aback—obtained the correct Greenwich time and set our chronometer to it. This done, Captain Martin swung his mainyard and made sail, and we followed suit as quickly as we could. Then I worked out my observations, pricked off the ship’s position on the chart, wrote up the log, and took possession of the late captain’s stateroom, by which time dinner was on the cabin table, and I sat down to my first meal on board the Mercury. The food, of course, was not quite so luxurious as that served up on the cuddy tables aboard the Salamis, but it was a long way better than what I had been accustomed to get in the apprentices’ berth, and I appreciated the change accordingly. At the conclusion of the meal, at which Polson joined me, uninvited, while the carpenter stumped the poop as officer of the watch, I went on deck to have a good look at my first command; and, on the whole, was very pleased with her. She was a big ship for her tonnage, having evidently been constructed with an eye to ample cargo stowage rather than speed; consequently she was inclined to be bluff in the bows and full in the run; yet when I looked ahead and saw that the Salamis had only drawn ahead of us by about a mile during the half-hour or so that I had been below, I was by no means dissatisfied. She was evidently an elderly ship, for everything about her in the way of fittings and equipment was old-fashioned; but she was as strong as oak and iron could make her, her scantling being nearly twice as heavy as that of the Salamis. Her bulwarks were almost as high and solid as those of a frigate, and she was pierced to mount seven guns of a side, but no longer carried any artillery on her decks excepting two brass six-pounders for the purpose of signalling. She was very loftily and solidly rigged, and it did not take me long to ascertain that she had been most liberally maintained, much of her rigging, both standing and running, being new, while her ground tackle was ponderous enough to hold a ship of double her size. “Not much chance,” thought I, “of this old barkie dragging her anchors home and driving ashore in anything short of a hurricane!” She carried a full poop, the break of which came so far forward that there was scarcely room to pass comfortably between the foot of the poop ladders and the combing of the after hatch. The poop cabin was a very spacious affair, extending, for the greater part of its length, to the full width of the ship, and it was most comfortably fitted up, although, as might be expected, it lacked the luxurious finish of the Salamis’ cuddy. It looked as though it might at one time have been fitted with staterooms on either side for the accommodation of saloon passengers; but, if so, they had all been removed, save two at the fore and two at the after end of the cabin. And even these were now unoccupied, the boatswain and carpenter occupying the staterooms at the fore end of the structure, in which the chief and second mate had originally been berthed. The captain’s cabin was abaft the saloon, in the extreme after end of the ship, and was an unusually commodious and airy apartment, extending the entire width of the ship, and splendidly lighted and ventilated by a whole range of large stern windows. There was a fine, roomy, standing bed-place on the starboard side, with a splendid chest of drawers under it; a washstand and dressing-table at the foot of it; a large and well-stocked bookcase on the port side; a chart rack occupied the whole of the fore bulkhead; the floor or deck of the cabin was covered with a handsome Turkey carpet; and a mahogany table, big enough to accommodate a large chart, stood in the middle of the apartment. This was where I was to sleep, and to spend in privacy as much of my waking time as I chose. “Truly,” thought I, “this is an agreeable change from my cramped quarters aboard the Salamis!” Having completed the establishment of myself in this luxurious cabin, by turning out my chest and hanging up such of my clothes as I was likely to want immediately, and so on, I went on deck again, where the carpenter, who told me that his name was Tudsbery—“Josiah Tudsbery, your honour, sir,”— was on duty, and requested him to conduct me below to the emigrants’ quarters, which, I found, occupied the whole of the ’tween-decks. Here again the liberality of the ship’s owners became manifest, for the whole fitting up of the place was vastly superior to what was at that time considered good enough accommodation for emigrants; the married quarters consisting of a number of quite comfortable and roomy cabins; while the spaces allotted to the accommodation of the single men and women ensured to their occupants such complete privacy as was deemed quite unnecessary in those days. I found that it was the duty of the emigrants to keep their own quarters clean, and this seemed to have been somewhat neglected of late. I therefore gave orders that all hands should at once turn-to and give the ’tween-decks a thorough cleansing, in readiness for another inspection by myself at eight bells in the afternoon watch. The emigrants aboard the Mercury numbered two hundred all told; namely thirty-three married couples, twenty-eight unmarried women, forty-two unmarried men, and sixty-four children, of whom one—a sweet, good-tempered baby girl—had been born during the voyage. They, the emigrants, seemed to be a very mixed lot, ranging from clod-hopping, agricultural labourers, whose intelligence seemed insufficient to enable them to appreciate the wonder of a flying-fish or the beauty of a golden, crimson, and purple sunset, to individuals of so refined and intellectual an appearance and so polished a behaviour, that the fact of their being ’tween-deck passengers seemed nothing short of a grotesque incongruity. W hen I went below again, at eight bells, to inspect the emigrants’ quarters, I found them sweet, clean, and altogether very much more wholesome than they had been upon the occasion of my first visit, and I expressed my gratification at the change, hinting pretty strongly that I should expect the place to be maintained in that condition for the remainder of the voyage; at which remark one of the occupants—a pale, delicate-looking girl—exclaimed: “Oh, sir, I only hope that you will insist upon that! Some of the people here—especially the men—are shockingly lazy, and would never do a hand’s turn of work if they were not made to.” “I am much obliged to you for the hint,” said I. “I will find out the identity of those especially lazy ones, and see if I cannot imbue them with a good wholesome hatred of idleness before we arrive in the land, where those who won’t work must starve.” By sunset that night the Salamis had slid so far ahead of us that only the heads of her courses were visible above the horizon; and with nightfall we saw the last of her that we were destined to see during that voyage. I suppose it was only natural that I, a lad of barely seventeen years of age, should be full of business, and importance, and anxiety, for a few hours at least, upon finding myself thus unexpectedly placed in a position of such tremendous responsibility as was involved in the navigation, and therefore, to a large extent, the safety of this fine, wholesome old ship with her two hundred passengers, her crew of thirty, and her valuable cargo. At all events, that was the condition of mind in which I found myself as I paced the spacious poop, hour after hour, sometimes accompanied by Polson, sometimes conversing with Tudsbery, and occasionally alone. As I walked, my glances travelled, with the regularity of clockwork, first to windward, then ahead, then aloft, and finally—as I reached the binnacle—into the compass bowl; then away out to windward again, and so on, ad infinitum, until I was fairly bone-weary, and had completely walked off all my anxiety—to say nothing of my importance—and had convinced myself that I really might venture to leave the ship for a few hours to the care of the boatswain and the carpenter. I have mentioned that, when bidding me farewell prior to my change over from the Salamis to the Mercury, Captain Martin was kind enough to give me a word or two of caution and advice; and one of the bits of advice which he most forcibly impressed upon me was that I should make a point of sighting either Saint Paul or Amsterdam island on my way to the eastward, and thus verify my reckoning. I recognised this as being a counsel of wisdom, and determined to shape a course that would enable me to sight both, they being only about fifty miles apart, and both standing high. I therefore very carefully laid off the compass course upon the chart, and found it to be south-east by east three-quarters east, the distance being eight hundred and forty miles; and this course I gave to the helmsman as soon as I had pricked it off and very carefully verified it, while he passed it on to his relief, and so on. But when I turned out at six bells the next morning I found, to my disgust, that the wind had drawn round from the eastward and broken us some four points off our course; while, to add to my vexation, the boatswain and the carpenter—both of them illiterate men—had entered up the log slate in such an extraordinary manner that, so far as the dead reckoning was concerned, the information was not of the slightest use to me. Fortunately for my peace of mind the atmosphere was clear, and I was able to get sights during the forenoon which gave me the ship’s longitude; while, a little later on, a meridian altitude of the sun fixed our latitude for us. Then, for nearly thirty hours, we found ourselves enveloped in one of the densest fogs I ever experienced, with light, baffling variable winds that made of our wake a continual zigzag, winding up with three days of thoroughly foul weather—a whole gale of wind from the north-east—during the greater part of which we lay hove-to under close-reefed fore and main topsails, with our head to the south-east. Then the weather cleared and moderated; the wind gradually worked round, first to east, and then to south-east; and at length I found the ship laying up, close-hauled under all plain sail, for the spot where, according to my reckoning, Saint Paul ought to be. I was now especially anxious to make that island, for the weather of the past three or four days had been of such a character as to baffle the most experienced of navigators, and I confess that I was beginning to feel rather more than a trifle nervous. The island, however, hove into view at the precise moment and in the precise quarter that it ought to do if my reckoning happened to be correct; and this test and verification of the accuracy of my working served to completely re-establish my confidence in myself, so that, from that time onward, I never experienced the least anxiety. I felt that so long as I could get tolerably regular sights of the sun, moon, or stars I was not at all likely to go wrong. But before the island of Saint Paul had climbed up over the horizon that stretched athwart our bows, I had become aware of a certain matter that, while it struck me as being somewhat peculiar, seemed to bear no further significance for me. One of the first persons among the emigrant passengers aboard the Mercury to attract my attention was a tall, thin, long-haired, sickly-looking man, of about thirty years of age, clad in a suit of rusty black, whose appearance and manner generally suggested to me the idea that he must be by profession a schoolmaster. There was a certain air of exaggerated earnestness of demeanour about him, and a wildness of expression in his flashing coal-black eyes, that caused me to set him down as being somewhat crack-brained. His name, I soon ascertained, was Algernon Marcus W ilde, and he was among the first of the emigrants to speak to me. He came to me, on the morning after I joined the ship, with a complaint as to the quality and quantity of the food served out to the occupants of the ’tween-decks; and I was as much struck by the correctness of his speech, as by the excessive indignation which he infused into his manner, when stating the nature of his alleged grievance. I pointed out to him the fact that, whatever the quality of the food might be, I was certainly not responsible for it, nor, in the event of its proving to be unsuitable, could I remedy the matter away out there in mid-ocean; but I promised to investigate the affair, and to do what might be possible to remove the grievance, should I find such to exist—of which I had my doubts after my brief but highly satisfactory experience of the viands served up in the cabin. I accordingly requested the steward to produce the dietary list which formed the basis of the agreement between the owners and the emigrants; and, upon going through it, was certainly unable to find any just cause for complaint, so far as quantity was concerned. The question of quality was of course a different matter; but here again, when, a day or two later, I unexpectedly examined the food as it was being served out at the galley, I was quite unable to discover any legitimate cause for complaint. On the contrary, the food, although plain, was as good as it was possible to obtain in those times aboard a ship that had been at sea a hundred days; and it was excellently prepared. W hen I sent for W ilde, and asked him to state specifically what he found wrong with the food that I had just examined, all he could say was that it was not so good or so varied in character as that which he had seen from time to time carried aft for use in the cabin; and that in his opinion no distinction whatever ought to be made in the treatment of persons occupying different parts of the ship; also that he considered I ought to give instructions for the emigrants to be fed henceforth from the stores provided for cabin use; nor would he be satisfied, although I pointed out that he was getting the food that the owners had undertaken to provide him with in exchange for his passage money. Of course to attempt to argue with so unreasonable an individual was obviously absurd, and I therefore dismissed him and thought nothing more about his complaints. This, however, was not the matter of which I have spoken as gradually obtruding itself upon my attention, although, had I only been able to guess it, the two were not unconnected. W hat I noticed, almost from the first moment of boarding the Mercury, without attaching any particular importance to it, was that this man W ilde and a few of the other male emigrants were in the habit of spending practically the whole of the second dogwatch—which, in fine weather at all events, is usually a period of idleness and recreation for a ship’s crew—on the forecastle-head, smoking and chatting animatedly with the forecastle hands; while at other times the ex-schoolmaster—as Wilde actually proved to be— seemed eternally engaged in earnest discussion with his fellow emigrants. I often wondered idly what the man could possibly find to talk about so incessantly; but usually found a sufficiently satisfactory explanation in the reflection that, being a man of education, he would naturally take pleasure in extracting the ideas of others, and also probably in correcting them according to his own notions. He was evidently very fond of talking; and I frequently amused myself by watching the impassioned earnestness and the eloquent gestures with which he would hold forth upon the subject—whatever it might be—that happened to be under discussion. I soon found that Polson and Tudsbery, the boatswain and carpenter of the ship, apparently found more pleasure in spending the second dogwatch on the forecastle with their shipmates and the emigrants than they did in promenading the poop with me; but this was not surprising, for not only were they both very illiterate men, but it quickly became apparent that they and I had scarcely a single interest or idea in common, and we were consequently often hard put to it to find a topic of congenial conversation; indeed, in the course of a few days, without the slightest ill-feeling on either side, our communications became almost exclusively restricted to matters connected with the business of the ship. Looking back, from the summit of a matured experience, as I now can, upon that first fortnight aboard the Mercury, I often feel astonished that I never, for a single instant, caught the faintest premonition of what was looming ahead; for I can recall plenty of hints and suggestions, had I only been keen- sighted enough to observe them and smart enough to read their significance; but I believe the fact to be that at that time I had no room in my mind for any other thought than that of the navigation of the ship. It is true that for more than a year it had been part of my daily duty, as a midshipman- apprentice qualifying for the position of officer, to take observations of the various heavenly bodies simultaneously with those of Captain Martin and the mates, to work them out independently, and to submit my calculations to the skipper—who examined and returned them with such written comments as he deemed called for—with the result that I had long since become proficient in the science of navigation. But this was a very different thing. If on board the Salamis I had chanced to make a mistake, the worst that could have happened would have been a sharp rebuke from the skipper for my carelessness, and an equally sharp injunction to be more careful in future; whereas now, aboard the Mercury, if I happened to make a miscalculation, there was nobody to correct it; and although subsequent observations might reveal the error, and no actual harm arise from its committal so long as the ship was in mid-ocean, a comparatively trivial mistake committed when the ship happened to be in the vicinity of rocks, or shoals, or approaching land, might easily make all the difference between perfect safety and her total loss, together with that of all hands. Hence, during those early days, when the sense of grave responsibility lay heavy upon my young shoulders, I could think of nothing but more or less abstruse astronomical problems. Chapter Three. An unpleasant surprise. The revelation came upon me, with the stunning effect of a thunder-clap, on the day upon which we made the island of Saint Paul. The weather during the whole of the preceding day had been brilliantly fine, with a light air of wind that, breathing out from the south-east at daybreak, had gradually hauled round until by noon it had settled at south; so that when I took my meridian altitude of the sun for the determination of our latitude, the Mercury was heading straight for the spot where my calculations declared the island to be, with all plain sail set to her royals, and with the weather bracer slightly checked. Upon working out my meridian altitude I found the ship’s latitude to be 38 degrees 43 minutes south and we were steering true east; consequently if my calculations were accurate, we were at that moment on the exact parallel of Saint Paul, which—also according to my calculations—then lay in line with our jibboom, eighty miles distant. This result was confirmed by a further observation of the sun taken in the course of the afternoon watch; and a very simple calculation then informed me that, if I had made no mistake, and there occurred no change in the direction or strength of the wind, the island ought to be sighted, directly ahead, fourteen miles distant, at dawn of the next day. This anticipation I communicated, in my anxiety, to Polson and Tudsbery, the former of whom remarked: “Well, Mr Troubridge, we shan’t have very long to wait afore we’re able to prove the haccuracy of your calculations; but let me tell ye this, sir—if you’re able to hit off that there bit of a hiland anywhere near as close as you hopes to, a’ter all the box-haulin’ about, breakin’ off, heavin’-to, and driftin’ to leeward that we’ve had these here last few days—well, all I can say is that you’re a good enough navigator to take a ship anywhere, ay, if ’twas round the world and back.” “Y–e–es,” said I, flattered a bit off my balance by the fulsome character of the compliment, “there will not be much fault to find, I fancy, after the traverse that we have been working. By the way, Polson, have you ever sighted Saint Paul? I never have, although this is my fifth trip in these seas.” “Well, no, sir; I can’t say as I have,” answered the boatswain. “But,” he continued, peering through the skylight at the cabin clock, “it’s eight bells. I’ll call Chips. I fancies I heard him say that he ’ad sighted it once or twice. I’ll ask him when he comes on deck.” So saying, Polson walked to the bell, where it hung mounted on the rail that guarded the fore end of the poop, struck “eight bells” upon it, and then descended to call the carpenter, with whom he presently returned to the poop. “Yes, Mr Troubridge,” continued the boatswain, as he preceded the carpenter up the weather poop ladder, “Chips, here, says he’ve sighted the hiland twice in his time; but only at a distance.” “Ah!” said I. “Do you think you would recognise it again, Tudsbery?” “Oh, yes, sir; no fear of that,” answered the carpenter confidently. “It’s a peculiar-lookin’ spot, not to be very easily mistook. I remembers that when we last sighted it I heard the mate say to the skipper that it looked pretty much like a dead whale floatin’ high out o’ the water; and he was right; it did. Oh yes, I’ll reckernize it again fast enough, if I claps my eyes upon it, never fear.” “Well,” said I, “I expect it to heave in sight to-morrow at dawn, under the jibboom-end, some fourteen or fifteen miles distant, if the wind and weather last as they are now—which I believe will be the case, since the barometer remains steady. It is your morning watch, isn’t it?” “Yes, sir; my eight hours out to-night,” answered Chips. “Then,” said I, turning to the boatswain, “when you call the carpenter to-morrow morning, at the end of the middle watch, please give me a call also; for, never yet having sighted the island, I should like to be on deck when it heaves into view, and get a good look at it.” “All right, sir,” answered Polson; “I’ll rouse ye out, never fear.” The weather held fine all through that night, with the breeze light but steady at south; when, having been duly called by the boatswain at four o’clock the next morning, I turned out and went on deck, the ship, with her spars almost upright, was sliding very gently along over a sea so smooth that her mastheads seemed scarcely to sway at all among the brilliant stars that thickly jewelled the deep indigo vault overhead. The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main- royal, found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the other. The watch had stowed themselves away somewhere about the fore deck, doubtless taking a quiet catnap somewhere out of reach of the heavy dew, and were not to be seen; but the figure of the lookout on the topgallant forecastle cou...