Project Gutenberg's Round the Galley Fire, by William Clark Russell 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/license Title: Round the Galley Fire Author: William Clark Russell Release Date: April 4, 2020 [EBook #61750] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE BY W. CLARK RUSSELL AUTHOR OF “THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,” “AN OCEAN TRAGEDY,” “ON THE FOK’S’LE HEAD,” ETC. {1} A NEW EDITION London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1893 These stories and sketches originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph. No further preface to them is needed than this statement; for the title under which they are collected will fitly express their character, if the reader can imagine himself one of an audience, in a cold Dog Watch, listening to the yarns of a man who has planted himself in the galley, where he delivers his memories and notions to the little company who have gathered round to listen. CONTENTS. PAGE A Dance at Sea 1 Going Aloft 10 A Trick at the Wheel 22 The Bailiff at Sea 31 Off the Horn 43 A Strange Chase 54 A Salvage Job 66 A Channel Incident 78 Loss of a Smack’s Crew 88 Fire at Sea 98 Sea-Sickness 107 A Log Extract 118 In an Open Boat 127 Waiting for a Ship 138 Skippers’ Wives at Sea 151 Sea Songs 162 An Hour’s Row 173 The Pleasures of Yachting 187 A Drunken Ship 196 A Sailor’s Club 208 The Perils of Humanity 221 Smack Apprentices 232 Gravesend 245 A Chat with a Fisherman 256 A Fourpenny Voyage 266 Poor Jack 276 On the Goodwins 288 The Strangers’ Home 298 ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. A DANCE AT SEA. {2} {3} {5} {4} {6} {7} A large Australian passenger ship, homeward bound from Sydney, New South Wales, lay becalmed in about two degrees south of the line. She had carried the trade-wind to that point, but it had failed her at daybreak, and all day long she had hung upon the whitish-blue of the oil-smooth sea, slightly leaning with the swell that ran through the bosom of the deep with the regularity of a restful respiration, her white canvas softly beating against the yellow masts, which were radiant with lines of fire, and the water bubbling like a fountain under her counter, as the stern of the great fabric was depressed by the heave of the swell under the bows. She was tolerably well crowded with human beings, carrying a large number of passengers in the cuddy and steerage, and some thirty or forty people in the ’tween decks. The poop was sheltered by an awning, and under it, seated on chairs or lounging upon the skylights and the hencoops, were such of the passengers as were privileged to use that portion of the decks, reading, talking, smoking, casting languid eyes upon the breathless ocean; ladies fanning themselves, gentlemen in the airiest possible costumes, and at the extremity of the shadowed deck the steersman grasping the wheel, his figure in the pouring vertical sunshine rising and falling against the rich sapphire of the tropical heavens with the swaying of the ship, and the brilliant brass of the binnacle-hood flashing into flames as it slowly lifted and sank under the eye of the burning luminary. The quarter-deck was partially sheltered by the folds of the mainsail, which hung from the great yard in the grip of the leechlines; and there, wherever the shadows rested, congregated the steerage and ’tween-deck passengers, lolling red-faced and open-breasted. In one place a knot of women with children gathered about them, in another a number of men in their shirt-sleeves sprawling in many postures, and, forward, glimpses of Jack could be caught at work at some job in the waist, or on the forecastle, or in the shadow of the break of his big parlour, or popping his head through the scuttle with a sooty inverted pipe between his teeth to have a look around him, or enjoying a wash-down, stripped to the hips, in a bucket of salt water, screened from the passengers’ eyes by the galley; while the live stock in the long boat filled the air that way with rumbling and squeaking noises, which harmonized with the hoarse pipes of the boatswain standing betwixt the knightheads and bawling instructions to a couple of ordinary seamen on the foretopsail-yard. The day passed with never so much as a shadow upon the sea to give the officer on duty an excuse to sing out to the watch. But nobody could reasonably complain. The ship had rushed grandly into this stagnant ocean under topmast and topgallant studdingsails, and for days and days the roar of foam speeding furiously past and the thunder of the trade-wind sweeping into the spacious concavities of the gleaming cloths had been familiar sounds. This calm was only like giving the ship a little breathing-time. Besides, it would directly serve a very pleasant purpose then in hand, which was simply this. It was the birthday of the daughter of one of the passengers, a rich Australian gentleman. The girl was pretty, charming in manners, and universally liked; indeed, four gentlemen were seriously in love with her, and one of these had suggested that they should celebrate the occasion by a dance. The skipper came promptly into the scheme, and so did the rich Australian papa, who merely stipulated that the dance should be general from one end of the ship to the other, and that he should be at the charge of enough wine to keep the heels of the forecastle and ’tween-decks nimble and up to the mark. They could dance in a calm like this, and the light and regular swell would be rather a help than a hindrance, as the heave of the deck should put additional alacrity into the swing of a waltz or the stampede of a gallop round the hencoops and hatchways. They could muster a little music: a flute, a concertina, and two fiddles, and they also had the cuddy piano. So all that was needful for a sea-ball was at hand, and in the second dog-watch, before the sun went down, they began to prepare for the festivity. There would be a bright moon, and the question whether they should dance in its light, like the Buffalo girls, or keep the awning spread, had been earnestly debated at luncheon and dinner. It was decided, however, to let the awning stand—first, because it would keep the dew from the deck; and, secondly, because the lanterns would show to advantage in its shadow. At the appointed time, therefore, the sailors came along to rig up the lanterns, as many as they had, sidelights, cabin-lamps, and the like. Any departure from regular routine delights Jack, and his grin is never broader nor his whispered jokes more explosive than at such times. Besides, he was to dance presently, and he tumbled through the preparations like a man in a hurry to enjoy himself. The sun went down—a mass of glorious splendour—flinging up the glass-smooth water until the western horizon all that way looked to be twenty leagues distant, and shedding a haze of purple gold far to the eastward of the zenith that tinted the mighty expanse of ocean with a delicate crimson which yielded fast to the eager stride of the tropical night, though darkness was in the east, and the large tremulous silver stars were sparkling upon its deep ebony bosom, and the white snow-like moon was floating in the pure deep shadows in the south and whitening the water with a slender stream of icy light, when the west was still ardent with the fires of the vanished day-beam. The cool of the night was immediately felt in the air, and now the circling draughts thrown down upon the decks by every flap of the lower canvas could be felt and enjoyed. With the row of lanterns along the poop, here a red and there a green one, mingling with the yellow radiance of the other lamps, the lustrous pearl of the moonlight on the main deck and forecastle, and the drowsily-flapping sails lifting their pale heights to the stars, the ship was a picturesque object indeed. The musicians posted themselves against the rail at the break of the poop, so that all hands could hear their strains and dance to them; and everything being ready, they dashed into a waltz, keeping very good time, and accompanied (after a fashion) by the piano in the cuddy, the notes of which rose very clearly through the open sky-lights. Aft, of course, there was the necessary decorum, ladies and gentlemen gliding over the smooth planking and skimming along with great propriety, and with a more or less tolerable exhibition of art. But on the main deck and forecastle shore customs were not very strictly adhered to. Women danced with women, men with men; the children hopped to and fro, clapping their hands and getting in the way; here and there a sailor would be showing off his paces in a lonely dance, slapping the deck with his heels in a hornpipe without the least reference to the music, which, so long as it kept going, was all the same to him, no matter what dances it played. The steward and his mates bustled about with wine and glasses; but the wine was light, and Jack, and many of the steerage and ’tween-deck passengers too, no doubt, were seasoned, and the mild refreshment did no further mischief than impart a sense of festivity. They say, and I can well believe, that a prettier sight was never seen than all those people dancing, and laughing, and enjoying themselves on the decks of that becalmed and sleeping Australian vessel. You must figure yourself taking your stand on one of the poop-ladders, say, clear of the awning, where, looking aft, you could see the row of lanterns and the dancers shifting their colours as they swept round into the rays of the green and red lamps, with little floods of moonlight here and there upon the deck under the awning; and beyond, the man at the wheel, standing there like a bronze figure, the binnacle lamp softly touching his shape with light, and making his image clear against the stars which slowly slided to and fro, past him; or where, looking forward, you commanded the {8} {9} {10} {11} vessel to the very eyes of her, whence the great bowsprit and long jibbooms forked into the gloom like a spear pointed by a giant, on which the row of jibs glimmered as they soared into the pale obscurity. On those decks the moonlight lay broad; but in places shone a yellow light which, with the moonshine, threw twin-shadows upon the silvered planks, and the shadows of the rigging were sharp and black, and scored the sails as though they were ruled with lines of India ink. The crowd of big spare booms over the galley, the outline of the huge windlass barrel under the forecastle, the solid masts piercing the night and bearing on high their vast stretches of symmetrical canvas, from which an occasional shower of dew would fall when the sails came in to the masts, loomed large and vague in the moonlight; there was something of shadowiness, too, in the figures of the dancers as they swayed in crowds between the bulwarks, and frollicked on the forecastle, with frequent bursts of hearty laughter and loud calls, which were thrown back in light echoes from the lofty sails. The musicians varied the dances often, but it was all one to the sailors and the steerage passengers, and whilst the cuddy people were staidly stalking through quadrilles or decorously gyrating in waltzes or hopping gravely through a mazurka, the company on the main deck kept steadily to galops and polkas—this last, a beloved dance among sailors—floundering against each other, capsizing over the children, spinning around the main hatch and through the galley, and awaking the echoes of the forecastle with their active toeing and heeling. But it was impossible to look abroad upon the vast and vague distances of the dark sea, upon whose horizon, down to the very water’s edge, the stars were shining like fireflies, without a mingling of melancholy in the thoughts. How small a speck that ship made in the midst of the lonely leagues of ocean! how minute a theatre sufficed for the revelry of near upon two hundred human souls! The contrast between the sounds in the vessel and the deep silence upon the sea was defined to a degree such as no pen could give expression to. The silence was like the night itself, a near and impervious envelopment which absorbed the shouts and laughter of the dancers as a stone flung at a mound of snow vanishes in it. The water against the ship’s side looked thick and black and sluggish as liquid pitch, but now and again the wash of the swell would set it on fire with phosphorous, that poured away under the surface in bright illuminated clouds, which sparkled and faded until they vanished utterly and the water was black again. Once an exclamation from the second mate, who was looking over the rail at the sea, brought several dancers to his side, and, following the indication of his outstretched finger, they perceived a fiery oval shape sneaking stealthily along towards the bows of the ship. “Only a shark, ladies, hoping that some of us may waltz ourselves overboard;” and, merrily laughing, the dancers drew away and fell to their prancings afresh. But presently, and in the midst of all this gaiety, the stream of moonlight in the south-west sea—a reflection that had hung like a cone of solid silver without a breath to tarnish the exquisite polish of its surface—trembled, and the water on either hand of it took a deeper shadow. Overhead the sails were silent, and a faint air streamed athwart the poop under the awning. The skipper, a fine- looking, hearty seaman, swung himself abreast of the officer in charge, with his arm still clasping the waist of his partner, said something in a low voice, and whisked off again. The officer walked to the break of the poop, and his loud cry startled the dancers on the main deck for a moment. “Trim sail, the watch! Lay aft some hands, and man the starboard main braces. Wheel, there; how’s her head?” “North-west by north, sir.” And now some new strains were added to those produced by the musicians. The rough voices of seamen rounding in the braces rose harshly, and the measures of the dance music were somewhat perplexed by the sharp cries of “Belay all that!” “Haul taut to wind’ard!” “Too much the royal yard. Slacken a bit to leeward!” But the dancers, to whose ears those cries were as familiar as their fingers were to their eyes, went on footing it bravely. The decks grew steady and slightly inclined; the sails had fallen asleep, and there was not a stir among the pallid folds; a pleasant sound of tinkling water came up from the ship’s side, and under the counter a narrow wake of green fire crawled away, with little eddies of foam twinkling among the ghastly sparkles of the phosphorus. But the musicians began to slacken; the piano had given over, and Jack had lighted his pipe forward, and was beginning to remember that his watch below would be up in two hours. By-and-by a bell was rung in the cuddy, and those who looked through the skylight saw that the grog and the biscuits were on the table. The music ended suddenly, and the fiddlers and the others gathered around the cuddy door, where they were received by the steward, who handed them each a glass of liquor. In twos and threes the steerage and ’tween-deck passengers went below, and in half an hour the ship’s decks were deserted save by the steersman, the pacing officer of the watch, and some dark figures leaning over the head-rail, visible from the poop under the arched foot of the foresail. Up through the booby and main hatches would come fitfully the sound of a child crying, or a woman’s voice talking low, or the growling hum of men; otherwise the silence was profound, the ship like a phantom in the moonlight, and nothing audible aloft but the moan of the tropical night breeze in the rigging, with now and again the creak of a sheave as the light swing of the swell hove the great ship very gently to windward, and brought an extra strain upon the taut sheets. GOING ALOFT. Some time ago, when the Queen was at Osborne, her Majesty visited a troopship in her yacht the Alberta. Her Majesty’s ship Hector, lying in Cowes Roads, manned yards in honour of the royal presence. One of the men got as high as the main truck and stood upon it. The main truck is a small circular platform—varying in diameter, of course, according to the size of the ship—fixed on the royal masthead, the highest point of the mast. Sometimes it has holes in it, through which halliards are rove for hoisting flags. The trucks of the Hector, I was told, are furnished with iron staffs, so that the sailor who stood on the main truck had something to lay hold of. But this diminishes nothing of the wonder of the feat. The nerve required coolly to stand upon a small circumference at a prodigious elevation is one thing; the more extraordinary feature of that achievement lies, it would strike a landsman, in the man’s getting over and on to the truck, and then kneeling and swinging himself off it and down upon the royal rigging. In the fine old song of the “Leap for Life,” the skipper’s son gets upon the main truck and stands there, holding on with his eyelids. To save his life he is ordered to jump, and the dog follows him overboard and picks him up. The order to that boy was a sensible one, for though it is perfectly true that he {12} {13} {14} {15} {16} {17} had managed to get upon the truck, it was really impossible that he should get off it without falling. In truth, going aloft is one of the hardest parts of the sea-life at the first start. Seamen who were active, courageous men enough, have told me that it took them months to vanquish their nervousness; and many a young fellow has given up the sea after the first voyage simply because he never could overcome the purely physical infirmity of giddiness the moment he had his feet in the ratlines. In “Redburn,” one of Herman Merivale’s delightful sea tales, this weakness is illustrated in an incident narrated with wonderful power. A young man, named Harry Bolton, ships for the return voyage from Liverpool. He is rated as an ordinary seaman, but his friend notices that when any work has to be done aloft, Harry is always busy about the belaying pins, making fast the clewlines, etc. At last he candidly owns to his friend that he has made a private trial of it, and that he cannot go aloft; that his nerves would not allow of it. But this does not save him. One day the mate ordered him to mount to the main truck and unreeve the short signal halliards. Where the ends of the halliards came is not stated, but one might think that the royal yard would have been high enough for the unfortunate young man to have clambered, even if the crosstrees would not have done. Be this as it may, Harry Bolton hesitates, is rope’s-ended by the mate, finally springs into the main-rigging and gets as high as the maintop. When there he looks down, and his heart instantly fails him. The pitiless mate thereupon orders a Dutch sailor to follow and help him up, which the Dutchman does with his head, batting at the base of his back and hoisting him along in that way. “Needs must,” continues the narrator, “when the devil drives; and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin signal halliards— scarcely bigger than common twine—were flying in the wind. ‘Unreeve,’ cried the mate; I saw Harry’s arm stretched out—his legs seemed shaking in the rigging, even to us down on deck; and at last, thank heaven! the deed was done. He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes and every limb quivering.” Sailors will know there is no exaggeration in all this. Some beginners will run up aloft like monkeys, others will get into the shrouds and stand there, hanging back and looking up, and holding on as if they meant, to use an old sea phrase, to squeeze all the tar out of the ropes. There is not, perhaps, any worse cruelty practised on board ship than that of driving a nervous lad aloft. In former times there was a custom called pricking—a sailor got behind a boy and forced him up by digging into him with a pin or a “pricker.” It is, perhaps, scarcely worth while, nowadays, to speak of such things—the sailing ship is dying out, and the steamer gives but little work to do aloft; but there are few men who have followed the sea who cannot recall cases of exquisite suffering in nervous boys hurried and pricked and thrust up the rigging. One instance I remember—that of a lad of thirteen, who was shipped in an Australian port. He was ordered on to the foreroyal yard along with another youngster. It was his first journey up the masts, and when he was half-way up the shrouds he came to a dead stop. The boatswain sung out to him to look alive and go on. The poor little chap, with shaking hands and a face like the foam alongside, footed it as high as the futtock shrouds, where he halted, looking up at the overhanging platform of the top. “Over you go,” shouted the boatswain from the forecastle. “I can’t, sir; indeed I can’t, sir!” cried the little fellow piteously. “We’ll see about that,” said the boatswain, and called to an ordinary seaman to help him up. This youth was a brute, and when he reached the clinging boy he began to pinch him in the legs, and pulled out his sheath-knife and threatened to stab him if he did not go over the top. It was a big top, the angle of the mast—the wind being abaft the beam—was a small one, and the futtock shrouds stretched away from the boy like the ribs of an open umbrella from the stick. The miserable little fellow, terrified by the sight of the knife behind him, laid hold of the long irons and made a swing with his legs at the ratlines, missed them, vibrated a moment or two like a pendulum, and then dropped past the outstretched hand of the sailor below him like a flash, striking the shrouds, and rebounding as a ball might overboard. He was drowned, of course. But as steamers multiply and the number of sailing ships decreases, going aloft will become the least and most infrequent of sea duties. Practical seamanship, in the old sense, is bound to die out, because there is no need to preserve it. It was only the other day that an old skipper assured me that he was acquainted with the mate of a steamer who did not know what a harness-cask was, “and, worst of all, sir,” cried my friend, “he’s not ashamed of his ignorance.” It is true that harness-casks have not much to do with seamanship; but one may excuse a shipmaster of the old school for taking a very gloomy view of the contemporary marine when he meets a man holding a master mariner’s certificate, ignorant of the receptacle in which Jack’s salt horse is kept when he is at sea. Most of the steamers nowadays are monkey-rigged, many of them with pole-masts, which are useful mainly as derricks upon which a little bit of fore and aft canvas will be hoisted to steady the vessels. What should men who serve in such ships know about going aloft? Even a landsman may comprehend the emotion excited in a seaman who has passed his life in sailing ships when he sees sailors without any spars or rigging to attend to, and with nothing to do but to wash decks down. Nearly all the work of the traditional mariner lies aloft, and to reflect upon Jack without dead-eyes to turn in, chafing gear to look after, reef-points to knot, rigging to tar, masts to stay, studdingsail gear to reeve, and the like, is almost as confounding as to think of him sleeping aft, eating fresh meat throughout the run, and going to the steward for a can of filtered water, instead of to the capstan for his eight bells caulker of fiery black rum. No doubt things are pleasanter as they are. It must be nice to turn in with the certainty of having the whole of your watch below, instead of going to bed in your sea-boots in readiness for the thundering of a handspike, and the cruel roar of “All hands shorten sail!” And yet, to the true sailor, going aloft is so much the part of his life, it is so complete a condition of his vocation, that when such a man finds himself aboard a steamer with nothing to take notice of above his head, it may be supposed that at the first going off he is as fully bewildered as a steamer’s man—that is, a man who has never served in anything but steamers—would be among the ropes of a full-rigged ship, taken aback with her studding sails abroad. He will miss the old songs at the reef tackles, the flapping of canvas, the thud of coils of halliards and clew-lines flung down on deck, the springing into the shrouds, the helter-skelter for the weather earing, or the ascent of the topgallant mast that jumps to the flogging of the clewed-up sails. There is a touch of wild excitement in going aloft in heavy weather, which no seaman can be insensible to; just as in a calm day or night a man may find a strange pleasure in lingering a few moments aloft after he has done his work, and looking down. The labour of reefing has been greatly diminished by the double topsail yards, which halve the great sails, so that when the halliards of the upper yards are let go, the ship is under close-reefed topsails. Moreover, there is only half the weight of the sail to handle in reefing or stowing. This valuable contrivance makes the task of shortening sail light in comparison with what the labour was in the days of the whole topsail. Old seamen will remember what that kind of canvas involved in a ship of fourteen or fifteen hundred tons, manned by about eighteen or twenty men, capable of doing sailors’ work aloft. {18} {19} {20} {21} It is the second dog watch. The royals and mizzen-topgallant sail have been furled, but the wind comes in freshening puffs, the sky has a menacing look away out on the starboard beam, and at eight bells all hands are kept on deck to roll up the mainsail and topgallant sails, and tie a single reef in the fore and mizzen topsails. The sea washes noisily against the weather bow, and the night settles down as black as a pocket; but the ship is tolerably snug, there is no great weight of wind as yet, and the watch below are dismissed to the forecastle. They have been an hour in their hammocks or bunks, when, on a sudden, the scuttle is rudely flung open, and a loud cry summons them on deck. They are up in a moment, scarcely waiting to pull on their jackets, for the instant they are awake they perceive that the vessel is on her beam ends, and they can hear the thunder of a gale of wind raging overhead. All three topsail halliards have been let go, and the watch are yelling out at the reef-tackles, the skipper shouting at the mizzen-rigging, the chief mate bawling from the break of the poop, and the second mate and boatswain roaring in the waist and on the forecastle. The sea is flying heavily over the weather rail of the prostrate ship, and adding its peculiar bursting noise to the din of the furiously-shaken canvas, to the deafening booming of the wind, and the hoarse long-drawn cries of the sailors hauling upon the ropes. You can barely see the weather shrouds, though to leeward their black lines are plain enough against the washing heights of foam which swell up as high as the rail of the bulwarks. You do not feel the force of the gale until you are in the rigging, and then for a spell the iron-hard pressure of it pins you against the shrouds as if you had been made a spread-eagle. The rain drives along in slashing horizontal lines, and you see the sparkle of the deluge over the skylight where the light of the cabin lamp is shining; or, maybe, the gale is charged with sleet and hail, and the cold so tautens your fingers that you can scarcely curl them to the shape of the rope you grasp. Over the top you swarm in company with the rest of your watch, perhaps getting a blow on the head from the heel of some fellow above you as you lay yourself backwards to swing over the futtock shrouds; and then, finding the weather side of the topsail yard with as many hands on it as are needed, you pass over to leeward, where you find the boatswain or third mate astride of the yard-arm, ready for the cry of “Haul out to leeward,” to pass the earing. At such a time as this a man has too much to do to look about him; the ship is brought close to shake the sail, that the men may get the reef-bands against the yard, otherwise the canvas stands out to the force of the gale in a surface as round as St. Paul’s dome, and so hard and tense that it would serve as a platform for a ball-room. In the whole-topsail days I have seen half a dozen men standing upon the canvas in the slings and quarters trying to stamp the sail down to bring the reef points within reach without so much as dinting the wind-swollen convexity. Still it is possible to knot a reef- point, and take a look round and below. It is a wonderful scene; no landsman can conceive of its wild and awful majesty. The ship surges heavily through the black heavings, and with every headlong plunge fills a wide circumference of the far-down ebony waters with a furious swirling of foam, in the midst of which her long narrow shape is distinctly visible. Overhead is a dim vision of naked spars and yards, reeling in the boisterous void in whose gloom it is just possible to trace the outline of huge black clouds rushing past like folds of swiftly-carried smoke. The yard on which you stand is at an angle of thirty or thirty-five degrees, and every lean-down of the slender fabric that supports the immense superstructure of masts threatens to submerge the point of it, astride of which—riding it as a horse—sits the seaman who takes the lee-earing; and his figure and that of the fellow beneath swinging on the flemish-horse, and those of the row of men who overhang the yard, and who chorus with a kind of shriek that rings athwart the yelling of the gale to the cry from the weather yard-arm of “Light over to windward!” are marked like pen-and-ink drawings upon white paper against the snow of the seas which stretch from the ship’s side into the darkness. But this is only one aspect of “going aloft.” Another—if the bowsprit and jibbooms may be included under the head of the word “aloft”—is that of laying out to furl, let me say the outer jib, when it has come on to blow hard enough to make the stowing of that sail necessary. From the masthead you see the ship under you; you can watch her hull flying through the sea, mark the glorious white of the foam that bursts from her bows and races in a broad band astern, and behold the ship in her noble solitude amid the tenantless world of waters whose pale green skirts lean against the hazy azure of the remote heavens. But on the jibboom you have the ship rushing at you, as it were; her cutwater seems to bear right down upon you; you see her coppered forefoot gleaming with a greenish tinge through the glass-clear water whose surface it divides into two feather-shaped fountains, whose seething and hissing and prismatic summits arch away from the glossy bends. And now, as she dips with a glorious rush into the hollow over whose yawning gloom you are poised as you overhang the jibboom, the half-buried bows break the sea into smoke, and yeast, and snow; the white and hissing mass, splendid with sunshine or rendered more vivid yet by the dark green of the seas along which it is sent rolling, roars and runs ahead of the ship as far as the flying jibboom, where its impetus fails and the soaring vessel swings over it, rising almost noiselessly over the thick froth, and in a breath it is passed, whilst you look down along the sloping deck from the forked-up boom and mark how like a creature of instinct the noble ship seems to be gathering herself together for the next headlong jump, her copper shining to windward, her black sides lustrous as a curried hide with the whirling spray, her leaning masts full of thunder on high, the white sails hard and still as carven marble, no sound reaching you but the regular wash of the spurned and trampled waters under the bows, the rude and clear moaning of the wind in the rigging, and the complaining of massive timbers as the stem of the ship lengthens in a steady upheaval, and then crushes down until the torn and sobbing billows of foam are flashing their white feathers over the head-boards. Or jump aloft to loose, let us say, the mizzen royal after the tropical squall has gone away to leeward, and left the clear moon shining in a purified heaven of indigo, and striking a cone of silver glory in the dark sea whose northern waters are studded with flakes of light from the great stars. It is the middle watch; you have overhauled your clewlines, the yard has been hoisted over your head, you come down the topgallant rigging into the crosstrees, and linger there a few moments. All is silent on deck; the helmsman stands motionless at the wheel; you hear the faint jar of the tiller chains; you mark the delicate nimbus of light round the binnacle hood. Nowhere is the mystery wrought by the magical beams of the moon felt so much as at sea. The pearl-like radiance steeps the fabric of the ship in an atmosphere of soft light as illusive as the clouds of phosphorescent fires which break from her sides as she leans with the swell. The movements of the sails are like the flapping of phantom wings; and not a sigh of air, not a sound of chafing rope, not a voice calling suddenly from the distant deck, but seems to take from the moonlight and the measureless and impenetrable spaces of the deep, and the immense and enfolding silence of those far-off waters, a character of unreality that makes them seem the very phantasm and mockery of the things they veritably are. A man might linger a long hour at the altitude of the crosstrees among the shadows of the moonlit, placid ocean night without weariness. Better than the loftiest and loneliest cliff is the mast head of a ship for the surveyal of the sublime and mighty surface on which she floats, for you rock in unison with the breathings of the deep; you are upon her great heart, and every beat of it is marked by {22} {23} {24} {25} {26} a stately motion of the towering masts against the stars; phosphoric outlines of huge fish haunt the sluggish wake; or a sound as of a long, deep-drawn respiration denotes the neighbourhood of a leviathan whose vast proportions, as they heave in the broad silver stream of moonlight, resemble the hull of a ship keel up, driven to the surface by some hidden power and slowly settling downwards again. These are some of the excitements and some of the quiet pleasures of “going aloft.” It is, no doubt, a highly sentimental view of the duty, and sailors who have had to let go the reef points, and beat their hands against the yards to drive life enough into their fingers to enable them to hold on, may consider that a very different representation of that kind of work would recommend itself a good deal more than this to their experience. Very possibly. But retrospection is apt to make us tender; and since “going aloft” must in the course of time—unless the shipbuilders change their minds—become a thing of the past, it is worth while spending a few minutes in trying to discover what there was of poetry and the picturesque in that old obligation of the marine life in the discharge of which the English sailor has always proved a shining example to all mariners. Even now—in these days when the steam-engine has so eaten into our maritime habits that a sailing-ship is looked upon as a kind of wonder of other times—do we not find Jack doing honour to his Queen by standing erect upon the main truck? But, oh! master mariners, mates, boatswains, and able seamen, all you who have youngsters under your charge or among you as shipmates, have mercy upon the timid lad, give him time to feel his way aloft, show him the lubber’s hole, and remember that many a first-rate sailor has faltered at the outset, and gazed with horror and despair at those giddy heights whose summits seemed to his boyish gaze to pierce the sky. A TRICK AT THE WHEEL. I remember a seaman, who had served for years both in sailing and steamships, telling me that never in all his life did he remember the like of the impression produced upon him one night when he was at the helm of a large ocean passenger steamer. He described the darkness; the occasional scattering of red sparks blown low down upon the sea on the lee beam; the glimmer of white water here and there out in the windy gloom; the silence aboard the vessel, disturbed only by the muffled beating of the engines and the seething of water washing in snow from under the bows; and he told me how all these things, combined with the thought that under his feet there lay sleeping a whole crowd of men and women, made him feel as though he and the ship and the great wind-swept shadow through which she was speeding, were portions of a phantom world, and that nothing was real and sentient but the compass, whose illuminated card stood out upon the gloom like a composant at a ship’s yard-arm. I can conceive of many a strange, fanciful thought coming into a sailor’s mind as he stands grasping the wheel in the lonely night watch, and I say this with a plentiful knowledge of the seaman’s prosaic and unsentimental character. A man must be but a very short way removed from a four-footed animal not to feel at times the wonderful and subduing spell which the ocean will fling over the human soul; and being at the wheel will give him the best chance of yielding to the nameless witchery, for at such a time—in most cases—he is alone, no one accosts him, the gloom falls down and blots out the figure of the officer of the watch, and completes the deep sense of solitude that is to be got from a spell at the helm on a dark and quiet night at sea. I cannot but think that the spirit of the deep is brought, at such a time, nearer to you aboard a sailing than aboard a steamship. The onward-rushing fabric that is impelled by engines demands incessant vigilance; she may be off her course even in the time that a man takes to lift his eyes to mark a flying meteor; there are no moments of rest. But in a sailing-ship you have the moonlit night and burnished swell heaving up in lines of ebony out of the visionary horizon, where the stars are wanly winking, until it rolls in billows of sparkling quicksilver under the wake of the bland and beautiful luminary; there is not a breath of air aloft, though little creepings of wind circle softly about the decks as the pallid surfaces of canvas swing in and out with the leaning of the ship; the moonlight lies in pools of light upon the planks, and every shadow cast upon those pearl-like surfaces is as black and sharp and clear as a tracing in ink; the after portions of the sails are dark as bronze, but looking at them forward they rise into the air like pieces of white satin, soaring into a stately edifice full of delicate hurrying shadows which resemble the streaky lustre on the inside of an oyster-shell as the cloths swell out or hollow in with the drowsy motion, and crowned with the little royals, which seem to melt even as the eye watches them like summer clouds upon the heaven of stars. Moments of such repose as this you will get in a sailing-ship. Who that has stood at the wheel at such a time but remembers the soft patter of reef-points upon the canvas, the frosty twinkling of the dew upon the skylights and rail, the hollow sob of the swell under the counter as the ship heaves her stern, and the tiller-chains rattle, and the wheel jumps to the echo of the groan of the rudder-head? It is the middle watch; eight bells were struck a quarter of an hour since; the watch on deck are forward, coiled away anywhere, and nothing stirs on the forecastle; the officer on duty walks the starboard side of the deck, for the yards are braced to port, and that makes a weather deck where the mate is pacing, sleepily scratching the back of his head, and casting drowsy glances aloft and at the sea. The moon is low in the west, and has changed her silver into copper, and will be gone soon. The calm is wonderfully expressed by the reflection she drops; the mirrored radiance streams towards you like a river of pallid gold, narrow at the horizon and broadening, fan-shaped, until it seems within a biscuit’s throw of the ship, where it vanishes in a fine haze; but on either hand of it the water is as black as ink, while the lustre of the moon has quenched the stars all about her, and left the sky in which she hangs as dark as the ocean. The setting orb carries the mind with it. The eye will seek the light, and it is a kind of instinct that makes a man watch the sinking of the moon at sea, when there is a deep repose in the air and nothing to hinder his thoughts from following the downward-sailing orb. Many a time have I watched her, and thought of the old home she would be shining upon; the loved scenes she would be making beautiful with her holy light. There is nothing in life that gives one such a sense of distance, of infinite remoteness, as the setting of the sun or moon at sea. It defines the immeasurable leagues of water which separate you from those you love with a sharpness that is scarcely felt at other times. It is the only mark upon the circle of the ocean, and courts you into a reckoning which there is something too vague in the bare and infinite horizon to invite. As one bell strikes the moon rests her lower limb upon the horizon, and her reflection shortens away from the ship’s side as the red fragment of disc sinks behind the black water-line. In a few seconds nothing but a speck of light that glows like a live ember is visible; and when that is quenched the faint saffron tinge that hung about the sky {27} {28} {29} {30} {31} when the moon was setting dies out and the whole circumference of the ocean is full of the blackness of night. The ship makes but a ghostly shape. The stars are there, but a haze floats like a veil under them; the diamond-dust that glittered in the hollow caverns of the firmament is eclipsed, and the planets are rayless and sickly in their defined and blueish-coloured forms. A fold of deeper darkness seems to have swept along in the wake of the vanished moon, and the officer of the watch coming up to the binnacle takes a brief look at the card, and then goes to the quarter and stands there softly whistling, while the canvas aloft echoes with a louder note, and the rolling of the ship breaks the water under her counter into foam that seethes sharply and expires quickly. Black as the water is out on the starboard bow you notice a shadow upon it that gives a fresh shade, a further profundity, to the jetty obscurity, and in a few moments the sails aloft fall asleep as though the wand of a magician had been waved over the swaying spars and a soft air comes blowing over the rail. “All aback forrards!” rings out a hoarse voice, and the cry finds an echo in the hollow canvas. The mate runs along the deck bawling out orders to flatten in the head-sheets and square the after yards, and so forth; the men come out of a dozen corners, coils of rigging are flung down, songs are raised, sheaves squeal as the yards are swung, topsail sheets rattle, and all is bustle and hurry. Meanwhile the wind freshens with a moan in the gathering gust, and the ship leans under it as her headsails fill, and she pays off. Presently the yards are braced round, the vessel brought to her course, and the wind is found to be a point free. The decks are still full of life, tacks have to be boarded, “small pulls” are wanted here and there, and the running gear has to be coiled away; the light from the binnacle lamp puzzles your eye, and when you lift your gaze from the illuminated card the darkness seems to stand around you like a wall; but the compass is there to tell you that the ship heads her course. You would know with your eyes blindfolded, by the mere feel of the helm, that everything is drawing, and amidst the calls of the mate and the songs of the sailors you can hear the sloppy sound of flat falls of water under the weather bow, and the hiss of exploding bubbles, and the faint wash of froth churned up by the rudder below you. Two bells are struck, and all is quiet once more. The skipper has been on deck, talked with the mate, pushed his bronzed face betwixt you and the binnacle, and after a few turns and several prolonged looks aloft and around the sea, has gone below again. The wind has steadily freshened, and the ship, under all plain sail, heels amid the darkness like a leaning column of white vapour. So softly she sweeps through the snow with which she girdles her shapely length, curtseying with queenly grace as she runs over the long-drawn undulations out of whose inky coils the wind is striking phosphoric sparks, that she steers herself; you have nothing to do but keep hold of the spokes, and let the breeze blow the noble fabric along. The deep gloom is full of strange sounds now that the seamen are forward, and all is silent aft. A spirit-like minstrelsy echoes down from the glimmering inclined heights like a far-off chorus of human voices; the wind is full of the mysterious sound. It does not appear to come from the ship, but from a group of invisible ghostly creatures sailing through the air over the mastheads, and setting the moaning voices and sobbing wash of the ocean to melodies which may easily seem to make this darkness belong to the night of a world peopled by phantoms and creatures without similitude in human knowledge. Hark! how plaintive is the song of the bow-wave that falls in an arch of green fire from the shearing stem, and rolls aft in a white swirl, interlaced with fitful and sullen flashes of phosphoric light! But the breeze freshens yet; you cannot count a dozen stars in the void of gloom overhead, the music aloft takes a clearer note, straining sounds are audible as the passing swell rolls the ship to windward, the white water under the main sheet rises closer to the scuppers and flashes fast and far from under the counter into the blackness over the stern. An order is sharply bawled out, and some hands come tumbling aft and jump into the mizzen rigging to roll up the cross-jack. A hoarse song reaches you from the forecastle as the flying jib downhaul is manned, and at the same moment the fore and mizzen royal halliards are let go. You hear this canvas flapping in the gloom amid the chorus of the men on the crossjack yard as they trice up the bunt. There must be no more wool-gathering with you now. The wheel is giving you as much work as you want; every now and again a smart kick stiffens your arms into iron, and you begin to feel that your jacket will have to come off soon. For some time nothing more is done, but the watch keep on their feet and stand about ready for the next call, which they know will not be long delayed. The sea to windward is full of white glancings, and the breaking heads make a vague light of their own which gives you a sight of the water for some distance. The canvas that has been taken off the ship counts for nothing; the main royal is still on her, and she is heeling over like a racing yacht, striking the bow swell with a stem that hisses like red-hot iron, and shattering the coils of liquid jet into foam, which widens out on either hand of her into a storm of snow, in the midst of which the flying hull of the vessel is as clearly traced as were the shadows of her rigging in the moonlight, while her iron-hard distended canvas is full of the low thunder of the pouring blast, and her forecastle is dark with flying spray that sweeps over the rail and strikes the deck like a hail storm. It is noble sailing, and this booming and hooting ocean night wind is something to be made the most of while it lasts; but it gives you at the wheel as much occupation as you relish. It is like drawing teeth to “meet her” as the swell sweeps the ship round; and at last the captain, who is again on deck, and who has been standing at the binnacle for five minutes, sings out for another hand to come aft to the wheel. A figure tumbles along in a hurry and stations himself to leeward of you; and thereupon your work, though it is by no means half as easy again, becomes considerably lighter than it was. “Hold on a minute, Bill,” says your mate, and he feels over his pocket for a chew of tobacco. The quid found and properly stowed away in his cheek, your companion resumes his grasp of the wheel, and in the haze of the binnacle lamp you may see his leathern jaws working like an old cow chewing the cud as he mumbles over the black fragment, sometimes directing a doleful squint at the compass, sometimes looking astern, while he helps you to put the wheel up or down, that you may keep the course swinging fair with the lubber’s mark. But the ship is being overdriven. At one bell it was a dead calm; it is not three bells yet, and here is the sea white with wind, and the vessel roaring through the smother with the blast thundering like a hurricane in the sails. “In main royal and mizzen topgallant sail.” The canvas rattles like an old waggon over a stony street as the clewlines are manned, and whilst furling it the foretopgallant halliards are let go. What other sails are taken in you do not know, for the ship wants much clever watching, and the skipper is at hand to bring you up with a round turn if the vessel should be a quarter of a point off her course. Being eased, she steers more comfortably, but whole topsails and courses and main-topgallant sail are ru...