Afloat at Last Part 12

"Just so," he answered; "and, similarly, we sailors in estimating the length of a voyage, do not take into consideration our pa.s.sage along the river and down channel, only counting our distance from the last point of land we see of the country we are leaving and the first we sight of that we're bound to. Our first day's run, therefore, will be what we get over from the Lizard up to the time the cap'en takes the sun at noon to-morrow, which will tell us our lat.i.tude and longitude then, when, by the aid of this fixed starting-point or 'point of departure,' and calculating our dead reckoning and courses steered, we will be enabled to know our precise position on the chart."

"I see, sir," said I. "I won't forget what you've told me another time, and shall know in future what the term means, sir, thank you."

"You're quite welcome, Graham," he replied pleasantly as he resumed his walk up and down the deck, with an occasional glance to windward and a look at the compa.s.s in the binnacle to see that the helmsman was keeping the ship on the course the captain had directed before going below a short time before--west-sou'-west, and as close up to the wind as we could sail, so as to avoid the French coast and get well across the mouth of the Bay of Biscay into the open Atlantic. "I hope to make a good navigator of you in time, my boy."

"I hope so, too, sir," said I, trying to keep pace with his measured tread, although I always got out of step as he turned regularly at the end of his walk, which was backwards and forwards between the cabin skylight and the binnacle. "I will try my best, sir."

While bearing in mind the "departure point," however, I must not forget to mention, too, that immediately after Captain Gillespie had taken our bearings off the Lizard, he sang out to Tim Rooney the boatswain to send the hands aft.

"Aye, aye, sorr," responded Tim, at once sounding his shrill whistle and hoa.r.s.e shout. "A-all ha-ands aft!"

"Now for a bit of speechifying," said Tom Jerrold, who was along with me on the lee-side of the p.o.o.p, watching the crew as they mustered together on the main-deck underneath. "The 'old man' loves a jaw."

But Tom was mistaken; for the captain's speech was laconic in the extreme, being "much shorter, indeed, than his nose," as my fellow mid was forced to acknowledge in a whisper to me!

"My men," said he, leaning over the bra.s.s rail at the head of the p.o.o.p, and gazing down into the faces of the rough-and-ready fellows looking up at him expectantly, with all sorts of funny expressions on their countenances, as they wondered what was to come--"we're now at sea and entering on a long voyage together. I only wish you to do your duty and I will do mine. If you have anything to complain of at any time, come to me singly and I will right it; but if you come in a body, I'll take no notice of ye. Ye know when I say a thing I mean a thing."

"Aye, aye sir!" shouted the hands, on his pausing here as if waiting for their answer. "Aye, aye, sir!"

"All right then; ye understand me, I see. That will do the watch."

Whereupon, half of them went back into the forecastle to finish their tea, while the remainder took their stations about the ship, remaining on deck until their span of duty was out, the whole lot having been divided into two groups, styled respectively the port and starboard watches, under charge of Mr Mackay and the second mate, Mr Saunders-- Tom Jerrold and I being in the port watch with the first mate; while Sam Weeks and Matthews, who was like the fifth wheel of a coach as "third mate," a very anomalous position on board-ship, mustered with the starbowlines under Mr Saunders.

Counting in Captain Gillespie, with the three mates, us apprentices, the boatswain, sailmaker Adams and carpenter Gregory--the three latter all "old hands," having sailed several voyages previously together in the ship--the steward Pedro Carvalho, Ching w.a.n.g our cook, Billy the boy, our "second-cla.s.s apprentice," and the eighteen fresh men who had come aboard with the Chinaman at Gravesend, our crew mustered all told some thirty-one hands; and, to complete the description of the vessel and her belongings, the Silver Queen was a sharp-bowed, full-rigged ship, with a tremendous bilge, built for carrying a goodish cargo, which consisted, as I believe I mentioned before, mainly of Manchester goods and Birmingham hardware, besides a private speculation of our captain consisting of a peculiarly novel consignment of Dundee marmalade, packed up in tins like those used for preserved meats and such like dainties.

About this marmalade I shall have something to say by and by; but I think I had better go on with my yarn in proper ship-shape fashion, narrating events in the order in which they occurred--merely stating, in order to give a full account of all concerning us, that, in addition to the particulars of our cargo as already detailed, we had sundry items of live freight in the shape of some pigs, which were stowed in the long- boat on top of the deck-house; three cats, two belonging to the Portuguese steward and messing in the cuddy, while the third was a vagrant Tom that had strayed on board in the docks, and making friends with the carpenter Gregory, or "old chips" as he was generally called, was allowed to take up his quarters in the forepeak, migrating to the cook's cabin at meal-times with unwavering sagacity; a lot of fowls, accommodated aristocratically in coops on the p.o.o.p; and, lastly, though by no means least, the starling which I'd caught coming down Channel, and which now seemed very comfortable in the boatswain's old canary cage, hung up to a ringbolt in his cabin next to mine, and regarded as a sort of joint property between us two.

There, you have our list of pa.s.sengers; and, now, to continue my story.

Shortly after pa.s.sing the Bishop's Rock lighthouse, which we did some few minutes before "Billy," the ship's boy, came out of the forecastle and struck "six bells," eleven o'clock, near the end of the port watch's spell on deck, the wind, which had freshened considerably since sunset, began to blow with greater force, veering, or "backing" as sailors say, more and more round to the north; so that, although our yards were braced up to the full and the vessel was sailing almost close-hauled, we had to drop off a point or two within the next half-hour from our true western course.

Within the next half-hour, south-west by west was as close as we could now keep her head outward across "The Bay," the wind even then continuing to show a tendency to shift further round still to the northwards and westwards, and naturally forcing us yet more in a southerly direction before gaining the offing Captain Gillespie wished.

The sea, too, had got up wonderfully during the short period that had elapsed from our leaving the Chops of the Channel--I suppose from its having a wider s.p.a.ce to frolic in, without being controlled by the narrow limits of land under its lea; for, the scintillating light of the twinkling stars and pale sickly moon, whose face was ever and anon obscured by light fleecy clouds floating across it in the east, showed the tumid waste of waters heaving and surging tempestuously as far as the eye could reach. The waves were tumbling over each other and racing past the ship in sport, sending their flying scud high over the foreyard, or else trying vainly to p.o.o.p her; and, when foiled in this, they would dash against her bows with the blow of a battering-ram, or fling themselves bodily on board in an angry cataract that poured down from the forecastle on to the main-deck, flooding the waist up to the height of the bulwarks to leeward, for we heeled over too much to allow of the sea running off through the scuppers, these and our port gunwale as well being well-nigh under water.

Presently, we had to reduce sail, brailing up the spanker and taking a single reef in the topsails; but still keeping the topgallant-sails set above them, a thing frequently done by a skipper who knows how to "carry-on."

Then, as the wind still rose and as with less canvas the ship would go all the better and not bend over or bury herself so much, the topgallants were taken in. At length, when Mr Mackay and I quitted the deck at midnight, the men were just beginning to clew up the main-sail, the captain, who had come up from below with Mr Saunders when the starboard watch relieved us, having ordered it to be furled and another reef to be taken in the topsails, as it was then blowing great guns and the ship staggering along through a storm-tossed sea, with the sky overcast all round--a sign that we had not seen the worst of it yet!

The Silver Queen pitched so much--giving an occasional heavy roll to starboard as her bows fell off from the battering of the waves, with her stern lifting up out of the water, and rolling back quickly to port again on her taking the helm as the men jammed it hard down--that I found it all I could do to descend the p.o.o.p ladder safely. I climbed down gingerly, however, holding on to anything I could clutch until I reached the deck-house, which was now nearly knee-deep in the water that was sluicing fore and aft the ship with every pitch and dive she gave, or washing in a body athwart the deck as she rolled, and dashing like a wave against the bulwarks within.

I went to turn in to my bunk, which was on top of that occupied by Sam Weeks, who, very luckily for him, had to turn out, going aft on duty with the rest of the starboard watch; for, in my struggles to ascend to the little narrow shelf that served me for a bed, and which from the motion of the ship was almost perpendicular one moment and the next horizontal, I would have pretty well trampled him to jelly, having to stand on the lower bunk to reach the upper one a.s.signed to me.

Ultimately, however, I managed to climb up to my perch and pulled my blankets about me; and then I tried to sleep as well as the roaring of the wind and rushing wash of the sea, in concert with the creaking of the chain-plates and groaning of the ship's timbers and myriad voices of the deep, would let me.

But, it was all in vain!

Hitherto, although I had been more than two days and two nights on board and had sailed all the way from the docks along the river and down the Channel, I had never yet been sea-sick, smiling at Tim Rooney's stereotyped inquiry each day of me, "An' sure, Misther Gray-ham, aren't ye sorry yit ye came to say?"

Since the afternoon, however, when the water had become rougher and the ship more lively, I had begun to experience a queer sensation such as I recollect once having at home at Christmas-time--on which occasion Dr Jollop, who was called in to attend me, declared I had eaten too much plum-pudding, just in order to give me some of his nasty pills, of course!

I hadn't had the chance of having anything so good as that now; but, at tea-time Tom Jerrold, who, like myself, had made friends with Ching w.a.n.g, had induced him to compound a savoury mess ent.i.tled, "dandy funk,"

composed of pounded biscuits, mola.s.ses, and grease. Of this mess, I am sorry to say, I had partaken; and the probable source of my present ailment was, no doubt, the insidious dandy funk wherewith Jerrold had beguiled me.

Oh, that night!

Dandy funk or no, I could not soon forget it, for I never was so sick in my life; and what is more, every roll of the ship made me worse, so that I thought I should die--Tom Jerrold, the heartless wretch, who was snoring away as usual in the next bunk to Weeks' below, not paying the slightest attention to my feeble calls to him for help and a.s.sistance between the paroxysms of my agonising qualms.

Somehow or other a sympathetic affinity seemed to be established between the vessel and myself, I rolling as she rolled and heaving when she heaved; while my heart seemed to reach from the Atlantic back to the Channel, and I felt as if I had swallowed the ocean and was trying to get rid of it and couldn't!

_Ille robur et aes triplex_, as Horace sang on again getting safely ash.o.r.e--for he must have been far too ill when afloat in his trireme-- and as father used to quote against me should I praise the charms of a sailor's life, "framed of oak and fortified with triple bra.s.s" must have been he who first braved the perils of the sea and made acquaintance with that fell demon whom our French neighbours style more elegantly than ourselves _le mal de mer_!

Weeks had his revenge upon me now with a vengeance indeed for all he might have suffered from my pummelling of the previous day; yes, and for the reproach of the two black eyes I had given him, which had since altered their colouring to the tints of the sea and sky, they being now of a bluish-purple hue shaded off into green and yellow, so that the general effect harmonised, as Tom Jerrold unkindly remarked, with his sandy hair and mottled complexion.

But, my whilom enemy and now friend Sammy must have been amply indemnified for all this when, at the end of the middle watch, he came in due course to rouse me out again for another turn of duty, not knowing that Mr Mackay, as if antic.i.p.ating what would happen after the shaking up I had had, had given me leave to lie-in if I liked and "keep my watch below;" for, when Weeks succeeded in opening the door of the deck-house, which he did with much difficulty against the opposing forces of the wind and the water that united to resist his efforts, he found me completely prostrate and in the very apogee of my misery.

"Hullo, Graham!" he called out, clutching hold of the corner of the blanket that enveloped one of my limp legs, which was hanging down almost as inanimate over the side of the bunk, and shaking this latter, too, as vigorously as he did the blanket. "Rouse out, it's gone eight bells and the port watch are already on deck, with Mr Mackay swearing away at a fine rate because you're not there--rouse out with you, sharp!"

There was no rousing me, however, pull and tug and shake away as much as he pleased both at my leg and the blanket.

"Leave me alone," I at last managed to say loud enough for him to hear me. "Mr Mackay told me I needn't turn out unless I felt well enough; and, oh, Weeks, I do feel so awfully ill!"

"Ill! what's the row with you?"

"I don't know," I feebly murmured. "I think I'm going to die; and I'm so sorry I hurt your eyes yesterday, they do look so bad."

"Oh, hang my eyes!" replied he hastily, as if he did not like the subject mentioned; and I don't wonder at this now, when I recollect how very funny they looked, all green and yellow as if he had a pair of goggle-eyed spectacles on. "Why can't you turn out? You were well enough when you called me four hours ago--shamming Abraham, I suppose,-- eh?"

I was too weak, though, to be indignant.

"Indeed I'm not shamming anything," I protested as earnestly as I could, not quite knowing what his slang phrase meant, but believing it to imply that I was pretending to be ill to shirk duty when I was all right.

"Weeks, I'm terribly ill, I tell you!"

He scrutinised me as well as he could by the early light of morning, now coming in through the open cabin door, which he had not been able to close again, the wind holding it back and resisting all his strength.

Tom Jerrold, too, aroused by Weeks' voice and the cold current of air that was blowing in upon him, rubbed his eyes, and standing up in his bunk while holding on to the top rail of mine, had also a good look at me.

"Bah!" cried he at length. "You're only sea-sick."

That was all the consolation he gave me as he shoved himself into his clothes; and then, hastily lugging on a thick monkey-jacket hurried out on deck.

"A nice mess you've made, too, of the cabin."

This was Master Weeks' sympathy as he took possession of Jerrold's vacated bunk and quietly composed himself to sleep, regardless of my groans and deaf to all further appeals for aid.

Tim Rooney, however, was the most unkind of all.

Later on in the morning he popped in his head at the cabin door.