Fritz and Eric Part 24

"This air prime, now ain't it?" said the skipper to Fritz, as the ship, with her nose pointing almost south, was driving away before the north- west wind and making some ten knots an hour.

"Yes, she's going along all right," replied he; adding frankly, however, "I should like it all the better, though, if the vessel didn't roll about so much."

"Roll?" exclaimed Captain Brown indignantly; "call this rolling? Why, Jee-rusalem, she only gives a kinder bit of a lurch now an' ag'in! I thought you would hev got your sea-legs on by this time."

Fritz could only bow to this statement, of course; but, all due deference to the skipper, nevertheless, the _Pilot's Bride_ did roll, and roll most unmercifully, too.

She was just like a huge porpoise wallowing in the water!

It may be remembered that she had sailed from port light, with a pretty considerable freeboard; and now, with the wind almost right aft, so that she had no lateral pressure to steady her--as would have been the case if the breeze had been abeam or on her quarter--she listed first to port and then to starboard, with the "send" of the sea, as regularly as the swing of a clock's pendulum. Really, the oscillation made it almost as impossible for Fritz to move about as if the ship had been contending with all the powers of the elements in a heavy storm, whereas the skipper said she was only "going easy," with a fair wind!

Why, the "breeze" had not lasted a day, before nearly every particle of gla.s.s and crockery-ware in the steward's cabin was smashed to atoms; while preventer stays had to be rove to save the masts from parting company.

Roll, eh? She did roll--roll with a vengeance!

Fortunately, this did not last long; the wind shifting round to the north-east, after a three days' spell from the west, which brought the ship on a bow line, steering, as she was, south-east and by south. Had not this change come when it did, "the old tub would hev rolled her bottom out," as Mr Slater, the whilom deck hand, "guessed" one morning to Fritz, while the crew were engaged in washing decks.

Of course, the brothers themselves had many a chat together while the voyage lasted, talking over their plans as well as chatting about the different scenes and circ.u.mstances surrounding the endless panorama of sea and sky, sky and sea, now daily unfolded before them.

Naturally--to Fritz, at least--all was new; and it was deeply interesting to him to notice the alteration in the aspect of the heavens which each night produced as the ship ran to the southward. The north star had disappeared with its pointers, as well as other familiar stellar bodies belonging to higher lat.i.tudes; but, a new and more brilliant constellation had risen up in the sky within his new range of view, which each evening became more and more distinct.

This was the Southern Cross, as it is called, consisting of four stars, three of the first magnitude and the fourth somewhat smaller, arranged in the form of an oblique crucifix, pointing across the firmament "athwartship-like," as the skipper explained one night-watch when the brothers were looking out together. Only once in the year, Captain Brown said, is this cross perfectly perpendicular towards the zenith; for, as it circles round our planet, it reverses its position, finally turning upside-down.

When the _Pilot's Bride_ ceased to roll and began to make steady way towards Tristan, with the wind from the northward and eastwards on her beam, she ran along steadily on one tack, with hardly a lurch, covering some two hundred miles a day as regularly as the log was hove and the sun taken at noon.

All this time, no sight could now have been more glorious than the heavens presented each night after sunset. The myriads upon myriads of stars that then shone out with startling brilliancy was something amazing; and the puzzle to Fritz was, how astronomers could name and place all these "lesser lights"--following their movements from day to day and year's end to year's end, without an error of calculation, so that they could tell the precise spot in the firmament where to find them at any hour they might wish!

"And yet," said Fritz, musingly, "these wise men are puzzled sometimes."

"Nary a doubt o' thet," responded the skipper, who, in spite of his rough manner and somewhat uncultivated language, thought more deeply than many would have given him credit for; "I guess, mister, all the book-larnin' in the world won't give us an insight inter the workin's o'

providence!"

"No," said Fritz. "The study of the infinite makes all our puny efforts at probing into the mysteries of nature and a.n.a.lysing the motives of nature's G.o.d appear mean and contemptible, even to ourselves."

"Thet's a fact," a.s.sented the skipper. "Look thaar, now! Don't thet sky-e, now, take the gildin' off yer bunk.u.m phi-loserphy an' tall talkin' 'bout this system an' thet--ain't thet sight above worth more'n a bushel o' words, I reckon, hey?"

Fritz gazed upwards in the direction the other pointed, right over the port quarter of the ship and where the starry expanse of the stellar world stretched out in all its beauty.

Eastwards, near the constellation Scorpio, was the Southern Cross, which had first attracted their attention, the figurative crucifix of the heavens; while the "scorpion," itself, upreared its head aloft, surmounted by a brilliant diadem of stars that twinkled and scintillated in flashes of light, like a row of gems of the first water--the body of the fabled animal being marked out in fine curves, in which fancy could trace its general proportions, half-way down the heavens. In a more southerly direction, still, the parallel stars of the twin heroes Castor and Pollux could be seen, shining out with full l.u.s.tre in a sky that was beautifully, intensely blue, conveying a sense of depths beyond depths of azure beyond; and, as the wondering lookers gazed and the night deepened, fresh myriads of stars appeared to come forth and swell the heavenly phalanx, although the greater lights still maintained their glittering superiority, Jupiter emitting an effulgence of radiant beams from his throne at the zenith, while the Milky Way powdered the great celestial dome with a smoke wreath of starlets that circled across the firmament in crescent fashion, like a sort of triumphal arch of flashing diamonds which the angels could tread in their missions from heaven to earth, or the feet of those translated to the realms of the blest!

"Grand, ain't it?" repeated the skipper.

But Fritz said nothing; his thoughts went deeper than words.

A day or two after this, the north-east wind suddenly failed and a dead calm set in, lasting for twenty-four hours. This circ.u.mstance did not please Captain Brown much, for he hardly knew what to make of it; however, after a day and night of stagnation, the breeze returned again, although, in the interim of lull, it took it into its head to shift round more to the southwards, causing the _Pilot's Bride_ to run close- hauled.

On the evening before this change of wind, and while the calm yet continued, the sea presented what seemed to Fritz--and Eric too, for he had never seen such a sight before, although he had much better acquaintance with the wonders of the deep than his brother--a most extraordinary scene of phosph.o.r.escent display, the strange effect of it being almost magical.

The sun had set early and the moon did not rise till late; but, as soon as the orb of day had disappeared below water, the horizon all round became nearly as black as ink, without any after-glow, as had invariably been noticed at previous sunsets. The whole sky was dark and pitchy like; only a few stars showing themselves momentarily for a while high up towards the zenith, although they were soon hidden by the mantle of sombre cloud that enveloped the heavens everywhere.

Meanwhile, the entire surface of the sea, in every direction as far as their eyes could reach, seemed as if covered with a coating of frosted silver; and, all around the ship, at the water-line, there appeared a brilliant illumination, as if from a row of gas jets or like the footlights in front of the stage of a theatre. Where the sea, too, was broken into foam by the slight motion of the ship, it also gave out the same appearance; and the faint wake astern was as bright as the track usually lit up by the moon or rising sun across the ocean, resembling a pathway of light yellow gold.

When Fritz first saw the reflection, on looking over the side of the ship, he thought that something had happened down below, and that the appearance he noticed was caused by different lights, streaming through the portholes and scuttles.

"What are they doing with all those lanterns in the hold?" he asked Eric in surprise.

The sailor lad laughed.

"No ship lanterns," said he, "are at work here. They say that this queer look of the sea is occasioned by thousands of little insects that float on the surface and which are like the fireflies of the tropics.

Don't you recollect reading about them?"

"But then, this light is so continuous," replied Fritz. "It is bright as far away as we can see."

"Yes, I suppose the shoal of insects stretches onward for miles; still, it is only when it is dark like this, with the sky overcast, that you can see them. At least, that is what I've been told, for I never saw such a display before."

"You're 'bout right, my lad," observed Captain Brown, who had come over to leeward, where the brothers were. "I forgit what they call the durned things; but, they're as thick as muskitters on the Florida coast.

You'll see 'em all clear away as soon as the moon shows a streak, though. They can't stand her candlelight, you bet!"

It was as the skipper said. Although the illumination of the sea was so vivid that it lit up the ship's sails with flashes as the water was stirred, it died away when the moon shone out. Then, too, the sky lightened all round and the clouds cleared away before the approaching wind which had thus apparently heralded its coming.

Nothing occurred after this to break the monotony of the voyage, beyond a school of whales being noticed blowing in the distance away to the windward one day, about a week after the change of wind.

"There she spouts!" called out a man who was up in the fore cross-trees, overhauling some of the running gear; but the hail only occasioned a little temporary excitement, for the animals were much too far off for pursuit and, besides, Captain Brown wished to land the brothers and clear his ship of all cargo before going whaling on his own account.

This consummation, however, was not long distant; for some sixteen days or so after they had turned their backs on the South American coast, the skipper told Fritz he hoped to be at Tristan on the morrow. This was when he and the captain were having their usual quarter-deck walk in the first watch, the evening of the same day on which they pa.s.sed the school of whales.

"Yes, sirree," he said, "we've run down to 36 degrees South lat.i.tude, I guess, an' wer 'bout 13 degrees West when I took the sun at noon; so I kalkerlate, if the wind don't fail an' the shep keeps on goin' as she is, which is bootiful, I reckon, why we'll fetch Tristan nigh on breakfus-time to-morrow,--yes, sir!"

"Indeed!" exclaimed Fritz. He did not think they were anywhere near the place yet; for, although it was more than two months since they had left Narraganset Bay, the ship appeared to sail so sluggishly and the voyage to be so tedious, that he would not have been surprised to hear some day from the captain that they would not reach their destination until somewhere about Christmas time!

"Ya-as, really, I guess so, mister. No doubt you're a bit fl.u.s.tered at gettin' thaar so soon; but the _Pilot's Bride's_ sich a powerful clipper thet we've kinder raced here, an' arrove afore we wer due, I reckon!"

The skipper innocently took Fritz's expression of surprise to be a compliment to the ship's sailing powers; and so Fritz would not undeceive him by telling him his real opinion about the vessel. It would have been cruel to try and weaken his belief in the lubberly old whaler, every piece of timber in whose hull he loved with a fatherly affection almost equal to that with which he regarded his daughter Celia.

Fritz therefore limited himself to an expression of delight at the speedy termination of their voyage, without hazarding any comment on the _Pilot's Bride's_ progress; by which means he avoided either hurting the old skipper's feelings or telling an untruth, which he would otherwise have had to do.

He was undoubtedly glad to have advanced so far in their undertaking; for, once arrived at Tristan d'Acunha, a few more days would see them landed on Inaccessible Island, when, he and Eric would really begin their crusoe life of seal-catching and "making the best" of it, in solitary state.

Wasn't he up on deck early next morning, turning out of his bunk as soon as he heard the first mate calling the captain at four bells--although, when he got there, he found Eric had preceded him, he having charge of the morning watch and having been up two hours before himself!

However, neither of the brothers had much the advantage of the other; for, up to breakfast time, Tristan had not been sighted.

But, about noon, "a change came o'er the spirit of their dream!"

Captain Brown had just gone below to his cabin to get his s.e.xtant in order to take the sun, while Fritz, to quiet his impatience, had sat down on the top of the cuddy skylight with a book in his hand, which he was pretending to read so as to cheat himself, as it were; when, suddenly, there came a shout from a man whom the skipper had ordered to be placed on the look-out forward--a shout that rang through the ship.

"Land ho!"