On Board the Esmeralda Part 19

BREAKERS AHEAD!

"Hullo, steady there--belay that!" exclaimed Captain Billings, half-way up the p.o.o.p ladder, which he was ascending hastily, two steps at a time, "Mr--Mr Macdougall--Martin Leigh! What's this disgraceful row about?"

I had quickly picked up a handspike when I saw that I had missed my aim with the s.n.a.t.c.h-block, while my antagonist--who, to do him justice, had plenty of pluck, and had only been startled for the moment by the heavy missile hurtling through the air close to his projecting nose--was advancing to attack me again with his fists clenched, a savage look the while on his face, as if he meant to settle me this time; but, on this interruption from the skipper, we both relinquished our hostile att.i.tudes, Mr Macdougall slinking towards the binnacle, as if innocently engaged in studying the bearings of the compa.s.s there, and I dropping the handspike incontinently.

There was a ringing tone of command in the skipper's voice which meant that he intended to be obeyed; but mixed with this, beyond a slight suspicion of surprise at the unexpected scene which met his gaze, there was a good deal of subdued irritation, which really was not to be wondered at.

He had been having an afternoon nap in his cabin, which was situated immediately below the deck where the mate and I had been rehearsing the little drama I have just detailed; and the noise we had made with "the movements of the piece," to speak theatrically, having very unceremoniously disturbed his slumbers before the period he generally allowed himself for his "forty winks" had expired, his temper was not sweetened thereby beforehand, only just needing the unseemly _fracas_ which he noticed on coming on the p.o.o.p to send it up to fever-heat.

I had never seen Captain Billings so angry since I had been on board the _Esmeralda_; his blue eyes fairly flashed forth fire!

He took no notice of me at first, advancing towards the chief mate.

"Mr Macdougall," said he, sharply, "I call upon you for an explanation of this--this--discreditable affair!"

"Yon dratted loon, Capting, sought me life!" replied the other, glibly.

"He hove a s.n.a.t.c.h-block at me, and takkin' the pairt of my ain defeence I was gangin' to poonish him a wee when ye came on deck."

"And did you give him no occasion for behaving so insubordinately, sir?"

asked the skipper, looking Mr Macdougall straight in the face with a piercing glance, as if defying him to answer him untruthfully.

But the mate was too old a hand at "spinning a yarn," as sailors term dealing in fict.i.tious statements. He could utter a falsehood without winking once!

"Nae, sir," said he, as cool as a cuc.u.mber, making no reference to the fact of his having twice knocked me down before I retaliated on him, "I did naething to the loon, naething at a'! I only joost reprovit him a wee for his bad language and inseelance, ye ken, an' he oops wi' yon block an' heaves at me puir head. It's joost a marcy o' Proveedence he did nae knockit me brains oot!"

Fortunately for the Scotsman, his good or bad angel was in the ascendant at this moment, substantiating this incomplete account he gave as to what had happened. As luck would have it, too, Captain Billings had only got up the p.o.o.p ladder in time to take heed of the latter part of the fray, and thus the evidence of his own eyesight corroborated apparently the mate's a.s.sertion, that I had made a most unjustifiable a.s.sault on him.

Greatly incensed, therefore, he now turned on me.

"I saw the a.s.sault myself, Mr Macdougall; so I don't merely take your word alone for it. What have you got to say, Leigh, in excuse for your outrageous behaviour? It's--it's scandalous; I could thrash you myself!"

My pride, however, was roused by the fact of his having accepted the mate's explanation without asking me for any explanation first, and so condemning me unheard; consequently, without taking into consideration the thought that it was only proper that Captain Billings should support the authority of his chief officer unhesitatingly, I answered him rather pertly, only feeling my own wrong, and not considering what was the skipper's obvious duty.

"If you believe Mr Macdougall," I replied, in a rude, off-hand way, "there's nothing for me to say."

"You ungrateful young hound!" cried out the skipper, who, if angry before, was now as mad as a hatter at my impudence. "That's the thanks I get, is it, for favouring you and promoting you out of your station!

Listen; consider yourself disrated from this instant--do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear, Captain Billings," said I, in a sullen voice.

"Then, heed sharply, my lad," he retorted. "Get off this deck and go forward. Your place, henceforth, sir, will be in the fo'c's'le, along with the other hands; and the sooner you lug that chest of yours out of the spare bunk I gave you amidships, the better!"

This was a terrible downfall; but, of course, there was no use my arguing against the skipper's decision, the master of a merchant ship being lord paramount on board his own vessel, and having the power to make and unmake his officers, like a nautical Warwick, the whilom creator of kings!

So, much chapfallen, I withdrew from the p.o.o.p; and, abandoning all my dignities as acting second mate and first-cla.s.s apprentice, proceeded to make myself at home with the crew forward--much against the grain, I confess, although the men received me cordially, and took my part, not only from their liking for me personally, but from their hatred of the chief mate as well.

Mr Macdougall, I could plainly see, was c.o.c.k-a-hoop at my disgrace, from the malicious grin on his freckled face.

His triumph, however, was not very long-lived.

On making me relinquish my functions on the quarter-deck, the skipper had sent for Jorrocks, telling him that he would have to take charge of Mr Ohlsen's watch in my place.

"But I doesn't know nothing o' navigation, Cap'," said the boatswain, who felt keenly my abas.e.m.e.nt, and was loth to "step into my shoes," as it were.

"Oh, never mind that," replied the skipper. "Mr Macdougall will give you the courses to steer; and, if anything particular happens--which I don't expect, with the wind we have now and us in the open sea--why, you can call me."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered Jorrocks, being thus foiled in his attempt at getting me reinstated, which he thought might have been the case on his pleading his inability to con the ship; and so, when Macdougall went below with the starboard watch at eight bells in the afternoon, the boatswain took charge of the deck with the relief hands--the mate telling him still to keep to the same west-sou'-west course which I had suggested to Mr Macdougall, a couple of hours or so before, should be altered to a more southerly one, and the controversy about which had caused that "little unpleasantness" between us, which had terminated so disastrously for myself.

To explain this matter properly, I should mention that, when, on our thirteenth day out, after the cessation of the north-westerly gale that had driven us to the south of the Canaries, Captain Billings discovered that we were so near in to the African coast, in taking advantage of the wind off the land he had perhaps committed an error of judgment in making an attempt to recover our lost westing, instead of pursuing a course more directly to the southwards; for, in the early part of the northern summer, the Equatorial Current begins to run with greater rapidity towards the west, causing vessels to lose much of their true direction, and the most experienced navigators recommend crossing this stream at right angles, if possible, so as to get beyond its influence as speedily as circ.u.mstances will permit, at least at that time of year, when an easterly pa.s.sage of the equator is advisable.

However, the skipper acted for the best, wishing to get well to the windward of Cape Blanco and the contrary currents and variable breezes generally encountered in that vicinity; and so, the _Esmeralda_ had therefore continued on a diagonal course across the equatorial stream even after we had picked up the regular north-east Trades, until we had reached the meridian of 25 degrees West, when we had run as far south as 8 degrees 15 minutes North.

Here, we lost the Trades that had blown us so far on our route, entering into the second great belt of calms met with in the Atlantic to perplex the mariner when essaying to pa.s.s either to the north or south of the equator--a zone of torpidity, known popularly under the name of the "Doldrums," which was originally derived most probably from the old Portuguese phrase _dolorio_, "tormenting."

This belt of calms separates the two wind zones of the north-east and south-west Trades, which meeting here, their opposing forces are neutralised, and the air they bring with them from the colder regions of the north and south, becoming rarified by the heat of the equator, pa.s.ses up into the higher atmosphere, producing a stagnation of the wind currents; and hence ensue calms that vary in duration according to the position of the sun, whether north or south of the Line, calms that are sometimes accompanied by tremendous rain showers, and sometimes varied with frequent squalls and thunder and lightning, followed sometimes by thick fogs hanging on the surface of the water.

The belt of the Doldrums has an average width of some six degrees, or about five hundred miles of lat.i.tude, roughly speaking; and in crossing it we were not much more favoured than most navigators, having to knock about for seven days under a sweltering tropical sun--taking advantage of whatever little breeze we could get that aided our progress to the equator, until we emerged from the r.e.t.a.r.ding influence of this zone of inactivity, some three degrees to the northward of the Line, when we fortunately succeeded in sailing into the south-east Trades almost before we expected.

We had, however, lost some little way eastwards through the sweep of the Guinea current, a stream which seems strangely enough to take its rise in the middle of the ocean, and makes a sudden set thence towards the Bight of Benin; so, Captain Billings, who appeared to be prejudiced on the subject of the western pa.s.sage of the equator, instead of now trying again to shape a true south course towards our point of destination, Cape Horn, directed a parallel so as to fetch the Brazilian coast. The ship, consequently, after leaving the Doldrums was steered south-west and by west, a direction which, if preserved, would have run us on in a straight line to the Rocas, a dangerous reef stretching out into the sea off the westward peak of the island of Fernando Noronha, some eighty- four miles out from the mainland to the northward of Cape Saint Roque.

This was on our thirtieth day out from the Bristol Channel, two days before the first mate and I had come to loggerheads; and since then the vessel had kept on in the same course, closing with the equator each hour under the steady south-easterly breeze which we had with us, on the port tack, and speeding even more rapidly to the west than our skipper imagined--for, through the set of some current to the northward and westwards, our dead reckoning showed a wide discrepancy from the position of the ship by observation, as I made it on the day of the row--when, as I've stated, the skipper, feeling indisposed, had left me to take the sun, knowing that the mate would check my calculations.

But, as things turned out, the altercation which occurred completely took off the attention of Captain Billings from the subject; and, as I left the chart which I had been using on the top of the cabin sky-light when he ordered me to quit the p.o.o.p without informing him of the serious error I had discovered, and Mr Macdougall, wise in his own conceit and confident that he and the dead reckoning were both right, did not hint of the ship's course being wrong, on we went, with all our canvas spread, racing into the teeth of a danger which the skipper never dreamt of our being near.

The weather was now beautifully fine, the breeze tempering the heat of the sun, and flying fish and albicore playing around the vessel as we neared the equator; while, occasionally, a school of whales would spout to windward, or a shoal of porpoises, having a game of high jinks as they leaped out of the water in their graceful curves one after the other, would cross our bows backwards and forwards in sport, apparently mocking our comparatively slow progress through the sea in contrast to their own rapid and graceful movements, and showing how easily they could outstrip us when they so pleased.

I was standing on the fo'c's'le head, sadly looking out over the bows, while the light lasted, at the moving panorama of Nature around me; the dancing waves curled up on either side of the catheads as the vessel plunged her forefoot down, and streaming aft in a long wake to leeward; the cloudless sky above; the vast solitary expanse of the horizon; the leaping fish and spouting whales--keenly alive to everything and yet my mind full of all my grievances, being especially wrathful with the skipper for accepting Mr Macdougall's statement against me, without first allowing me to utter a word in my own defence.

It was worse than tyranny, I thought, this arbitrary conduct in disrating me unjustly!

I remained here till I heard one bell strike soon after the second dog- watch commenced; for I was waiting for Jorrocks to be relieved, as I wished to speak to him in order to get him to put in a word for me with Captain Billings, when he had calmed down and could listen to reason.

While I was waiting, the evening closed in, the sun having not long set; for, in the tropics, night succeeds day with startling rapidity, there being no twilight to temper the transition between bright sunshine and darkness--the one ensuing almost immediately after the other without any "toning down," as painters express it, to lessen the effect of the change.

Hearing, as I fancied, a whale spouting nearer than usual--these monsters of the deep making a noise as they eject the water through the spout-holes on top of their heads in a fountain of spray, after drawing it with their gills, like surf breaking on a distant sh.o.r.e--the sound somehow or other took back my thoughts to the chart, and I suddenly remembered what I had told the mate about the danger of the ship approaching the Islets of Saint Paul.

These are a cl.u.s.ter of rocks, called by the early Portuguese navigators the Penedo de Saint Pedro, lying almost in mid-ocean, close to the equator, in lat.i.tude zero degrees 55 minutes 30 seconds North, and longitude 29 degrees 22 minutes West; and, from the water being beyond soundings in their immediate neighbourhood, they must form the peak of some submarine mountain range. They are only about sixty feet or so in height clear above the level of the sea; and, consequently, being only visible at a comparatively short distance off--not more than a couple of leagues at the outside, even in broad daylight--and situated as the shoal is in the direct track of the trade wind, the rocks form a source of great peril to mariners traversing their bearings, especially at night time, nothing existing to give warning of their proximity until a vessel may be right on to them, as it were.

Thinking of all this, which I had read in the "Sailing Directions for the North Atlantic," a book which the skipper had lent me to study, in order to perfect me in navigation, I felt a sudden fear lest the ship should be wrecked on the reef, making up my mind to tell Jorrocks about the error I had discovered in our position on the chart, which I determined to ask him to fetch for me, so as to show it to Captain Billings.

Jorrocks, however, was a long time coming forwards after being relieved from charge of the deck by Mr Macdougall, remaining some little time talking to him on the p.o.o.p; so that it was nearly two bells, and quite dusky, when he made his way to where I was standing looking out for him, I having asked one of the hands to say that I wanted to speak with him.

"Well, Mister Leigh," he said, on making his appearance, "here I am at last; better late nor never, as the old folks say! But that blessed Scotchman would have a long yarn with me, about goodness knows what!"

"I'm glad you've come," I replied; and then I went on to tell him about my fears of peril to the ship from our vicinity to the Rocks of Saint Paul, which I was certain we were approaching every mile we ran further west.

But the boatswain was almost as incredulous of our being near the shoal as the first mate had been in the afternoon.

"Bless you, Mister Leigh, we're miles to windward of that place," said he with a laugh. "But it's allers the way with your young navigators as is full chock up to the bung with book larnin' and hasn't had no real 'sperience o' the sea yet! They allers fancy all sorts o' dangers that your old seamen who've been a v'yage or two never thinks o' reckonin'

on!"