CHAPTER VI
In Which the Gullwing Suffers a Ghostly Visitation
“The words of Agur, the son of Jaketh.... There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea....”
That old fellow whose wise sayings make up the final chapter of the Book of Proverbs had a deal of experience and knowledge; but navigation was a mystery to him. And to see a great ship sailing straight away on her course, in the midst of the sea, without a sign of land anywhere about, is like to make one think of the wonder of it.
We picked up many a sail after the mirage of our sister ship, during the next few days; but none of them were the Seamew. The wind increased and the Gullwing went snoring through green seas, her bow in a smother of foam and a good deal of loose water inboard on occasion. But that did not bother the captain. We were speeding up toward the Horn and little else mattered.
We were getting into a colder latitude, too. Now we were down about to the line where the Gypsey Girl had steamed in and out of the channels after seals. But we never saw the land. The Gullwing was keeping well off shore.
The keen wind blew a fitful gale. We were glad to get into the lee of the deck-houses when we were on duty. Thanks to Captain Rogers of the Scarboro, however, my chum and I were well dressed for colder weather; but we got each a suit of tarpaulins and hip boots from Captain Bowditch, for we had not owned them. We could safely dress in these water-shedding garments every watch above, when the weather was not fair; for the schooner was bound to ship a deal of suds.
In our watch besides old Tom Thornton, was another ancient mariner, and the only man not an American born aboard the Gullwing—August Stronson. He was a queer, gentle old man with the marks of dissipation strong upon his face, although most of his spare time below he sat and read a well-thumbed Swedish Bible. He was a man in whom Alcohol had taken a strangle hold on Will. A more than ordinarily good seaman, when ashore he soon became a derelict along the docks, finally ending in some mission or bethel where he would be straightened out and a berth found for him again. He was only safe aboard ship. Eternally sailing about the Seven Seas was his salvation.
He was aboard the Gullwing, as Thank and I were, merely by chance. And his reason for wishing to make the port of Baltimore was a curious one—yet one that gives a sidelight upon the sailor’s character. As a usual thing, Jack is grateful to anybody who does him a kindness, and he does not often forget a favor done him. Besides, he prides himself on “being square.” Yet it seemed to me that old Stronson was carrying that trait farther than most seamen.
He had been picked up at Honolulu by Cap-Bowditch, after the two men before mentioned had deserted the Gullwing to go with a native trader into the South Seas. Stronson had already traveled by one craft and another from Australia and would have traveled, when he reached Baltimore, all of ten thousand miles to see just one man. He told me this story in one watch below and I think it worth repeating.
“Captain Sowle, who iss de superintendent of that mission where dey iss so goot to sailormans, lend me a dollar five years ago when I was sick. I ban goin’ to pay dat dollar, me! I ban going to Baltimore to pay him.”
“But why didn’t you send it to him by mail?” I asked the old fellow.
“Captain Sowle, gif me dat dollar in his own hand, and I haf to give it back to him mit mine. I could nefer forget his kindness—no. In many foreign ports I thought of him—how goot he wass. I long carry that dollar note in my shirt—yes. In Sydney I went to the sailor’s mission one night and heard an old song das Captain Sowle sung to me and odders in Baltimore. I had that dollar note I haf saved mit me den. Why! I ban shipwrecked once and safe only dot dollar and a jumper. Luck foller me mit das dollar.
“I says to my mate dere in Sydney, ‘Bill,’ I says, ‘I got de old man’s dollar yet. Meppe he need it for de poys when he sing dot old hymn to-night over seas.’
“‘Do you feel uneasy like?’ Bill asks me.
“‘No,’ says I, ‘but I seems to hear the old man singing and I’m minding the old Bethel and the winter night he ban givin’ me de dollar.’ ‘Well,’ says Bill, ‘you must bring your cargo to port and get a discharge. You must show de old man dat you sail straight. That’s my verdict.’
“So we shook hands undt I go find me a berth to Manila—best I can do just then. I makes Honolulu on a Pacific Mail; but she drops me there. Then I finds de Gullwing. She iss de ship for me,” added Stronson, smiling in his simple way. “She carry me straight for Baltimore, undt I pay das dollar to Captain Sowle.”
Some of the men made a good deal of fun of Stronson because he was slow of intellect; but he was an able seaman and even the sharp-spoken Mr. Barney seemed to bear easy on the old man. He was stiff in his joints at times, for the sailor’s chief enemy, rheumatism, had got a grip on Stronson. Thank and I saved him many a job aloft, and in return he patiently set about teaching us all he knew about splicing and knotting—which was no small job for either the old man or for us.
It was soon after this that we got the four days’ gale that I, for one, shall not soon forget. The wind, however, did not increase so suddenly as before, and Captain Bowditch took warning in time and had the small sails furled. But when the gale fairly struck us we had enough lower canvas set in all good conscience. The ship fairly reeled under the sudden stroke of the blast.
With the wind, too, came the snow. Such a snowstorm I had not seen for several years, for we had had two or three mild winters in New England before I had gone to sea. We were forced to reef down the big sails, though every order from the skipper to this end was punctuated by groans. The canvas was stiff and the snow froze on it, and we had a mess. Glad was I that the work was not to be done in the tops.
A smother of snow wrapped the Gullwing about and we plunged on without an idea as to what was in our path. The lookout forward could not see to the end of the jib-boom. The sea was lashed to fury and, again and again, a wave broke over our bows and washed the deck from stem to stern. To add to the wonder of it, somewhere in the depths of the universe above us an electrical storm raged; we could hear the sullen thunder rolling from horizon to horizon. At first I had thought this was surf on the rocks and believed we were going head-on to death and destruction; but the officers knew where we were and they assured us that the chart gave us an open sea.
The decks were a mess of slush and it was dangerous to go about without hanging to the lifelines that checkrowed the Gullwing from forward of the fo’castle to the after companionway. Yet how the staunch craft sailed! She shook the waves off her back like a duck under a waterspout, and seemed to enjoy the buffeting of the sea like a thing alive.
While the storm continued we got just such food as we could grab in our fists. Nothing was safe on the table. The doctor kept the coffee hot in some magic way; yet there were times when the ship rolled so that the lids flew off his stove and the fire was dumped on the deck of the galley.
Sixty hours and more of this sort of weather dragged past. I once said to Tom Thornton:
“It’s a pity the skipper didn’t try for the Straits, isn’t it?”
“And what would the Gullwing be doing in the Straits, in a blow like this, my lad?” he demanded. “A big ship like her in that narrow way has little chance in a storm. The tail of such a gale as this would heave her on the rocks. There’s not seaway enough there for anything bigger than a bugeye canoe.”
“But the Scarboro made a fair course through it,” I said.
“That greaser!” snorted the old A. B. “She can loaf along as she pleases. Sea-anchor, if there’s a bit of a gale. But the Windjammer has to make time. These days the big sailin’ ships hafter compete with them dirty steam tramps. We can’t risk bein’ becalmed in any narrow waterway—no, sir!”
It was on the fourth night, with the wind blowing a hurricane and the snow as thick about us as a winding-sheet, that our watch had come on deck at midnight. I was sent as second man with Bob Promise to the wheel. It took both of us to handle the steering gear when the old schooner kicked and plunged so.
We were under close-reefed mainsail and jibs and were battling fearful waves. The sleet-like snow drove across her deck and all but blinded us. I had to keep wiping the slush off the binnacle, or the lamp would have been completely smothered and we could not have seen the trembling needle.
Sometimes the officer on the quarter was hidden from our eyes, but his voice reached us all right:
“Steady your helm! You lubbers act like your muscles were mush. Keep off! Can’t you hear that sail shaking? You’ll have us under sternway yet. Call yourselves sailors? You’re a pair of farmers! What d’ye think you’re doing? Plowing with a pair of steers? Steady!”
Bob muttered imprecations on Mr. Barney’s head; but I knew better.
“He’s nervous, that’s all,” I said. “He’s always so when the skipper ain’t on deck.”
“All he thinks of is whether we’re beatin’ the Seamew, or not,” growled Bob.
“I notice that bothers him,” said I. “But he hasn’t bet a Greening apple on the race, has he?”
“It’s bigger than that, I reckon. They say it’s something betwixt him and his brother Alf. They’ve been sore on each other for a year or more.”
I knew Mr. Alfred Barney was second mate of the Seamew, and I wondered what the trouble was between the twin brothers.
But just as this moment something happened that gave our minds a slant in another direction. The snow squall had thinned. We could see pretty near the length of the deck from where we stood—Bob and I—at the wheel.
Suddenly my mate uttered a stifled yell and his hands dropped from the spokes.
“Looker there!” he gasped.
I hung to the wheel, although a kick of the schooner near sent me on my head.
“Catch hold here, confound you!” I bawled.
“There!” he cried again, pointing with a terror stiffened arm into the forerigging.
I saw a flash of light—a glow like that of a big incandescent lamp bulb. It hung for fully thirty seconds to the very tip of one of the fore-topmast spars. Again, another flashed upon another point of the rigging. Bob Promise crouched by the wheel; he fairly groveled, while I could hear cries and groans from many of the hands on deck.
“What’s the matter with you? What is it?” I demanded, still fighting with the wabbling wheel alone; and I am afraid I kicked him. “Catch hold here!”
“Corpse lights!” groaned Bob, not even resenting my foot. “We’re all dead men. We’re doomed.”