CHAPTER IV
In Which Captain Bowditch Crowds On Sail and There Is Much Excitement
In writing a story of the sea—even a narrative of personal experiences—it is difficult to give the reader a proper idea of the daily life of the man before the mast. It naturally falls that the high lights of adventure are accentuated while the shadows of monotony are very faint indeed. But the sailor’s life is no sinecure.
Saving on occasion the work on shipboard is not very hard. The watch-and-watch system followed on all ships makes the work easy in fair weather; and foul weather lasts but for short spells, save in certain portions of the two hemispheres.
“Eight bells! Rise and shine!”
This order, shouted into the fo’castle at four o’clock in the morning, roused Thankful Polk and I from our berths. No turning over for another nap—or for even a wink of sleep—with that command ringing in one’s ears. We tumbled out, got into our outer clothing, ran our fingers through our hair (no chance for any fancy toilets at this hour) and went on deck with the other members of the captain’s watch.
There was plenty of light by which to chore around, and Mr. Barney’s sharp voice kept us stirring until five when we lined up at the galley door and each man got a tin of hot coffee—and good coffee it was too, aboard the Gullwing. Then buckets and brooms was the order and the ship began to be slopped and scrubbed from the bowsprit to the rudder timbers. No housewife was ever half as thorough as we had to be to satisfy Mr. Barney and the old man. Thank and I learned that Captain Bowditch made a tour of the deck every morning after breakfast, and if there had been any part of the work skimped he would call up the watch and have the whole job done over again.
“But that don’t happen more’n once on a v’yage,” chuckled Tom Thornton, working beside us. “The feller that skips any part of the work he’s set to do on this here packet, gets to be mighty onpopular with his mates.”
Thus warned, we two boys were very careful with our share of the scrubbing—and likewise the coiling down of ropes which followed. I can assure the reader that, when we were through, everything in sight was as spick and span as it could be—every stain was holystoned from the deck, the white paint glistened, and the brasswork shone.
At seven-thirty the watch below was given breakfast and at four bells—eight o’clock—we were relieved and went below to our own breakfast; and that was not a bad meal aboard the Gullwing. There are no fancy dishes tacked onto Jack Tar’s bill of fare—nor does he expect it; but on this ship food was served with some regard to decency.
On the Gypsey Girl “souse” was served in a bucket, set down in the middle of the long fo’castle table, and every man scooped his cup into the mess, broke in his hardtack, and inhaled it a good deal after the style of a pig at a trough. But for breakfast on this ship there was more good coffee, tack that was not mouldy and scraps of meat and potatoes fried together—a hearty, satisfying meal.
Each man washed and put away his own cup, plate and knife and fork. Some used their gulleys, or sheath-knives; but Thank and I had brought aboard proper table tools in our dunnage bags. After the breakfast was cleared away, and the fo’castle itself tidied up, the watch below busied itself in mending, sock darning, and such like odd jobs. A sailor has got to be his own tailor, seamstress and housewife; and even such a horny-handed and tar-fingered giant as Tom Thornton was mighty handy with his needle and “sailor’s palm.”
Some of the men shaved at this time, one cut another’s hair and trimmed his beard. The crew of the Gullwing respected themselves; the deck of the fo’castle was kept as well scrubbed as the deck above. Nobody came to the table without having scrubbed his face and hands clean; nor was the men’s clothing foul with tar or the grease of the running gear. They may all have been “sword-swallowers” when it came to “stowing their cargo ’tween hatches,” but cleanliness was the order, and the ordinary decencies of life were not ignored. These men may not have been particularly strong on etiquette, and were not “parlor broke,” as the saying is; but they were neat, accommodating, cheerful, and if they skylarked some, it was fun of a good-natured kind and was not objectionable.
I liked old Tom Thornton, for despite the cast in his eye, and his gorilla-like appearance, he was good hearted. He was just about covered with tattooing, I reckon. As he said, if he’d wanted to take any more indigo into his system he’d have to swallow it! Most of the work had been done on him by a South Sea Islander who had sailed in whaling ships and the like and made a little “on the side” by tattooing pictures on foolish sailors.
“’Taint done now, no more,” old Tom said, shaking his head. “But when I was a youngster it was the fashion. Poor Jack can’t afford to buy picters and have a family portrait gallery, or the like. But he used to be strong for art,” and the old man grinned.
“I was wrecked with this here nigger-man I tell you about. About all he saved from the wreck was his colors and bone needles, and the patterns he outlined his figgers from. We was held prisoner on that blamed reef, living on stuff from the wreck, for three months. There wasn’t nothing else to do. His tattooing me kept him from going crazy, and the smart of the thing kept me alive. So there you have it—tit for tat! He never charged me nothing for his work, neither, and I allus was a great lad for gittin’ a good deal for my money.”
Tom’s legs were mural paintings of serpents and sea monsters. He had anklets and bracelets worked in red and blue. On his back was a picture of three gallows with a man hanging in chains from the middle one. I believe that it was the ignorant South Sea native’s idea of the story of Calvary, for there was the typical cross and crown worked above it at the back of Tom’s neck. The mermaid on Tom’s chest could have won a job as fat woman with a traveling circus; but then, Tom had an enormous chest which had given the tattooer plenty of space to work on. Around his waist was tattooed a belt like a lattice-work fence. When he stripped to “sluice down,” as he called his daily bath, he looked as gay as a billboard.
At ten o’clock (six bells) of the forenoon watch most of the watch below turned in for a nap, and at half past eleven we answered the call to dinner. At noon we were on duty again until four o’clock. In pleasant weather this afternoon watch is a mighty easy one. Besides the man at the wheel and the two on lookout, the others haven’t much to do but tell stories, play checkers, or read. As long as everything was neat and shipshape the old man did not hound us to work at odd jobs as some masters do.
From four to eight p. m. the time is divided into two dog-watches, although the second half of that spell is the actual dog-watch. “Dog” is a corruption of “dodge,” the object of this division being to make an even number of watches to the twenty-four hours so that there will be a daily changing or shifting, thus dodging the routine. For example, the watch that goes below one day at noon will the next day come on deck at that hour.
At five-thirty our watch had supper and at six we took the deck once more until eight o’clock. Then we could sleep until midnight and from thence had the watch until four in the morning. It is a monotonous round—especially in fair weather. We were like to welcome a bit of a blow now and then, although the Gullwing was such a big ship, and her crew was so small, that all hands had to turn out to shorten or make sail. On some ships this fact would have made the crew ugly but these boys had even a good word for the cook or “doctor,” and usually Jack looks upon that functionary as his natural enemy.
But during those first few days of the run down the coast of Chile it was seldom that we were called on to shorten sail. Captain Bowditch was living up to his reputation; the Gullwing foamed along through the short green seas with every sail she would bear spread to the favoring gale. With her four whole sails on the lower spars and all her jibs set, she spread a vast amount of canvas to the wind. And the only changes we made were in her topsails. Those the skipper kept spread every moment that he dared; and it took a pretty strong gust to make him give the order to reef down.
When he left the deck himself, either day or night, he instructed his mates to call him before they took in an inch of cloth. And Mr. Gates and Mr. Barney were just as hungry for speed, as the old man. The Gullwing was heavily laden, but there was probably few stiffer vessels at sea that day than she. With plenty of ballast there was no gale or no sea that could capsize her.
She took cheerfully all the wind and all the sea could give her. A little loose water flopping around her deck didn’t trouble Captain Bowditch. “Tarpaulin her hatches, clamp ’em down, and let her roll!” had been his order when we had got well away from our anchorage at Valpariso. We had good weather, however, as I have said, for some days.
Then suddenly, one afternoon in the first dog-watch, it came on to blow. Carefully as the captain watched the glass, I do not think this squall was foretold. A more cautious navigator might have been better prepared for a squall. He wouldn’t have had his topsails spread in any such gale as had been blowing. And when all hands were called to go aloft, the wind shrieked down upon us and the foretopsail and two staysails were blown clean out of the boltropes before the men could get at them.
“What are ye about, ye sawneys!” yelled Captain Bowditch, dancing up and down on the deck and shaking his fists at the men above. “Save my sails for me! Think I’m made o’ sailcloth? And them right new fixin’s, too! Git busy there!”
Oh, we were busy! I had been sent aloft and so had Thank. We were nimble enough in the shrouds; but we were not as smart about handling the stiff canvas as some. I found my chum beside me as we hauled down the stiff canvas upon the spar, and threw ourselves upon the folds to hold them till they could be secured.
“My law-dee!” gasped the Georgian boy, grinning. “Jest as lives try to pin an apron around the waist of a baby hippopotamus—what?”
I saw his wet, red, grinning face for a moment looking across at me. Then, suddenly, the ship keeled over, the rope on which we stood overhung those leaping, green, froth-streaked waves—waves which seemed hungrily trying to lap our feet. Thank disappeared! Something gave way, his weight left the sail to me alone. And perhaps, fearful for my chum, I bore off the canvas myself to look for him.
The next instant I was cast back by the wind tearing under the canvas and lifting it in a great balloon.
“Swish—r-r-rip!”
Like a banshee on a broomstick that sail kited off to leeward, and I was left hanging desperately to the shrouds, with the wind booming in my ears so that I could not even hear the angry roaring of the skipper below.
And all the time this question kept thumping in my head: “Where was Thankful Polk?”