Tales of the clipper ships by C. Fox Smith - HTML preview

THE UNLUCKY “ALTISIDORA”

I

WHEN first the legend of the Unlucky “Altisidora” began to take its place in the great unwritten book of the folk-lore of the sea, old shellbacks (nodding weather-beaten heads over mugs and glasses in a thousand sailortown taverns from Paradise Street to Argyle Cut) were wont to put forward a variety of theories accounting for her character, according to the particular taste, creed, or nationality of the theorizer for the time being.

Her keel was laid on a Friday.... Someone going to work on her had met a red-haired wumman, or a wumman as skenned (this if the speaker were a Northumbrian) and hadn’t turned back.... Someone had chalked “To Hell with the Pope” (this if he were a Roman Catholic) or, conversely, “To Hell with King William” (in the case of a Belfast Orangeman) on one of her deck beams.... There was a stiff ’un hid away somewheres inside her, same as caused all the trouble with the “Great Eastern.”... And so on, and so forth, usually finishing up with the finely illogical assertion that you couldn’t expect nothink better, not with a jaw-crackin’ name like that!

Anyhow, unlucky she was, you couldn’t get away from it! Didn’t she drownd her first skipper, when he was going on board one night in ’Frisco Bay? Didn’t her second break his neck in Vallipo, along of tumbling down an open hatch in the dark? Come to that, didn’t she kill a coupler chaps a week when she was buildin’ over in Wilson’s Yard, Rotherhithe? Didn’t she smash up a lumper or two every blessed trip she made? Hadn’t she got a way of slipping fellers overboard that sneaky and sly-like no one knowed they was gone until it come coffee time and they wasn’t there?... Say the skipper was drunk—well, ain’t skippers gone on board canned up afore now and not been drownded?... Say it was somebody’s business to see that there hatch was covered or else a light left alongside of it—well, ain’t hatches been left open in other ships without folks walkin’ into ’em into the dark?... Say it was only two fellers as was killed workin’ on her—well, ain’t there been plenty o’ ships built what nobody got killed workin’ on? Answer me that!...

So the Unlucky “Altisidora” she became from London River to the Sandheads—a legend to endure in many an ancient memory long after her bones were rust.

. . . . .

It was in the South-West India Dock that Anderton first set eyes on her—the sun going down behind Limehouse Church tower in a great flaming splendour, and lighting up the warehouses, and the dock, and the huddle of shipping, with an almost unearthly glory.

Anderton was in great spirits. He had waited a long and weary while for a ship; haunting the docks and the shipping offices by day, and spending his evenings—for he had no friends in London and no money to spare for the usual shore diversions—in the dark little officers’ messroom at the Sailors’ Home in Well Street and the uninspiring society of a morose mate from Sunderland, who passed the time toasting lumps of cheese over the fire in order—so he confided to Anderton in a rare burst of eloquence—to get his money’s worth out of the damn place. So that when there dropped suddenly, as it were out of the summer heavens, the chance of going as second mate in the “Altisidora” he fairly trod on air.

It happened in this wise. He had spent a desolating morning tramping round the docks, offering his valuable services to shipmasters who were sometimes indifferent, sometimes actively offensive, but without exception entirely unappreciative. He was beginning to feel as if the new second mate’s ticket of which he had been so inordinately proud were a possession slightly less to his credit than a convict’s ticket-of-leave. Two yards of bony Nova Scotian, topped by a sardonic grin, had asked him if he had remembered to bring his titty-bottle along; and a brawny female, with her hands on her hips, bursting forth upon him from a captain’s cabin, inquired if he took the ship for an adjectived day nursery.

He had just beaten a hasty retreat after this last devastating encounter with what dignity he could muster, and was all but resolved to give up the fruitless quest and ship before the mast, when he heard a voice behind him shouting “Mister! Hi, mister!”

At first Anderton took no notice. For one thing, he was far too much taken up with his own concerns to be much interested in the outside world; for another, he was not long enough out of his apprenticeship to recognize at once the appellation of “Mister” as one likely to apply to himself. And in any case there seemed no reason at all why the hail should be intended for him. It was not, therefore, until it had been repeated several times, each time a shade more insistently, until, moreover, he realized that there was no one else in sight or earshot for whom it could conceivably be intended, that the fact forced itself upon his consciousness that he was the “Mister” concerned, and he stopped to let the caller come up with him. He did so puffing and blowing. He was a round, insignificant little man, whom Anderton remembered now having seen talking to the mate of one of the ships he had visited earlier in the day.

“I say,” he gasped, as soon as he was within speaking distance, “aren’t you—I mean to say, don’t you want a second mate’s berth?”

Did he want a second mate’s berth, indeed? Did he want the moon out of the sky—or the first prize in the Calcutta Sweep—or the Cullinan diamond—or any other seemingly unattainable thing? He retained sufficient presence of mind, however, not to say so, and (he hoped) not to look it either, admitting, with a creditable attempt not to sound too keen on it, that he did in fact happen to be on the look out for such an opening.

“Ah, that’s good,” said the stranger, “because, as a matter of fact, I—it’s most unfortunate, but my second mate’s met with an accident, and the ship sails to-morrow. Could you join to-night?”

Manage it? Anderton repressed an impulse to execute a double shuffle on the edge of the dock, to fling his arms round the little man’s neck and embrace him, to cast his cap upon the stones and leap upon it. Instead, he said, with the air of one conferring a favour, that he rather thought he might.

“All right, then ... ship ‘Altisidora’ ... South-West India Dock ... ask for Mr. Rumbold ... tell him you’ve seen me ... Captain Carter.”

Anderton stood staring after his new captain for several minutes after his stubby figure had disappeared among the sheds. The thing was incredible. It was impossible. It must be a dream. Here, only two minutes before, he had been walking along seriously meditating the desirability of taking a plunge into the murky waters of the London Docks, and in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the whole aspect of life had been changed by a total stranger offering him—more, positively thrusting upon him—the very thing he had trudged the docks in search of until his boot-soles were nearly through.

If he had had time to reflect upon this bewildering gift thrown at him by wayward fortune it might have occurred to him that—like so many of that freakish dame’s bounties—there was a catch in it somewhere. He might have thought, for example, that it was, to say the least, a surprising fact that—at a time when he knew from bitter personal experience that the supply of highly qualified and otherwise eminently desirable second mates evidently greatly exceeded the demand—a distracted skipper should be rushing round the docks looking for one. But no such idea as yet damped the first fine flush of his triumph. Why, indeed, should it? The ship’s name conveyed no sinister meaning to his mind. He had never heard of her reputation; if he had, he wouldn’t have cared a button.

He was, as it happened, destined to get the first hint of it within a very few minutes. Just outside the dock gates he ran into Dick Charnock, who had been senior apprentice in the old “Araminta” when Anderton was a first voyager. Charnock was now mate—chief officer he called himself—of a stinking little tub of a steam tramp plying to the Mediterranean ports; and Anderton, remembering the airs he had been wont to give himself in bygone days, took a special pleasure in announcing his good fortune.

Charnock blew his cheeks out and said:

“O-oh—her!”

“Well?” said Anderton a trifle huffily. “What about her?”

No one likes to have cold water poured upon an exultant mood. “Beast!” he thought. “Jealous—that’s what’s the matter with him!”

“Oh, nothing—nothing!” Charnock replied hastily. “I was just thinking about something else, that’s all!”

This was so obviously a lie that it only made matters worse, and they parted a trifle coolly; Anderton refusing an invitation to enjoy the pleasures of London that evening, as displayed at Wilson’s Music Hall, at which he would fairly have jumped less than an hour ago.

The morose mate was still sitting in the messroom, surrounded by his customary aura of “frizzly dick,” when he got back to Well Street and burst in upon him with his news.

He withdrew the fork from the fire, carefully inspected its burden and after an interval of profound thought remarked:

“O-oh—her!”

His “O-oh—her” was, if anything, more pregnant with meaning than Charnock’s.

“Well?” snapped Anderton. He was by now getting thoroughly exasperated. “Well? What about ‘Oh—her ‘? What’s wrong with her anyway?”

The mate thoughtfully blew the ashes off his latest culinary triumph and thrust it into his mouth.

“She’s no’ got a gude name!” he said, indistinctly, but none the less darkly.

“Not a good name—what’s that mean, pray?” demanded Anderton angrily.

“Just that,” said the mate laconically, and went on toasting cheese.

Anderton flung out of the room in a rage. By this time his first enthusiasm over his unexpected good fortune had received a decided check, and it was with distinctly mixed feelings that he made his way Poplar-wards to make personal acquaintance with his new ship.

What was the meaning behind all these dark hints? Was this mysterious “Altisidora” a tough ship—a hell-ship? Her skipper didn’t look like it, though, of course, one had heard of captains who had the Jekyll-and-Hyde touch about them—butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths ashore, but they turned into raging devils as soon as they were out of soundings. Anyhow, he was ready enough for such contingencies. He had been reckoned the best boxer in the ship as an apprentice, and he would rather welcome than otherwise an opportunity of displaying his prowess with his fists.... Was she perhaps a hungry ship? He reflected with a grin that he had received ample training in the art of tightening his belt in the old “Araminta.” ... Slow—well, a slow ship had her compensations in the way of a thumping pay-roll. He remembered the long faces the crew of his old ship had pulled when the dead horse was not out before she was on the Line.... Ah, well, he supposed he should know soon enough. One thing was certain, if she were the most unseaworthy tub in the world, he had no intention of turning back. His situation had been desperate enough to call for a desperate remedy.

There was some kind of a small disturbance—a street row of some sort—in progress just outside the dock gate, and, despite his impatience to see his new ship, Anderton stopped to see what was happening.

A queer little scarecrow of a man was standing in the roadway, shaking his clenched fists in denunciation towards the soaring spars of a lofty clipper, whose poles, rising above the roofs of the warehouses, seemed to stab the sunset sky.

“Oh, ye beauty! Oh, ye murdhering bitch!” he shouted. “Lovely ye look, don’t ye? Who’d think to see ye that ye had it in ye to kill the bes’ shipmate ever a man had?”

A passing policeman, thumbs in belt, casting a kindly Olympian eye on the little man, tapped him on the shoulder.

“All right—all right now—move on! Never mind about that now, Johnny! Can’t do with you making your bother ’ere!”

The little man whirled round on him furiously.

“Johnny! Johnny is it? Isn’t it Johnny I’m talkin’ about, the bes’ shipmate ever a man had—smashed like a rotten apple, and no cause at all for him to fall—oh, ye villain—oh, ye——”

Olympus grew slightly impatient.

“Come now, move on! Can’t do with you creatin’ no bother! Move on, I tell you, if you don’t want me to appre’end you!”

The little man shuffled off, still muttering to himself, and pausing now and again in his zigzag progress along the road to flourish his fists at those contemptuous spars stabbing the sunset. The policeman, catching Anderton’s eye, tapped his forehead significantly.

“Case o’ Dhoolallie tap, as we used to say in Injer,” he observed. “Round ’ere nearly every day, ’e is, carryin’ on same as you saw. Chronic!”

Anderton asked him where the “Altisidora” was berthed. A look—was it of surprise?—flitted across his stolid countenance. Anderton could have sworn he was going to say “O-oh—her!” But he didn’t. He only said, “Right straight a’ead—can’t miss ’er——”

There were quite a number of ships in the dock, of which in those days a fair proportion were still sailing ships—ships from the Baltic with windmills sticking up amidships, Dagoes with brightly painted figureheads and Irish pennants everywhere, Frenchmen with their look of Gallic smartness and their standing rigging picked out in black and white; she was none of these anyway.

Anderton’s eye dwelt longingly on the tall clipper whose spars he had already seen soaring above the sheds. There, now, was the very ship of his dreams! He thought life could hold no higher bliss for a sailorman than to stand upon her poop—to control her, to guide her, to see the whole of her lovely height and grace moving in obedience to his commands. He sighed a little at the thought, as he continued to scan the vista of moored shipping with eyes that hoped and yet feared to find what they sought.

“Right straight ahead.” She couldn’t be far off now—why, his ship must be lying at the very next berth to the beautiful clipper.

But there wasn’t a next berth: the tall beauty was lying in the very corner of the dock. Already the straggle of letters among the gilt scrollwork on her bow had begun to suggest a wild hope he daren’t let himself entertain. But now it wasn’t a hope—it was a certainty! This was his ship—this dream, this queen, this perfect thing among ships! Why, her name was like a song—why hadn’t it struck him before?—and she was like a song ... the loveliest thing, Anderton thought, he had ever seen ... rising up there so proud and stately above them all ... her bare slender skysail poles soaring up, up until the little rosy dapple in the evening sky seemed almost like a flight of tropical birds resting on her spars. She dwarfed everything else in the dock. Anderton had thought his last ship, the ship in which he had served his time, lofty enough; yet now she seemed almost stumpy by comparison.

He climbed the gangway and stepped on board. The steward, a hoarse Cockney with a drooping moustache under a pendulous red nose, and an expression of ludicrous melancholy which would have been worth a fortune to a music-hall artist, came out of his little kennel of a pantry to show him his room, and lingered a while, exuding onions and conversation.

“Nice room, sir, ain’t it? Orl been done right froo.... ’Ard lines on the ovver young feller, weren’t it? Coo! Cargo slings giv’ way when he was right underneaf—a coupler ’underweight bung on top of ’im! Coo! Didn’t it jus’ make a mess of ’im? Not ’arf....”

So that was what had happened to his mysterious predecessor! Well, it was an ill wind that blew nobody good, Anderton reflected. Poor beggar ... still he couldn’t help it ... and after all——

And it was a nice room—no denying that! Heaps of room for his things, he thought, remembering the little cramped half-deck of the “Araminta” which he had shared with five other apprentices three short months ago. The ship belonged to a period which had not yet learned the art of cutting down its accommodation to the very last possible inch. Her saloon was a grand affair, with a carved sideboard and panelling of bird’s-eye maple, and a skylight with stained glass in it, and all the rest of her fittings were to match. It looked as if he were going to be in clover!

A series of tremendous crashes, accompanied by the falling of a heavy body, broke in upon the steward’s remarks, and he started and looked round, his toothpick poised in mid-mouth.

“Coo!” he exclaimed. “’Ere comes our Mister Rumbold—and ain’t he pickled, too?... Not ’arf!”

He vanished discreetly into his pantry as the originator of the disturbance came ricochetting along the alleyway, finally bringing up against the door-jamb of Anderton’s room, where he came to a precarious stand.

He was a man on the shady side of middle age, with a nose which had once been aquiline and a sandy-white moustache yellowed with tobacco. The impression he gave—of a dissipated cockatoo—was heightened by the rumpled crest of stiff hair which protruded from beneath the shore-going straw hat which he wore halo-fashion, like a saint on the spree, pushed well back from his forehead.

“’Lo!” he observed with owl-like gravity. “You—comin’ shee long’f us?”

Anderton said he believed he was.

The mate reflected a minute and then said succinctly:

“Gorrelpyou!”

Not being able on the spur of the moment to think of a really satisfactory answer to this rather surprising remark, Anderton took refuge in silence, and went on stowing his gear.

“I said ‘Gorrelpyou!’” repeated Mr. Rumbold presently, with a decided touch of pugnacity in his tone.

Anderton supposed it was up to him to say something, so he said:

“Yes, I know. But why?”

“’Cos—thiship—thishipsh—unlucky—‘Alshdora’!” replied the mate. “Thashwy. Unlucky—‘Alshdora’! ’N if any man shaysh I’m drunk—then I shay—my lorshangemmen, I shmit if I can shay unlucky—unlucky—‘Alshdora’—I’m perfec’ly shober.... I’m perfec’ly shober—‘n I’m goin’ bed!”

At this point he let go of the door-jamb to which he had been holding, and proceeded with astonishing velocity on a diagonal course along the alleyway, concluding by sprawling all his length on the floor of the saloon.

“Wash marry thiship,” he enunciated gravely, sitting up and rubbing his head. “Furnishershall over blushop. Tablesh—chairsh—sho on. Mush make inquirations into thish—morramomin’!”

Here he again collapsed on to the floor, from which he had been slowly raising himself as he spoke; then, apparently deciding to abandon the attempt to resume the perpendicular, he set off at a surprising pace on all fours, and Anderton’s last glimpse of him was the soles of his boots as he vanished into his cabin.

He finished stowing his possessions, and then went ashore to make one or two small purchases. The sun was not quite gone, and the greater part of the dock was still flooded with rosy light. But the Unlucky “Altisidora” lay now all in shadow, except for the gilt vane at her main truck which flashed back the last rays of sunset. She looked aloof, alone, cut off from her fellows by some mysterious and unmerited doom—a ship under a dark star.

II

It wasn’t long before she began to live up to her reputation. She started in quite a small way by fouling her anchor off Gravesend, and giving every one a peck of trouble clearing it. Incidentally, it was Mr. Mate’s morning-after head that was responsible for the mess. But that didn’t matter: it went down to the ship’s account all the same. Her next exploit was to cut a hay barge in two in the estuary. It was foggy at the time, the barge’s skipper was drunk, and the “crew”—a boy of sixteen or so—lost his head when the ship loomed suddenly up right on top of him, and put his helm up instead of down. But what of that? She was the Unlucky “Altisidora,” or very likely the barge wouldn’t have been there at all. Down went another black mark against her name.

The captain, in the meantime, had apparently gone into retreat like an Anglican parson. He had dived below as soon as he came on board, and there he remained, to all intents and purposes as remote and inaccessible as the Grand Lama of Tibet, until the ship was well to westward of the Lizard. This, Anderton learned, was his invariable custom when nearing or leaving land. Mr. Rumbold, the mate, defined his malady briefly and scornfully as “soundings-itis.” “No nerve—that’s what’s the matter with him: as much use as the ship’s figurehead and a damn sight less ornamental!”

Not that it seemed to make much difference whether he was there or not. He was a singularly colourless little man, whose very features were so curiously indeterminate that his face made no more impression on the mind than if it had been a sheet of blank paper. It seemed to be a positive agony to him to give an order. Even in ordinary conversation he was never quite sure which word to put first. He never finished a sentence or even a phrase straight ahead, but dropped it and made a fresh start, only to change his mind a second time and run back to pick up what he had discarded. And this same painful uncertainty was evident in all he did. His fingers were constantly busy—fiddling with his beard, smoothing his tie, twiddling the buttons of his coat. Even his eyes were irresolute—wandering hither and thither as if they couldn’t decide to look at the same thing two minutes together. He had the look of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and so, in point of fact, he was. He had jockeyed himself somehow into the command of the “Altisidora,” through family influence or something of the kind, and had lived ever since in momentary dread of his unfitness for his position being discovered.

Anderton, for his part, owed to the skipper’s invisibility one of the most unforgettable moments of his whole life. The pilot had just gone ashore. The mate was below. To all intent Anderton had the ship to himself.

A glorious moment—a magnificent moment! He was nineteen—not six months out of his time—and he was in sole charge of a ship—and such a ship. The veriest cockboat might well have gained a borrowed splendour in the circumstances; but here was no need for the rose-coloured spectacles of idealizing youth. Tier on tier, her canvas rose rounding and dimpling against the blue of the sky. She curtseyed, bowed, dipped, and rose on the long lift of the seas. Her hull quivered like a thing alive. Oh, she was beautiful! beautiful! Whatever life might yet hold for him of happiness or success, it could bring again no moment quite so splendid as this.

Mr. Rumbold, after a few days of the most appalling moroseness while the drink was working out of his system, developed, rather to Anderton’s surprise, into a quite entertaining companion, possessed of the relics of a good education, a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of unprintable stories, and a pretty if slightly bitter wit. He was perfectly conscious of the failing that had made a mess of his career. Anderton guessed from a hint he let drop one day that he had once had a command and had lost it, probably through over-indulgence in the good old English pastime known as “lifting the elbow.” “A sailor’s life would be all right if it was all like this,” he broke out one day—it was one of those glorious exhilarating days in the Trades when the whole world seems full of rejoicing—“it’s the damned seaports that play hell with a fellow, Anderton, you take my word for it! Drink, my boy, that’s what does it—drink and little dirty sluts of women—that’s what we risk our lives every day earning money for! It’s all a big joke—a big bloody joke, my son—and the only thing to do is to laugh at it!” And off he went again on one of his Rabelaisian stories.

The ship fought her way to the southward against a succession of baffling airs and head winds where the Trades should have been, and a few degrees north of the Line ran into a belt of flat calm which bade fair to keep her there until the crack of doom. It wasn’t a case of the usual unreliable, irritating Doldrum weather. It was a dead flat calm in which day after day came and went while the sails drooped lifeless against the masts, and men’s nerves got more and more on edge, and Anderton began to have visions of the months and the years passing by, and the weed growing long and green on the “Altisidora’s” hull like the whiskers of some marine deity, and himself returning, one day, old and white-haired and toothless, to a world which had forgotten his existence. To crown all, the melancholy steward at this time suffered a sad bereavement. His cat was missing—a ginger-and-white specimen, gaunt, dingy, and singularly unlovely after the manner of most ship’s cats, but a great favourite with her proud owner, as well as with all the fo’c’sle. The steward wandered about like a disconsolate ghost, making sibilant noises of a persuasive nature in all sorts of unexpected places, which the mate appeared to find peculiarly irritating. The steward had only to murmur “P’sss—p’sss—p’sss!” under his breath, and out would come Mr. Rumbold’s head from his cabin with an accompanying roar of “Damn you—shishing that infernal cat again! If I hear any more of it I’ll wring your neck!”

But good and bad times and all times pass over—and there came at last a day when the “Altisidora’s” idle sails once more filled to a heartening breeze, and the seas slipped bubbling under her keel, and she sped rejoicing on her way as if no dark star brooded over her.

The steward poked his head out of his pantry that morning as Anderton passed, with a smile that was like a convulsion of nature.

“Ol’ Ginger’s turned up again, sir!... What do you think of ’er?”

He indicated a small box in the corner in which a gently palpitating mass of kittenhood explained how Ginger had been spending her time. The prodigal in the meantime was parading proudly round the steward’s legs, thrumming to the end of her thin tail with the cat’s ever-recurring surprise and delight over the miracle of maternity.

“Artful, ain’t she?” said the steward. “Right down in the lazareet, she was! Must ’ave poked ’erself down there w’en I was gettin’ up some stores las’ week. That’s ’cos I drahned ’er last lot—see? Wot, drahn these ’ere! No blinkin’ fear! W’y, they’re black ’uns—ketch me drahnin’ a black cat!”

Whether the advent of the black kittens had anything to do with it or not, it certainly seemed for a time as if the luck had turned. Day after day the ship reeled the knots off behind her at a steady fifteen. Every one’s spirits rose. “Wot price the hunlucky ‘Altisidora’ now?” said Bill Green to the man next him on the yard. They were tarring down, their tar-pots slung round their necks as they worked. “There you go, you ruddy fool, askin’ for trouble!” replied Mike, the ancient shellback, wise in the lore of the sea. “Didn’t I tell ye now?” Bill’s tar-pot had given an unexpected tilt and spread its contents impartially over Bill’s person and the deck below. “If you was in the Downeaster ‘Elias K. Slocum’ wot I sailed in once, you’d git a dose o’ belayin’ pin soup for supper over that, my son, as’d learn you to play tricks with luck.”

The luck didn’t last long. Possibly a hatful of blind black kittens had not the efficacy as mascots of a full-grown black Tom. Ginger’s progeny undeniably looked very small, helpless, squirming morsels to contend successfully against the Dark Gods.

The ship was by now getting into the high latitudes, and sail had to be gradually shortened until she was running down the Easting under lower topsails and foresail. Anderton had been keeping the middle watch, and had gone below, tired out, after a night of “All hands on deck.” It seemed to him that his eyes were no sooner closed than once again the familiar summons beat upon the doors of his consciousness, and he stumbled on deck, still only half roused from sleep, to find a scene of the wildest confusion.

A sudden shift of wind had caught the ship aback. Both the foremast and mainmast were hanging over the side in a raffle of rigging, only the mizen, with the rags of the lower topsail still clinging to the yard, being left standing. The helmsman had been swept overboard, to be seen no more, and the ship lay wallowing helplessly in the trough of the sea, under the grey light of the dreary dawn—a sight to daunt the stoutest heart.

It was then that the mate, Mr. Rumbold, revealed a new and hitherto unsuspected side of his character. Anderton had first known him as a drunken and shameless sot; next, he had found in him an entertaining companion and a man of the world whose wide experience of life in its more sordid aspects compelled the unwilling admiration of youth. But now he recognized in him a fine and resourceful seaman and a determined and indomitable leader of men in the face of instant danger. The suddenness and completeness of the disaster which might well have induced the numbness of despair, only seemed to arouse in him a spirit in proportion to the needs of the moment. During the long hours while the ship fought for her life—during the whole of the next day, when the pumps were kept going incessantly to free her from the volume of water that had flooded her hold—when all hands laboured to rig jury-masts and bend sufficient sail to keep her going before the wind—he it was who continually urged, encouraged, cajoled, and drove another ounce of effort out of men who thought they had no more fight left in their bodies. He it was who worked hardest of all, and who, when things seemed at their worst and blackest, brought a grin to haggard, worn-out faces with a shanty stave of an irresistible humour and—be it added—a devastating unprintableness.

The ship managed to hobble into Cape Town under her jury rig, where Mr. Rumbold promptl