Part 2 (1/2)
The moment the wind abated we again made sail, and endeavoured to regain our lost ground. It was trying work. The weather was bitterly cold-- the days little more than seven hours long--we scarcely ever had a dry rag on our backs, for when the rain was not falling the sea was continually breaking over us, knocking away our bulwarks, and threatening to carry off those on deck to destruction. Scarcely had we made good forty or fifty miles to the westward, than the wind increasing we had again to heave-to under a close-reefed fore-topsail. Here we lay day after day, drifting rapidly back from the point it had taken us so long to gain. Each day, too, saw our bulwarks more and more shattered by the furious seas constantly breaking on board.
During this time I was one forenoon in the pantry, just outside the captain's cabin, when Domingo, handing me a wooden bowl containing the ingredients for a plum pudding, said, ”Here you, Jack, carry dis to de galley, and tell de cook to boil him well.”
I was bound to obey the steward, black though he was, and away I sped on my errand. Just as I reached the deck the s.h.i.+p gave a lurch and sent me down to leeward, when instead of, as I ought to have done, making my way up to windward, to save the distance, I ran along on the lee side of the deck. Before, however, my destination was reached I saw rising up right ahead a high, dark, foam-crested sea. On it came. With a crash like thunder it broke on board, and rushed roaring and hissing along the deck. Letting go the bowl, I frantically clutched a handspike sticking in the windla.s.s, the nearest object to me. The fierce water surrounded me, the handspike uns.h.i.+pped, and, still grasping it, I felt myself borne away into the seething, hissing ocean. At that instant the s.h.i.+p gave another lee-lurch--all hope was gone--every incident of my life pa.s.sed through my mind--when I caught a glimpse of the cook darting out of his galley; seizing me by the collar he dragged me in, dripping wet and half stunned. It was the work of a moment.
Directly afterwards the watch on the quarterdeck came hurrying forward with the third mate, who sang out, in a tone of alarm, ”Where is that boy?” making sure that I had been carried overboard, he not having seen the cook lift me into the galley. When he found me there--though I fancied that I deserved commiseration, for my teeth chattered with cold and fright, and I looked like a drowned rat--he rated me soundly for having gone along the lee side. Medley, however, who had come with the rest, took me down below and made me s.h.i.+ft into a dry suit of his clothing. He then persuaded Domingo to mix a fresh pudding, which he took to the cook to boil, so that I was saved from the captain's anger, which would have fallen on my head had it not been forthcoming at dinner-time.
On his return to the half-deck, Medley said to me, ”Now, Jack, let us thank our merciful Father in heaven that you have been preserved from the greatest danger you were ever in during your life. Had the cook not been looking your way in another moment of time you would have been overboard, and it would have been impossible to pick you up.”
I was willing to do as he proposed, and no one being below we knelt down by the side of our bunks, and I prayed more earnestly than I had ever prayed before. We were just about to rise from our knees when I heard Dan Hogan's voice exclaim, ”Arrah now, you young psalm singers, what new trick are you after?”
”Not a new trick, but an old custom, Dan,” answered Medley, boldly confronting him. ”If your life had just been saved I hope that you would thank G.o.d for it, otherwise I should say that you were a very ungrateful fellow.”
”I'm shut up,” answered Hogan, and taking the article he had come for he returned on deck.
I expected that he would tell the men how he had found us employed, but I could not discover that he had spoken about it to any one, and after that he appeared to treat Medley with more respect than heretofore.
When a person is doing a right thing the proper way is to confront his opponent boldly.
All this time we were suffering from the bitter cold, the sleet and snow, the long, long hours of darkness with seldom a gleam from the sun during the short period he was above the horizon. At length, the weather moderating, we again stood on our course to the westward.
About five weeks after we first sighted the Horn we managed to weather it, and finally steering northward with a favourable breeze soon ran into a more temperate atmosphere than we had enjoyed for many a day.
CHAPTER THREE.
We were now fairly in the Pacific. I have said little about our crew.
There were some good men, not a few indifferent ones, and others as bad as could be. Dan Hogan was not by a long way the worst. It required the greatest strictness and vigilance on the part of the officers to keep them in order. Medley and I kept pretty clear of them, except when on duty, and we were then compelled to lend a hand to any one of them who might summon us. This we did cheerfully, though I, being the youngest, had all sorts of odd jobs to perform, not all of the pleasantest description. I thus had opportunities of hearing what the men were talking about without intending to be an eavesdropper, and I was before long convinced that some of them, if they had the opportunity, would not scruple to mutiny, to knock all who opposed them on the head, and take possession of the s.h.i.+p, or to run off themselves.
I told Medley of my suspicions.
”It's all brag, Jack,” he answered. ”Don't trouble yourself about the matter. They might very probably like to do that, or any other piece of villainy, but they dare not. They are cowards at heart, let them talk ever so boastfully.”
I was not convinced, and determined to watch them. While we were engaged in the chase of whales, in towing them alongside, and in cutting out and trying in, or, in other words, in taking off the blubber and boiling it down into oil, they were too actively employed to plot mischief. They were also then separated, some being in the boats and others on board; but while the s.h.i.+p was at anchor off some savage island, away from all const.i.tuted authority, was the time when they were likely to carry out their evil designs.
I am sorry to say it, that though Captain Hake was a bold seaman, generous and kind-hearted, he was influenced by no religious principle; he objected to what he called Methodism on board, and so did the mate and doctor. Not a chest except Medley's and mine contained a Bible, and we had to read ours in secret to avoid the risk of being ordered to throw them overboard. If we had had merely to endure the sneers and laughter of our s.h.i.+pmates, we should not have minded. How I should have acted if left to myself, or with a different sort of companion, I do not know; but he encouraged me to read and pray, and refrain from evil habits, for which I owe him a deep debt of grat.i.tude.
The first land we made was Juan Fernandez, or, as we called it, Robinson Crusoe's Island, where he, or rather Alexander Selkirk, lived so long till rescued by the s.h.i.+p in which the veteran Dampier sailed as pilot.
It is about three hundred miles west of Valparaiso, on the coast of Chili, very mountainous and rugged, but richly covered with vegetation.
We hove-to off the bay in which Drake, Cavendish, Dampier, and Lord Anson anch.o.r.ed. Three boats were immediately sent on sh.o.r.e. I went in one with the doctor, who wanted to collect a species of mint, an excellent preventive against scurvy. It was found in such abundance that two boats loaded with it were sent back to the s.h.i.+p. We made tea of it, which we much enjoyed, after having had only pea-coffee to drink for so long. I half expected to meet Robinson Crusoe himself coming down to welcome us to his island, for we saw numbers of his goats among the craigs, though we in vain tried to catch one of the patriarchs of the flock, to ascertain whether its ears were nicked. Anson's men discovered several venerable animals with long beards, which had evidently been so treated by Selkirk himself, but that generation must have long since died out. The dogs Anson saw have also disappeared, being more easily shot than the goats.
Pulling a short distance from the sh.o.r.e, we got out our fis.h.i.+ng-lines.
So beautifully clear was the water as the sun shone down into it, that we could actually see the fish take the hook. They bit with wonderful avidity, and in a short time we caught as many rock-cod and other fish as we required. After this we stood along the coast, seldom within sixty miles of it, yet in sight of the snowy summits of the towering Andes. This part of the ocean is called by whalers ”the off-sh.o.r.e fis.h.i.+ng ground,” extending from Valparaiso to Panama, and about four hundred miles westward from the land. We were tolerably successful, having killed four whales.
I shall not forget the scene the deck presented to my eyes the night after the blubber from our first whale had been stripped off and cut up while the crew were engaged in ”trying out,” that is, boiling it down into oil, to be stowed away in casks below. Along the deck were arranged the huge ”try-pots,” with brightly blazing fires beneath them, the fuel being the crisp membrane from the already used blubber. On each side of the ”try-works” were copper tanks or coolers to receive the oil as it flows over the sides of the pots with the rolling of the s.h.i.+p, or is ladled into them when sufficiently boiled. Some of the men stripped to the waist, and, begrimed with smoke and oil, were working away with forks or ladles, either throwing in the blubber, chopped into small pieces, or skimming off the sc.r.a.ps, or baling out the oil; others of the men were in the blubber-room, heaving on deck the horse-pieces, of about thirty pounds weight each, to be minced fine before being thrown into the try-pots. The whole watch were thus engaged, and what with the blazing fires, the wreaths of black smoke, the dark figures flouris.h.i.+ng their implements, and ever and anon giving vent to horrible oaths and shouts and shrieks of savage laughter, the spectacle I beheld was more weird and wild than anything I could have imagined--like one of those dreadful scenes I have read of where spirits of darkness are described holding their midnight revels.
My share of the work on such occasions when the watch to which I belonged was on deck was to turn the grindstone for the carpenter, whose business it was to sharpen the spades for the men. In the intervals during daylight I amused myself, armed with one of the spades, the pole of which was twenty feet long, in killing the sharks swarming alongside.
One deep cut on the back of the neck or tail was sufficient to destroy the largest of the savage creatures. I must not be accused of cruelty to animals. Of all the fierce creatures of land or sea the sailor most dreads and detests the cruel shark, for there are few who have not heard or seen some thing of his depredations.
About a month after leaving Juan Fernandez we reached the Galapagos, a group of volcanic islands lying under the equator, their black and rugged sh.o.r.es having a most uninviting appearance. In one only, Charles Island, is water to be found, though in another of considerable extent there are hills and valleys with groves of trees; but the chief vegetation on all of them is the p.r.i.c.kly pear, which in most parts covers the ground.