The Project Gutenberg eBook, Under Sail, by Felix Riesenberg

The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

UNDER SAIL

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

THE SHIP A. J. FULLER OF NEW YORK

Copyright, 1918

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and Electrotyped. Published, September, 1918

TO
MAUD

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[INTRODUCTION]

THE SQUARE RIGGERS

America is again facing forward to the sea. The ancient thrill of the wide salt spaces, of the broad horizon beyond which adventure beckons us, appeals once more to the youth of America. We are living in times when the great importance of the sea as a career comes home to us at every turn. The sea is the great bulwark of our liberty, and by the sea we must persevere or perish in the world struggle of Anglo-Saxon democracy against the powers of autocratic might.

When America returns to her own, she builds upon foundations of tradition that have their footings on the solid bed rock of the republic. One glorious era of our sea history was followed by another, and as times progressed the breed of seamen ever rose capable and triumphant to the necessities that called them forth.

The Revolutionary sailors, and those of 1812, were followed by the great commercial seamen of the clippers. The mighty fleets of the Civil War astonished the world, and in the period just previous to our seafaring decline of a score of years past, the great sailers flying the Stars and Stripes spread their white cotton canvas on every sea.

Their story has never been adequately told. They are not to be measured in terms of tonnage, or in the annals of swift passages from port to port. Their contribution to the legends of the sea remains obscure. They carried a tradition of hard driving, and were a phase of our sea life that formed and forged the link between the old and the new, between the last days of sail and the great new present of the America of steam and steel.

Men who go to sea today in our merchant marine, in positions of command, are, in many instances, graduates of the ships of these latter days of sail.

Looking back, and as time goes it is not so very far away; we can, in our mind's eye, see the great wood-built craft that lined the waterfront of South Street. These were the last of the American sailing ships, entering from, and clearing to, every sea port under heaven. They were not the famous California clippers of an earlier day, or the swift Western Ocean packet ships, or the storied tea ships of the China trade, but they were their legitimate successors. The ships of this last glorious burst of sail, under the Stars and Stripes, were larger craft, vessels built for the long voyage haul, for the grain trade, for the sugar trade, and as carriers of general cargo to the Orient and the western coast of North America.

Most of these ships were laid down in the eighties, and left the yards of Maine to find adventure and preferment in the longer routes of commerce. The Horn and the Cape of Good Hope were their turning points, and they smoked through the hum of the Roaring Forties, as they beat from the Line to Liverpool, laden with California grain, or they ran before the westerly winds, from Table Bay to Melbourne—Running Their Easting Down—black hulled, white winged ships, with New York, Boston, Baltimore, or Philadelphia standing out in golden letters on their transoms.

Only the strongest and best found ships, and the most skilful and daring seamen were fit to carry the flag across the world-long ocean courses about the storm-swept Horn, and here again America more than held her own in competition with the mariners of the old seafaring nations of Europe.

Winthrop Lippitt Marvin in his valuable work, "The American Merchant Marine,"[1] pictures this last Titanic struggle of the sea in stirring fashion—

"It was a contest of truly Olympian dignity,—of the best ships of many flags with each other and with the elements. Out through the Golden Gate there rode every year in the later seventies and the eighties, southward bound, the long lean iron models of Liverpool and Glasgow, the broader waisted, wooden New Englanders, with their fine Yankee sheer and tall, gleaming skysails, the sturdy, careful Norwegian and German ships, often launched on the Penobscot or Kennebec, and here and there a graceful Frenchman or Italian. The British were the most numerous, because the total tonnage of their merchant marine was by far the greatest. Next came the Americans. The other flags looked small by comparison. In this splendid grain trade there sailed from San Francisco for Europe in 1881-85, 761 British iron ships and 418 American wooden ships. The Americans were the largest vessels. Their average registered tonnage was 1,634 and of the fourteen ships above 2,000 tons that sailed in 1880-1, twelve flew the Stars and Stripes. The average tonnage of the British iron ships was 1,356.

"The wooden yards of Maine had seen their opportunity and built in quick succession many great ships and barks of from 1,400 to 2,400 tons, very strongly constructed on models happily combining carrying capacity with speed, loftily sparred, and clothed with the symmetrical, snow-white canvas for which Yankee sailmakers were famous the world around. These new vessels were not strictly clippers, though they were often called so. They were really medium clippers; that is, they were less racer-like and more capacious than the celebrated greyhounds of the decade before the Civil War. They could not compete with steam; their owners knew it. But they were launched in confident hope that they were adapted for the grain trade and for some other forms of long-voyage, bulky carrying, and that they could find a profitable occupation during their lifetime of fifteen or twenty years. They were just as fine ships in their way as the extreme clippers, and in all but speed they were more efficient. They were framed with oak, and ceiled and planked with the hard pine of the South. They were generously supplied with the new, approved devices in rig and equipment."

In the last years of the nineties there were many survivors of this noble fleet of American sailers still in the long voyage trade. Ships like the El Capitan, the Charmer, the A. J. Fuller, the Roanoke, and the Shenandoah, were clearing from New York for deep water ports, and South Street was a thoroughfare of sailors, redolent of tar, and familiar with the wide gossip of the seas, brought to the string pieces of the street by men from the great sailing ships.

Then the crimp still throve in his repulsive power, and the Boarding Masters' Association owned the right to parcel out, fleece and ship, the deepwater seamen of the port. The Front Street House and a score of others held the humble dunnage of the fo'c'sle sailor as security, cashed his "advance" and sent him out past the Hook with nothing but a sparse kit of dog's wool and oakum slops, a sheath knife and a donkey's breakfast.

Those were the hard days of large ships and small crews. In clipper days, a flyer like the Sovereign of the Seas carried a crew of eighty seamen, and most of them were as rated—A.B. The ship A. J. Fuller, in the year 1897, left the port of New York, for the voyage around Cape Horn to Honolulu with eighteen seamen, counting the boy and the carpenter, the Fuller being a three skysail yard ship of 1,848 tons register.

It may be interesting to compare the size and crew of the Sovereign of the Seas, as given by Captain Clark in his great book, "The Clipper Ship Era,"[2] with the dimensions and crew of the ship A. J. Fuller.

This condition, of small crews and large ships, brought to the seven seas a reputation for relentless driving and manhandling that has clung to the minds of men as nothing else. The huge American ships were the hardest afloat, and that remarkable booklet, "The Red Record," compiled by the National Seamen's Union of America, in the middle nineties, carries a tale of cruelty and abuse on the high seas that must forever remain a blot upon the white escutcheon of sail.

These ships bred a sea officer peculiar to the time—the bucko mate of fact as well as fiction. These were hard fisted men, good sailors and excellent disciplinarians, though they lacked the polish acquired by sea officers of an earlier day when the sailer was often a passenger carrier, and intercourse with people of culture had its effect upon the men of the after guard. Also, the sea had become less attractive as a career. The boasted "high pay" of the American Merchant Marine, was $60 per month for the Chief Mate; $30 per month for the Second Mate, and $18 per month for an A.B.—at least such were the magnificent wages paid on the A. J. Fuller of New York in the year 1897.

The mate, to earn his two dollars a day, and keep, had to be a seaman of the highest attainments. His was a knowledge won only after a long hard apprenticeship at sea. He had to have the force of character of a top-notch executive, combined with ability and initiative. Then too, he was supposed to be a navigator, a man having at least a speaking acquaintance with nautical astronomy. In addition to this he might be as rough and as foul mouthed as he saw fit, and some of them were very liberal in this respect.

Then men still signed articles, voyage after voyage, for the long drill around the Horn, or, to vary the monotony, if such it could be called, made the voyage to Australia, or to China or Japan. In the main, however, American ships clearing from New York carried cargoes to the West Coast of the United States, or to the Hawaiian Islands, where they came under the protective ruling of the coastwise shipping laws, and were not compelled to meet the stringent insurance rates of Lloyd's that barred American sailing bottoms from fair competition with the British.

The sailor men of that day were still real seamen, at least a large number of real seamen still clung to the remaining ships. They were experts, able to turn in a dead eye in wire or hemp, and could cast a lanyard knot in the stiff four-stranded stuff that was later on replaced by screws and turn buckles when metal hulls succeeded those of wood.

With the passing of the wooden ship—the wooden square rigged sailer—went the American sailor, for comparatively few steel sailing ships were built in the United States. With the sailor went the romance of bulging canvas and of storm stripped humming bolt ropes. The tragedy, and the hardships of the long voyages passed away, and with that passing is gone much of the actual physical struggle with the wind and sea that made the sailor what he was.

The square rigged breed of sailors, while not dead yet, for the old salts die hard, has, by force of circumstances, failed to rear a younger generation to take its place. But the old spirit of sea adventure is as strong as ever; the ocean rages as loud, and lies as calm, as in the days of departed glory. It is still the world route to foreign trade, and a more ample domestic prosperity. Americans are again turning toward the sea, are heeding its age old wisdom, and are building and handling the newer craft of steam, and coal, and oil, with as much skill and success as they did the sailing craft of old.

On the following pages is recorded for the seamen and landsmen of today, a personal story of one of the last voyages around Cape Horn in a wooden ship propelled by sail alone—a ship without a donkey engine, a wooden Bath-built packet at her prime in point of age and upkeep. The advance notes have been cashed by the boarding masters, who have left the crew in tow of their crimps, and, after deducting for board and slops, the last remaining dollars have been blown in on the Bowery under the watchful eyes of the runners, who see to it that the men are delivered on board.

Our ship is the A. J. Fuller of New York, Captain Charles M. Nichols, and she waits her crew, ready to cast off from her berth in the East River at the turn of the tide, at daybreak on December 5, 1897, having cleared for the port of Honolulu, capital of the Republic of Hawaii, with a general cargo consigned to the old island house of Brewer and Company.

CHAPTER I

[OUTWARD BOUND]

"Oh for a fair and gentle wind,"
I heard a fair one cry;
But give to me the roaring breeze,
And white waves beating high;
And white waves beating high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free,
The world of waters is our own,
And merry men are we.

Jacob Faithful.

"Cook!" bawled a deep voice from a door that burst open with a flood of yellow light under the break of the poop, "serve a round of hot cafay nore to them passengers! And Mr. Stoddard," added the mate from whom these orders issued, addressing the second officer who strode from the edge of light toward the group of men tumbling on board, "turn all hands to in five minutes! Stand by to cast off lines!"

Some of the shore crowd from the boarding houses helped to pass up the chests and bags of dunnage, and the bundles of "donkey's breakfast" as we clambered to the ice-encrusted deck of the ship A. J. Fuller, lying at her wharf near the foot of Maiden Lane. A flickering light, and the rattle of stove lids in the galley, as we passed forward to the fo'c'sle, told us that the cook was stirring, and the snorting of a tug under the starboard quarter gave notice of an early start.

It was dark when we came aboard; a cold December wind rippled the black waters of the East River, chilling to the marrow those few stragglers who walked the cobble stones of South Street at that early morning hour.

An odd lot of humanity dumped their few belongings on the fo'c'sle deck; strangers all, excepting a few who had just deserted from the British bark Falls of Ettrick, men jumbled together by strange fate, and destined to long months of close companionship, of hard knocks, and endless days and nights of unremitting labor.

No time was lost, however, in sentimental mooning; the chill morning air was charged with activity, the "after guard" was all astir and an ebb tide flowed, ready to help us on our way. Gulping down the "cafay nore" that presently was passed forward in a bucket, all hands dipping in with hook pots and pannikins, hastily dug from chest and bag, we were barely able to stow away this refreshment before a heavy fist thumped the fo'c'sle doors.

"Turn to! Turn to! This ain't a private yachting tour!" was the sarcastic invitation that sent us scrambling to the deck.

"Here! You, I mean!" yelled the mate, "come forward!" for I had headed aft, and, at this command, I found myself with some others hauling a heavy water-soaked hawser aboard the fo'c'sle head.

"All clear?" came the query from aft.

"Aye, aye! All clear!"

A long whistle sounded from our tug, as we backed slowly from the wharf; the escort of boarding house runners shivering on the string piece of the dock, gave us a dismal cheer, and the voyage around Cape Horn had fairly begun.

The first level rays of morning light began to filter over the house tops on the Brooklyn side, the misty span of the bridge loomed above the river, and a dozen bloodshot eyes among the crew forward cast their farewell glances at the Tom and Jerry signs in the saloon windows on historic South Street.

We were a lumbering lot, pushed and cuffed from station to station, our best men acting like dolts, until the exercise and crisp morning air, zipping above the river, wore off the effects of a last night spent at the Atlantic Garden. South Street, at that day still a forest of spars, with here and there a bald spot marking the advent of the coastwise steamers, slid past us, Governor's Island, the Statue, the Narrows, and the Hook, were passed unnoticed in the ceaseless hustle on our decks. The running gear, left by the shore riggers in a hopeless tangle, had to be put to rights, and the mates worked us like demons to get things in some sort of shape before we should be called upon to work the vessel under sail.

Gradually order of some sort issued from the chaos, and as the day wore on we set our fores'l, all tops'ls, main t'gan'sl, jib and stays'ls, before a stiff off-shore breeze that caused the towline to slacken, and orders were given to cast off the tug.

The new steam pilot boat New York rode the swell ahead of us, ready to take off the pilot.

"Weather main braces!" came the order; the yards were braced aback, a yawl from the New York touched our side for an instant, as we surged ahead slowly against the back push from the main, and the pilot, hanging from a Jacob's ladder, dropped into his boat.

"See you in Liverpool!" shouted the pilot, standing in the yawl and waving a final farewell to Captain Nichols.

"Brace up main yards, sir!" ordered the skipper, addressing the mate, and we swung them around with a will.

The day was well advanced by then, a low bank of cloud over the land shut in the sunset, and a spanking breeze from no'east by nor' brought our port tacks to the deck. The Fuller heeled easily beneath the force of the wind. Off to leeward, and rapidly falling astern, was the American ship Tam O'Shanter, bound for China; we heard afterward that she was lost.

Up to the first dog watch all hands had labored without a moment's rest, and at eight bells in the afternoon the courses and all plain sail to royals were drawing nicely. As soon as the gear was shipshape and coiled on the pins, all hands were mustered aft. There was a feeling of uncertainty among the crew as we filed aft to the waist, standing in an awkward group about the main fife rail, a nondescript, hard-fisted, weatherbeaten lot of men.

Above towered the vast expanse of snowy canvas, looming out of all proportion in the dark half light of the winter evening; beneath us was the rolling, palpitating sweep of deck, yielding and swaying in the constant balance 'tween the wind and sea. To windward, above the line of bulwark, a ragged mackerel sky drove across the cloud rack of scattered cirrus, touched with dull red from the high shafts of the setting sun. The black backs of the shoreward rollers swept to leeward and astern, passing us as if frightened by the lofty figure of the ship.

The watches were about to be chosen. The two mates came down into the waist, and Captain Nichols stood at the break of the poop to observe this time-honored ceremony of the sea. For better or for worse, in sunshine or in storm, we were to be parceled off to our respective task-masters for the long months of the voyage ahead. The fate of friendships was to be decided, for watchmates are far closer than mere shipmates, and a general desire to escape the clutches of the mate made all of us anxious for the ordeal to be concluded. Most of the men were in favor of the second mate, Mr. Stoddard. The mate, Mr. Zerk, was a driver, a bully, and what not, but the second mate seemed to be easier, in spite of the fact that he lost no opportunity to bawl out everyone that came across his path.

"He'll be all right when we get outside," was the remark that voiced the general opinion. Old Smith, perhaps the wisest of the real sailor-men on board, came as near to hitting the relative values of the mates as was possible. "I don't see no choice between them," he said. "One may be easier, but give me the best sailor. A good sailor aft saves work for his watch forward. See if I don't figger it right. Take it any way you like, there's no choosing between them rotten apples aft, and let it go at that."

Mr. Zerk, a man of about forty, medium in height, broad shouldered, bull necked, with close cropped yellow hair—grey eyes set in a very red, smooth-shaven face, except for a sweeping blond mustache, was a native of Nova Scotia, brought up in "blue nose" ships. He eyed us with the cold look of a surgeon about to amputate. Walking up to the group just abaft of the mainmast, he made his first choice without a moment's hesitation.

"Frenchy, come here," and Victor Mathes, of Dunkirk, went to the port watch, chosen by the mate.

"Smith," was the laconic reply of Mr. Stoddard to the first choice of the mate. Honors were even, for it was a toss up between the two men.

Brenden, a husky, well-set-up sailor, trained in the sailing ships out of Hamburg, with plenty of beef and a good head, was the next choice of the mate.

"Axel," said the second mate, scoring the first advantage in the choosing of the watches. Axel proved to be one of the best men in the crew, a big, boyish Swede, a sailor and a gentleman.

"Roth, come here," and John Roth, late of the opal mines in Australia, one of the deserters from the Falls of Ettrick, and the artist of the crew, went to port. We soon dubbed him "Australia." The mate sent "Australia" to relieve the wheel, and the second mate paused a moment weighing the merits of the remaining men.

"Tom," was his choice, and another sailor, Tom Morstad, also a deserter from the Ettrick, went to starboard.

Things were fining down, and the remaining victims in this heartless process of elimination were becoming increasingly apprehensive, while those who had been chosen grinned at us with aggravating humor. The mates were getting less and less sure of their choice as the pickings became more and more undesirable. It was getting to be a question of brains versus brawn. Husky young clodhoppers shipped as A.B. by the greedy boarding masters; young mules with nothing but their thick hides and an abundance of main strength and stupidity to recommend them, placed in the balance with such old fellows as Jimmy Marshall and Jack Hitchen. Jimmy, who claimed to be sixty-five, a wizened little old sea-horse, but a wonderful "chantey man," won the next choice and was taken by the mate.

Hitchen was called to starboard, and the honors still remained about even in the contest of wit and experience, for both mates had studied the paces of each individual with critical eyes during that eventful day.

The next choice was a painful one. There was a short pause; it seemed to us that "Charlie Horse," who had once been mate on a coaster in the oyster trade, or Dago Tony, would surely be chosen next.

"Felix, come here," said the mate, running his eye over the Dago and Charlie, and lighting on me. I stepped over to the boys lined up on the lee side, a weight lifted from my mind, as Frenchy, destined to be my chum, moved near me.

It was getting on by then. Chips went aft carrying the side lights, and Captain Nichols was stumping the poop with some impatience, as a hint to his officers to bring things to a close.

The second mate chose Charlie, and George Krug, or "Scouse" as we called him, was taken by the mate. Dago Tony went to the second mate, and Fred Erricson, a good sailor, also an Ettrick deserter, went to port.

Mike, the wood turner, went to starboard, and Joe Johnson, one time a cobbler's apprentice, and general all round husky favorite of misfortune, was taken by the mate.

The left-overs, Martin, and Peter the boy, were divided by the call of Peter to the starboard watch, and Martin fell to the mate. Peter, an American, ex-reporter on a Worcester paper, one time foreman in a corset factory, and a bright, wideawake boy of something over twenty-one, had shipped for eight dollars a month and his health. The voyage netted him his payday many times over, for he was endowed with brains and, starting out a wreck, he came back a toughhanded deepwater man.

It was close to six bells by that time. Chips had set out the running lights and was getting the big pump ready, having sounded the well and reported a foot of water.

"Starboard watch below for tucker!" ordered the mate; and then turning to the men of his watch, he ordered, "Man the pump!"

It was dark as we bent to the cranks of the big pump, and with the hum of wind and the swish of water in our ears we realized that we were truly at sea, insignificant mortals riding on the low deck of a vast fabric of wood and canvas, venturing far from land on the mighty stretches of the Western Ocean.

That first night at the pump, forerunner of many, many other nights, our little band of watch mates toiled in silence, except for a few monosyllables. Four men to each crank, two on a side, facing each other, our tired arms and backs reciprocated to the action of rotation like so many toy figures actuated by some hidden clockwork; the new labor was almost a rest after the constant pulling and hauling of the day. Finally the low, raucous wheezing of the valves told us we were sucking air, and the mate, from the darkness of the poop, called out, "Belay pump!"

It is the custom of the sea, handed down from time immemorial, that "The captain takes her out and the mate brings her back." That is, the first regular watch at sea is taken by the captain's watch on the outward passage, and the same watch is taken by the port, or mate's watch, on the start for home. Of course the second mate stands the starboard watch, except in case of emergency.

Accordingly, at four bells, we went below, and after a hasty supper we sought our bunks for a brief rest before turning out for the watch from eight to midnight. We were tired—some of us, to the point of utter exhaustion—and a few of the older men claimed that we were being cheated out of our right to the first four-hour watch below, ours having merely been a dog watch of 2 hours from 6 to 8. Anyhow, whatever we thought about that, nothing was said above a mild growling in the fo'c'sle, and as we tumbled out at eight bells, and both watches lined up in the waist to muster, the chill wind cut through us, and a moment later we were greeted by an order from aft.

"Hands aloft to overhaul the t'gallant and royal buntlines!"

Up I went on the mizzen, never caring to lag behind on an order to lay aloft, a piece of twine in my pocket. The gear was overhauled and stopped just below the blocks, so the buntlines would not chafe the sails, and at the same time the stops of cotton twine were frail enough to be easily broken. When at times they were not, some unlucky wight would clamber aloft at the critical moment of taking in sail amid the slatting of canvas and the most profuse showers of artistic abuse.

Coming down from this task, I was in time to witness a burst of profanity on the part of the mate. "Keep moving, you beach-combing —— —— ——! Every lousy —— —— —— ——! I won't have no 'lime juice' sleeping on deck this voyage. D'ye hear that?" All heard, for there was a shuffle of weary feet about the main hatch, where several of the watch had perched comfortably in the dark, and, after a moment of indecision, sprinkled with derogatory mutterings, we paired off in little groups of twos, walking the swaying deck wherever we could find places free from the back draft of the sails.

Frenchy was my first chum on the Fuller, and though for periods we drifted apart, through sheer mutual exhaustion of our interchangeable ideas, yet we always came together again. Somehow, on the very start of the voyage, when the crimps and runners bade us that sad farewell from the port of New York, we were drawn together. The night that we paired off, on our first watch at sea, it seemed natural that Frenchy and I should elect to stump the deck in company. We preempted a path from the lee main pin rail to the after end of the forward house. "It's better here than anywhere," remarked Frenchy, and I soon found he was right, as we missed the draft from the mains'l and were partly sheltered by the house on the forward leg of our walk.

Frenchy was a heavy-whiskered, ruddy specimen, sporting the square-cut beard of the French sailor. He was an ex-naval man, and one time prison guard in the penal settlement of New Caledonia. Trained to the sea since boyhood, in the fishing fleet of Dunkirk, for many years a rigger in the naval yards at Brest, a sailor man on every type of craft from the Mediterranean ybeck to a ship. Victor Mathes was one of the finest types of the Gallic seaman.

His life was a vague and many folded nebula of romance. He was full of stories of the life in New Caledonia, of the discipline on the outlying islands, of punitive expeditions, and of the intrigues and jealousies among the checkered lives that wear themselves away in those distant places.

Night after night we paced the deck during the long, cold watches, and between the calls to man this rope or that, and the horsing and rustling about that was always indulged in, we swapped information of all kinds, related all sorts of experiences, truthful and otherwise, and each man explored his mental storehouse for the amusement and benefit of his chum. For hours at a time Frenchy would talk of good things to eat; this was a hobby, in fact a sort of passion, with him and often drove me to the verge of distraction. He would go into the minutest detail of how his sister Madeleine, back in Dunkirk, prepared some particular dish, telling not only of the delightful flavor and succulent qualities, but he would go into the subject of the way things smelled, roast fowl, with all sorts of fancy stuffing. My mouth would water at these cruel recitals and I know that Frenchy suffered as much as I did at the poignant recollections of gastronomic joys long past.

CHAPTER II

[THE OUTWARD PASSAGE]

When well clear of the coast we roused the bower anchors up on the fo'c'sle head and lashed them. "A sure sign, sonny, that you are off soundings," said Brenden; "these wind wagons don't take no chances till they get a safe offing." The cables were unshackled, and the ends stoppered abaft the wildcats. Canvas coats were put on to them, just over the chain pipes leading to the locker. "Jackasses" were then bowsed into the hawse holes for fair, taking the "tails" to the windlass. With the ground tackle secured, the "cat" and "fish" were unrove, and this gear stowed away in the fore peak. We had entered upon the real deepwater stage of the voyage, with lee shores, and soundings, many miles away.

The Fuller[3] carried a complement of sixteen hands forward, and a "boy," not counting the "idlers"—that is, the carpenter, cook and cabin steward—a small enough crew for a vessel displacing in the neighborhood of 2,500 tons, dead weight, a craft 229 feet between perpendiculars, 41½ feet beam and 23 feet depth of hold, ship rigged, with skysails, royals, single t'gans'ls, double tops'ls, and courses. Her main yard was 90 feet from tip to tip. A crojik was carried as well as a spanker. On her stays, she carried flying jib, jib tops'l, jib and fore topmast stays'l, main t'gallant stays'l, main topmast stays'l. Mizzen t'gallant stays'l and a main spencer completed her spread of canvas. When on a wind, in a whole-sail breeze, with crojik furled, and spanker set, the ship Fuller spread twenty-five kites to the wind.

Now think of the handsome way in which they manned their ships in the olden days of the tea clippers when a vessel half her size would carry forty men forward! And a vessel of equal size would carry from 80 to 90 seamen. As it was, we were hard put to it in an emergency and "all hands" was the rule on every occasion demanding quick work, in going about, or in making or taking in sail. When tacking it was "all hands, and the cook at the fore sheet." One watch could not hoist the main upper tops'l, except in the finest kind of weather, and then only by taking the halyards to the main deck capstan, and "inching" the great yard up in slow and painful fashion with much singing and "yo ho"ing.

Captain Nichols shaped a course well to the eastward, fetching almost to the Azores, before hauling his wind aft and squaring away for an easy run through the N. E. trades. Skysails and flying jib were up and down a score of times a day at this restless stage of the voyage, for every rag was kept drawing to the last moment. In squally weather, and we had plenty of it, the ship would race along, her lee scuppers boiling in white water as she heeled to the blast, hands standing by at the halyards, which were always flaked down clear for running, and every mother's son keyed to a high pitch, ready for quick work at braces, clewlines and buntlines.

To have a "wheel" or a "lookout" during the night watch was a rest, although the trick at the helm was a wideawake job, whether on a course, or "by the wind." I had a fondness for steering and often stood the wheel for Frenchy or Brenden, especially during the daytime when they were employed on sailor jobs that no one else of our watch was able to do. The mate winked at this practice, and as they often let me take their tricks at night, I was able to side step a lot of the skysail climbing that would ordinarily have fallen to me as the youngster of the watch.

My training on the old St. Mary's now stood me in good stead, and by remembering a lot of the advice given me by that prince of sailor-men, old Bos'un Dreilick of the schoolship,[4] I found myself rated with the best men in the ship, and far ahead of such fellows as Scouse, and Joe, and Martin, who were strong as bulls, but knew nothing. In between us ranged Australia and Fred, good ordinary sailors who knew the ropes, could hand, reef, and steer, but lacked that finished technique so essential to the proper able seaman. I must admit that in classing myself with men like Marshall, Frenchy, and Brenden, I am doing so at the tail end of this trio, and then only because of my skill at the helm, at heaving the "blue pigeon," and at sailing and handling boats, accomplishments that, except for steering, are rare among deep water sailors.

"You seem to stand the wheel a lot," the Skipper remarked one night, having noted me by the dim light of the binnacle, for I also had done a trick in the first dog watch when he happened to change the course.

The Old Man grinned, "Well, I suppose you like to be aft. Keep at it, boy, and you'll get there. But it's a lonesome life; dammit, I would rather be a farmer any day."

Captain Nichols thought this a great joke, the idea of being a farmer pleased him so he had a good laugh as he surveyed the great spread of canvas bowling along under his command. I felt sure he was joking. Since then, I have often pondered over his remark and am now of the opinion that he was in dead earnest.

Standing lookout on the fo'c'sle head was a favorite duty that no one delegated. Finally, however, when we were well clear of the coast, the mates began to pull down the lookout whenever there was any work to be done. There always was considerable, for the mates would start something as soon as they felt the least bit sleepy and would horse their watches about even though it was absolutely unnecessary to start a single rope.

Our fare on the Fuller was of the regular deep water variety, made palatable by the fact that we were living the open air life of a lot of human gorillas. Our labors were torture, to me at least, until at last the outraged muscles adjusted themselves to the unaccustomed work. Poor Peter, he was a hundred times harder hit than I, and the four hours below were barely enough to keep him alive. One night, a few days after leaving port, when we mustered at midnight, Peter was not to be found. "Was he called?" thundered the mate, as Old Smith reported him "not present," doing so in a hesitating sort of way. "Was that —— —— called?" again thundered the mate. "By —— I'll call him!" he shouted, and strode forward, the second mate following. Peter lay half out of his bunk, one leg over the edge. He had fallen back exhausted as soon as he got his trousers on; he was dead to the cruel, hard world.

Mr. Zerk grabbed him by the leg, and, swinging him like a bag of meal, he yanked Peter clear through the fo'c'sle door, landing him on the deck with a thud, amid a shower of curses and the startled cry of the victim.

This type of brutality was calculated to "put the fear of God into us," as they say, and to strengthen discipline, and add snap and vigor to our movements. It certainly had the effect of showing us how important it was to be in the waist when the watch was mustered.

At the morning washdown the black slops that went by the name of coffee tasted like the very nectar of the gods. We dipped in with our hook pots, drinking it with relish, and the fact that it possessed mild cathartic properties, may have had something to do with the excellent state of our health. Cockroaches were not mentioned in the old scale of provisions[5] adopted by a kind Congress for the nourishment of the simple sailor-man. This was no doubt an oversight on the part of some bucolic "sailor's friend," for they might have specified that "one ounce of cockroaches may be substituted for an ounce of tea."

Our tea was never without these disgusting vermin and none of us was ever able to tell what gave it the peculiar flavor that we came to relish—the twigs and leaves floating about in the brown liquor, or the roaches lying drowned in the bottom of the can.

"They's no worse nor shrimps," philosophized Jimmy Marshall, and we tried to believe him.

The cook, an ancient Celestial named Chow, hailing from Hong Kong, had evidently put all of his gods behind him. His pigtail was gone, and with it all sense of decency, so far as preparing food for sailor-men was concerned. Those human precepts that all cooks are supposed to act upon, the ethics, if you will, of the noble profession, that Marryat tells us entitled the practitioner to wear a sword, in those good old days when the Admiralty recognized the cook, were lacking in the breast of Chow. He was a typical deepwater cook. What went aft was right, so far as looks count anyway, but the kids that left for the fo'c'sle often contained the most unsavory messes that ill-fortune can concoct. Some of the men had words with Chow about this but the result was increased carelessness and decreased portions.

"It don't do no good to scrap with the cook," was Jimmy Marshall's sage advice. "If the dirty bum wants to be dirty he can fix us all up. I knowed a cook once wot —— in the soup an' bully on a English bark. The skipper, he caught him at it, an' puts him in irons. The cook had to be let out though because he was the only one wot could do the work, an' they was mighty careful aft not to rile him after they knowed wot he was. You got to leave them cooks alone."

We left Chow severely alone, and some of the crowd, Joe and Tommy especially, constituted themselves his volunteer assistants, and almost every first dog watch, one of them would be around the galley helping out. Chow rewarded them by allowing the use of the oven to make "dandy funk," a mess of broken hard tack and molasses, baked to a crisp.

When ten days had elapsed, after the final rations of fresh provisions had been issued, a tot of lime juice, that reeked suspiciously of vinegar, was served each day—by Act of Congress—to keep the sailor-man from getting scurvey. At the same time the "harness casks," beef to starboard, and pork to port, did their duty nobly and each week or so we would lift the forehatch and rouse up a slimy, wooden hooped barrel, and roll it aft to the galley door, alternating to the port and starboard harness casks.

After a month of chumming it with Frenchy, talking steadily from three to four hours a night, we were both pretty well cleaned out of experiences and ideas. Other groups had long before reached that deplorable state, and new combinations were formed in the night walks on deck. One night as we came on deck in the midwatch, Frenchy and I noticed Jimmy Marshall and Martin standing at the lee of the main hatch, in silence, after the watch had been mustered. The absence of their usual animated discussions of everything temporal and mundane attracted our attention. Soon we found ourselves at the lee of the hatch; Martin and Jimmy warmed up to us and presently Jimmy and myself were walking just aft of the forward house, and Martin and Frenchy began to pace the deck to windward.

Jimmy was a new sort of chum and the poorest listener I have ever met, which may have accounted for the peculiar one sided lay of his mind. The hard knocks of experience were alone accountable for his knowledge, varied and picturesque in the telling. He was chockful of religion and was constantly repenting the bad deeds of his youth, telling them at great length, and with such relish, that it seemed they had come to be his one unfailing source of enjoyment. A terrible drunk in his day, he had also indulged in robbery, having looted a house in Australia while tramping overland to Sydney from Port Hunter, where he had "jumped" a schooner, leaving everything behind, because of a row with the mate, in which he felled him with a handspike.

"Walked away with a piece o' change an' a whole kit o' dunnage," was the way he put it.

And also, according to his story, Jimmy had been a lightweight fighter in his youth, many, many years before. He was the best chantey-man in the crew; to hear him "sing" a rope was an inspiration to tired arms and backs.

While memory lasts, the picture of our first chantey, a few days after leaving port, will remain with me as one of the great thrills that have come my way. A heavy squall in the forenoon watch sent all of our tops'l yards to the caps, everything coming down by the run, to hang slatting in the gear. Sky sails, royals, flying jib, t'gans'ls, jib tops'l, jib, fore topmast stays'l, and then the upper tops'ls were lowered, the latter thrashing and straining against the downhauls as the ship heeled to it almost on her beam ends, gaining headway with a rush, and righting herself as we spilled the wind from the bulging canvas.

Passing as quickly as it came, the squall left us wallowing under lower tops'ls, the courses hanging in their gear.

All hands were called to make sail, and as we manned the main tops'l halyards Jimmy Marshall jumped to the pin rail, and with one leg over the top of the bulwark, he faced the line of men tailing along the deck.

"A chantey, boys!" shouted Mr. Stoddard as he took his place "beforehand" on the rope. "Come now, run her up, lads. Up! Up!" and the heavy yard commenced to creep along the mast to the sound of the creaking parral, the complaining of the blocks, and the haunting deep sea tune of "Blow the Man Down," greatest of all the two haul chanteys.

Jimmy—"Now rouse her right up boys for Liverpool town,"
Sailors—"Go way—way—blow the man down."
Jimmy—"We'll blow the man up and blow the man down,"
Sailors—"Oh, give us some time to blow the man down."
Jimmy—"We lay off the Island of Maderdegascar."
Sailors—"Hi! Ho! Blow the man down."
Jimmy—"We lowered three anchors to make her hold faster,"
Sailors—"Oh, give us some time to blow the man down."

Chorus

All hands—"Then we'll blow the man up,
And we'll blow the man down,
Go way—way—blow the man down.
We'll blow him right over to Liverpool town,
Oh, give us some time to blow the man down.
Ho! Stand by your braces,
And stand by your falls;
Hi! Ho! Blow the man down,
We'll blow him clean over to Liverpool town,
Oh, give us some time to blow the man down."

Old Marshall faced to windward, his mustache lifting in the breeze, the grey weather worn fringe of hair bending up over his battered nose. He always sang with a full quid in his cheek, and the absence of several front teeth helped to give a peculiar deep-sea quality to his voice.

"We have a man-o-war crew aboard, Mr. Zerk!" shouted the Captain from the top of the cabin, where he had come out to see the fun.

"Aye, aye, sir! Some crew!" returned the Mate, looking over us with a grim smile.

CHAPTER III

[CHRISTMAS DAY ON THE HIGH SEAS]

Life was not always so pleasant on board the Fuller. Hard words were the common run of things and the most frightful and artistic profanity often punctuated the working of the ship. Given a ship's company barely strong enough to handle a two thousand five hundred ton three-skysail yarder, even had they all been seasoned able seamen, our officers had to contend with a crew over half of which rated below that of the "ordinary" classification of seamanship, thick skinned clodhoppers, all thumbs on a dark night, and for many weeks after leaving port, as useless as so much living ballast. The kicking and moulding into form of this conglomerate mass of deep sea flotsam, gathered for the ship by the boarding masters, and duly signed on the ship's articles as A.B., called for all but superhuman efforts. The curse is far more potent than the gentle plea, especially when hard fists and hobnailed sea boots are backed by all of the age old authority of the sea. To work a ship of the proportions of the Fuller, with seventeen hands forward, called for man driving without thought of anything but the work required.

The latter days of the sailing ship as a carrier, before invoking the aid of steam auxiliary apparatus, in the hoisting and hauling, brought forth the brute sea officer aft, and the hardened fo'c'sle crowd, half sailor and half drudge, forward. The "bucko mate" walked her decks, and the jack tar, stripped of his pigtail, his bell mouthed canvas trousers, his varnished sailor hat, and his grog, remained in plain dungaree and cotton shirt to work the biggest sailing craft in the history of the world on the last hard stages of their storm tossed voyages.

Mixed with our real sailors were the worthless (so far as sea lore went) scrapings of the waterfront. Shipped by the boarding masters for the benefit of their three months' "advance," and furnished for sea with rotten kits of dunnage, as unreliable and unfitted for the work as the poor unfortunate dubs who were forced by an unkind fate to wear them.

On the other hand, the real sailor-men of the crew were valued accordingly, and I can hardly remember an instance where either one of the mates singled out for abuse those men who had shipped as A.B. and were so in fact. My schoolship training (St. Mary's '97) stood by me, and though barely turned eighteen, I was saved from most of the drudgery meted out to the farmers of the watch.

After washing through the heavy seas we encountered for the first few weeks of the voyage, while beating off the coast on the long reach eastward to the Azores, the long hard pine sweep of the main deck became slippery with a deposit of white salt-water slime. The sheen of this scum, in the moonlight, under a film of running water, gave the decks a ghastly "Flying Dutchman" like appearance, and the footing became so precarious that something had to be done.

"They have the 'bear' out," Scouse announced, as he trudged into the fo'c'sle carrying a "kid" of cracker hash, ditto of burgoo, a can of coffee, and a bag of hard tack, this cargo of sustenance being our regulation breakfast menu.

"The bear?" I asked, as we gathered about this appetizing spread.

"Yes, the bear," volunteered Brenden, grinning with the rest of the sailors. "The bear for Scouse, and Joe, and Martin, and Fred." At eight bells, as we mustered aft, a subdued banter went on among the men. The starboard watch were all grinning, and as they went below four sheepish looking fellows of the other side turned the "bear" over to the farmers of our watch. "Keep that jackass baby carriage moving now. D'ye hear me? Keep it moving!" bellowed the mate, for there was some reluctance in taking hold, and as Scouse and Martin tailed on, opposed to Joe and Fred, the doleful scrape of the bear mingled with the general laughter at the mate's sally.

The bear consisted of a heavy box, a thick thrum mat lashed on the bottom of it, and the inside loaded with broken holy stones and charged with wet sand. Four stout rope lanyards were rigged to the corners and served to haul the thing back and forth while the sand filtered down through the mat, providing the necessary scouring agent. A day or two with the bear in constant service, both day and night, cleaned up the decks and provided us with considerable amusement, that is, those of us who were lucky enough to be kept at more dignified jobs.

Ships leaving the Atlantic Coast in the winter months bend their best suit of sails. The severe weather usually encountered in working clear of the land, and the chance of having to ratch off from a lee shore, make this precaution one of great importance. The fact that green crews are bound to be more or less slow in taking in sail during squalls may also account for the "storm suit" under which we sailed from port.

On our first night out, shortly before one bell in the mid watch, our crowd having just gone below, the fore topmast stays'l blew from the bolt ropes with the report of a cannon. We had already clambered into our bunks, dog tired, when this occurred, and muttered oaths, anticipating a call of "all hands," came from untold depths of weariness within the fo'c'sle. On deck there was the hurried tramping of feet, and the shouting of the second mate. We could hear the long wail of the men at brace and downhaul, the "Ah-hee-Oh-hee-ah-Ho!" with all of its variation as the slaves of the ropes launched their age-old complaint on the whipping winds. I lapsed into slumber with the dim consciousness that the second mate was handling the situation alone, and a heartfelt thanks for the warmth of the blankets in my narrow bunk; a foot above me the cold rain pattered against the roof of the fo'c'sle house, its music mingling with the swish of the water under the fore channels.

After three weeks of beating to the eastward, having fetched almost as far across as the Azores, and being in the region of the northern limit of the N. E. trades, the captain hauled his wind and squared away for the run through the trade wind belt to the doldrums and the line. Fine weather became the order of the day and life on board settled down to a more regular routine.

On a Saturday morning, the day having broken remarkably fine, a brilliant red sunset followed by a cold grey dawn, assuring us of the settled weather that the steady "glass" made more certain, all the world seemed ready to rejoice, for it was Christmas Day. Word was passed into the fo'c'sle by the other watch, as we turned out for our breakfast, "We shift sail today."

"All hands on deck for us, me boys!" piped Australia. "An' the first watch on deck tonight," chipped in Jimmy Marshall, "an' a hell of a Christmas Day!"

Jimmy lit his pipe for a morning puff; climbing into his bunk, he dangled his short legs over the frowsy head of big Scouse who sat with his dejected poll bent under the upper bunk board, a fair sample of the despondent crowd of farmers who faced a Christmas Day of labor.

"A hell of a Christmas Day, boys,
A hell of a Christmas Day,
For we are bound for the bloody Horn
Ten thousand miles away."

Jimmy rendered this little ditty of cheerfulness as Fred picked up the breakfast kids and started for the galley, while we turned out on the sun-splashed planks as the last of eight bells vibrated over the ship. She lay still in a near calm like a scene by Turner, all of her canvas hanging in picturesque festoons from the jackstays, where the starboard watch had cast off the courses and tops'ls, leaving them depending in their gear. The decks had not been washed down, in order to keep them dry, and the mate himself had turned out at four bells to start the ball rolling.

Long bundles of the fine weather canvas were stretched on the decks ready for swaying aloft. Working like demons in the forenoon, and with all hands on deck after dinner, which was dispatched in haste, we had the courses, and in turn the tops'ls and light sails, lowered to the deck, and the gantlines rigged to hoist the summer canvas; this we sent aloft in record time. These old sails, soft and mellow, veterans of a dozen voyages, patched and repatched, with whole new cloths of a lighter grade here and there streaking the dull white-weathered surface, were as smooth and pliable as a baby's bonnet.

On some of them, the fore upper tops'l especially, we found records of the many crews who had handled them before. "James Brine, Liverpool. On his last voyage," was one inscription. I hope Brine achieved his end and stayed ashore. A date under this was hardly decipherable but may have been Jan., June, or July, the day the eighth, and the year 1893.

Bending a sail calls for the nicest knowledge; the passing of the head earing must be done in a certain manner, so the head of the sail will hold well up on the yard arm; the gear, consisting of tacks, sheets, clew garnets, and buntlines, in the case of a "course," not to mention the leechlines, and bowlines, must all be rove and rigged just so. The "robands" or pieces of rope yarn, are all looped through the "head holes" ready for bending the sail to the iron jackstay on the yard, and when a sailor does the job, all goes as smooth as a wedding when the parson knows his job.

After the labors of a busy day, the ship presented the comfortable well-patched appearance of a man in the woods, free from the stiffness of new white linen, and naturally fitting into the familiar folds of old duds, unconventional but plenty good enough. The bright spars still attested to her "smartness," but we were in easy trade wind weather and dressed accordingly. The fores'l was particularly large, with extra clothes in the leeches, made to catch and hold every breath of wind blowing over the deck.

The sail locker was re-stowed with our "best suit," and between the coils of canvas we liberally spread a bundle of old newspapers brought out by the mate. "To give the rats something to chew on," he remarked, as we ran the stiff new canvas in, tier upon tier.

One thing that Frenchy called my attention to in the stowing of the locker was the fact that the storm canvas, lower tops'ls and stays'ls, were placed handy for immediate removal, the mate assuring himself of this fact by personal supervision; indeed he knew just where each particular sail was located in the locker, and could go in and lay his hand upon it in the darkest night, as he more than once demonstrated during the course of the voyage.

That night a tired lot of men sat down to supper. The cold salt beef, the hard bread and the can of tea came from the galley in their usual order. Fred, who was mess cook for that week, went back to the galley, after depositing the regulation Saturday night grub. As he left the fo'c'sle door he turned back at us with a grin on his wide good natured face, bristling with uneven outcroppings of yellow stubble. Fred reminded me of an amiable plodder hulking out in his dungaree jacket, while the watch fell to on the beef and tack.

"I guess he forgot to thank the cook for putting so many bugs in the tea," ventured Brenden.

"Maybe he's going aft to take Christmas Dinner with the captain in the cabin. They have a real plum pudding there; I saw it in the galley," said Joe.

Plum pudding! Christmas! The thoughts of loved ones far away, and of those distant homes that perhaps were remembering some of us out on the broad bosom of the deep waters, came as a pang. All of us, I believe, felt this. For a moment or two silence ensued, then Fred burst through the fo'c'sle door with the big surprise.

"Pie, boys! Pie!" he shouted, depositing three tin plates on the fo'c'sle deck, for we dined with the deck as a table, sitting about the kids on low benches. The precious pie was cut with the greatest regard for equality by no less an expert hand than that of Frenchy, assisted by Australia, who showed us how to cut a pie into three parts by measuring across the diameter with a knife, adding a little to this, and then this length went three times into the circumference.

Jimmy Marshall failed to agree with this theory, but was fairly beaten in the result, for Australia was right. The pie certainly was cut into three very equal parts.

"An engineer in the mines showed me this," said Australia. "He says, 'Pie times across the pie, is all the way around.' Mathematics is wot he calls this." Australia was nearly right at that, and the marks he made on the crust of the confections baked by Chow served as a reliable guide for Frenchy, also bolstering him immensely in the eyes of the more humble members of the port watch. That Australia chap certainly knew a thing or two, even if he was not the best sailor in the world.

But Jimmy Marshall's comment was simply, "Rats!"

After supper, when pipes were glowing, and most of us sought our bunks for the hour or so that remained to us in the last dog watch, a discussion arose as to what kind of pie it was. Frenchy, the great gastronomic authority, claimed it was English currant pie. "They taste so bitter, that's why I know," he added with an air of finality.

Others differed with him. Scouse said it was red crabapple pie. Martin claimed it was nothing but plum pie. I thought it tasted like cranberry, but was not sure. At last, to settle the matter, and at the earnest request of the crabbed Jimmy, Fred trudged aft to the galley to consult Chow and wind up the argument. He returned in triumph with a large tin can done up in a gaudy red label marked "Pie Fruit."

Shortly after entering the N. E. trades we encountered the region of tropic rains, of daily thunder storms, and of abundant drinking and washing water. We rigged an old sail over the gallows frame in the main deck to catch the rain, which was teemed through a canvas pipe to the main tank, a large upright iron cylinder standing on the keelson blocks in the main hold just abaft of the main mast. Our allowance of three quarts a day, per man, was anything but satisfying in the tropic atmosphere of the torrid zone. At least half of this "whack" of water went to the galley for use in the preparation of food and the rest was divided between the scuttle butt and the water barrel, from which it was drawn sparingly for washing purposes; usually a mere rinse to clean off the salt of a sea water scrub.

In the extreme heat, during the frequent periods of calm, our suffering through the lack of water became intense. The Fuller, like many other ships sailing from New York, put to sea with her water tank barely a quarter full, relying on the tropic rains to replenish the supply. When the rains did finally come we fairly reveled in the luxury of abundant fresh water, drinking, washing clothes, bathing, and just plain wasteful wallowing in the refreshing element. With the first douse of rain all hands turned out on deck to fill their pannikins under the spouting drains from the forward house.

The conduct of a deep water sailing voyage in the old days of wooden ships called for what today would be considered the highest type of scientific management. In the maintenance of the vessel, each part of the complicated fabric received its due attention at some particular point in the voyage where the weather was favorable for that certain operation. So in the entry to the rainy belt, that uncertain region of the doldrums where almost constant precipitation takes turn about with calm or light baffling winds, we were turned loose on the job of scrubbing paintwork. The work was started aft and each watch did its own side of the ship, there being much rivalry as to who was doing the most work. Everybody took a hand in this and Brenden and Marshall would curse unmercifully at the job when well out of earshot of the after guard. Our hands became wrinkled with the constant wet, the calloused flesh getting soft and cheesy, while our oilskins, in which we worked during the worst downpours, became soaked and clammy through constant use.

We were not allowed the bucket of classic "sewgee" of the steam ship sailor, a mixture of caustic soda, soft soap and water, but were provided with nothing but a small tin of brick dust and a rag of burlap; a rope handled deck bucket and a small swab completed the outfit. Add to this formula an abundance of "elbow grease," and slithers of tropic rain, and you get paintwork polished smooth and white as ivory. A week or so, with all hands on the paintwork, whenever the working of the ship would permit, transformed her into a model of neatness. Woe to the luckless wretch who by any chance marred the deck or paintwork with a drop of grease or tar.

About this time we made our acquaintance with the flying fish, these swift travellers often shooting over our deck at night and being caught in the belly of one of the courses or the spanker. A flying fish for breakfast is not bad, and many were caught by the men on deck keeping a sharp lookout for them. The mates were also watching for the bag of flying fish and whenever one landed on the poop or in the waist, one or the other of the mates would call out and have a hand bring the fish aft.

One night a fish landed somewhere in the waist. We could hear the wet splatter of the flying fins, as it was calm and the deck quiet. Mr. Zerk, who was leaning against the weather swifter of the mizzen shrouds, roused himself and called out for someone to bring the fish aft.

Several of the watch started to search for the visitor, for we also had heard him land, but without success.

"How about that fish?" shouted the mate, after a decent interval, while the search was going on.

"Can't find it, sir," Joe piped up.

"The hell you can't!" thundered the mate. "There he is," and again we heard a faint "splash, splash" of the wings.

"Get a light, you damn fools," was the order, for it was mighty dark. "Come now quick. Pronto!" and as Scouse banged on the door of the deck room occupied by Chips, in order to get him to open the lamp locker, we thought we heard the "splash, splash" again.

With the aid of a lantern and all of the watch the entire deck was searched. Finally, Jimmy Marshall let out a whoop, "Here he was! Here he was!" Some water on the deck, near the coils of rope hanging from the main pin rail, looked as though Jimmy was close to the flying fish.

"Here he was!" again shouted the excited Jimmy, grabbing the lantern from the hand of Scouse.

"Here he what?" demanded the mate, coming down into the waist. The mate bent over the wet spot and exploded in a string of oaths. "No flying fish ever made that! Here, you!" and he grabbed Jimmy. "This is some of your damn monkey shines, you old dried up bundle of sea tripe! —— —— your gray hairs, I'll flying fish you! Lay aloft to the main skysail yard and watch the stars! I'll call you down on deck whenever we need you!"

For several nights after that Jimmy spent his time climbing up and down the main rigging, for no sooner would he get up than the mate would think of something to do that required his presence on deck.

The flying fish episode furnished us with something to talk about in the fo'c'sle, and while Jimmy always tried to leave the impression that the joke was on the mate and the rest of us, we felt that his over zeal in discovering the puddle of water in which his clever hand had simulated the nervous flapping of the fins of a flying fish had turned the tables. My idea was that Jimmy, after seeing how well the thing was taking, could not resist the temptation to get the credit.

We also harpooned our first bonita, a very active, virile fish, shaped like a short double ended spindle buoy, and striped lengthwise. These fish are exceedingly lively and jump about with terrific energy when brought on deck. Before taking this fish to the galley, Old Smith of the other watch, and Frenchy, and of course Jimmy Marshall, tested the meat with a silver coin, to see if it was of the poison variety.

"If the silver turns black the fish is poison," explained Frenchy. In this case the bonita was pronounced "good to eat," and a great feast was on that night; however, I never cared much for fish anyway and did not touch it. Chow had certainly made an ill looking mess of it, garnished with broken tack, and basted with pork fat.

"You'll wisht you had a bit of this tucker afore we get to Honolulu," was the comment of Joe, who proceeded to help himself liberally.

CHAPTER IV

[THE FIGHT]

An undercurrent of trouble had been running for some time, finding expression in much subdued comment and criticism, at odd moments, when small groups of the watch would foregather about the fo'c'sle during the dog watch below. These dog watch hours were, during fine weather, given over largely to yarning, smoking, reading, or playing cards, or checkers, and to the performance of such odd jobs as sailors do during their few leisure moments. Big George, or Scouse, as we called him, had become something of a bully, and Joe, the most independent of his subjects, had on several occasions taken pains to let Scouse understand that he resented the way in which the big fellow carried on among the farmers of the watch. Of course Scouse never dared open his mouth to any of the real sailors, but he had gradually set himself up as a sort of autocrat among the pushers of the "bear."

The development of this condition was so long in process of evolution, that several times Frenchy and Brenden threatened to clean things up and put an end to the stumbling block that threatened our fo'c'sle democracy. Always, however, Jimmy Marshall intervened. "Leave 'em alone. Things will break, see if they don't, an' 'e'll get it good, 'e will."

Following our siege of paint-scrubbing, we started to tar down the standing rigging, work that devolved largely upon Scouse and his gang of understrappers, making them the bright particular stars in the firmament of wrath whenever, by any chance, they happened to drop so much as a pin point of tar on the immaculate paintwork or deck.

The mate on these occasions outdid himself, and by the fluency of his language and the surprising richness of his imagery he afforded a certain amusement to those of us who were the listeners. The targets of these profane outbursts had no redress, and, if they lost none of their self respect, it was simply because none of that useless commodity was left clinging to their devoted hides. Scouse, Fred and Martin had received recent broadsides, and with half an eye we could see that Mr. Zerk was watching Joe with a view to exercising a few new epithets.

It was our afternoon watch on deck; we turned out at seven bells to get our dinner, and Joe, who was mess carrier for that week, turned out lively to get the "kids" of cracker hash from the galley. A gentle sea was rolling in on our quarter and Joe entered the fo'c'sle door, the kid of cracker hash under his arm, the bread bag full of hard tack in one hand, and a large can of steaming hot tea in the other, the Fuller gave one of her corkscrew twists, and Joe stumbled over the sill, dousing Scouse with about half of the hot tea.

Scouse was furious, and at the same time half of our whack of tea was running in the scuppers.

Little things assume monstrous proportions after a group of men have been in close quarters for a long time. This is particularly so when they have to live in such intimate and trying proximity as that in the fo'c'sle of a sailing ship. On a deepwaterman, months at sea without even a smell of land, let alone a sight of it, the community life is bound to wear thin the edges of daily intercourse. Every small incident is magnified far beyond its worth, and only a trifle is needed to start a racket of some kind. Brenden and Frenchy cursed the luckless Joe for a clumsy lout. Jimmy called him a "bloody rum cat," a favorite expression of the little sailor, and Scouse, foaming with rage, was only restrained by the rest of us from sailing right into Joe, regardless of the cracker hash, the remaining tea, or anything else. Joe was equally furious. He refused to touch the tea, saying he had spilled his whack, and the rest of us might shut up our talk about it.

At this Australia and Fred insisted that Joe have his tea, sharing with the rest. Talk became loud, and in the midst of the whole affair eight bells struck and we tumbled on deck, our dinner half finished. Scouse and Joe went to their work in the main rigging; some were to leeward of the deckhouse stitching sails, while I passed a ball of marline for Frenchy, who was serving the wire bolt rope of the foot of an old lower tops'l that we were repairing.

He was facing aft toward the main shrouds, when suddenly he started, his eyes seemed to bulge from his head, and he dropped his serving mallet, while at the same time there was a bump behind me on the deck, and Frenchy gasped, "Ma foi! Look, Felix!"

I turned quickly and there on the white deck below the main rigging was a big black greasy splotch of tar, and Joe's tar pot rolling into the scupper.

The silence that followed was painful. Mr. Zerk came forward from the weather quarterbitt where he was smoking his after dinner pipe, and Joe dropped down the Jacob's ladder to the deck under a fire of insulting profanity from the mate. Whipping off his dungaree jacket, he started to swab up the defiling tar before it could soak well into the deck planks.

Scouse, whom Frenchy saw unhitch the lanyard of the pot as he worked above Joe, went on with his tarring without batting an eye. Trouble was on foot, however, in the port watch.

We went below at eight bells, four o'clock in the afternoon, but Joe remained on deck to remove the last vestiges of tar, and Scouse entered the fo'c'sle, speaking to no one. The trick played on Joe was so contemptible that, so far as the common feeling went, Scouse had placed himself beyond the pale, and no man cared to break the ice by addressing him. That big Scouse felt this was certain, and the fact that it hurt at least attested a few remaining embers of decent feeling.

The first dog watch that day was unusually quiet, all hands mending and reading and wondering what the outcome would be when Joe got the tar cleaned up on deck. At five bells Joe returned to the fo'c'sle with the supper, a kid of salt pork and cabbage. Martin, who had busied himself in the galley, brought in a pan of "dandy funk," a baked mass of hard tack and molasses, a great delicacy with us and only possible at rare intervals when Chow would permit us to take up the space in his galley range. However, the dandy funk went begging. Joe was sullen and refused to touch it. Scouse ignored it, and so did everyone else with the exception of Martin, who for once enjoyed a complete meal of our favorite dessert. Conversation during supper was strained to the breaking point, and we were all glad to be away as soon as possible and get out on deck.

The second dog watch went by without incident, as we were rushed about the braces, sweating up for the night, trimming yards, and laboring at the bilge pumps. It was clear, but with no moon, and at eight bells we went forward to the square under the fo'c'sle head. The starboard watch were called aft by the second mate, to some task of horsing up this yard or that, and everything was propitious for the coming battle. Blood alone could wipe out the feud between Scouse and Joe.

"And I hope he gets a damn good lickin'," confided Martin to me as we went forward, referring to Scouse.

"Too heavy, Mart," was my opinion.

"But Australia says as how Joe can handle his self. That boy ain't no slouch, and he's mad. You bet he's mad," insisted Martin.

That Joe was mad, fighting mad, went without saying. He had the stinging insults from the mate still ringing in his ears, and the vile tactics of Scouse, culminating in the tar pot trick, had steeled Joe to the point of desperation. Scouse, on the other hand, faced the question of fighting for his right to exist in the fo'c'sle. For a man to be ostracized by the crowd forward is a living hell, as has been proven on other voyages.

Aggravated as the situation was by the hedging discipline of the ship, the preparations for the battle were as secret as though we were an illegal boxing club operating in some blue-stocking community. Jimmy Marshall decided all the details, jumping around as busy as a field louse at harvest time. He elected himself referee and told off Australia and Brenden to look after Scouse, while Martin and myself were detailed to take care of Joe.

Our men stripped to the waist, bare knuckles and bare feet, with the "ring" bounded by the fore pinrail to leeward, the fife rail, the knight heads, and the fore side of the fo'c'sle, all dimly lighted by the fo'c'sle lamp, moved to the doorway by Jimmy, and shedding a faint yellow gleam over the space on deck.

Aft, the watch under the second mate were going through the first half hour of trimming yards, and the general shake up of things with which the officers usually "woke up" their crowd. No time had been lost by Jimmy, for he know just what to do, and Joe was facing Scouse with blood in his eyes, a very few minutes after eight bells.

"Not much room, but good enough for a fight, if it's fight you want," said Jimmy, buzzing around the men to see that all was in order. Two buckets were filled with water from over side, hand swabs were got from the deck chest, and our men lined up for work.

Scouse weighed about two hundred pounds, topping Joe by twenty pounds, but for all that they were well matched, as Joe had the advantage of agility and the better chance to dodge the hard knocks of the very substantial deck fixtures all about.

Jimmy brought out a big silver watch and announced that the rounds would be three minutes, "An' no punchin' in a clinch, an' no noise. These is the Mark o' Queensberry rules," said Jimmy with great emphasis.

The fo'c'sle lookout of the other watch came aft to the break of the fo'c'sle head and stood by the mast, ready to warn us of a surprise from aft. It was to be a silent fight, a desperate, uncompromising battle for the freedom of the fo'c'sle slaves, and the general edification of all hands, long wearied by the bickering between Joe and the red head.

The men backed off in the gloom.

"Go to it!" cried Jimmy.

They clashed with the hard thuds of calloused fists. Both men were in the prime of condition. Both were crazy to fight. Big Scouse swung at Joe, landing a fraction before Joe connected with the big fellow's wind. The blow brought blood spurting from Joe's nose and cut his lip. "Play for his wind, Joe! The bread basket, Joe! Bat 'im in the eye! Kill him!" The side lines, hid in the shadow of the fo'c'sle, were with Joe.

For a minute or two there was a rapid exchange of blows without thought of guard or parry. To get in as many and as strong a lot of blows as possible was the simple system.

Jimmy cried out "time," but no account of time or rounds was contemplated in the scheme of things. Fight was the business, and to a finish.

"Biff!" They slammed against the side of the deck house; a splotch of blood, dimly visible in the night, smeared the white paint. Once again they swung back, when the ship gave a sudden roll, as a blow from Joe's right landed on Scouse's nose, toppling him backward against the fife rail. An iron pin, the one used to belay the chain sheets of the lower tops'l, caught Scouse behind the ear and, with a grunt, he was "out."

Fortunately, nothing but rumors of the fight got aft. Scouse was well beaten, and came to in his bunk, after Australia and Brenden had doused him with salt water. Joe was badly battered up, and both men carried "shiners." As Jimmy Marshall said, "Honors is even, but it was a wery wery ragged fight."

The mate next morning greeted the watch with a broad grin, and the story of the mill, told to the starboard watch by their lookout Tommy, lost nothing in the telling. As for the port watch, we were glad it was over and once again the atmosphere below returned to normal. A few nights later Joe and Scouse chummed together, and from that day to the night in Honolulu, when Joe deserted and went out on the barkentine Irmgard to Frisco, he and Scouse were inseparable.

CHAPTER V

[NEPTUNE COMES ON BOARD]

We were then in about five degrees of North Latitude, the trades had failed us, and the doldrums claimed their share of bracing and hauling, giving us little time for any other work. Every ripple on the brazen sea called for a different angle of the yards, and in dead calm we lay with our head yards braced sharp up and the after yards square, the courses guyed out from the masts by slap lines and bowlines. During the day a vertical sun beat down on our bare deck in unmerciful fashion, lifting the scorching pitch from the seams and all but addling our senses with the heat. The mates became more and more exacting, every job palled, and the stuffy, unpalatable food of the fo'c'sle stuck in our throats. The vessel was a chip of hell floating on the unforgiving ocean; riveted for days, that stretched to weeks, amid the patches of rusty sea weed, a thousand feet across, that tangled about the rudder post, great sun-scorched fragments of the dead Sargasso Sea.

And all of this time we knew that the Southern branch of the Equatorial Current was sending us back to the W. N. W. at the rate of several miles a day!

In watch below, choking with the heat, we lay tossing sleeplessly in our bunks while the sickly smell of the bilges came up from the fore peak through the wind sails let down to ventilate the hold. Cockroaches throve in added millions, and we were treated to our first rations of weevily tack. The little white worms seemed to be everywhere. The cracker hash was riddled with them as Chow selected the rottenest bread for this purpose. Most of us developed boils, and the dark brown taste, left by the vile food, resulted in a general loss of appetite. The heat even forced the rats from the hold and on a dark night we could hear them scampering about under the fo'c'sle head. The healthy sea tan of the temperate zone left our faces, and we became peevish and morose.

Some of us tried to forget our misery by reading the books sent aboard by the Seamen's Friend Society, others whiled away the hot watches below, when sleep was impossible, by making wonderful models of ships in bottles, almost a lost art nowadays, and revived on board the Fuller by Frenchy. Most of these works of art found resting places behind the bars of waterfront saloons in Honolulu.

One blessing that came to us in this hell afloat was the fact that the mates winked at the snatching of a few hours' sleep during the night watches on deck, otherwise there is no telling how some of us would have survived.

Our fo'c'sle scuttle butt soured, and Old Smith of the starboard watch emptied it one Sunday morning and charred the inside with a bundle of rope yarns to which he set fire. He told us how water gets bad in the tropics, and then how its own impurities destroy themselves. "The bugs scoff each other and die," and, went on Smithy, "they drops to the bottom of the butt, like white skeletons, and the water is as clean and good as ever."

About this time considerable activity went on forward among the old sailors in both watches. One dog watch, men from both sides of the fo'c'sle went aft and interviewed the captain.

"We are near the line," said Frenchy to me shortly afterward. "Don't make any fuss about what goes on, and you'll get off easy," he cautioned.

There were quite a few of us who had never crossed the equator, and the preparations in the dog watches augured ill for those who chose to resist the just tribute demanded by Father Neptune of all green sailors who, in those days, ventured across the magic bounds.

A fair slant of wind had helped us along for a few days, when the Old Man called Jimmy aft and imparted important information.

At eight bells in the afternoon watch, as all hands were mustering in the waist, a hoarse hail from forward greeted us.

"Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!" came the deep bass summons from a point beneath the bow.

"Forward, there! Who hails us?" answered the captain, who stood out on the poop, replying to the voice from forward.

"Father Neptune hails us, Captain," answered Hitchen, returning from the bow. "He asks if there are any of his children on board who would receive his blessing on their heads."

"Aye, bring him on board," ordered the skipper, a broad grin lighting his features, and the two mates reflected the feeling aft by joining in the smiles.

A noise of trudging along the deck followed, the King of the Sea, his own whiskers hidden behind a broad beard of rope yarns, a bright red harpoon in his right hand serving as a trident, and a large razor, made of hoop iron, stuck in his belt, walked aft. He was draped in the folds of an old boat sail, and for all of his regal trimmings we recognized the famous Jimmy. A retinue followed, rigged out in true deepwater style, and carrying a tub between them, which was deposited on deck just aft of the mainmast.

"Captain," said Neptune, "I am told as 'ow you 'ave green 'ands on board who 'ave to be shaved."

"Yes, Your Majesty, we have some with the hayseed still in their whiskers," answered the skipper.

"Bring 'em forth!" thundered the King, unlimbering his razor and passing the trident to the safe keeping of his wife, Amphitrite, in the person of Axel, who towered two feet above the head of the King.

However, what Jimmy lacked in stature he made up in efficiency, and in the imperious glance of scorn with which he greeted eight of us who were lined up for his inspection.

Old Smith grabbed me by the neck; I was seated on the bottom of an upturned bucket at the feet of the King.

"Your name?" demanded His Majesty, and as I was about to answer a filthy swab of soapsuds and grease was thrust in my mouth and smeared over my face and the shaving began, ending by a back somersault into the tub of water behind.

"Next!" called Neptune in true barber shop style, and so, in turn, each of the green hands went through the ordeal; the least willing getting the most attention. Scouse and Joe were among the lubbers, and were accorded special rites to the vast amusement of all hands. Australia wound up the entertainment by handing Scouse and Joe pieces of gunny sack, smeared with black paint, with which to wipe their faces.

"All right now!" called the mate, after the skipper had left the deck. "Turn to and clean up," and we were back again to the rigid discipline of the sea, relaxed for a brief hour to let King Neptune hold his sway.

After crossing the line we picked up the first whisperings of the S. E. trades, that soon began to blow steadily and ushered in another busy stage of the voyage. The refreshing wind and falling temperature brought renewed vigor to our jaded crew. Although we had commenced to feel the lack of fresh provisions, scurvy did not bother us, possibly owing to the regular issue of lime juice, but the constant repetition of salt pork and salt beef, the weevily hard tack, and the abominable slumgullion, a stew made from canned mutton, made us crave for something decent to eat.