CHAPTER I
A blue-nose ancestry with Yankee
proclivities—Youthful fondness for the sea—Master of the ship Northern
Light—Loss of the Aquidneck—Return home from Brazil in the canoe Liberdade—The
gift of a "ship"—The rebuilding of the Spray-Conundrums in regard to
finance and calking—The launching of the Spray.
In the fair land of Nova Scotia, a maritime
province, there is a ridge called North Mountain, overlooking the Bay of Fundy
on one side and the fertile Annapolis valley on the other. On the northern
slope of the range grows the hardy spruce-tree, well adapted for ship-timbers,
of which many vessels of all classes have been built. The people of this coast,
hardy, robust, and strong, are disposed to compete in the world's commerce, and
it is nothing against the master mariner if the birthplace mentioned on his
certificate be Nova Scotia. I was born in a cold spot, on coldest North
Mountain, on a cold February 20, though I am a citizen of the United States—a
naturalized Yankee, if it may be said that Nova Scotians are not Yankees in the
truest sense of the word. On both sides my family were sailors; and if any
Slocum should be found not seafaring, he will show at least an inclination to
whittle models of boats and contemplate voyages. My father was the sort of man
who, if wrecked on a desolate island, would find his way home, if he had a
jack-knife and could find a tree. He was a good judge of a boat, but the old
clay farm which some calamity made his was an anchor to him. He was not afraid
of a capful of wind, and he never took a back seat at a camp-meeting or a good,
old-fashioned revival.
As for myself, the wonderful sea charmed me
from the first. At the age of eight I had already been afloat along with other
boys on the bay, with chances greatly in favor of being drowned. When a lad I
filled the important post of cook on a fishing-schooner; but I was not long in
the galley, for the crew mutinied at the appearance of my first duff, and
"chucked me out" before I had a chance to shine as a culinary artist.
The next step toward the goal of happiness found me before the mast in a
full-rigged ship bound on a foreign voyage. Thus I came "over the
bows," and not in through the cabin windows, to the command of a ship.
My best command was that of the magnificent
ship Northern Light, of which I was part-owner. I had a right to be proud of
her, for at that time—in the eighties—she was the finest American
sailing-vessel afloat. Afterward I owned and sailed the Aquidneck, a little
bark which of all man's handiwork seemed to me the nearest to perfection of
beauty, and which in speed, when the wind blew, asked no favors of steamers, I
had been nearly twenty years a shipmaster when I quit her deck on the coast of
Brazil, where she was wrecked. My home voyage to New York with my family was
made in the canoe Liberdade, without accident.
The
Northern Light, Captain Joshua
Slocum, bound for Liverpool, 1885. Drawn by
W. Taber. The Northern Light, Captain Joshua Slocum, bound for Liverpool, 1885.
Drawn by W. Taber.
My voyages were all foreign. I sailed as
freighter and trader principally to China, Australia, and Japan, and among the
Spice Islands. Mine was not the sort of life to make one long to coil up one's
ropes on land, the customs and ways of which I had finally almost forgotten. And
so when times for freighters got bad, as at last they did, and I tried to quit
the sea, what was there for an old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and
I had studied the sea as perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting all else.
Next in attractiveness, after seafaring, came ship-building. I longed to be
master in both professions, and in a small way, in time, I accomplished my
desire. From the decks of stout ships in the worst gales I had made
calculations as to the size and sort of ship safest for all weather and all
seas. Thus the voyage which I am now to narrate was a natural outcome not only
of my love of adventure, but of my lifelong experience.
One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where
I had been cast up from old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was
cogitating whether I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and
butter on the sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old
acquaintance, a whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and I'll
give you a ship. But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The
captain's terms, when fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me. They
included all the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea. I was
only too glad to accept, for I had already found that I could not obtain work
in the shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a
ship to command—there were not enough ships to go round. Nearly all our tall
vessels had been cut down for coal-barges, and were being ignominiously towed by
the nose from port to port, while many worthy captains addressed themselves to
Sailors' Snug Harbor.
The next day I landed at Fairhaven,
opposite New Bedford, and found that my friend had something of a joke on me.
For seven years the joke had been on him. The "ship" proved to be a
very antiquated sloop called the Spray, which the neighbors declared had been
built in the year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some
distance from salt water, and was covered with canvas. The people of Fairhaven,
I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For seven years they had asked,
"I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is going to do with the old
Spray?" The day I appeared there was a buzz at the gossip exchange: at
last some one had come and was actually at work on the old Spray.
"Breaking her up, I s'pose?" "No; going to rebuild her."
Great was the amazement. "Will it pay?" was the question which for a
year or more I answered by declaring that I would make it pay.
My ax felled a stout oak-tree near by for a
keel, and Farmer Howard, for a small sum of money, hauled in this and enough
timbers for the frame of the new vessel. I rigged a steam-box and a pot for a
boiler. The timbers for ribs, being straight saplings, were dressed and steamed
till supple, and then bent over a log, where they were secured till set.
Something tangible appeared every day to show for my labor, and the neighbors
made the work sociable. It was a great day in the Spray shipyard when her new
stem was set up and fastened to the new keel. Whaling-captains came from far to
survey it. With one voice they pronounced it "A 1," and in their
opinion "fit to smash ice." The oldest captain shook my hand warmly
when the breast-hooks were put in, declaring that he could see no reason why
the Spray should not "cut in bow-head" yet off the coast of
Greenland. The much-esteemed stem-piece was from the butt of the smartest kind
of a pasture oak. It afterward split a coral patch in two at the Keeling
Islands, and did not receive a blemish. Better timber for a ship than pasture
white oak never grew. The breast-hooks, as well as all the ribs, were of this
wood, and were steamed and bent into shape as required. It was hard upon March
when I began work in earnest; the weather was cold; still, there were plenty of
inspectors to back me with advice. When a whaling-captain hove in sight I just
rested on my adz awhile and "gammed" with him.
New Bedford, the home of whaling-captains,
is connected with Fairhaven by a bridge, and the walking is good. They never
"worked along up" to the shipyard too often for me. It was the
charming tales about arctic whaling that inspired me to put a double set of
breast-hooks in the Spray, that she might shunt ice.
The seasons came quickly while I worked.
Hardly were the ribs of the sloop up before apple-trees were in bloom. Then the
daisies and the cherries came soon after. Close by the place where the old
Spray had now dissolved rested the ashes of John Cook, a revered Pilgrim
father. So the new Spray rose from hallowed ground. From the deck of the new
craft I could put out my hand and pick cherries that grew over the little
grave. The planks for the new vessel, which I soon came to put on, were of
Georgia pine an inch and a half thick. The operation of putting them on was
tedious, but, when on, the calking was easy. The outward edges stood slightly
open to receive the calking, but the inner edges were so close that I could not
see daylight between them. All the butts were fastened by through bolts, with
screw-nuts tightening them to the timbers, so that there would be no complaint
from them. Many bolts with screw-nuts were used in other parts of the
construction, in all about a thousand. It was my purpose to make my vessel
stout and strong.
Cross-section of the Spray. Cross-section of
the Spray.
Now, it is a law in Lloyd's that the Jane
repaired all out of the old until she is entirely new is still the Jane. The
Spray changed her being so gradually that it was hard to say at what point the
old died or the new took birth, and it was no matter. The bulwarks I built up
of white-oak stanchions fourteen inches high, and covered with
seven-eighth-inch white pine. These stanchions, mortised through a two-inch
covering-board, I calked with thin cedar wedges. They have remained perfectly
tight ever since. The deck I made of one-and-a-half-inch by three-inch white
pine spiked to beams, six by six inches, of yellow or Georgia pine, placed
three feet apart. The deck-inclosures were one over the aperture of the main
hatch, six feet by six, for a cooking-galley, and a trunk farther aft, about
ten feet by twelve, for a cabin. Both of these rose about three feet above the
deck, and were sunk sufficiently into the hold to afford head-room. In the
spaces along the sides of the cabin, under the deck, I arranged a berth to
sleep in, and shelves for small storage, not forgetting a place for the
medicine-chest. In the midship hold, that is, the space between cabin and
galley, under the deck, was room for provision of water, salt beef, etc., ample
for many months.
The hull of my vessel being now put
together as strongly as wood and iron could make her, and the various rooms
partitioned off, I set about "calking ship." Grave fears were
entertained by some that at this point I should fail. I myself gave some
thought to the advisability of a "professional calker." The very
first blow I struck on the cotton with the calking-iron, which I thought was
right, many others thought wrong. "It'll crawl!" cried a man from
Marion, passing with a basket of clams on his back. "It'll crawl!"
cried another from West Island, when he saw me driving cotton into the seams.
Bruno simply wagged his tail. Even Mr. Ben J——, a noted authority on
whaling-ships, whose mind, however, was said to totter, asked rather
confidently if I did not think "it would crawl." "How fast will
it crawl?" cried my old captain friend, who had been towed by many a
lively sperm-whale. "Tell us how fast," cried he, "that we may
get into port in time."
"'It'll crawl'" "'It'll
crawl'"
However, I drove a thread of oakum on top
of the cotton, as from the first I had intended to do. And Bruno again wagged
his tail. The cotton never "crawled." When the calking was finished,
two coats of copper paint were slapped on the bottom, two of white lead on the
topsides and bulwarks. The rudder was then shipped and painted, and on the
following day the Spray was launched. As she rode at her ancient, rust-eaten
anchor, she sat on the water like a swan.
The Spray's dimensions were, when finished,
thirty-six feet nine inches long, over all, fourteen feet two inches wide, and
four feet two inches deep in the hold, her tonnage being nine tons net and
twelve and seventy-one hundredths tons gross.
Then the mast, a smart New Hampshire
spruce, was fitted, and likewise all the small appurtenances necessary for a
short cruise. Sails were bent, and away she flew with my friend Captain Pierce
and me, across Buzzard's Bay on a trial-trip—all right. The only thing that now
worried my friends along the beach was, "Will she pay?" The cost of
my new vessel was $553.62 for materials, and thirteen months of my own labor. I
was several months more than that at Fairhaven, for I got work now and then on
an occasional whale-ship fitting farther down the harbor, and that kept me the
overtime.
CHAPTER II
Failure as a fisherman—A voyage around the
world projected—From Boston to Gloucester—Fitting out for the ocean voyage—Half
of a dory for a ship's boat—The run from Gloucester to Nova Scotia—A shaking up
in home waters—Among old friends.
I spent a season in my new craft fishing on
the coast, only to find that I had not the cunning properly to bait a hook. But
at last the time arrived to weigh anchor and get to sea in earnest. I had
resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the morning of April
24,1895, was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail, and filled away from
Boston, where the Spray had been moored snugly all winter. The twelve-o'clock
whistles were blowing just as the sloop shot ahead under full sail. A short
board was made up the harbor on the port tack, then coming about she stood
seaward, with her boom well off to port, and swung past the ferries with lively
heels. A photographer on the outer pier at East Boston got a picture of her as
she swept by, her flag at the peak throwing its folds clear. A thrilling pulse
beat high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt that there
could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning
of which I thoroughly understood. I had taken little advice from any one, for I
had a right to my own opinions in matters pertaining to the sea. That the best
of sailors might do worse than even I alone was borne in upon me not a league
from Boston docks, where a great steamship, fully manned, officered, and
piloted, lay stranded and broken. This was the Venetian. She was broken
completely in two over a ledge. So in the first hour of my lone voyage I had
proof that the Spray could at least do better than this full-handed steamship,
for I was already farther on my voyage than she. "Take warning, Spray, and
have a care," I uttered aloud to my bark, passing fairylike silently down
the bay.
The wind freshened, and the Spray rounded
Deer Island light at the rate of seven knots.
Passing it, she squared away direct for
Gloucester to procure there some fishermen's stores. Waves dancing joyously
across Massachusetts Bay met her coming out of the harbor to dash them into
myriads of sparkling gems that hung about her at every surge. The day was
perfect, the sunlight clear and strong. Every particle of water thrown into the
air became a gem, and the Spray, bounding ahead, snatched necklace after
necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away. We have all seen miniature
rainbows about a ship's prow, but the Spray flung out a bow of her own that
day, such as I had never seen before. Her good angel had embarked on the
voyage; I so read it in the sea.
Bold Nahant was soon abeam, then Marblehead
was put astern. Other vessels were outward bound, but none of them passed the
Spray flying along on her course. I heard the clanking of the dismal bell on
Norman's Woe as we went by; and the reef where the schooner Hesperus struck I
passed close aboard. The "bones" of a wreck tossed up lay bleaching
on the shore abreast. The wind still freshening, I settled the throat of the
mainsail to ease the sloop's helm, for I could hardly hold her before it with
the whole mainsail set. A schooner ahead of me lowered all sail and ran into
port under bare poles, the wind being fair. As the Spray brushed by the
stranger, I saw that some of his sails were gone, and much broken canvas hung
in his rigging, from the effects of a squall.
I made for the cove, a lovely branch of
Gloucester's fine harbor, again to look the Spray over and again to weigh the
voyage, and my feelings, and all that. The bay was feather-white as my little
vessel tore in, smothered in foam. It was my first experience of coming into
port alone, with a craft of any size, and in among shipping. Old fishermen ran
down to the wharf for which the Spray was heading, apparently intent upon
braining herself there. I hardly know how a calamity was averted, but with my
heart in my mouth, almost, I let go the wheel, stepped quickly forward, and
downed the jib. The sloop naturally rounded in the wind, and just ranging
ahead, laid her cheek against a mooring-pile at the windward corner of the
wharf, so quietly, after all, that she would not have broken an egg. Very
leisurely I passed a rope around the post, and she was moored. Then a cheer
went up from the little crowd on the wharf. "You couldn't 'a' done it
better," cried an old skipper, "if you weighed a ton!" Now, my
weight was rather less than the fifteenth part of a ton, but I said nothing,
only putting on a look of careless indifference to say for me, "Oh, that's
nothing"; for some of the ablest sailors in the world were looking at me,
and my wish was not to appear green, for I had a mind to stay in Gloucester
several days. Had I uttered a word it surely would have betrayed me, for I was
still quite nervous and short of breath.
I remained in Gloucester about two weeks,
fitting out with the various articles for the voyage most readily obtained
there. The owners of the wharf where I lay, and of many fishing-vessels, put on
board dry cod galore, also a barrel of oil to calm the waves. They were old
skippers themselves, and took a great interest in the voyage. They also made
the Spray a present of a "fisherman's own" lantern, which I found
would throw a light a great distance round. Indeed, a ship that would run
another down having such a good light aboard would be capable of running into a
light-ship. A gaff, a pugh, and a dip-net, all of which an old fisherman
declared I could not sail without, were also put aboard. Then, top, from across
the cove came a case of copper paint, a famous antifouling article, which stood
me in good stead long after. I slapped two coats of this paint on the bottom of
the Spray while she lay a tide or so on the hard beach.
For a boat to take along, I made shift to
cut a castaway dory in two athwartships, boarding up the end where it was cut.
This half-dory I could hoist in and out by the nose easily enough, by hooking
the throat-halyards into a strop fitted for the purpose. A whole dory would be
heavy and awkward to handle alone. Manifestly there was not room on deck for
more than the half of a boat, which, after all, was better than no boat at all,
and was large enough for one man. I perceived, moreover, that the newly
arranged craft would answer for a washing-machine when placed athwartships, and
also for a bath-tub. Indeed, for the former office my razeed dory gained such a
reputation on the voyage that my washerwoman at Samoa would not take no for an
answer. She could see with one eye that it was a new invention which beat any Yankee
notion ever brought by missionaries to the islands, and she had to have it.
The want of a chronometer for the voyage
was all that now worried me. In our newfangled notions of navigation it is
supposed that a mariner cannot find his way without one; and I had myself
drifted into this way of thinking. My old chronometer, a good one, had been
long in disuse. It would cost fifteen dollars to clean and rate it. Fifteen
dollars! For sufficient reasons I left that timepiece at home, where the
Dutchman left his anchor. I had the great lantern, and a lady in Boston sent me
the price of a large two-burner cabin lamp, which lighted the cabin at night,
and by some small contriving served for a stove through the day.
Being thus refitted I was once more ready
for sea, and on May 7 again made sail. With little room in which to turn, the
Spray, in gathering headway, scratched the paint off an old, fine-weather craft
in the fairway, being puttied and painted for a summer voyage. "Who'll pay
for that?" growled the painters. "I will," said I. "With
the main-sheet," echoed the captain of the Bluebird, close by, which was
his way of saying that I was off. There was nothing to pay for above five cents'
worth of paint, maybe, but such a din was raised between the old
"hooker" and the Bluebird, which now took up my case, that the first
cause of it was forgotten altogether. Anyhow, no bill was sent after me.
The weather was mild on the day of my
departure from Gloucester. On the point ahead, as the Spray stood out of the
cove, was a lively picture, for the front of a tall factory was a flutter of
handkerchiefs and caps. Pretty faces peered out of the windows from the top to
the bottom of the building, all smiling bon voyage. Some hailed me to know
where away and why alone. Why? When I made as if to stand in, a hundred pairs
of arms reached out, and said come, but the shore was dangerous! The sloop
worked out of the bay against a light southwest wind, and about noon squared
away off Eastern Point, receiving at the same time a hearty salute—the last of
many kindnesses to her at Gloucester. The wind freshened off the point, and
skipping along smoothly, the Spray was soon off Thatcher's Island lights.
Thence shaping her course east, by compass, to go north of Cashes Ledge and the
Amen Rocks, I sat and considered the matter all over again, and asked myself
once more whether it were best to sail beyond the ledge and rocks at all. I had
only said that I would sail round the world in the Spray, "dangers of the
sea excepted," but I must have said it very much in earnest. The
"charter-party" with myself seemed to bind me, and so I sailed on.
Toward night I hauled the sloop to the wind, and baiting a hook, sounded for
bottom-fish, in thirty fathoms of water, on the edge of Cashes Ledge. With fair
success I hauled till dark, landing on deck three cod and two haddocks, one
hake, and, best of all, a small halibut, all plump and spry. This, I thought,
would be the place to take in a good stock of provisions above what I already
had; so I put out a sea-anchor that would hold her head to windward. The
current being southwest, against the wind, I felt quite sure I would find the
Spray still on the bank or near it in the morning. Then "stradding"
the cable and putting my great lantern in the rigging, I lay down, for the
first time at sea alone, not to sleep, but to doze and to dream.
I had read somewhere of a fishing-schooner
hooking her anchor into a whale, and being towed a long way and at great speed.
This was exactly what happened to the Spray—in my dream! I could not shake it
off entirely when I awoke and found that it was the wind blowing and the heavy
sea now running that had disturbed my short rest. A scud was flying across the
moon. A storm was brewing; indeed, it was already stormy. I reefed the sails,
then hauled in my sea-anchor, and setting what canvas the sloop could carry,
headed her away for Monhegan light, which she made before daylight on the
morning of the 8th. The wind being free, I ran on into Round Pond harbor, which
is a little port east from Pemaquid. Here I rested a day, while the wind
rattled among the pine-trees on shore. But the following day was fine enough,
and I put to sea, first writing up my log from Cape Ann, not omitting a full
account of my adventure with the whale.
"'No dorg nor no cat.'" "'No
dorg nor no cat.'"
The Spray, heading east, stretched along
the coast among many islands and over a tranquil sea. At evening of this day,
May 10, she came up with a considerable island, which I shall always think of
as the Island of Frogs, for the Spray was charmed by a million voices. From the
Island of Frogs we made for the Island of Birds, called Gannet Island, and
sometimes Gannet Rock, whereon is a bright, intermittent light, which flashed
fitfully across the Spray's deck as she coasted along under its light and
shade. Thence shaping a course for Briar's Island, I came among vessels the
following afternoon on the western fishing-grounds, and after speaking a
fisherman at anchor, who gave me a wrong course, the Spray sailed directly over
the southwest ledge through the worst tide-race in the Bay of Fundy, and got
into Westport harbor in Nova Scotia, where I had spent eight years of my life
as a lad.
The fisherman may have said "east-southeast,"
the course I was steering when I hailed him; but I thought he said
"east-northeast," and I accordingly changed it to that. Before he
made up his mind to answer me at all, he improved the occasion of his own
curiosity to know where I was from, and if I was alone, and if I didn't have
"no dorg nor no cat." It was the first time in all my life at sea
that I had heard a hail for information answered by a question. I think the
chap belonged to the Foreign Islands. There was one thing I was sure of, and
that was that he did not belong to Briar's Island, because he dodged a sea that
slopped over the rail, and stopping to brush the water from his face, lost a
fine cod which he was about to ship. My islander would not have done that. It
is known that a Briar Islander, fish or no fish on his hook, never flinches
from a sea. He just tends to his lines and hauls or "saws." Nay, have
I not seen my old friend Deacon W. D—-, a good man of the island, while
listening to a sermon in the little church on the hill, reach out his hand over
the door of his pew and "jig" imaginary squid in the aisle, to the
intense delight of the young people, who did not realize that to catch good
fish one must have good bait, the thing most on the deacon's mind.
The
deacon's dream. The deacon's dream.
I was delighted to reach Westport. Any port
at all would have been delightful after the terrible thrashing I got in the
fierce sou'west rip, and to find myself among old schoolmates now was charming.
It was the 13th of the month, and 13 is my lucky number—a fact registered long
before Dr. Nansen sailed in search of the north pole with his crew of thirteen.
Perhaps he had heard of my success in taking a most extraordinary ship
successfully to Brazil with that number of crew. The very stones on Briar's
Island I was glad to see again, and I knew them all. The little shop round the
corner, which for thirty-five years I had not seen, was the same, except that
it looked a deal smaller. It wore the same shingles—I was sure of it; for did not
I know the roof where we boys, night after night, hunted for the skin of a
black cat, to be taken on a dark night, to make a plaster for a poor lame man?
Lowry the tailor lived there when boys were boys. In his day he was fond of the
gun. He always carried his powder loose in the tail pocket of his coat. He
usually had in his mouth a short dudeen; but in an evil moment he put the
dudeen, lighted, in the pocket among the powder. Mr. Lowry was an eccentric
man.
At Briar's Island I overhauled the Spray
once more and tried her seams, but found that even the test of the sou'west rip
had started nothing. Bad weather and much head wind prevailing outside, I was
in no hurry to round Cape Sable. I made a short excursion with some friends to
St. Mary's Bay, an old cruising-ground, and back to the island. Then I sailed,
putting into Yarmouth the following day on account of fog and head wind. I
spent some days pleasantly enough in Yarmouth, took in some butter for the
voyage, also a barrel of potatoes, filled six barrels of water, and stowed all
under deck. At Yarmouth, too, I got my famous tin clock, the only timepiece I
carried on the whole voyage. The price of it was a dollar and a half, but on
account of the face being smashed the merchant let me have it for a dollar.
Captain Slocum's chronometer. Captain Slocum's
chronometer.
CHAPTER III
Good-by to the American coast—Off Sable
Island in a fog—In the open sea—The man in the moon takes an interest in the
voyage—The first fit of loneliness—The Spray encounters La Vaguisa—A bottle of
wine from the Spaniard—A bout of words with the captain of the Java—The
steamship Olympia spoken—Arrival at the Azores.
I now stowed all my goods securely, for the
boisterous Atlantic was before me, and I sent the topmast down, knowing that
the Spray would be the wholesomer with it on deck. Then I gave the lanyards a
pull and hitched them afresh, and saw that the gammon was secure, also that the
boat was lashed, for even in summer one may meet with bad weather in the
crossing.
In fact, many weeks of bad weather had
prevailed. On July 1, however, after a rude gale, the wind came out nor'west
and clear, propitious for a good run. On the following day, the head sea having
gone down, I sailed from Yarmouth, and let go my last hold on America. The log
of my first day on the Atlantic in the Spray reads briefly: "9:30 A.M.
sailed from Yarmouth. 4:30 P.M. passed Cape Sable; distance, three cables from
the land. The sloop making eight knots. Fresh breeze N.W." Before the sun
went down I was taking my supper of strawberries and tea in smooth water under
the lee of the east-coast land, along which the Spray was now leisurely
skirting.
At noon on July 3 Ironbound Island was
abeam. The Spray was again at her best. A large schooner came out of Liverpool,
Nova Scotia, this morning, steering eastward. The Spray put her hull down
astern in five hours. At 6:45 P.M. I was in close under Chebucto Head light,
near Halifax harbor. I set my flag and squared away, taking my departure from
George's Island before dark to sail east of Sable Island. There are many beacon
lights along the coast. Sambro, the Rock of Lamentations, carries a noble
light, which, however, the liner Atlantic, on the night of her terrible
disaster, did not see. I watched light after light sink astern as I sailed into
the unbounded sea, till Sambro, the last of them all, was below the horizon.
The Spray was then alone, and sailing on, she held her course. July 4, at 6
A.M., I put in double reefs, and at 8:30 A.M. turned out all reefs. At 9:40 P.M.
I raised the sheen only of the light on the west end of Sable Island, which may
also be called the Island of Tragedies. The fog, which till this moment had
held off, now lowered over the sea like a pall. I was in a world of fog, shut
off from the universe. I did not see any more of the light. By the lead, which
I cast often, I found that a little after midnight I was passing the east point
of the island, and should soon be clear of dangers of land and shoals. The wind
was holding free, though it was from the foggy point, south-southwest. It is
said that within a few years Sable Island has been reduced from forty miles in
length to twenty, and that of three lighthouses built on it since 1880, two
have been washed away and the third will soon be engulfed.
"'Good evening, sir.'" "'Good
evening, sir.'"
On the evening of July 5 the Spray, after
having steered all day over a lumpy sea, took it into her head to go without
the helmsman's aid. I had been steering southeast by south, but the wind
hauling forward a bit, she dropped into a smooth lane, heading southeast, and
making about eight knots, her very best work. I crowded on sail to cross the
track of the liners without loss of time, and to reach as soon as possible the
friendly Gulf Stream. The fog lifting before night, I was afforded a look at
the sun just as it was touching the sea. I watched it go down and out of sight.
Then I turned my face eastward, and there, apparently at the very end of the
bowsprit, was the smiling full moon rising out of the sea. Neptune himself
coming over the bows could not have startled me more. "Good evening,
sir," I cried; "I'm glad to see you." Many a long talk since
then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage.
About midnight the fog shut down again
denser than ever before. One could almost "stand on it." It continued
so for a number of days, the wind increasing to a gale. The waves rose high,
but I had a good ship. Still, in the dismal fog I felt myself drifting into
loneliness, an insect on a straw in the midst of the elements. I lashed the
helm, and my vessel held her course, and while she sailed I slept.
During these days a feeling of awe crept
over me. My memory worked with startling power. The ominous, the insignificant,
the great, the small, the wonderful, the commonplace—all appeared before my
mental vision in magical succession. Pages of my history were recalled which
had been so long forgotten that they seemed to belong to a previous existence.
I heard all the voices of the past laughing, crying, telling what I had heard
them tell in many corners of the earth.
The loneliness of my state wore off when
the gale was high and I found much work to do. When fine weather returned, then
came the sense of solitude, which I could not shake off. I used my voice often,
at first giving some order about the affairs of a ship, for I had been told
that from disuse I should lose my speech. At the meridian altitude of the sun I
called aloud, "Eight bells," after the custom on a ship at sea. Again
from my cabin I cried to an imaginary man at the helm, "How does she head,
there?" and again, "Is she on her course?" But getting no reply,
I was reminded the more palpably of my condition. My voice sounded hollow on
the empty air, and I dropped the practice. However, it was not long before the
thought came to me that when I was a lad I used to sing; why not try that now,
where it would disturb no one? My musical talent had never bred envy in others,
but out on the Atlantic, to realize what it meant, you should have heard me
sing. You should have seen the porpoises leap when I pitched my voice for the
waves and the sea and all that was in it. Old turtles, with large eyes, poked
their heads up out of the sea as I sang "Johnny Boker," and
"We'll Pay Darby Doyl for his Boots," and the like. But the porpoises
were, on the whole, vastly more appreciative than the turtles; they jumped a
deal higher. One day when I was humming a favorite chant, I think it was
"Babylon's a-Fallin'," a porpoise jumped higher than the bowsprit.
Had the Spray been going a little faster she would have scooped him in. The
sea-birds sailed around rather shy.
July 10, eight days at sea, the Spray was
twelve hundred miles east of Cape Sable. One hundred and fifty miles a day for
so small a vessel must be considered good sailing. It was the greatest run the
Spray ever made before or since in so few days. On the evening of July 14, in
better humor than ever before, all hands cried, "Sail ho!" The sail
was a barkantine, three points on the weather bow, hull down. Then came the
night. My ship was sailing along now without attention to the helm. The wind
was south; she was heading east. Her sails were trimmed like the sails of the
nautilus. They drew steadily all night. I went frequently on deck, but found
all well. A merry breeze kept on from the south. Early in the morning of the
15th the Spray was close aboard the stranger, which proved to be La Vaguisa of
Vigo, twenty-three days from Philadelphia, bound for Vigo. A lookout from his
masthead had spied the Spray the evening before. The captain, when I came near
enough, threw a line to me and sent a bottle of wine across slung by the neck,
and very good wine it was. He also sent his card, which bore the name of Juan
Gantes. I think he was a good man, as Spaniards go. But when I asked him to
report me "all well" (the Spray passing him in a lively manner), he
hauled his shoulders much above his head; and when his mate, who knew of my
expedition, told him that I was alone, he crossed himself and made for his cabin.
I did not see him again. By sundown he was as far astern as he had been ahead
the evening before.
"He also sent his card." "He
also sent his card."
There was now less and less monotony. On
July 16 the wind was northwest and clear, the sea smooth, and a large bark,
hull down, came in sight on the lee bow, and at 2:30 P.M. I spoke the stranger.
She was the bark Java of Glasgow, from Peru for Queenstown for orders. Her old
captain was bearish, but I met a bear once in Alaska that looked pleasanter. At
least, the bear seemed pleased to meet me, but this grizzly old man! Well, I
suppose my hail disturbed his siesta, and my little sloop passing his great
ship had somewhat the effect on him that a red rag has upon a bull. I had the
advantage over heavy ships, by long odds, in the light winds of this and the
two previous days. The wind was light; his ship was heavy and foul, making poor
headway, while the Spray, with a great mainsail bellying even to light winds,
was just skipping along as nimbly as one could wish. "How long has it been
calm about here?" roared the captain of the Java, as I came within hail of
him. "Dunno, cap'n," I shouted back as loud as I could bawl. "I
haven't been here long." At this the mate on the forecastle wore a broad
grin. "I left Cape Sable fourteen days ago," I added. (I was now well
across toward the Azores.) "Mate," he roared to his chief
officer—"mate, come here and listen to the Yankee's yarn. Haul down the
flag, mate, haul down the flag!" In the best of humor, after all, the Java
surrendered to the Spray.
Chart of the Spray's course around the
world—April
24, 1895, to July 3, 1898 Chart of the
Spray's course around the world—April 24, 1895, to July 3, 1898
The acute pain of solitude experienced at
first never returned. I had penetrated a mystery, and, by the way, I had sailed
through a fog. I had met Neptune in his wrath, but he found that I had not
treated him with contempt, and so he suffered me to go on and explore.
In the log for July 18 there is this entry:
"Fine weather, wind south-southwest. Porpoises gamboling all about. The
S.S. Olympia passed at 11:30 A.M., long. W. 34 degrees 50'."
"It lacks now three minutes of the
half-hour," shouted the captain, as he gave me the longitude and the time.
I admired the businesslike air of the Olympia; but I have the feeling still
that the captain was just a little too precise in his reckoning. That may be
all well enough, however, where there is plenty of sea-room. But
over-confidence, I believe, was the cause of the disaster to the liner
Atlantic, and many more like her. The captain knew too well where he was. There
were no porpoises at all skipping along with the Olympia! Porpoises always
prefer sailing-ships. The captain was a young man, I observed, and had before
him, I hope, a good record.
Land ho! On the morning of July 19 a mystic
dome like a mountain of silver stood alone in the sea ahead. Although the land
was completely hidden by the white, glistening haze that shone in the sun like
polished silver, I felt quite sure that it was Flores Island. At half-past four
P.M. it was abeam. The haze in the meantime had disappeared. Flores is one
hundred and seventy-four miles from Fayal, and although it is a high island, it
remained many years undiscovered after the principal group of the islands had
been colonized.
Early on the morning of July 20 I saw Pico
looming above the clouds on the starboard bow. Lower lands burst forth as the
sun burned away the morning fog, and island after island came into view. As I
approached nearer, cultivated fields appeared, "and oh, how green the
corn!" Only those who have seen the Azores from the deck of a vessel
realize the beauty of the mid-ocean picture.
The
island of Pico. The island of Pico.
At 4:30 P.M. I cast anchor at Fayal,
exactly eighteen days from Cape Sable. The American consul, in a smart boat,
came alongside before the Spray reached the breakwater, and a young naval
officer, who feared for the safety of my vessel, boarded, and offered his
services as pilot. The youngster, I have no good reason to doubt, could have
handled a man-of-war, but the Spray was too small for the amount of uniform he
wore. However, after fouling all the craft in port and sinking a lighter, she
was moored without much damage to herself. This wonderful pilot expected a
"gratification," I understood, but whether for the reason that his
government, and not I, would have to pay the cost of raising the lighter, or
because he did not sink the Spray, I could never make out. But I forgive him.
It was the season for fruit when I arrived
at the Azores, and there was soon more of all kinds of it put on board than I
knew what to do with. Islanders are always the kindest people in the world, and
I met none anywhere kinder than the good hearts of this place. The people of
the Azores are not a very rich community. The burden of taxes is heavy, with
scant privileges in return, the air they breathe being about the only thing
that is not taxed. The mother-country does not even allow them a port of entry
for a foreign mail service. A packet passing never so close with mails for
Horta must deliver them first in Lisbon, ostensibly to be fumigated, but really
for the tariff from the packet. My own letters posted at Horta reached the United
States six days behind my letter from Gibraltar, mailed thirteen days later.
The day after my arrival at Horta was the
feast of a great saint. Boats loaded with people came from other islands to
celebrate at Horta, the capital, or Jerusalem, of the Azores. The deck of the
Spray was crowded from morning till night with men, women, and children. On the
day after the feast a kind-hearted native harnessed a team and drove me a day
over the beautiful roads all about Fayal, "because," said he, in
broken English, "when I was in America and couldn't speak a word of
English, I found it hard till I met some one who seemed to have time to listen
to my story, and I promised my good saint then that if ever a stranger came to
my country I would try to make him happy." Unfortunately, this gentleman
brought along an interpreter, that I might "learn more of the
country." The fellow was nearly the death of me, talking of ships and
voyages, and of the boats he had steered, the last thing in the world I wished
to hear. He had sailed out of New Bedford, so he said, for "that Joe Wing
they call 'John.'" My friend and host found hardly a chance to edge in a
word. Before we parted my host dined me with a cheer that would have gladdened
the heart of a prince, but he was quite alone in his house. "My wife and
children all rest there," said he, pointing to the churchyard across the
way. "I moved to this house from far off," he added, "to be near
the spot, where I pray every morning."
I remained four days at Fayal, and that was
two days more than I had intended to stay. It was the kindness of the islanders
and their touching simplicity which detained me. A damsel, as innocent as an
angel, came alongside one day, and said she would embark on the Spray if I
would land her at Lisbon. She could cook flying-fish, she thought, but her
forte was dressing bacalhao. Her brother Antonio, who served as interpreter,
hinted that, anyhow, he would like to make the trip. Antonio's heart went out
to one John Wilson, and he was ready to sail for America by way of the two
capes to meet his friend. "Do you know John Wilson of Boston?" he
cried. "I knew a John Wilson," I said, "but not of Boston."
"He had one daughter and one son," said Antonio, by way of identifying
his friend. If this reaches the right John Wilson, I am told to say that
"Antonio of Pico remembers him."
Chart of the Spray's Atlantic voyages from
Boston to
Gibraltar, thence to the Strait of
Magellan, in 1895, and finally
homeward bound from the Cape of Good Hope
in 1898. Chart of the Spray's Atlantic voyages from Boston to Gibraltar, thence
to the Strait of Magellan, in 1895, and finally homeward bound from the Cape of
Good Hope in 1898.
CHAPTER IV
Squally weather in the Azores—High
living—Delirious from cheese and plums—The pilot of the Pinta—At
Gibraltar—Compliments exchanged with the British navy—A picnic on the Morocco
shore.
I set sail from Horta early on July 24. The
southwest wind at the time was light, but squalls came up with the sun, and I
was glad enough to get reefs in my sails before I had gone a mile. I had hardly
set the mainsail, double-reefed, when a squall of wind down the mountains
struck the sloop with such violence that I thought her mast would go. However,
a quick helm brought her to the wind. As it was, one of the weather lanyards
was carried away and the other was stranded. My tin basin, caught up by the
wind, went flying across a French school-ship to leeward. It was more or less
squally all day, sailing along under high land; but rounding close under a
bluff, I found an opportunity to mend the lanyards broken in the squall. No
sooner had I lowered my sails when a four-oared boat shot out from some gully
in the rocks, with a customs officer on board, who thought he had come upon a
smuggler. I had some difficulty in making him comprehend the true case.
However, one of his crew, a sailorly chap, who understood how matters were,
while we palavered jumped on board and rove off the new lanyards I had already
prepared, and with a friendly hand helped me "set up the rigging."
This incident gave the turn in my favor. My story was then clear to all. I have
found this the way of the world. Let one be without a friend, and see what will
happen!
Passing the island of Pico, after the
rigging was mended, the Spray stretched across to leeward of the island of St.
Michael's, which she was up with early on the morning of July 26, the wind
blowing hard. Later in the day she passed the Prince of Monaco's fine
steam-yacht bound to Fayal, where, on a previous voyage, the prince had slipped
his cables to "escape a reception" which the padres of the island
wished to give him. Why he so dreaded the "ovation" I could not make
out. At Horta they did not know. Since reaching the islands I had lived most
luxuriously on fresh bread, butter, vegetables, and fruits of all kinds. Plums
seemed the most plentiful on the Spray, and these I ate without stint. I had
also a Pico white cheese that General Manning, the American consul-general, had
given me, which I supposed was to be eaten, and of this I partook with the
plums. Alas! by night-time I was doubled up with cramps. The wind, which was
already a smart breeze, was increasing somewhat, with a heavy sky to the
sou'west. Reefs had been turned out, and I must turn them in again somehow.
Between cramps I got the mainsail down, hauled out the earings as best I could,
and tied away point by point, in the double reef. There being sea-room, I
should, in strict prudence, have made all snug and gone down at once to my
cabin. I am a careful man at sea, but this night, in the coming storm, I swayed
up my sails, which, reefed though they were, were still too much in such heavy
weather; and I saw to it that the sheets were securely belayed. In a word, I
should have laid to, but did not. I gave her the double-reefed mainsail and
whole jib instead, and set her on her course. Then I went below, and threw
myself upon the cabin floor in great pain. How long I lay there I could not
tell, for I became delirious. When I came to, as I thought, from my swoon, I
realized that the sloop was plunging into a heavy sea, and looking out of the
companionway, to my amazement I saw a tall man at the helm. His rigid hand,
grasping the spokes of the wheel, held them as in a vise. One may imagine my
astonishment. His rig was that of a foreign sailor, and the large red cap he
wore was cockbilled over his left ear, and all was set off with shaggy black
whiskers. He would have been taken for a pirate in any part of the world. While
I gazed upon his threatening aspect I forgot the storm, and wondered if he had
come to cut my throat. This he seemed to divine. "Senor," said he,
doffing his cap, "I have come to do you no harm." And a smile, the
faintest in the world, but still a smile, played on his face, which seemed not
unkind when he spoke. "I have come to do you no harm. I have sailed
free," he said, "but was never worse than a contrabandista. I am one
of Columbus's crew," he continued. "I am the pilot of the Pinta come
to aid you. Lie quiet, senor captain," he added, "and I will guide
your ship to-night. You have a calentura, but you will be all right
tomorrow." I thought what a very devil he was to carry sail. Again, as if
he read my mind, he exclaimed: "Yonder is the Pinta ahead; we must
overtake her. Give her sail; give her sail! Vale, vale, muy vale!" Biting
off a large quid of black twist, he said: "You did wrong, captain, to mix
cheese with plums. White cheese is never safe unless you know whence it comes.
Quien sabe, it may have been from leche de Capra and becoming capricious—"
The
apparition at the wheel. The apparition at the wheel.
"Avast, there!" I cried. "I
have no mind for moralizing."
I made shift to spread a mattress and lie
on that instead of the hard floor, my eyes all the while fastened on my strange
guest, who, remarking again that I would have "only pains and
calentura," chuckled as he chanted a wild song:
High are the waves, fierce, gleaming,
High is the tempest roar!
High the sea-bird screaming!
High the Azore!
I suppose I was now on the mend, for I was
peevish, and complained: "I detest your jingle. Your Azore should be at
roost, and would have been were it a respectable bird!" I begged he would
tie a rope-yarn on the rest of the song, if there was any more of it. I was
still in agony. Great seas were boarding the Spray, but in my fevered brain I
thought they were boats falling on deck, that careless draymen were throwing
from wagons on the pier to which I imagined the Spray was now moored, and
without fenders to breast her off. "You'll smash your boats!" I
called out again and again, as the seas crashed on the cabin over my head.
"You'll smash your boats, but you can't hurt the Spray. She is
strong!" I cried.
I found, when my pains and calentura had
gone, that the deck, now as white as a shark's tooth from seas washing over it,
had been swept of everything movable. To my astonishment, I saw now at broad
day that the Spray was still heading as I had left her, and was going like a
racehorse. Columbus himself could not have held her more exactly on her course.
The sloop had made ninety miles in the night through a rough sea. I felt
grateful to the old pilot, but I marveled some that he had not taken in the
jib. The gale was moderating, and by noon the sun was shining. A meridian
altitude and the distance on the patent log, which I always kept towing, told
me that she had made a true course throughout the twenty-four hours. I was
getting much better now, but was very weak, and did not turn out reefs that day
or the night following, although the wind fell light; but I just put my wet
clothes out in the sun when it was shining, and lying down there myself, fell
asleep. Then who should visit me again but my old friend of the night before,
this time, of course, in a dream. "You did well last night to take my
advice," said he, "and if you would, I should like to be with you
often on the voyage, for the love of adventure alone." Finishing what he
had to say, he again doffed his cap and disappeared as mysteriously as he came,
returning, I suppose, to the phantom Pinta. I awoke much refreshed, and with
the feeling that I had been in the presence of a friend and a seaman of vast
experience. I gathered up my clothes, which by this time were dry, then, by
inspiration, I threw overboard all the plums in the vessel.
July 28 was exceptionally fine. The wind
from the northwest was light and the air balmy. I overhauled my wardrobe, and
bent on a white shirt against nearing some coasting-packet with genteel folk on
board. I also did some washing to get the salt out of my clothes. After it all
I was hungry, so I made a fire and very cautiously stewed a dish of pears and
set them carefully aside till I had made a pot of delicious coffee, for both of
which I could afford sugar and cream. But the crowning dish of all was a
fish-hash, and there was enough of it for two. I was in good health again, and
my appetite was simply ravenous. While I was dining I had a large onion over
the double lamp stewing for a luncheon later in the day. High living to-day!
In the afternoon the Spray came upon a
large turtle asleep on the sea. He awoke with my harpoon through his neck, if
he awoke at all. I had much difficulty in landing him on deck, which I finally
accomplished by hooking the throat-halyards to one of his flippers, for he was
about as heavy as my boat. I saw more turtles, and I rigged a burton ready with
which to hoist them in; for I was obliged to lower the mainsail whenever the
halyards were used for such purposes, and it was no small matter to hoist the
large sail again. But the turtle-steak was good. I found no fault with the
cook, and it was the rule of the voyage that the cook found no fault with me.
There was never a ship's crew so well agreed. The bill of fare that evening was
turtle-steak, tea and toast, fried potatoes, stewed onions; with dessert of
stewed pears and cream.
Sometime in the afternoon I passed a
barrel-buoy adrift, floating light on the water. It was painted red, and rigged
with a signal-staff about six feet high. A sudden change in the weather coming
on, I got no more turtle or fish of any sort before reaching port. July 31 a
gale sprang up suddenly from the north, with heavy seas, and I shortened sail.
The Spray made only fifty-one miles on her course that day. August 1 the gale
continued, with heavy seas. Through the night the sloop was reaching, under
close-reefed mainsail and bobbed jib. At 3 P.M. the jib was washed off the
bowsprit and blown to rags and ribbons. I bent the "jumbo" on a stay
at the night-heads. As for the jib, let it go; I saved pieces of it, and, after
all, I was in want of pot-rags.
On August 3 the gale broke, and I saw many
signs of land. Bad weather having made itself felt in the galley, I was minded
to try my hand at a loaf of bread, and so rigging a pot of fire on deck by
which to bake it, a loaf soon became an accomplished fact. One great feature
about ship's cooking is that one's appetite on the sea is always good—a fact
that I realized when I cooked for the crew of fishermen in the before-mentioned
boyhood days. Dinner being over, I sat for hours reading the life of Columbus,
and as the day wore on I watched the birds all flying in one direction, and
said, "Land lies there."
Early the next morning, August 4, I
discovered Spain. I saw fires on shore, and knew that the country was
inhabited. The Spray continued on her course till well in with the land, which
was that about Trafalgar. Then keeping away a point, she passed through the
Strait of Gibraltar, where she cast anchor at 3 P. M. of the same day, less
than twenty-nine days from Cape Sable. At the finish of this preliminary trip I
found myself in excellent health, not overworked or cramped, but as well as
ever in my life, though I was as thin as a reef-point.
Coming to anchor at Gibraltar. Coming to
anchor at Gibraltar.
Two Italian barks, which had been close
alongside at daylight, I saw long after I had anchored, passing up the African
side of the strait. The Spray had sailed them both hull down before she reached
Tarifa. So far as I know, the Spray beat everything going across the Atlantic
except the steamers.
All was well, but I had forgotten to bring
a bill of health from Horta, and so when the fierce old port doctor came to
inspect there was a row. That, however, was the very thing needed. If you want
to get on well with a true Britisher you must first have a deuce of a row with
him. I knew that well enough, and so I fired away, shot for shot, as best I
could. "Well, yes," the doctor admitted at last, "your crew are
healthy enough, no doubt, but who knows the diseases of your last port?"—a
reasonable enough remark. "We ought to put you in the fort, sir!" he
blustered; "but never mind. Free pratique, sir! Shove off,
cockswain!" And that was the last I saw of the port doctor.
But on the following morning a
steam-launch, much longer than the Spray, came alongside,—or as much of her as
could get alongside,—with compliments from the senior naval officer, Admiral
Bruce, saying there was a berth for the Spray at the arsenal. This was around
at the new mole. I had anchored at the old mole, among the native craft, where
it was rough and uncomfortable. Of course I was glad to shift, and did so as
soon as possible, thinking of the great company the Spray would be in among
battle-ships such as the Collingwood, Balfleur, and Cormorant, which were at
that time stationed there, and on board all of which I was entertained, later,
most royally.
"'Put it thar!' as the Americans
say," was the salute I got from Admiral Bruce, when I called at the
admiralty to thank him for his courtesy of the berth, and for the use of the
steam-launch which towed me into dock. "About the berth, it is all right
if it suits, and we'll tow you out when you are ready to go. But, say, what
repairs do you want? Ahoy the Hebe, can you spare your sailmaker? The Spray
wants a new jib. Construction and repair, there! will you see to the Spray?
Say, old man, you must have knocked the devil out of her coming over alone in
twenty-nine days! But we'll make it smooth for you here!" Not even her Majesty's
ship the Collingwood was better looked after than the Spray at Gibraltar.
The
Spray at anchor off Gibraltar. The Spray at anchor off Gibraltar.
Later in the day came the hail: "Spray
ahoy! Mrs. Bruce would like to come on board and shake hands with the Spray.
Will it be convenient to-day!" "Very!" I joyfully shouted.
On the following day Sir F. Carrington, at
the time governor of Gibraltar, with other high officers of the garrison, and
all the commanders of the battle-ships, came on board and signed their names in
the Spray's log-book. Again there was a hail, "Spray ahoy!"
"Hello!" "Commander Reynolds's compliments. You are invited on
board H.M.S. Collingwood, 'at home' at 4:30 P.M. Not later than 5:30 P.M."
I had already hinted at the limited amount of my wardrobe, and that I could
never succeed as a dude. "You are expected, sir, in a stovepipe hat and a
claw-hammer coat!" "Then I can't come." "Dash it! come in
what you have on; that is what we mean." "Aye, aye, sir!" The
Collingwood's cheer was good, and had I worn a silk hat as high as the moon I
could not have had a better time or been made more at home. An Englishman, even
on his great battle-ship, unbends when the stranger passes his gangway, and
when he says "at home" he means it.
That one should like Gibraltar would go
without saying. How could one help loving so hospitable a place? Vegetables
twice a week and milk every morning came from the palatial grounds of the
admiralty. "Spray ahoy!" would hail the admiral. "Spray
ahoy!" "Hello!" "To-morrow is your vegetable day,
sir." "Aye, aye, sir!"
I rambled much about the old city, and a
gunner piloted me through the galleries of the rock as far as a stranger is
permitted to go. There is no excavation in the world, for military purposes, at
all approaching these of Gibraltar in conception or execution. Viewing the
stupendous works, it became hard to realize that one was within the Gibraltar
of his little old Morse geography.
Before sailing I was invited on a picnic
with the governor, the officers of the garrison, and the commanders of the
war-ships at the station; and a royal affair it was. Torpedo-boat No. 91, going
twenty-two knots, carried our party to the Morocco shore and back. The day was
perfect—too fine, in fact, for comfort on shore, and so no one landed at
Morocco. No. 91 trembled like an aspen-leaf as she raced through the sea at top
speed. Sublieutenant Boucher, apparently a mere lad, was in command, and
handled his ship with the skill of an older sailor. On the following day I
lunched with General Carrington, the governor, at Line Wall House, which was
once the Franciscan convent. In this interesting edifice are preserved relics
of the fourteen sieges which Gibraltar has seen. On the next day I supped with
the admiral at his residence, the palace, which was once the convent of the
Mercenaries. At each place, and all about, I felt the friendly grasp of a manly
hand, that lent me vital strength to pass the coming long days at sea. I must
confess that the perfect discipline, order, and cheerfulness at Gibraltar were
only a second wonder in the great stronghold. The vast amount of business going
forward caused no more excitement than the quiet sailing of a well-appointed
ship in a smooth sea. No one spoke above his natural voice, save a boatswain's
mate now and then. The Hon. Horatio J. Sprague, the venerable United States
consul at Gibraltar, honored the Spray with a visit on Sunday, August 24, and
was much pleased to find that our British cousins had been so kind to her.
CHAPTER V
Sailing from Gibraltar with the assistance
of her Majesty's tug—The Spray's course changed from the Suez Canal to Cape
Horn—Chased by a Moorish pirate—A comparison with Columbus—The Canary
Islands-The Cape Verde Islands—Sea life—Arrival at Pernambuco—A bill against
the Brazilian government—Preparing for the stormy weather of the cape.
Monday, August 25, the Spray sailed from
Gibraltar, well repaid for whatever deviation she had made from a direct course
to reach the place. A tug belonging to her Majesty towed the sloop into the
steady breeze clear of the mount, where her sails caught a volant wind, which
carried her once more to the Atlantic, where it rose rapidly to a furious gale.
My plan was, in going down this coast, to haul offshore, well clear of the
land, which hereabouts is the home of pirates; but I had hardly accomplished
this when I perceived a felucca making out of the nearest port, and finally
following in the wake of the Spray. Now, my course to Gibraltar had been taken
with a view to proceed up the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal, down
the Red Sea, and east about, instead of a western route, which I finally
adopted. By officers of vast experience in navigating these seas, I was
influenced to make the change. Longshore pirates on both coasts being numerous,
I could not afford to make light of the advice. But here I was, after all,
evidently in the midst of pirates and thieves! I changed my course; the felucca
did the same, both vessels sailing very fast, but the distance growing less and
less between us. The Spray was doing nobly; she was even more than at her best;
but, in spite of all I could do, she would broach now and then. She was carrying
too much sail for safety. I must reef or be dismasted and lose all, pirate or
no pirate. I must reef, even if I had to grapple with him for my life.
I was not long in reefing the mainsail and
sweating it up—probably not more than fifteen minutes; but the felucca had in
the meantime so shortened the distance between us that I now saw the tuft of
hair on the heads of the crew,—by which, it is said, Mohammed will pull the
villains up into heaven,—and they were coming on like the wind. From what I
could clearly make out now, I felt them to be the sons of generations of
pirates, and I saw by their movements that they were now preparing to strike a
blow. The exultation on their faces, however, was changed in an instant to a
look of fear and rage. Their craft, with too much sail on, broached to on the
crest of a great wave. This one great sea changed the aspect of affairs
suddenly as the flash of a gun. Three minutes later the same wave overtook the
Spray and shook her in every timber. At the same moment the sheet-strop parted,
and away went the main-boom, broken short at the rigging. Impulsively I sprang
to the jib-halyards and down-haul, and instantly downed the jib. The head-sail
being off, and the helm put hard down, the sloop came in the wind with a bound.
While shivering there, but a moment though it was, I got the mainsail down and
secured inboard, broken boom and all. How I got the boom in before the sail was
torn I hardly know; but not a stitch of it was broken. The mainsail being
secured, I hoisted away the jib, and, without looking round, stepped quickly to
the cabin and snatched down my loaded rifle and cartridges at hand; for I made
mental calculations that the pirate would by this time have recovered his
course and be close aboard, and that when I saw him it would be better for me
to be looking at him along the barrel of a gun. The piece was at my shoulder
when I peered into the mist, but there was no pirate within a mile. The wave
and squall that carried away my boom dismasted the felucca outright. I perceived
his thieving crew, some dozen or more of them, struggling to recover their
rigging from the sea. Allah blacken their faces!
I sailed comfortably on under the jib and
forestaysail, which I now set. I fished the boom and furled the sail snug for
the night; then hauled the sloop's head two points offshore to allow for the
set of current and heavy rollers toward the land. This gave me the wind three
points on the starboard quarter and a steady pull in the headsails. By the time
I had things in this order it was dark, and a flying-fish had already fallen on
deck. I took him below for my supper, but found myself too tired to cook, or
even to eat a thing already prepared. I do not remember to have been more tired
before or since in all my life than I was at the finish of that day. Too
fatigued to sleep, I rolled about with the motion of the vessel till near
midnight, when I made shift to dress my fish and prepare a dish of tea. I fully
realized now, if I had not before, that the voyage ahead would call for exertions
ardent and lasting. On August 27 nothing could be seen of the Moor, or his
country either, except two peaks, away in the east through the clear atmosphere
of morning. Soon after the sun rose even these were obscured by haze, much to
my satisfaction.
Chased by pirates. Chased by pirates.
The wind, for a few days following my
escape from the pirates, blew a steady but moderate gale, and the sea, though
agitated into long rollers, was not uncomfortably rough or dangerous, and while
sitting in my cabin I could hardly realize that any sea was running at all, so
easy was the long, swinging motion of the sloop over the waves. All distracting
uneasiness and excitement being now over, I was once more alone with myself in
the realization that I was on the mighty sea and in the hands of the elements.
But I was happy, and was becoming more and more interested in the voyage.
Columbus, in the Santa Maria, sailing these
seas more than four hundred years before, was not so happy as I, nor so sure of
success in what he had undertaken. His first troubles at sea had already begun.
His crew had managed, by foul play or otherwise, to break the ship's rudder
while running before probably just such a gale as the Spray had passed through;
and there was dissension on the Santa Maria, something that was unknown on the
Spray.
After three days of squalls and shifting
winds I threw myself down to rest and sleep, while, with helm lashed, the sloop
sailed steadily on her course.
September 1, in the early morning,
land-clouds rising ahead told of the Canary Islands not far away. A change in
the weather came next day: storm-clouds stretched their arms across the sky;
from the east, to all appearances, might come a fierce harmattan, or from the
south might come the fierce hurricane. Every point of the compass threatened a
wild storm. My attention was turned to reefing sails, and no time was to be
lost over it, either, for the sea in a moment was confusion itself, and I was
glad to head the sloop three points or more away from her true course that she
might ride safely over the waves. I was now scudding her for the channel
between Africa and the island of Fuerteventura, the easternmost of the Canary
Islands, for which I was on the lookout. At 2 P.M., the weather becoming
suddenly fine, the island stood in view, already abeam to starboard, and not
more than seven miles off. Fuerteventura is twenty-seven hundred feet high, and
in fine weather is visible many leagues away.
The wind freshened in the night, and the
Spray had a fine run through the channel. By daylight, September 3, she was
twenty-five miles clear of all the islands, when a calm ensued, which was the
precursor of another gale of wind that soon came on, bringing with it dust from
the African shore. It howled dismally while it lasted, and though it was not
the season of the harmattan, the sea in the course of an hour was discolored
with a reddish-brown dust. The air remained thick with flying dust all the
afternoon, but the wind, veering northwest at night, swept it back to land, and
afforded the Spray once more a clear sky. Her mast now bent under a strong,
steady pressure, and her bellying sail swept the sea as she rolled scuppers
under, courtesying to the waves. These rolling waves thrilled me as they tossed
my ship, passing quickly under her keel. This was grand sailing.
September 4, the wind, still fresh, blew
from the north-northeast, and the sea surged along with the sloop. About noon a
steamship, a bullock-droger, from the river Plate hove in sight, steering
northeast, and making bad weather of it. I signaled her, but got no answer. She
was plunging into the head sea and rolling in a most astonishing manner, and
from the way she yawed one might have said that a wild steer was at the helm.
On the morning of September 6 I found three
flying-fish on deck, and a fourth one down the fore-scuttle as close as
possible to the frying-pan. It was the best haul yet, and afforded me a
sumptuous breakfast and dinner.
The Spray had now settled down to the
tradewinds and to the business of her voyage. Later in the day another droger
hove in sight, rolling as badly as her predecessor. I threw out no flag to this
one, but got the worst of it for passing under her lee. She was, indeed, a
stale one! And the poor cattle, how they bellowed! The time was when ships
passing one another at sea backed their topsails and had a "gam," and
on parting fired guns; but those good old days have gone. People have hardly
time nowadays to speak even on the broad ocean, where news is news, and as for
a salute of guns, they cannot afford the powder. There are no poetry-enshrined
freighters on the sea now; it is a prosy life when we have no time to bid one
another good morning.
My ship, running now in the full swing of
the trades, left me days to myself for rest and recuperation. I employed the
time in reading and writing, or in whatever I found to do about the rigging and
the sails to keep them all in order. The cooking was always done quickly, and
was a small matter, as the bill of fare consisted mostly of flying-fish, hot
biscuits and butter, potatoes, coffee and cream—dishes readily prepared.
On September 10 the Spray passed the island
of St. Antonio, the northwesternmost of the Cape Verdes, close aboard. The
landfall was wonderfully true, considering that no observations for longitude
had been made. The wind, northeast, as the sloop drew by the island, was very
squally, but I reefed her sails snug, and steered broad from the highland of
blustering St. Antonio. Then leaving the Cape Verde Islands out of sight
astern, I found myself once more sailing a lonely sea and in a solitude supreme
all around. When I slept I dreamed that I was alone. This feeling never left
me; but, sleeping or waking, I seemed always to know the position of the sloop,
and I saw my vessel moving across the chart, which became a picture before me.
One night while I sat in the cabin under
this spell, the profound stillness all about was broken by human voices
alongside! I sprang instantly to the deck, startled beyond my power to tell.
Passing close under lee, like an apparition, was a white bark under full sail.
The sailors on board of her were hauling on ropes to brace the yards, which
just cleared the sloop's mast as she swept by. No one hailed from the
white-winged flier, but I heard some one on board say that he saw lights on the
sloop, and that he made her out to be a fisherman. I sat long on the starlit
deck that night, thinking of ships, and watching the constellations on their
voyage.
On the following day, September 13, a large
four-masted ship passed some distance to windward, heading north.
The sloop was now rapidly drawing toward
the region of doldrums, and the force of the trade-winds was lessening. I could
see by the ripples that a counter-current had set in. This I estimated to be
about sixteen miles a day. In the heart of the counter-stream the rate was more
than that setting eastward.
September 14 a lofty three-masted ship,
heading north, was seen from the masthead. Neither this ship nor the one seen
yesterday was within signal distance, yet it was good even to see them. On the
following day heavy rain-clouds rose in the south, obscuring the sun; this was
ominous of doldrums. On the 16th the Spray entered this gloomy region, to
battle with squalls and to be harassed by fitful calms; for this is the state
of the elements between the northeast and the southeast trades, where each
wind, struggling in turn for mastery, expends its force whirling about in all
directions. Making this still more trying to one's nerve and patience, the sea
was tossed into confused cross-lumps and fretted by eddying currents. As if
something more were needed to complete a sailor's discomfort in this state, the
rain poured down in torrents day and night. The Spray struggled and tossed for
ten days, making only three hundred miles on her course in all that time. I
didn't say anything!
On September 23 the fine schooner Nantasket
of Boston, from Bear River, for the river Plate, lumber-laden, and just through
the doldrums, came up with the Spray, and her captain passing a few words, she
sailed on. Being much fouled on the bottom by shell-fish, she drew along with
her fishes which had been following the Spray, which was less provided with
that sort of food. Fishes will always follow a foul ship. A barnacle-grown log
adrift has the same attraction for deep-sea fishes. One of this little school
of deserters was a dolphin that had followed the Spray about a thousand miles,
and had been content to eat scraps of food thrown overboard from my table; for,
having been wounded, it could not dart through the sea to prey on other fishes.
I had become accustomed to seeing the dolphin, which I knew by its scars, and
missed it whenever it took occasional excursions away from the sloop. One day,
after it had been off some hours, it returned in company with three
yellowtails, a sort of cousin to the dolphin. This little school kept together,
except when in danger and when foraging about the sea. Their lives were often
threatened by hungry sharks that came round the vessel, and more than once they
had narrow escapes. Their mode of escape interested me greatly, and I passed
hours watching them. They would dart away, each in a different direction, so
that the wolf of the sea, the shark, pursuing one, would be led away from the
others; then after a while they would all return and rendezvous under one side
or the other of the sloop. Twice their pursuers were diverted by a tin pan,
which I towed astern of the sloop, and which was mistaken for a bright fish;
and while turning, in the peculiar way that sharks have when about to devour
their prey, I shot them through the head.
Their precarious life seemed to concern the
yellowtails very little, if at all. All living beings, without doubt, are
afraid of death. Nevertheless, some of the species I saw huddle together as
though they knew they were created for the larger fishes, and wished to give
the least possible trouble to their captors. I have seen, on the other hand,
whales swimming in a circle around a school of herrings, and with mighty
exertion "bunching" them together in a whirlpool set in motion by
their flukes, and when the small fry were all whirled nicely together, one or
the other of the leviathans, lunging through the center with open jaws, take in
a boat-load or so at a single mouthful. Off the Cape of Good Hope I saw schools
of sardines or other small fish being treated in this way by great numbers of
cavally-fish. There was not the slightest chance of escape for the sardines,
while the cavally circled round and round, feeding from the edge of the mass.
It was interesting to note how rapidly the small fry disappeared; and though it
was repeated before my eyes over and over, I could hardly perceive the capture
of a single sardine, so dexterously was it done.
Along the equatorial limit of the southeast
trade winds the air was heavily charged with electricity, and there was much
thunder and lightning. It was hereabout I remembered that, a few years before,
the American ship Alert was destroyed by lightning. Her people, by wonderful
good fortune, were rescued on the same day and brought to Pernambuco, where I
then met them.
On September 25, in the latitude of 5
degrees N., longitude 26 degrees 30' W., I spoke the ship North Star of London.
The great ship was out forty-eight days from Norfolk, Virginia, and was bound
for Rio, where we met again about two months later. The Spray was now thirty
days from Gibraltar.
The Spray's next companion of the voyage
was a swordfish, that swam alongside, showing its tall fin out of the water,
till I made a stir for my harpoon, when it hauled its black flag down and
disappeared. September 30, at half-past eleven in the morning, the Spray
crossed the equator in longitude 29 degrees 30' W. At noon she was two miles
south of the line. The southeast trade-winds, met, rather light, in about 4
degrees N., gave her sails now a stiff full sending her handsomely over the sea
toward the coast of Brazil, where on October 5, just north of Olinda Point,
without further incident, she made the land, casting anchor in Pernambuco
harbor about noon: forty days from Gibraltar, and all well on board. Did I tire
of the voyage in all that time? Not a bit of it! I was never in better trim in
all my life, and was eager for the more perilous experience of rounding the
Horn.
It was not at all strange in a life common
to sailors that, having already crossed the Atlantic twice and being now
half-way from Boston to the Horn, I should find myself still among friends. My
determination to sail westward from Gibraltar not only enabled me to escape the
pirates of the Red Sea, but, in bringing me to Pernambuco, landed me on
familiar shores. I had made many voyages to this and other ports in Brazil. In
1893 I was employed as master to take the famous Ericsson ship Destroyer from
New York to Brazil to go against the rebel Mello and his party. The Destroyer,
by the way, carried a submarine cannon of enormous length.
In the same expedition went the Nictheroy,
the ship purchased by the United States government during the Spanish war and
renamed the Buffalo. The Destroyer was in many ways the better ship of the two,
but the Brazilians in their curious war sank her themselves at Bahia. With her
sank my hope of recovering wages due me; still, I could but try to recover, for
to me it meant a great deal. But now within two years the whirligig of time had
brought the Mello party into power, and although it was the legal government
which had employed me, the so-called "rebels" felt under less
obligation to me than I could have wished.
During these visits to Brazil I had made
the acquaintance of Dr. Perera, owner and editor of "El Commercio
Jornal," and soon after the Spray was safely moored in Upper Topsail
Reach, the doctor, who is a very enthusiastic yachtsman, came to pay me a visit
and to carry me up the waterway of the lagoon to his country residence. The
approach to his mansion by the waterside was guarded by his armada, a fleet of
boats including a Chinese sampan, a Norwegian pram, and a Cape Ann dory, the
last of which he obtained from the Destroyer. The doctor dined me often on good
Brazilian fare, that I might, as he said, "salle gordo" for the
voyage; but he found that even on the best I fattened slowly.
Fruits and vegetables and all other
provisions necessary for the voyage having been taken in, on the 23d of October
I unmoored and made ready for sea. Here I encountered one of the unforgiving
Mello faction in the person of the collector of customs, who charged the Spray
tonnage dues when she cleared, notwithstanding that she sailed with a yacht
license and should have been exempt from port charges. Our consul reminded the
collector of this and of the fact—without much diplomacy, I thought—that it was
I who brought the Destroyer to Brazil. "Oh, yes," said the bland
collector; "we remember it very well," for it was now in a small way
his turn.
Mr. Lungrin, a merchant, to help me out of
the trifling difficulty, offered to freight the Spray with a cargo of gunpowder
for Bahia, which would have put me in funds; and when the insurance companies
refused to take the risk on cargo shipped on a vessel manned by a crew of only
one, he offered to ship it without insurance, taking all the risk himself. This
was perhaps paying me a greater compliment than I deserved. The reason why I
did not accept the business was that in so doing I found that I should vitiate
my yacht license and run into more expense for harbor dues around the world
than the freight would amount to. Instead of all this, another old merchant
friend came to my assistance, advancing the cash direct.
While at Pernambuco I shortened the boom,
which had been broken when off the coast of Morocco, by removing the broken
piece, which took about four feet off the inboard end; I also refitted the
jaws. On October 24,1895, a fine day even as days go in Brazil, the Spray
sailed, having had abundant good cheer. Making about one hundred miles a day
along the coast, I arrived at Rio de Janeiro November 5, without any event
worth mentioning, and about noon cast anchor near Villaganon, to await the
official port visit. On the following day I bestirred myself to meet the
highest lord of the admiralty and the ministers, to inquire concerning the
matter of wages due me from the beloved Destroyer. The high official I met
said: "Captain, so far as we are concerned, you may have the ship, and if
you care to accept her we will send an officer to show you where she is."
I knew well enough where she was at that moment. The top of her smoke-stack
being awash in Bahia, it was more than likely that she rested on the bottom
there. I thanked the kind officer, but declined his offer.
The Spray, with a number of old shipmasters
on board, sailed about the harbor of Rio the day before she put to sea. As I
had decided to give the Spray a yawl rig for the tempestuous waters of Patagonia,
I here placed on the stern a semicircular brace to support a jigger mast. These
old captains inspected the Spray's rigging, and each one contributed something
to her outfit. Captain Jones, who had acted as my interpreter at Rio, gave her
an anchor, and one of the steamers gave her a cable to match it. She never
dragged Jones's anchor once on the voyage, and the cable not only stood the
strain on a lee shore, but when towed off Cape Horn helped break combing seas
astern that threatened to board her.
CHAPTER VI
Departure from Rio de Janeiro—The Spray
ashore on the sands of Uruguay—A narrow escape from shipwreck—The boy who found
a sloop—The Spray floated but somewhat damaged—Courtesies from the British
consul at Maldonado—A warm greeting at Montevideo—An excursion to Buenos
Aires—Shortening the mast and bowsprit.
On November 28 the Spray sailed from Rio de
Janeiro, and first of all ran into a gale of wind, which tore up things
generally along the coast, doing considerable damage to shipping. It was well
for her, perhaps, that she was clear of the land. Coasting along on this part
of the voyage, I observed that while some of the small vessels I fell in with
were able to outsail the Spray by day, they fell astern of her by night. To the
Spray day and night were the same; to the others clearly there was a
difference. On one of the very fine days experienced after leaving Rio, the
steamship South Wales spoke the Spray and unsolicited gave the longitude by
chronometer as 48 degrees W., "as near as I can make it," the captain
said. The Spray, with her tin clock, had exactly the same reckoning. I was
feeling at ease in my primitive method of navigation, but it startled me not a
little to find my position by account verified by the ship's chronometer. On
December 5 a barkantine hove in sight, and for several days the two vessels
sailed along the coast together. Right here a current was experienced setting
north, making it necessary to hug the shore, with which the Spray became rather
familiar. Here I confess a weakness: I hugged the shore entirely too close. In
a word, at daybreak on the morning of December 11 the Spray ran hard and fast
on the beach. This was annoying; but I soon found that the sloop was in no
great danger. The false appearance of the sand-hills under a bright moon had
deceived me, and I lamented now that I had trusted to appearances at all. The
sea, though moderately smooth, still carried a swell which broke with some
force on the shore. I managed to launch my small dory from the deck, and ran
out a kedge-anchor and warp; but it was too late to kedge the sloop off, for
the tide was falling and she had already sewed a foot. Then I went about
"laying out" the larger anchor, which was no easy matter, for my only
life-boat, the frail dory, when the anchor and cable were in it, was swamped at
once in the surf, the load being too great for her. Then I cut the cable and
made two loads of it instead of one. The anchor, with forty fathoms bent and
already buoyed, I now took and succeeded in getting through the surf; but my
dory was leaking fast, and by the time I had rowed far enough to drop the
anchor she was full to the gunwale and sinking. There was not a moment to
spare, and I saw clearly that if I failed now all might be lost. I sprang from
the oars to my feet, and lifting the anchor above my head, threw it clear just
as she was turning over. I grasped her gunwale and held on as she turned bottom
up, for I suddenly remembered that I could not swim. Then I tried to right her,
but with too much eagerness, for she rolled clean over, and left me as before,
clinging to her gunwale, while my body was still in the water. Giving a moment
to cool reflection, I found that although the wind was blowing moderately
toward the land, the current was carrying me to sea, and that something would
have to be done. Three times I had been under water, in trying to right the
dory, and I was just saying, "Now I lay me," when I was seized by a
determination to try yet once more, so that no one of the prophets of evil I
had left behind me could say, "I told you so." Whatever the danger
may have been, much or little, I can truly say that the moment was the most
serene of my life.
"I suddenly remembered that I could not
swim." "I suddenly remembered that I could not swim."
After righting the dory for the fourth
time, I finally succeeded by the utmost care in keeping her upright while I
hauled myself into her and with one of the oars, which I had recovered, paddled
to the shore, somewhat the worse for wear and pretty full of salt water. The
position of my vessel, now high and dry, gave me anxiety. To get her afloat
again was all I thought of or cared for. I had little difficulty in carrying
the second part of my cable out and securing it to the first, which I had taken
the precaution to buoy before I put it into the boat. To bring the end back to
the sloop was a smaller matter still, and I believe I chuckled above my sorrows
when I found that in all the haphazard my judgment or my good genius had
faithfully stood by me. The cable reached from the anchor in deep water to the
sloop's windlass by just enough to secure a turn and no more. The anchor had
been dropped at the right distance from the vessel. To heave all taut now and
wait for the coming tide was all I could do.
I had already done enough work to tire a
stouter man, and was only too glad to throw myself on the sand above the tide
and rest; for the sun was already up, and pouring a generous warmth over the
land. While my state could have been worse, I was on the wild coast of a
foreign country, and not entirely secure in my property, as I soon found out. I
had not been long on the shore when I heard the patter, patter of a horse's
feet approaching along the hard beach, which ceased as it came abreast of the
sand-ridge where I lay sheltered from the wind. Looking up cautiously, I saw
mounted on a nag probably the most astonished boy on the whole coast. He had
found a sloop! "It must be mine," he thought, "for am I not the
first to see it on the beach?" Sure enough, there it was all high and dry
and painted white. He trotted his horse around it, and finding no owner,
hitched the nag to the sloop's bobstay and hauled as though he would take her
home; but of course she was too heavy for one horse to move. With my skiff,
however, it was different; this he hauled some distance, and concealed behind a
dune in a bunch of tall grass. He had made up his mind, I dare say, to bring
more horses and drag his bigger prize away, anyhow, and was starting off for
the settlement a mile or so away for the reinforcement when I discovered myself
to him, at which he seemed displeased and disappointed. "Buenos dias,
muchacho," I said. He grunted a reply, and eyed me keenly from head to
foot. Then bursting into a volley of questions,—more than six Yankees could
ask,—he wanted to know, first, where my ship was from, and how many days she
had been coming. Then he asked what I was doing here ashore so early in the
morning. "Your questions are easily answered," I replied; "my
ship is from the moon, it has taken her a month to come, and she is here for a
cargo of boys." But the intimation of this enterprise, had I not been on
the alert, might have cost me dearly; for while I spoke this child of the campo
coiled his lariat ready to throw, and instead of being himself carried to the
moon, he was apparently thinking of towing me home by the neck, astern of his
wild cayuse, over the fields of Uruguay.
The exact spot where I was stranded was at
the Castillo Chicos, about seven miles south of the dividing-line of Uruguay
and Brazil, and of course the natives there speak Spanish. To reconcile my
early visitor, I told him that I had on my ship biscuits, and that I wished to
trade them for butter and milk. On hearing this a broad grin lighted up his
face, and showed that he was greatly interested, and that even in Uruguay a
ship's biscuit will cheer the heart of a boy and make him your bosom friend.
The lad almost flew home, and returned quickly with butter, milk, and eggs. I
was, after all, in a land of plenty. With the boy came others, old and young,
from neighboring ranches, among them a German settler, who was of great
assistance to me in many ways.
A
double surprise. A double surprise.
A coast-guard from Fort Teresa, a few miles
away, also came, "to protect your property from the natives of the
plains," he said. I took occasion to tell him, however, that if he would
look after the people of his own village, I would take care of those from the
plains, pointing, as I spoke, to the nondescript "merchant" who had
already stolen my revolver and several small articles from my cabin, which by a
bold front I had recovered. The chap was not a native Uruguayan. Here, as in
many other places that I visited, the natives themselves were not the ones
discreditable to the country.
Early in the day a despatch came from the
port captain of Montevideo, commanding the coastguards to render the Spray
every assistance. This, however, was not necessary, for a guard was already on
the alert, and making all the ado that would become the wreck of a steamer with
a thousand emigrants aboard. The same messenger brought word from the port
captain that he would despatch a steam-tug to tow the Spray to Montevideo. The
officer was as good as his word; a powerful tug arrived on the following day;
but, to make a long story short, with the help of the German and one soldier
and one Italian, called "Angel of Milan," I had already floated the
sloop and was sailing for port with the boom off before a fair wind. The
adventure cost the Spray no small amount of pounding on the hard sand; she lost
her shoe and part of her false keel, and received other damage, which, however,
was readily mended afterward in dock.
On the following day I anchored at
Maldonado. The British consul, his daughter, and another young lady came on
board, bringing with them a basket of fresh eggs, strawberries, bottles of
milk, and a great loaf of sweet bread. This was a good landfall, and better
cheer than I had found at Maldonado once upon a time when I entered the port
with a stricken crew in my bark, the Aquidneck.
In the waters of Maldonado Bay a variety of
fishes abound, and fur-seals in their season haul out on the island abreast the
bay to breed. Currents on this coast are greatly affected by the prevailing
winds, and a tidal wave higher than that ordinarily produced by the moon is
sent up the whole shore of Uruguay before a southwest gale, or lowered by a
northeaster, as may happen. One of these waves having just receded before the
northeast wind which brought the Spray in left the tide now at low ebb, with
oyster-rocks laid bare for some distance along the shore. Other shellfish of
good flavor were also plentiful, though small in size. I gathered a mess of
oysters and mussels here, while a native with hook and line, and with mussels
for bait, fished from a point of detached rocks for bream, landing several
good-sized ones.
The fisherman's nephew, a lad about seven
years old, deserves mention as the tallest blasphemer, for a short boy, that I
met on the voyage. He called his old uncle all the vile names under the sun for
not helping him across the gully. While he swore roundly in all the moods and
tenses of the Spanish language, his uncle fished on, now and then
congratulating his hopeful nephew on his accomplishment. At the end of his rich
vocabulary the urchin sauntered off into the fields, and shortly returned with
a bunch of flowers, and with all smiles handed them to me with the innocence of
an angel. I remembered having seen the same flower on the banks of the river
farther up, some years before. I asked the young pirate why he had brought them
to me. Said he, "I don't know; I only wished to do so." Whatever the
influence was that put so amiable a wish in this wild pampa boy, it must be
far-reaching, thought I, and potent, seas over.
Shortly after, the Spray sailed for
Montevideo, where she arrived on the following day and was greeted by
steam-whistles till I felt embarrassed and wished that I had arrived
unobserved. The voyage so far alone may have seemed to the Uruguayans a feat
worthy of some recognition; but there was so much of it yet ahead, and of such
an arduous nature, that any demonstration at this point seemed, somehow, like
boasting prematurely.
The Spray had barely come to anchor at
Montevideo when the agents of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, Messrs.
Humphreys & Co., sent word that they would dock and repair her free of
expense and give me twenty pounds sterling, which, they did to the letter, and
more besides. The calkers at Montevideo paid very careful attention to the work
of making the sloop tight. Carpenters mended the keel and also the life-boat
(the dory), painting it till I hardly knew it from a butterfly.
Christmas of 1895 found the Spray refitted
even to a wonderful makeshift stove which was contrived from a large iron drum
of some sort punched full of holes to give it a draft; the pipe reached
straight up through the top of the forecastle. Now, this was not a stove by
mere courtesy. It was always hungry, even for green wood; and in cold, wet days
off the coast of Tierra del Fuego it stood me in good stead. Its one door swung
on copper hinges, which one of the yard apprentices, with laudable pride,
polished till the whole thing blushed like the brass binnacle of a P. & O.
steamer.
The Spray was now ready for sea. Instead of
proceeding at once on her voyage, however, she made an excursion up the river,
sailing December 29. An old friend of mine, Captain Howard of Cape Cod and of
River Plate fame, took the trip in her to Buenos Aires, where she arrived early
on the following day, with a gale of wind and a current so much in her favor
that she outdid herself. I was glad to have a sailor of Howard's experience on
board to witness her performance of sailing with no living being at the helm.
Howard sat near the binnacle and watched the compass while the sloop held her
course so steadily that one would have declared that the card was nailed fast.
Not a quarter of a point did she deviate from her course. My old friend had
owned and sailed a pilot-sloop on the river for many years, but this feat took
the wind out of his sails at last, and he cried, "I'll be stranded on
Chico Bank if ever I saw the like of it!" Perhaps he had never given his
sloop a chance to show what she could do. The point I make for the Spray here,
above all other points, is that she sailed in shoal water and in a strong
current, with other difficult and unusual conditions. Captain Howard took all
this into account.
In all the years away from his native home
Howard had not forgotten the art of making fish chowders; and to prove this he
brought along some fine rockfish and prepared a mess fit for kings. When the
savory chowder was done, chocking the pot securely between two boxes on the
cabin floor, so that it could not roll over, we helped ourselves and swapped
yarns over it while the Spray made her own way through the darkness on the
river. Howard told me stories about the Fuegian cannibals as she reeled along,
and I told him about the pilot of the Pinta steering my vessel through the
storm off the coast of the Azores, and that I looked for him at the helm in a
gale such as this. I do not charge Howard with superstition,—we are none of us
superstitious,—but when I spoke about his returning to Montevideo on the Spray
he shook his head and took a steam-packet instead.
I had not been in Buenos Aires for a number
of years. The place where I had once landed from packets, in a cart, was now
built up with magnificent docks. Vast fortunes had been spent in remodeling the
harbor; London bankers could tell you that. The port captain, after assigning
the Spray a safe berth, with his compliments, sent me word to call on him for
anything I might want while in port, and I felt quite sure that his friendship
was sincere. The sloop was well cared for at Buenos Aires; her dockage and
tonnage dues were all free, and the yachting fraternity of the city welcomed
her with a good will. In town I found things not so greatly changed as about
the docks, and I soon felt myself more at home.
From Montevideo I had forwarded a letter
from Sir Edward Hairby to the owner of the "Standard," Mr. Mulhall,
and in reply to it was assured of a warm welcome to the warmest heart, I think,
outside of Ireland. Mr. Mulhall, with a prancing team, came down to the docks
as soon as the Spray was berthed, and would have me go to his house at once,
where a room was waiting. And it was New Year's day, 1896. The course of the
Spray had been followed in the columns of the "Standard."
Mr. Mulhall kindly drove me to see many
improvements about the city, and we went in search of some of the old
landmarks. The man who sold "lemonade" on the plaza when first I
visited this wonderful city I found selling lemonade still at two cents a
glass; he had made a fortune by it. His stock in trade was a wash-tub and a
neighboring hydrant, a moderate supply of brown sugar, and about six lemons
that floated on the sweetened water. The water from time to time was renewed
from the friendly pump, but the lemon "went on forever," and all at
two cents a glass.
At
the sign of the comet. At the sign of the comet.
But we looked in vain for the man who once
sold whisky and coffins in Buenos Aires; the march of civilization had crushed
him—memory only clung to his name. Enterprising man that he was, I fain would
have looked him up. I remember the tiers of whisky-barrels, ranged on end, on
one side of the store, while on the other side, and divided by a thin
partition, were the coffins in the same order, of all sizes and in great
numbers. The unique arrangement seemed in order, for as a cask was emptied a
coffin might be filled. Besides cheap whisky and many other liquors, he sold
"cider," which he manufactured from damaged Malaga raisins. Within
the scope of his enterprise was also the sale of mineral waters, not entirely
blameless of the germs of disease. This man surely catered to all the tastes,
wants, and conditions of his customers.
Farther along in the city, however,
survived the good man who wrote on the side of his store, where thoughtful men
might read and learn: "This wicked world will be destroyed by a comet! The
owner of this store is therefore bound to sell out at any price and avoid the
catastrophe." My friend Mr. Mulhall drove me round to view the fearful
comet with streaming tail pictured large on the trembling merchant's walls.
I unshipped the sloop's mast at Buenos
Aires and shortened it by seven feet. I reduced the length of the bowsprit by
about five feet, and even then I found it reaching far enough from home; and
more than once, when on the end of it reefing the jib, I regretted that I had
not shortened it another foot.
CHAPTER VII
Weighing anchor at Buenos Aires—An outburst
of emotion at the mouth of the Plate—Submerged by a great wave—A stormy
entrance to the strait—Captain Samblich's happy gift of a bag of
carpet-tacks—Off Cape Froward—Chased by Indians from Fortescue Bay—A miss-shot
for "Black Pedro"—Taking in supplies of wood and water at Three
Island Cove—Animal life.
On January 26, 1896, the Spray, being
refitted and well provisioned in every way, sailed from Buenos Aires. There was
little wind at the start; the surface of the great river was like a silver
disk, and I was glad of a tow from a harbor tug to clear the port entrance. But
a gale came up soon after, and caused an ugly sea, and instead of being all
silver, as before, the river was now all mud. The Plate is a treacherous place
for storms. One sailing there should always be on the alert for squalls. I cast
anchor before dark in the best lee I could find near the land, but was tossed
miserably all night, heartsore of choppy seas. On the following morning I got
the sloop under way, and with reefed sails worked her down the river against a
head wind. Standing in that night to the place where pilot Howard joined me for
the up-river sail, I took a departure, shaping my course to clear Point Indio
on the one hand, and the English Bank on the other.
A
great wave off the Patagonian coast A great wave off the Patagonian coast
I had not for many years been south of
these regions. I will not say that I expected all fine sailing on the course
for Cape Horn direct, but while I worked at the sails and rigging I thought
only of onward and forward. It was when I anchored in the lonely places that a
feeling of awe crept over me. At the last anchorage on the monotonous and muddy
river, weak as it may seem, I gave way to my feelings. I resolved then that I
would anchor no more north of the Strait of Magellan.
On the 28th of January the Spray was clear
of Point Indio, English Bank, and all the other dangers of the River Plate.
With a fair wind she then bore away for the Strait of Magellan, under all sail,
pressing farther and farther toward the wonderland of the South, till I forgot
the blessings of our milder North.
My ship passed in safety Bahia Blanca, also
the Gulf of St. Matias and the mighty Gulf of St. George. Hoping that she might
go clear of the destructive tide-races, the dread of big craft or little along
this coast, I gave all the capes a berth of about fifty miles, for these
dangers extend many miles from the land. But where the sloop avoided one danger
she encountered another. For, one day, well off the Patagonian coast, while the
sloop was reaching under short sail, a tremendous wave, the culmination, it
seemed, of many waves, rolled down upon her in a storm, roaring as it came. I
had only a moment to get all sail down and myself up on the peak halliards, out
of danger, when I saw the mighty crest towering masthead-high above me. The
mountain of water submerged my vessel. She shook in every timber and reeled
under the weight of the sea, but rose quickly out of it, and rode grandly over
the rollers that followed. It may have been a minute that from my hold in the
rigging I could see no part of the Spray's hull. Perhaps it was even less time
than that, but it seemed a long while, for under great excitement one lives
fast, and in a few seconds one may think a great deal of one's past life. Not
only did the past, with electric speed, flash before me, but I had time while
in my hazardous position for resolutions for the future that would take a long time
to fulfil. The first one was, I remember, that if the Spray came through this
danger I would dedicate my best energies to building a larger ship on her
lines, which I hope yet to do. Other promises, less easily kept, I should have
made under protest. However, the incident, which filled me with fear, was only
one more test of the Spray's seaworthiness. It reassured me against rude Cape
Horn.
From the time the great wave swept over the
Spray until she reached Cape Virgins nothing occurred to move a pulse and set
blood in motion. On the contrary, the weather became fine and the sea smooth
and life tranquil. The phenomenon of mirage frequently occurred. An albatross
sitting on the water one day loomed up like a large ship; two fur-seals asleep
on the surface of the sea appeared like great whales, and a bank of haze I
could have sworn was high land. The kaleidescope then changed, and on the
following day I sailed in a world peopled by dwarfs.
Entrance to the Strait of Magellan. Entrance
to the Strait of Magellan.
On February 11 the Spray rounded Cape
Virgins and entered the Strait of Magellan. The scene was again real and
gloomy; the wind, northeast, and blowing a gale, sent feather-white spume along
the coast; such a sea ran as would swamp an ill-appointed ship. As the sloop
neared the entrance to the strait I observed that two great tide-races made
ahead, one very close to the point of the land and one farther offshore.
Between the two, in a sort of channel, through combers, went the Spray with
close-reefed sails. But a rolling sea followed her a long way in, and a fierce
current swept around the cape against her; but this she stemmed, and was soon
chirruping under the lee of Cape Virgins and running every minute into smoother
water. However, long trailing kelp from sunken rocks waved forebodingly under
her keel, and the wreck of a great steamship smashed on the beach abreast gave
a gloomy aspect to the scene.
I was not to be let off easy. The Virgins
would collect tribute even from the Spray passing their promontory. Fitful
rain-squalls from the northwest followed the northeast gale. I reefed the
sloop's sails, and sitting in the cabin to rest my eyes, I was so strongly
impressed with what in all nature I might expect that as I dozed the very air I
breathed seemed to warn me of danger. My senses heard "Spray ahoy!"
shouted in warning. I sprang to the deck, wondering who could be there that
knew the Spray so well as to call out her name passing in the dark; for it was
now the blackest of nights all around, except away in the southwest, where the
old familiar white arch, the terror of Cape Horn, rapidly pushed up by a
southwest gale. I had only a moment to douse sail and lash all solid when it
struck like a shot from a cannon, and for the first half-hour it was something
to be remembered by way of a gale. For thirty hours it kept on blowing hard.
The sloop could carry no more than a three-reefed mainsail and forestaysail;
with these she held on stoutly and was not blown out of the strait. In the
height of the squalls in this gale she doused all sail, and this occurred often
enough.
After this gale followed only a smart
breeze, and the Spray, passing through the narrows without mishap, cast anchor
at Sandy Point on February 14, 1896.
The
course of the Spray through the Strait of
Magellan. The course of the Spray through
the Strait of Magellan.
Sandy Point (Punta Arenas) is a Chilean
coaling-station, and boasts about two thousand inhabitants, of mixed
nationality, but mostly Chileans. What with sheep-farming, gold-mining, and
hunting, the settlers in this dreary land seemed not the worst off in the
world. But the natives, Patagonian and Fuegian, on the other hand, were as
squalid as contact with unscrupulous traders could make them. A large
percentage of the business there was traffic in "fire-water." If
there was a law against selling the poisonous stuff to the natives, it was not
enforced. Fine specimens of the Patagonian race, looking smart in the morning
when they came into town, had repented before night of ever having seen a white
man, so beastly drunk were they, to say nothing about the peltry of which they
had been robbed.
The port at that time was free, but a
customhouse was in course of construction, and when it is finished, port and
tariff dues are to be collected. A soldier police guarded the place, and a sort
of vigilante force besides took down its guns now and then; but as a general
thing, to my mind, whenever an execution was made they killed the wrong man.
Just previous to my arrival the governor, himself of a jovial turn of mind, had
sent a party of young bloods to foray a Fuegian settlement and wipe out what
they could of it on account of the recent massacre of a schooner's crew
somewhere else. Altogether the place was quite newsy and supported two
papers—dailies, I think. The port captain, a Chilean naval officer, advised me
to ship hands to fight Indians in the strait farther west, and spoke of my
stopping until a gunboat should be going through, which would give me a tow.
After canvassing the place, however, I found only one man willing to embark,
and he on condition that I should ship another "mon and a doog." But
as no one else was willing to come along, and as I drew the line at dogs, I
said no more about the matter, but simply loaded my guns. At this point in my
dilemma Captain Pedro Samblich, a good Austrian of large experience, coming
along, gave me a bag of carpet-tacks, worth more than all the fighting men and
dogs of Tierra del Fuego. I protested that I had no use for carpet-tacks on
board. Samblich smiled at my want of experience, and maintained stoutly that I
would have use for them. "You must use them with discretion," he
said; "that is to say, don't step on them yourself." With this remote
hint about the use of the tacks I got on all right, and saw the way to maintain
clear decks at night without the care of watching.
The
man who wouldn't ship without another "mon and a
doog." The man who wouldn't ship
without another "mon and a doog."
Samblich was greatly interested in my
voyage, and after giving me the tacks he put on board bags of biscuits and a
large quantity of smoked venison. He declared that my bread, which was ordinary
sea-biscuits and easily broken, was not nutritious as his, which was so hard
that I could break it only with a stout blow from a maul. Then he gave me, from
his own sloop, a compass which was certainly better than mine, and offered to
unbend her mainsail for me if I would accept it. Last of all, this
large-hearted man brought out a bottle of Fuegian gold-dust from a place where
it had been cached and begged me to help myself from it, for use farther along
on the voyage. But I felt sure of success without this draft on a friend, and I
was right. Samblich's tacks, as it turned out, were of more value than gold.
A
Fuegian Girl. A Fuegian Girl.
The port captain finding that I was
resolved to go, even alone, since there was no help for it, set up no further
objections, but advised me, in case the savages tried to surround me with their
canoes, to shoot straight, and begin to do it in time, but to avoid killing
them if possible, which I heartily agreed to do. With these simple injunctions
the officer gave me my port clearance free of charge, and I sailed on the same
day, February 19, 1896. It was not without thoughts of strange and stirring
adventure beyond all I had yet encountered that I now sailed into the country
and very core of the savage Fuegians.
A fair wind from Sandy Point brought me on
the first day to St. Nicholas Bay, where, so I was told, I might expect to meet
savages; but seeing no signs of life, I came to anchor in eight fathoms of
water, where I lay all night under a high mountain. Here I had my first
experience with the terrific squalls, called williwaws, which extended from
this point on through the strait to the Pacific. They were compressed gales of
wind that Boreas handed down over the hills in chunks. A full-blown williwaw
will throw a ship, even without sail on, over on her beam ends; but, like other
gales, they cease now and then, if only for a short time.
February 20 was my birthday, and I found
myself alone, with hardly so much as a bird in sight, off Cape Froward, the
southernmost point of the continent of America. By daylight in the morning I
was getting my ship under way for the bout ahead.
The sloop held the wind fair while she ran
thirty miles farther on her course, which brought her to Fortescue Bay, and at
once among the natives' signal-fires, which blazed up now on all sides. Clouds
flew over the mountain from the west all day; at night my good east wind
failed, and in its stead a gale from the west soon came on. I gained anchorage
at twelve o'clock that night, under the lee of a little island, and then
prepared myself a cup of coffee, of which I was sorely in need; for, to tell
the truth, hard beating in the heavy squalls and against the current had told
on my strength. Finding that the anchor held, I drank my beverage, and named
the place Coffee Island. It lies to the south of Charles Island, with only a narrow
channel between.
Looking west from Fortescue Bay, where the
Spray was
chased by Indians. (From a photograph.)
Looking west from Fortescue Bay, where the Spray was chased by Indians. (From a
photograph.)
By daylight the next morning the Spray was
again under way, beating hard; but she came to in a cove in Charles Island, two
and a half miles along on her course. Here she remained undisturbed two days,
with both anchors down in a bed of kelp. Indeed, she might have remained
undisturbed indefinitely had not the wind moderated; for during these two days
it blew so hard that no boat could venture out on the strait, and the natives
being away to other hunting-grounds, the island anchorage was safe. But at the
end of the fierce wind-storm fair weather came; then I got my anchors, and
again sailed out upon the strait.
Canoes manned by savages from Fortescue now
came in pursuit. The wind falling light, they gained on me rapidly till coming
within hail, when they ceased paddling, and a bow-legged savage stood up and
called to me, "Yammerschooner! yammerschooner!" which is their
begging term. I said, "No!" Now, I was not for letting on that I was
alone, and so I stepped into the cabin, and, passing through the hold, came out
at the fore-scuttle, changing my clothes as I went along. That made two men.
Then the piece of bowsprit which I had sawed off at Buenos Aires, and which I
had still on board, I arranged forward on the lookout, dressed as a seaman,
attaching a line by which I could pull it into motion. That made three of us,
and we didn't want to "yammerschooner"; but for all that the savages
came on faster than before. I saw that besides four at the paddles in the canoe
nearest to me, there were others in the bottom, and that they were shifting
hands often. At eighty yards I fired a shot across the bows of the nearest
canoe, at which they all stopped, but only for a moment. Seeing that they
persisted in coming nearer, I fired the second shot so close to the chap who
wanted to "yammerschooner" that he changed his mind quickly enough
and bellowed with fear, "Bueno jo via Isla," and sitting down in his
canoe, he rubbed his starboard cat-head for some time. I was thinking of the
good port captain's advice when I pulled the trigger, and must have aimed pretty
straight; however, a miss was as good as a mile for Mr. "Black
Pedro," as he it was, and no other, a leader in several bloody massacres.
He made for the island now, and the others followed him. I knew by his Spanish
lingo and by his full beard that he was the villain I have named, a renegade
mongrel, and the worst murderer in Tierra del Fuego. The authorities had been
in search of him for two years. The Fuegians are not bearded.
So much for the first day among the
savages. I came to anchor at midnight in Three Island Cove, about twenty miles
along from Fortescue Bay. I saw on the opposite side of the strait
signal-fires, and heard the barking of dogs, but where I lay it was quite deserted
by natives. I have always taken it as a sign that where I found birds sitting
about, or seals on the rocks, I should not find savage Indians. Seals are never
plentiful in these waters, but in Three Island Cove I saw one on the rocks, and
other signs of the absence of savage men.
A
brush with Fuegians A brush with Fuegians
On the next day the wind was again blowing
a gale, and although she was in the lee of the land, the sloop dragged her
anchors, so that I had to get her under way and beat farther into the cove,
where I came to in a landlocked pool. At another time or place this would have
been a rash thing to do, and it was safe now only from the fact that the gale
which drove me to shelter would keep the Indians from crossing the strait. Seeing
this was the case, I went ashore with gun and ax on an island, where I could
not in any event be surprised, and there felled trees and split about a cord of
fire-wood, which loaded my small boat several times.
While I carried the wood, though I was
morally sure there were no savages near, I never once went to or from the skiff
without my gun. While I had that and a clear field of over eighty yards about
me I felt safe.
The trees on the island, very scattering,
were a sort of beech and a stunted cedar, both of which made good fuel. Even
the green limbs of the beech, which seemed to possess a resinous quality,
burned readily in my great drum-stove. I have described my method of wooding up
in detail, that the reader who has kindly borne with me so far may see that in
this, as in all other particulars of my voyage, I took great care against all
kinds of surprises, whether by animals or by the elements. In the Strait of
Magellan the greatest vigilance was necessary. In this instance I reasoned that
I had all about me the greatest danger of the whole voyage—the treachery of
cunning savages, for which I must be particularly on the alert.
The Spray sailed from Three Island Cove in
the morning after the gale went down, but was glad to return for shelter from
another sudden gale. Sailing again on the following day, she fetched Borgia
Bay, a few miles on her course, where vessels had anchored from time to time
and had nailed boards on the trees ashore with name and date of harboring
carved or painted. Nothing else could I see to indicate that civilized man had
ever been there. I had taken a survey of the gloomy place with my spy-glass,
and was getting my boat out to land and take notes, when the Chilean gunboat
Huemel came in, and officers, coming on board, advised me to leave the place at
once, a thing that required little eloquence to persuade me to do. I accepted
the captain's kind offer of a tow to the next anchorage, at the place called
Notch Cove, eight miles farther along, where I should be clear of the worst of the
Fuegians.
A
bit of friendly assistance. (After a sketch by
Midshipman Miguel Arenas.) A bit of
friendly assistance. (After a sketch by Midshipman Miguel Arenas.)
We made anchorage at the cove about dark
that night, while the wind came down in fierce williwaws from the mountains. An
instance of Magellan weather was afforded when the Huemel, a well-appointed
gunboat of great power, after attempting on the following day to proceed on her
voyage, was obliged by sheer force of the wind to return and take up anchorage
again and remain till the gale abated; and lucky she was to get back!
Meeting this vessel was a little godsend.
She was commanded and officered by high-class sailors and educated gentlemen.
An entertainment that was gotten up on her, impromptu, at the Notch would be
hard to beat anywhere. One of her midshipmen sang popular songs in French,
German, and Spanish, and one (so he said) in Russian. If the audience did not
know the lingo of one song from another, it was no drawback to the merriment.
I was left alone the next day, for then the
Huemel put out on her voyage the gale having abated. I spent a day taking in
wood and water; by the end of that time the weather was fine. Then I sailed
from the desolate place.
There is little more to be said concerning
the Spray's first passage through the strait that would differ from what I have
already recorded. She anchored and weighed many times, and beat many days
against the current, with now and then a "slant" for a few miles,
till finally she gained anchorage and shelter for the night at Port Tamar, with
Cape Pillar in sight to the west. Here I felt the throb of the great ocean that
lay before me. I knew now that I had put a world behind me, and that I was
opening out another world ahead. I had passed the haunts of savages. Great
piles of granite mountains of bleak and lifeless aspect were now astern; on
some of them not even a speck of moss had ever grown. There was an unfinished
newness all about the land. On the hill back of Port Tamar a small beacon had
been thrown up, showing that some man had been there. But how could one tell
but that he had died of loneliness and grief? In a bleak land is not the place
to enjoy solitude.
Throughout the whole of the strait west of
Cape Froward I saw no animals except dogs owned by savages. These I saw often
enough, and heard them yelping night and day. Birds were not plentiful. The
scream of a wild fowl, which I took for a loon, sometimes startled me with its
piercing cry. The steamboat duck, so called because it propels itself over the
sea with its wings, and resembles a miniature side-wheel steamer in its motion,
was sometimes seen scurrying on out of danger. It never flies, but, hitting the
water instead of the air with its wings, it moves faster than a rowboat or a
canoe. The few fur-seals I saw were very shy; and of fishes I saw next to none
at all. I did not catch one; indeed, I seldom or never put a hook over during
the whole voyage. Here in the strait I found great abundance of mussels of an
excellent quality. I fared sumptuously on them. There was a sort of swan,
smaller than a Muscovy duck, which might have been brought down with the gun,
but in the loneliness of life about the dreary country I found myself in no
mood to make one life less, except in self-defense.
CHAPTER VIII
From Cape Pillar into the Pacific—Driven by
a tempest toward Cape Horn—Captain Slocum's greatest sea adventure—Beaching the
strait again by way of Cockburn Channel—Some savages find the
carpet-tacks—Danger from firebrands—A series of fierce williwaws—Again sailing
westward.
It was the 3d of March when the Spray
sailed from Port Tamar direct for Cape Pillar, with the wind from the
northeast, which I fervently hoped might hold till she cleared the land; but
there was no such good luck in store. It soon began to rain and thicken in the
northwest, boding no good. The Spray reared Cape Pillar rapidly, and, nothing
loath, plunged into the Pacific Ocean at once, taking her first bath of it in
the gathering storm. There was no turning back even had I wished to do so, for
the land was now shut out by the darkness of night. The wind freshened, and I
took in a third reef. The sea was confused and treacherous. In such a time as
this the old fisherman prayed, "Remember, Lord, my ship is small and thy
sea is so wide!" I saw now only the gleaming crests of the waves. They
showed white teeth while the sloop balanced over them. "Everything for an
offing," I cried, and to this end I carried on all the sail she would
bear. She ran all night with a free sheet, but on the morning of March 4 the
wind shifted to southwest, then back suddenly to northwest, and blew with
terrific force. The Spray, stripped of her sails, then bore off under bare
poles. No ship in the world could have stood up against so violent a gale.
Knowing that this storm might continue for many days, and that it would be
impossible to work back to the westward along the coast outside of Tierra del
Fuego, there seemed nothing to do but to keep on and go east about, after all.
Anyhow, for my present safety the only course lay in keeping her before the
wind. And so she drove southeast, as though about to round the Horn, while the
waves rose and fell and bellowed their never-ending story of the sea; but the
Hand that held these held also the Spray. She was running now with a reefed
forestaysail, the sheets flat amidship. I paid out two long ropes to steady her
course and to break combing seas astern, and I lashed the helm amidship. In
this trim she ran before it, shipping never a sea. Even while the storm raged
at its worst, my ship was wholesome and noble. My mind as to her seaworthiness
was put at ease for aye.
Cape
Pillar. Cape Pillar.
When all had been done that I could do for
the safety of the vessel, I got to the fore-scuttle, between seas, and prepared
a pot of coffee over a wood fire, and made a good Irish stew. Then, as before
and afterward on the Spray, I insisted on warm meals. In the tide-race off Cape
Pillar, however, where the sea was marvelously high, uneven, and crooked, my
appetite was slim, and for a time I postponed cooking. (Confidentially, I was
seasick!)
The first day of the storm gave the Spray
her actual test in the worst sea that Cape Horn or its wild regions could
afford, and in no part of the world could a rougher sea be found than at this
particular point, namely, off Cape Pillar, the grim sentinel of the Horn.
Farther offshore, while the sea was
majestic, there was less apprehension of danger. There the Spray rode, now like
a bird on the crest of a wave, and now like a waif deep down in the hollow
between seas; and so she drove on. Whole days passed, counted as other days,
but with always a thrill—yes, of delight.
On the fourth day of the gale, rapidly
nearing the pitch of Cape Horn, I inspected my chart and pricked off the course
and distance to Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, where I might find my
way and refit, when I saw through a rift in the clouds a high mountain, about
seven leagues away on the port beam. The fierce edge of the gale by this time
had blown off, and I had already bent a square-sail on the boom in place of the
mainsail, which was torn to rags. I hauled in the trailing ropes, hoisted this
awkward sail reefed, the forestaysail being already set, and under this sail
brought her at once on the wind heading for the land, which appeared as an
island in the sea. So it turned out to be, though not the one I had supposed.
I was exultant over the prospect of once
more entering the Strait of Magellan and beating through again into the
Pacific, for it was more than rough on the outside coast of Tierra del Fuego.
It was indeed a mountainous sea. When the sloop was in the fiercest squalls,
with only the reefed forestaysail set, even that small sail shook her from
keelson to truck when it shivered by the leech. Had I harbored the shadow of a
doubt for her safety, it would have been that she might spring a leak in the
garboard at the heel of the mast; but she never called me once to the pump.
Under pressure of the smallest sail I could set she made for the land like a
race-horse, and steering her over the crests of the waves so that she might not
trip was nice work. I stood at the helm now and made the most of it.
Night closed in before the sloop reached
the land, leaving her feeling the way in pitchy darkness. I saw breakers ahead
before long. At this I wore ship and stood offshore, but was immediately
startled by the tremendous roaring of breakers again ahead and on the lee bow.
This puzzled me, for there should have been no broken water where I supposed
myself to be. I kept off a good bit, then wore round, but finding broken water
also there, threw her head again offshore. In this way, among dangers, I spent
the rest of the night. Hail and sleet in the fierce squalls cut my flesh till
the blood trickled over my face; but what of that? It was daylight, and the
sloop was in the midst of the Milky Way of the sea, which is northwest of Cape
Horn, and it was the white breakers of a huge sea over sunken rocks which had
threatened to engulf her through the night. It was Fury Island I had sighted
and steered for, and what a panorama was before me now and all around! It was
not the time to complain of a broken skin. What could I do but fill away among
the breakers and find a channel between them, now that it was day? Since she
had escaped the rocks through the night, surely she would find her way by
daylight. This was the greatest sea adventure of my life. God knows how my
vessel escaped.
The sloop at last reached inside of small
islands that sheltered her in smooth water. Then I climbed the mast to survey
the wild scene astern. The great naturalist Darwin looked over this seascape
from the deck of the Beagle, and wrote in his journal, "Any landsman
seeing the Milky Way would have nightmare for a week." He might have
added, "or seaman" as well.
The Spray's good luck followed fast. I
discovered, as she sailed along through a labyrinth of islands, that she was in
the Cockburn Channel, which leads into the Strait of Magellan at a point
opposite Cape Froward, and that she was already passing Thieves' Bay,
suggestively named. And at night, March 8, behold, she was at anchor in a snug
cove at the Turn! Every heart-beat on the Spray now counted thanks.
Here I pondered on the events of the last
few days, and, strangely enough, instead of feeling rested from sitting or
lying down, I now began to feel jaded and worn; but a hot meal of venison stew
soon put me right, so that I could sleep. As drowsiness came on I sprinkled the
deck with tacks, and then I turned in, bearing in mind the advice of my old
friend Samblich that I was not to step on them myself. I saw to it that not a
few of them stood "business end" up; for when the Spray passed
Thieves' Bay two canoes had put out and followed in her wake, and there was no
disguising the fact any longer that I was alone.
Now, it is well known that one cannot step
on a tack without saying something about it. A pretty good Christian will
whistle when he steps on the "commercial end" of a carpet-tack; a
savage will howl and claw the air, and that was just what happened that night
about twelve o'clock, while I was asleep in the cabin, where the savages
thought they "had me," sloop and all, but changed their minds when
they stepped on deck, for then they thought that I or somebody else had them. I
had no need of a dog; they howled like a pack of hounds. I had hardly use for a
gun. They jumped pell-mell, some into their canoes and some into the sea, to
cool off, I suppose, and there was a deal of free language over it as they
went. I fired several guns when I came on deck, to let the rascals know that I
was home, and then I turned in again, feeling sure I should not be disturbed
any more by people who left in so great a hurry.
The Fuegians, being cruel, are naturally
cowards; they regard a rifle with superstitious fear. The only real danger one
could see that might come from their quarter would be from allowing them to
surround one within bow-shot, or to anchor within range where they might lie in
ambush. As for their coming on deck at night, even had I not put tacks about, I
could have cleared them off by shots from the cabin and hold. I always kept a
quantity of ammunition within reach in the hold and in the cabin and in the
forepeak, so that retreating to any of these places I could "hold the
fort" simply by shooting up through the deck.
"They howled like a pack of hounds."
"They howled like a pack of hounds."
Perhaps the greatest danger to be
apprehended was from the use of fire. Every canoe carries fire; nothing is
thought of that, for it is their custom to communicate by smoke-signals. The
harmless brand that lies smoldering in the bottom of one of their canoes might
be ablaze in one's cabin if he were not on the alert. The port captain of Sandy
Point warned me particularly of this danger. Only a short time before they had
fired a Chilean gunboat by throwing brands in through the stern windows of the
cabin. The Spray had no openings in the cabin or deck, except two scuttles, and
these were guarded by fastenings which could not be undone without waking me if
I were asleep.
On the morning of the 9th, after a
refreshing rest and a warm breakfast, and after I had swept the deck of tacks,
I got out what spare canvas there was on board, and began to sew the pieces
together in the shape of a peak for my square-mainsail, the tarpaulin. The day
to all appearances promised fine weather and light winds, but appearances in
Tierra del Fuego do not always count. While I was wondering why no trees grew
on the slope abreast of the anchorage, half minded to lay by the sail-making
and land with my gun for some game and to inspect a white boulder on the beach,
near the brook, a williwaw came down with such terrific force as to carry the
Spray, with two anchors down, like a feather out of the cove and away into deep
water. No wonder trees did not grow on the side of that hill! Great Boreas! a
tree would need to be all roots to hold on against such a furious wind.
From the cove to the nearest land to
leeward was a long drift, however, and I had ample time to weigh both anchors
before the sloop came near any danger, and so no harm came of it. I saw no more
savages that day or the next; they probably had some sign by which they knew of
the coming williwaws; at least, they were wise in not being afloat even on the
second day, for I had no sooner gotten to work at sail-making again, after the
anchor was down, than the wind, as on the day before, picked the sloop up and
flung her seaward with a vengeance, anchor and all, as before. This fierce
wind, usual to the Magellan country, continued on through the day, and swept
the sloop by several miles of steep bluffs and precipices overhanging a bold
shore of wild and uninviting appearance. I was not sorry to get away from it,
though in doing so it was no Elysian shore to which I shaped my course. I kept
on sailing in hope, since I had no choice but to go on, heading across for St.
Nicholas Bay, where I had cast anchor February 19. It was now the 10th of
March! Upon reaching the bay the second time I had circumnavigated the wildest
part of desolate Tierra del Fuego. But the Spray had not yet arrived at St.
Nicholas, and by the merest accident her bones were saved from resting there
when she did arrive. The parting of a staysail-sheet in a williwaw, when the
sea was turbulent and she was plunging into the storm, brought me forward to
see instantly a dark cliff ahead and breakers so close under the bows that I
felt surely lost, and in my thoughts cried, "Is the hand of fate against
me, after all, leading me in the end to this dark spot?" I sprang aft again,
unheeding the flapping sail, and threw the wheel over, expecting, as the sloop
came down into the hollow of a wave, to feel her timbers smash under me on the
rocks. But at the touch of her helm she swung clear of the danger, and in the
next moment she was in the lee of the land.
A
glimpse of Sandy Point (Punta Arenas) in the Strait
of Magellan. A glimpse of Sandy Point
(Punta Arenas) in the Strait of Magellan.
It was the small island in the middle of
the bay for which the sloop had been steering, and which she made with such
unerring aim as nearly to run it down. Farther along in the bay was the
anchorage, which I managed to reach, but before I could get the anchor down
another squall caught the sloop and whirled her round like a top and carried
her away, altogether to leeward of the bay. Still farther to leeward was a
great headland, and I bore off for that. This was retracing my course toward
Sandy Point, for the gale was from the southwest.
I had the sloop soon under good control,
however, and in a short time rounded to under the lee of a mountain, where the
sea was as smooth as a mill-pond, and the sails flapped and hung limp while she
carried her way close in. Here I thought I would anchor and rest till morning,
the depth being eight fathoms very close to the shore. But it was interesting
to see, as I let go the anchor, that it did not reach the bottom before another
williwaw struck down from this mountain and carried the sloop off faster than I
could pay out cable. Therefore, instead of resting, I had to "man the
windlass" and heave up the anchor with fifty fathoms of cable hanging up
and down in deep water. This was in that part of the strait called Famine
Reach. Dismal Famine Reach! On the sloop's crab-windlass I worked the rest of
the night, thinking how much easier it was for me when I could say, "Do
that thing or the other," than now doing all myself. But I hove away and
sang the old chants that I sang when I was a sailor. Within the last few days I
had passed through much and was now thankful that my state was no worse.
It was daybreak when the anchor was at the
hawse. By this time the wind had gone down, and cat's-paws took the place of
williwaws, while the sloop drifted slowly toward Sandy Point. She came within
sight of ships at anchor in the roads, and I was more than half minded to put
in for new sails, but the wind coming out from the northeast, which was fair
for the other direction, I turned the prow of the Spray westward once more for
the Pacific, to traverse a second time the second half of my first course
through the strait.
CHAPTER IX
Repairing the Spray's sails—Savages and an
obstreperous anchor-A spider-fight—An encounter with Black Pedro—A visit to the
steamship Colombia,—On the defensive against a fleet of canoes—A record of
voyages through the strait—A chance cargo of tallow.
I was determined to rely on my own small
resources to repair the damages of the great gale which drove me southward
toward the Horn, after I had passed from the Strait of Magellan out into the
Pacific. So when I had got back into the strait, by way of Cockburn Channel, I
did not proceed eastward for help at the Sandy Point settlement, but turning
again into the northwestward reach of the strait, set to work with my palm and
needle at every opportunity, when at anchor and when sailing. It was slow work;
but little by little the squaresail on the boom expanded to the dimensions of a
serviceable mainsail with a peak to it and a leech besides. If it was not the
best-setting sail afloat, it was at least very strongly made and would stand a
hard blow. A ship, meeting the Spray long afterward, reported her as wearing a
mainsail of some improved design and patent reefer, but that was not the case.
The Spray for a few days after the storm
enjoyed fine weather, and made fair time through the strait for the distance of
twenty miles, which, in these days of many adversities, I called a long run.
The weather, I say, was fine for a few days; but it brought little rest. Care
for the safety of my vessel, and even for my own life, was in no wise lessened
by the absence of heavy weather. Indeed, the peril was even greater, inasmuch
as the savages on comparatively fine days ventured forth on their marauding
excursions, and in boisterous weather disappeared from sight, their wretched
canoes being frail and undeserving the name of craft at all. This being so, I
now enjoyed gales of wind as never before, and the Spray was never long without
them during her struggles about Cape Horn. I became in a measure inured to the
life, and began to think that one more trip through the strait, if perchance
the sloop should be blown off again, would make me the aggressor, and put the
Fuegians entirely on the defensive. This feeling was forcibly borne in on me at
Snug Bay, where I anchored at gray morning after passing Cape Froward, to find,
when broad day appeared, that two canoes which I had eluded by sailing all
night were now entering the same bay stealthily under the shadow of the high
headland. They were well manned, and the savages were well armed with spears
and bows. At a shot from my rifle across the bows, both turned aside into a
small creek out of range. In danger now of being flanked by the savages in the
bush close aboard, I was obliged to hoist the sails, which I had barely
lowered, and make across to the opposite side of the strait, a distance of six
miles. But now I was put to my wit's end as to how I should weigh anchor, for
through an accident to the windlass right here I could not budge it. However, I
set all sail and filled away, first hauling short by hand. The sloop carried
her anchor away, as though it was meant to be always towed in this way
underfoot, and with it she towed a ton or more of kelp from a reef in the bay,
the wind blowing a wholesale breeze.
Meanwhile I worked till blood started from
my fingers, and with one eye over my shoulder for savages, I watched at the
same time, and sent a bullet whistling whenever I saw a limb or a twig move;
for I kept a gun always at hand, and an Indian appearing then within range
would have been taken as a declaration of war. As it was, however, my own blood
was all that was spilt—and from the trifling accident of sometimes breaking the
flesh against a cleat or a pin which came in the way when I was in haste.
Sea-cuts in my hands from pulling on hard, wet ropes were sometimes painful and
often bled freely; but these healed when I finally got away from the strait
into fine weather.
After clearing Snug Bay I hauled the sloop
to the wind, repaired the windlass, and hove the anchor to the hawse, catted
it, and then stretched across to a port of refuge under a high mountain about
six miles away, and came to in nine fathoms close under the face of a
perpendicular cliff. Here my own voice answered back, and I named the place
"Echo Mountain." Seeing dead trees farther along where the shore was
broken, I made a landing for fuel, taking, besides my ax, a rifle, which on
these days I never left far from hand; but I saw no living thing here, except a
small spider, which had nested in a dry log that I boated to the sloop. The
conduct of this insect interested me now more than anything else around the
wild place. In my cabin it met, oddly enough, a spider of its own size and
species that had come all the way from Boston—a very civil little chap, too,
but mighty spry. Well, the Fuegian threw up its antennae for a fight; but my
little Bostonian downed it at once, then broke its legs, and pulled them off,
one by one, so dexterously that in less than three minutes from the time the
battle began the Fuegian spider didn't know itself from a fly.
I made haste the following morning to be
under way after a night of wakefulness on the weird shore. Before weighing
anchor, however, I prepared a cup of warm coffee over a smart wood fire in my
great Montevideo stove. In the same fire was cremated the Fuegian spider, slain
the day before by the little warrior from Boston, which a Scots lady at Cape
Town long after named "Bruce" upon hearing of its prowess at Echo
Mountain. The Spray now reached away for Coffee Island, which I sighted on my
birthday, February 20,1896.
"Yammerschooner"
"Yammerschooner"
There she encountered another gale, that
brought her in the lee of great Charles Island for shelter. On a bluff point on
Charles were signal-fires, and a tribe of savages, mustered here since my first
trip through the strait, manned their canoes to put off for the sloop. It was
not prudent to come to, the anchorage being within bow-shot of the shore, which
was thickly wooded; but I made signs that one canoe might come alongside, while
the sloop ranged about under sail in the lee of the land. The others I motioned
to keep off, and incidentally laid a smart Martini-Henry rifle in sight, close
at hand, on the top of the cabin. In the canoe that came alongside, crying
their never-ending begging word "yammerschooner," were two squaws and
one Indian, the hardest specimens of humanity I had ever seen in any of my
travels. "Yammerschooner" was their plaint when they pushed off from
the shore, and "yammerschooner" it was when they got alongside. The
squaws beckoned for food, while the Indian, a black-visaged savage, stood
sulkily as if he took no interest at all in the matter, but on my turning my
back for some biscuits and jerked beef for the squaws, the "buck"
sprang on deck and confronted me, saying in Spanish jargon that we had met
before. I thought I recognized the tone of his "yammerschooner," and
his full beard identified him as the Black Pedro whom, it was true, I had met
before. "Where are the rest of the crew?" he asked, as he looked uneasily
around, expecting hands, maybe, to come out of the fore-scuttle and deal him
his just deserts for many murders. "About three weeks ago," said he,
"when you passed up here, I saw three men on board. Where are the other
two?" I answered him briefly that the same crew was still on board.
"But," said he, "I see you are doing all the work," and
with a leer he added, as he glanced at the mainsail, "hombre
valiente." I explained that I did all the work in the day, while the rest
of the crew slept, so that they would be fresh to watch for Indians at night. I
was interested in the subtle cunning of this savage, knowing him, as I did,
better perhaps than he was aware. Even had I not been advised before I sailed
from Sandy Point, I should have measured him for an arch-villain now. Moreover,
one of the squaws, with that spark of kindliness which is somehow found in the
breast of even the lowest savage, warned me by a sign to be on my guard, or
Black Pedro would do me harm. There was no need of the warning, however, for I
was on my guard from the first, and at that moment held a smart revolver in my
hand ready for instant service.
"When you sailed through here
before," he said, "you fired a shot at me," adding with some
warmth that it was "muy malo." I affected not to understand, and
said, "You have lived at Sandy Point, have you not I" He answered
frankly, "Yes," and appeared delighted to meet one who had come from
the dear old place. "At the mission?" I queried. "Why,
yes," he replied, stepping forward as if to embrace an old friend. I
motioned him back, for I did not share his flattering humor. "And you know
Captain Pedro Samblich?" continued I. "Yes," said the villain,
who had killed a kinsman of Samblich—"yes, indeed; he is a great friend of
mine." "I know it," said I. Samblich had told me to shoot him on
sight. Pointing to my rifle on the cabin, he wanted to know how many times it
fired. "Cuantos?" said he. When I explained to him that that gun kept
right on shooting, his jaw fell, and he spoke of getting away. I did not hinder
him from going. I gave the squaws biscuits and beef, and one of them gave me
several lumps of tallow in exchange, and I think it worth mentioning that she
did not offer me the smallest pieces, but with some extra trouble handed me the
largest of all the pieces in the canoe. No Christian could have done more.
Before pushing off from the sloop the cunning savage asked for matches, and
made as if to reach with the end of his spear the box I was about to give him;
but I held it toward him on the muzzle of my rifle, the one that "kept on
shooting." The chap picked the box off the gun gingerly enough, to be
sure, but he jumped when I said, "Quedao [Look out]," at which the
squaws laughed and seemed not at all displeased. Perhaps the wretch had clubbed
them that morning for not gathering mussels enough for his breakfast. There was
a good understanding among us all.
From Charles Island the Spray crossed over
to Fortescue Bay, where she anchored and spent a comfortable night under the
lee of high land, while the wind howled outside. The bay was deserted now. They
were Fortescue Indians whom I had seen at the island, and I felt quite sure
they could not follow the Spray in the present hard blow. Not to neglect a
precaution, however, I sprinkled tacks on deck before I turned in.
On the following day the loneliness of the
place was broken by the appearance of a great steamship, making for the
anchorage with a lofty bearing. She was no Diego craft. I knew the sheer, the
model, and the poise. I threw out my flag, and directly saw the Stars and
Stripes flung to the breeze from the great ship.
The wind had then abated, and toward night
the savages made their appearance from the island, going direct to the steamer
to "yammerschooner." Then they came to the Spray to beg more, or to
steal all, declaring that they got nothing from the steamer. Black Pedro here
came alongside again. My own brother could not have been more delighted to see
me, and he begged me to lend him my rifle to shoot a guanaco for me in the
morning. I assured the fellow that if I remained there another day I would lend
him the gun, but I had no mind to remain. I gave him a cooper's draw-knife and
some other small implements which would be of service in canoe-making, and bade
him be off.
Under the cover of darkness that night I
went to the steamer, which I found to be the Colombia, Captain Henderson, from
New York, bound for San Francisco. I carried all my guns along with me, in case
it should be necessary to fight my way back. In the chief mate of the Colombia,
Mr. Hannibal, I found an old friend, and he referred affectionately to days in
Manila when we were there together, he in the Southern Cross and I in the
Northern Light, both ships as beautiful as their names.
The Colombia had an abundance of fresh
stores on board. The captain gave his steward some order, and I remember that
the guileless young man asked me if I could manage, besides other things, a few
cans of milk and a cheese. When I offered my Montevideo gold for the supplies,
the captain roared like a lion and told me to put my money up. It was a
glorious outfit of provisions of all kinds that I got.
A
contrast in lighting—the electric lights of the
Colombia and the canoe fires of the
Fortescue Indians. A contrast in lighting—the electric lights of the Colombia
and the canoe fires of the Fortescue Indians.
Returning to the Spray, where I found all secure,
I prepared for an early start in the morning. It was agreed that the steamer
should blow her whistle for me if first on the move. I watched the steamer, off
and on, through the night for the pleasure alone of seeing her electric lights,
a pleasing sight in contrast to the ordinary Fuegian canoe with a brand of fire
in it. The sloop was the first under way, but the Colombia, soon following,
passed, and saluted as she went by. Had the captain given me his steamer, his
company would have been no worse off than they were two or three months later.
I read afterward, in a late California paper, "The Colombia will be a
total loss." On her second trip to Panama she was wrecked on the rocks of
the California coast.
The Spray was then beating against wind and
current, as usual in the strait. At this point the tides from the Atlantic and
the Pacific meet, and in the strait, as on the outside coast, their meeting
makes a commotion of whirlpools and combers that in a gale of wind is dangerous
to canoes and other frail craft.
A few miles farther along was a large
steamer ashore, bottom up. Passing this place, the sloop ran into a streak of
light wind, and then—a most remarkable condition for strait weather—it fell
entirely calm. Signal-fires sprang up at once on all sides, and then more than
twenty canoes hove in sight, all heading for the Spray. As they came within
hail, their savage crews cried, "Amigo yammerschooner," "Anclas
aqui," "Bueno puerto aqui," and like scraps of Spanish mixed
with their own jargon. I had no thought of anchoring in their "good
port." I hoisted the sloop's flag and fired a gun, all of which they might
construe as a friendly salute or an invitation to come on. They drew up in a
semicircle, but kept outside of eighty yards, which in self-defense would have
been the death-line.
In their mosquito fleet was a ship's boat
stolen probably from a murdered crew. Six savages paddled this rather awkwardly
with the blades of oars which had been broken off. Two of the savages standing
erect wore sea-boots, and this sustained the suspicion that they had fallen
upon some luckless ship's crew, and also added a hint that they had already
visited the Spray's deck, and would now, if they could, try her again. Their
sea-boots, I have no doubt, would have protected their feet and rendered
carpet-tacks harmless. Paddling clumsily, they passed down the strait at a
distance of a hundred yards from the sloop, in an offhand manner and as if
bound to Fortescue Bay. This I judged to be a piece of strategy, and so kept a
sharp lookout over a small island which soon came in range between them and the
sloop, completely hiding them from view, and toward which the Spray was now
drifting helplessly with the tide, and with every prospect of going on the
rocks, for there was no anchorage, at least, none that my cables would reach.
And, sure enough, I soon saw a movement in the grass just on top of the island,
which is called Bonet Island and is one hundred and thirty-six feet high. I
fired several shots over the place, but saw no other sign of the savages. It
was they that had moved the grass, for as the sloop swept past the island, the
rebound of the tide carrying her clear, there on the other side was the boat,
surely enough exposing their cunning and treachery. A stiff breeze, coming up
suddenly, now scattered the canoes while it extricated the sloop from a
dangerous position, albeit the wind, though friendly, was still ahead.
The Spray, flogging against current and
wind, made Borgia Bay on the following afternoon, and cast anchor there for the
second time. I would now, if I could, describe the moonlit scene on the strait
at midnight after I had cleared the savages and Bonet Island. A heavy
cloud-bank that had swept across the sky then cleared away, and the night
became suddenly as light as day, or nearly so. A high mountain was mirrored in
the channel ahead, and the Spray sailing along with her shadow was as two
sloops on the sea.
Records of passages through the strait at the
head of
Borgia Bay. Note.—On a small bush nearer the
water there was a board
bearing several other inscriptions, to
which were added the words
"Sloop Spray, March, 1896"
Records of passages through the strait at the head of Borgia Bay. Note.—On a
small bush nearer the water there was a board bearing several other
inscriptions, to which were added the words "Sloop Spray, March, 1896"
The sloop being moored, I threw out my
skiff, and with ax and gun landed at the head of the cove, and filled a barrel
of water from a stream. Then, as before, there was no sign of Indians at the
place. Finding it quite deserted, I rambled about near the beach for an hour or
more. The fine weather seemed, somehow, to add loneliness to the place, and
when I came upon a spot where a grave was marked I went no farther. Returning
to the head of the cove, I came to a sort of Calvary, it appeared to me, where
navigators, carrying their cross, had each set one up as a beacon to others
coming after. They had anchored here and gone on, all except the one under the
little mound. One of the simple marks, curiously enough, had been left there by
the steamship Colimbia, sister ship to the Colombia, my neighbor of that
morning.
I read the names of many other vessels;
some of them I copied in my journal, others were illegible. Many of the crosses
had decayed and fallen, and many a hand that put them there I had known, many a
hand now still. The air of depression was about the place, and I hurried back
to the sloop to forget myself again in the voyage.
Early the next morning I stood out from
Borgia Bay, and off Cape Quod, where the wind fell light, I moored the sloop by
kelp in twenty fathoms of water, and held her there a few hours against a
three-knot current. That night I anchored in Langara Cove, a few miles farther
along, where on the following day I discovered wreckage and goods washed up
from the sea. I worked all day now, salving and boating off a cargo to the
sloop. The bulk of the goods was tallow in casks and in lumps from which the
casks had broken away; and embedded in the seaweed was a barrel of wine, which
I also towed alongside. I hoisted them all in with the throat-halyards, which I
took to the windlass. The weight of some of the casks was a little over eight
hundred pounds.
Salving wreckage. Salving wreckage.
There were no Indians about Langara;
evidently there had not been any since the great gale which had washed the wreckage
on shore. Probably it was the same gale that drove the Spray off Cape Horn,
from March 3 to 8. Hundreds of tons of kelp had been torn from beds in deep
water and rolled up into ridges on the beach. A specimen stalk which I found
entire, roots, leaves, and all, measured one hundred and thirty-one feet in
length. At this place I filled a barrel of water at night, and on the following
day sailed with a fair wind at last.
I had not sailed far, however, when I came
abreast of more tallow in a small cove, where I anchored, and boated off as
before. It rained and snowed hard all that day, and it was no light work
carrying tallow in my arms over the boulders on the beach. But I worked on till
the Spray was loaded with a full cargo. I was happy then in the prospect of
doing a good business farther along on the voyage, for the habits of an old
trader would come to the surface. I sailed from the cove about noon, greased
from top to toe, while my vessel was tallowed from keelson to truck. My cabin,
as well as the hold and deck, was stowed full of tallow, and all were
thoroughly smeared.
CHAPTER X
Running to Port Angosto in a snow-storm—A
defective sheetrope places the Spray in peril—The Spray as a target for a
Fuegian arrow—The island of Alan Erric—Again in the open Pacific—The run to the
island of Juan Fernandez—An absentee king—At Robinson Crusoe's anchorage.
Another gale had then sprung up, but the
wind was still fair, and I had only twenty-six miles to run for Port Angosto, a
dreary enough place, where, however, I would find a safe harbor in which to
refit and stow cargo. I carried on sail to make the harbor before dark, and she
fairly flew along, all covered with snow, which fell thick and fast, till she
looked like a white winter bird. Between the storm-bursts I saw the headland of
my port, and was steering for it when a flaw of wind caught the mainsail by the
lee, jibed it over, and dear! dear! how nearly was this the cause of disaster;
for the sheet parted and the boom unshipped, and it was then close upon night.
I worked till the perspiration poured from my body to get things adjusted and
in working order before dark, and, above all, to get it done before the sloop
drove to leeward of the port of refuge. Even then I did not get the boom
shipped in its saddle. I was at the entrance of the harbor before I could get
this done, and it was time to haul her to or lose the port; but in that
condition, like a bird with a broken wing, she made the haven. The accident
which so jeopardized my vessel and cargo came of a defective sheet-rope, one
made from sisal, a treacherous fiber which has caused a deal of strong language
among sailors.
I did not run the Spray into the inner
harbor of Port Angosto, but came to inside a bed of kelp under a steep bluff on
the port hand going in. It was an exceedingly snug nook, and to make doubly
sure of holding on here against all williwaws I moored her with two anchors and
secured her besides, by cables to trees. However, no wind ever reached there
except back flaws from the mountains on the opposite side of the harbor. There,
as elsewhere in that region, the country was made up of mountains. This was the
place where I was to refit and whence I was to sail direct, once more, for Cape
Pillar and the Pacific.
I remained at Port Angosto some days,
busily employed about the sloop. I stowed the tallow from the deck to the hold,
arranged my cabin in better order, and took in a good supply of wood and water.
I also mended the sloop's sails and rigging, and fitted a jigger, which changed
the rig to a yawl, though I called the boat a sloop just the same, the jigger
being merely a temporary affair.
I never forgot, even at the busiest time of
my work there, to have my rifle by me ready for instant use; for I was of
necessity within range of savages, and I had seen Fuegian canoes at this place
when I anchored in the port, farther down the reach, on the first trip through
the strait. I think it was on the second day, while I was busily employed about
decks, that I heard the swish of something through the air close by my ear, and
heard a "zip"-like sound in the water, but saw nothing. Presently,
however, I suspected that it was an arrow of some sort, for just then one
passing not far from me struck the mainmast, where it stuck fast, vibrating
from the shock—a Fuegian autograph. A savage was somewhere near, there could be
no doubt about that. I did not know but he might be shooting at me, with a view
to getting my sloop and her cargo; and so I threw up my old Martini-Henry, the
rifle that kept on shooting, and the first shot uncovered three Fuegians, who
scampered from a clump of bushes where they had been concealed, and made over
the hills. I fired away a good many cartridges, aiming under their feet to
encourage their climbing. My dear old gun woke up the hills, and at every
report all three of the savages jumped as if shot; but they kept on, and put
Fuego real estate between themselves and the Spray as fast as their legs could
carry them. I took care then, more than ever before, that all my firearms should
be in order and that a supply of ammunition should always be ready at hand. But
the savages did not return, and although I put tacks on deck every night, I
never discovered that any more visitors came, and I had only to sweep the deck
of tacks carefully every morning after.
"The first shot uncovered three
Fuegians." "The first shot uncovered three Fuegians."
As the days went by, the season became more
favorable for a chance to clear the strait with a fair wind, and so I made up
my mind after six attempts, being driven back each, time, to be in no further
haste to sail. The bad weather on my last return to Port Angosto for shelter
brought the Chilean gunboat Condor and the Argentine cruiser Azopardo into
port. As soon as the latter came to anchor, Captain Mascarella, the commander,
sent a boat to the Spray with the message that he would take me in tow for
Sandy Point if I would give up the voyage and return—the thing farthest from my
mind. The officers of the Azopardo told me that, coming up the strait after the
Spray on her first passage through, they saw Black Pedro and learned that he
had visited me. The Azopardo, being a foreign man-of-war, had no right to
arrest the Fuegian outlaw, but her captain blamed me for not shooting the
rascal when he came to my sloop.
I procured some cordage and other small
supplies from these vessels, and the officers of each of them mustered a supply
of warm flannels, of which I was most in need. With these additions to my
outfit, and with the vessel in good trim, though somewhat deeply laden, I was
well prepared for another bout with the Southern, misnamed Pacific, Ocean.
In the first week in April southeast winds,
such as appear about Cape Horn in the fall and winter seasons, bringing better
weather than that experienced in the summer, began to disturb the upper clouds;
a little more patience, and the time would come for sailing with a fair wind.
At Port Angosto I met Professor Dusen of
the Swedish scientific expedition to South America and the Pacific Islands. The
professor was camped by the side of a brook at the head of the harbor, where
there were many varieties of moss, in which he was interested, and where the
water was, as his Argentine cook said, "muy rico." The professor had
three well-armed Argentines along in his camp to fight savages. They seemed
disgusted when I filled water at a small stream near the vessel, slighting
their advice to go farther up to the greater brook, where it was "muy
rico." But they were all fine fellows, though it was a wonder that they did
not all die of rheumatic pains from living on wet ground.
Of all the little haps and mishaps to the
Spray at Port Angosto, of the many attempts to put to sea, and of each return
for shelter, it is not my purpose to speak. Of hindrances there were many to
keep her back, but on the thirteenth day of April, and for the seventh and last
time, she weighed anchor from that port. Difficulties, however, multiplied all
about in so strange a manner that had I been given to superstitious fears I
should not have persisted in sailing on a thirteenth day, notwithstanding that
a fair wind blew in the offing. Many of the incidents were ludicrous. When I
found myself, for instance, disentangling the sloop's mast from the branches of
a tree after she had drifted three times around a small island, against my
will, it seemed more than one's nerves could bear, and I had to speak about it,
so I thought, or die of lockjaw, and I apostrophized the Spray as an impatient
farmer might his horse or his ox. "Didn't you know," cried I—"didn't
you know that you couldn't climb a tree!" But the poor old Spray had
essayed, and successfully too, nearly everything else in the Strait of
Magellan, and my heart softened toward her when I thought of what she had gone
through. Moreover, she had discovered an island. On the charts this one that
she had sailed around was traced as a point of land. I named it Alan Erric
Island, after a worthy literary friend whom I had met in strange by-places, and
I put up a sign, "Keep off the grass," which, as discoverer, was
within my rights.
Now at last the Spray carried me free of
Tierra del Fuego. If by a close shave only, still she carried me clear, though
her boom actually hit the beacon rocks to leeward as she lugged on sail to
clear the point. The thing was done on the 13th of April, 1896. But a close
shave and a narrow escape were nothing new to the Spray.
The waves doffed their white caps
beautifully to her in the strait that day before the southeast wind, the first
true winter breeze of the season from that quarter, and here she was out on the
first of it, with every prospect of clearing Cape Pillar before it should
shift. So it turned out; the wind blew hard, as it always blows about Cape
Horn, but she had cleared the great tide-race off Cape Pillar and the Evangelistas,
the outermost rocks of all, before the change came. I remained at the helm,
humoring my vessel in the cross seas, for it was rough, and I did not dare to
let her take a straight course. It was necessary to change her course in the
combing seas, to meet them with what skill I could when they rolled up ahead,
and to keep off when they came up abeam.
On the following morning, April 14, only
the tops of the highest mountains were in sight, and the Spray, making good
headway on a northwest course, soon sank these out of sight. "Hurrah for
the Spray!" I shouted to seals, sea-gulls, and penguins; for there were no
other living creatures about, and she had weathered all the dangers of Cape
Horn. Moreover, she had on her voyage round the Horn salved a cargo of which
she had not jettisoned a pound. And why should not one rejoice also in the main
chance coming so of itself?
I shook out a reef, and set the whole jib,
for, having sea-room, I could square away two points. This brought the sea more
on her quarter, and she was the wholesomer under a press of sail. Occasionally
an old southwest sea, rolling up, combed athwart her, but did no harm. The wind
freshened as the sun rose half-mast or more, and the air, a bit chilly in the
morning, softened later in the day; but I gave little thought to such things as
these.
One wave, in the evening, larger than
others that had threatened all day,—one such as sailors call "fine-weather
seas,"-broke over the sloop fore and aft. It washed over me at the helm,
the last that swept over the Spray off Cape Horn. It seemed to wash away old
regrets. All my troubles were now astern; summer was ahead; all the world was
again before me. The wind was even literally fair. My "trick" at the
wheel was now up, and it was 5 p.m. I had stood at the helm since eleven
o'clock the morning before, or thirty hours.
Then was the time to uncover my head, for I
sailed alone with God. The vast ocean was again around me, and the horizon was
unbroken by land. A few days later the Spray was under full sail, and I saw her
for the first time with a jigger spread, This was indeed a small incident, but
it was the incident following a triumph. The wind was still southwest, but it
had moderated, and roaring seas had turned to gossiping waves that rippled and
pattered against her sides as she rolled among them, delighted with their
story. Rapid changes went on, those days, in things all about while she headed
for the tropics. New species of birds came around; albatrosses fell back and
became scarcer and scarcer; lighter gulls came in their stead, and pecked for
crumbs in the sloop's wake.
On the tenth day from Cape Pillar a shark
came along, the first of its kind on this part of the voyage to get into
trouble. I harpooned him and took out his ugly jaws. I had not till then felt
inclined to take the life of any animal, but when John Shark hove in sight my
sympathy flew to the winds. It is a fact that in Magellan I let pass many ducks
that would have made a good stew, for I had no mind in the lonesome strait to
take the life of any living thing.
From Cape Pillar I steered for Juan
Fernandez, and on the 26th of April, fifteen days out, made that historic
island right ahead.
The blue hills of Juan Fernandez, high
among the clouds, could be seen about thirty miles off. A thousand emotions
thrilled me when I saw the island, and I bowed my head to the deck. We may mock
the Oriental salaam, but for my part I could find no other way of expressing
myself.
The wind being light through the day, the
Spray did not reach the island till night. With what wind there was to fill her
sails she stood close in to shore on the northeast side, where it fell calm and
remained so all night. I saw the twinkling of a small light farther along in a
cove, and fired a gun, but got no answer, and soon the light disappeared
altogether. I heard the sea booming against the cliffs all night, and realized
that the ocean swell was still great, although from the deck of my little ship
it was apparently small. From the cry of animals in the hills, which sounded
fainter and fainter through the night, I judged that a light current was
drifting the sloop from the land, though she seemed all night dangerously near
the shore, for, the land being very high, appearances were deceptive.
The
Spray approaching Juan Fernandez, Robinson Crusoe's Island. The Spray
approaching
Juan Fernandez,
Robinson Crusoe's Island.
Soon after daylight I saw a boat putting
out toward me. As it pulled near, it so happened that I picked up my gun, which
was on the deck, meaning only to put it below; but the people in the boat,
seeing the piece in my hands, quickly turned and pulled back for shore, which
was about four miles distant. There were six rowers in her, and I observed that
they pulled with oars in oar-locks, after the manner of trained seamen, and so
I knew they belonged to a civilized race; but their opinion of me must have
been anything but flattering when they mistook my purpose with the gun and
pulled away with all their might. I made them understand by signs, but not
without difficulty, that I did not intend to shoot, that I was simply putting
the piece in the cabin, and that I wished them to return. When they understood
my meaning they came back and were soon on board.
One of the party, whom the rest called
"king," spoke English; the others spoke Spanish. They had all heard
of the voyage of the Spray through the papers of Valparaiso, and were hungry
for news concerning it. They told me of a war between Chile and the Argentine,
which I had not heard of when I was there. I had just visited both countries,
and I told them that according to the latest reports, while I was in Chile,
their own island was sunk. (This same report that Juan Fernandez had sunk was
current in Australia when I arrived there three months later.)
I had already prepared a pot of coffee and
a plate of doughnuts, which, after some words of civility, the islanders stood
up to and discussed with a will, after which they took the Spray in tow of
their boat and made toward the island with her at the rate of a good three
knots. The man they called king took the helm, and with whirling it up and down
he so rattled the Spray that I thought she would never carry herself straight
again. The others pulled away lustily with their oars. The king, I soon
learned, was king only by courtesy. Having lived longer on the island than any
other man in the world,—thirty years,—he was so dubbed. Juan Fernandez was then
under the administration of a governor of Swedish nobility, so I was told. I
was also told that his daughter could ride the wildest goat on the island. The
governor, at the time of my visit, was away at Valparaiso with his family, to
place his children at school. The king had been away once for a year or two,
and in Rio de Janeiro had married a Brazilian woman who followed his fortunes
to the far-off island. He was himself a Portuguese and a native of the Azores.
He had sailed in New Bedford whale-ships and had steered a boat. All this I
learned, and more too, before we reached the anchorage. The sea-breeze, coming
in before long, filled the Spray's sails, and the experienced Portuguese
mariner piloted her to a safe berth in the bay, where she was moored to a buoy
abreast the settlement.
CHAPTER XI
The islanders at Juan Fernandez entertained
with Yankee doughnuts—The beauties of Robinson Crusoe's realm—The mountain
monument to Alexander Selkirk—Robinson Crusoe's cave—A stroll with the children
of the island—Westward ho! with a friendly gale—A month's free sailing with the
Southern Cross and the sun for guides—Sighting the Marquesas—Experience in
reckoning.
The Spray being secured, the islanders
returned to the coffee and doughnuts, and I was more than flattered when they
did not slight my buns, as the professor had done in the Strait of Magellan.
Between buns and doughnuts there was little difference except in name. Both had
been fried in tallow, which was the strong point in both, for there was nothing
on the island fatter than a goat, and a goat is but a lean beast, to make the
best of it. So with a view to business I hooked my steelyards to the boom at
once, ready to weigh out tallow, there being no customs officer to say,
"Why do you do so?" and before the sun went down the islanders had
learned the art of making buns and doughnuts. I did not charge a high price for
what I sold, but the ancient and curious coins I got in payment, some of them
from the wreck of a galleon sunk in the bay no one knows when, I sold afterward
to antiquarians for more than face-value. In this way I made a reasonable
profit. I brought away money of all denominations from the island, and nearly
all there was, so far as I could find out.
The
house of the king. The house of the king.
Juan Fernandez, as a place of call, is a
lovely spot. The hills are well wooded, the valleys fertile, and pouring down
through many ravines are streams of pure water. There are no serpents on the
island, and no wild beasts other than pigs and goats, of which I saw a number,
with possibly a dog or two. The people lived without the use of rum or beer of
any sort. There was not a police officer or a lawyer among them. The domestic
economy of the island was simplicity itself. The fashions of Paris did not
affect the inhabitants; each dressed according to his own taste. Although there
was no doctor, the people were all healthy, and the children were all
beautiful. There were about forty-five souls on the island all told. The adults
were mostly from the mainland of South America. One lady there, from Chile, who
made a flying-jib for the Spray, taking her pay in tallow, would be called a
belle at Newport. Blessed island of Juan Fernandez! Why Alexander Selkirk ever
left you was more than I could make out.
Robinson Crusoe's cave. Robinson Crusoe's
cave.
A large ship which had arrived some time
before, on fire, had been stranded at the head of the bay, and as the sea
smashed her to pieces on the rocks, after the fire was drowned, the islanders
picked up the timbers and utilized them in the construction of houses, which
naturally presented a ship-like appearance. The house of the king of Juan
Fernandez, Manuel Carroza by name, besides resembling the ark, wore a polished
brass knocker on its only door, which was painted green. In front of this
gorgeous entrance was a flag-mast all ataunto, and near it a smart whale-boat
painted red and blue, the delight of the king's old age.
I of course made a pilgrimage to the old
lookout place at the top of the mountain, where Selkirk spent many days peering
into the distance for the ship which came at last. From a tablet fixed into the
face of the rock I copied these words, inscribed in Arabic capitals:
IN MEMORY
OF
ALEXANDER SELKIRK,
MARINER,
A native of Largo, in the county of Fife,
Scotland, who lived on this island in complete solitude for four years and four
months. He was landed from the Cinque Ports galley, 96 tons, 18 guns, A. D.
1704, and was taken off in the Duke, privateer, 12th February, 1709. He died
Lieutenant of H. M. S. Weymouth, A. D. 1723,[A] aged 47. This tablet is erected
near Selkirk's lookout, by Commodore Powell and the officers of H. M. S.
Topaze, A. D. 1868.
[A] Mr. J. Cuthbert Hadden, in the
"Century Magazine" for July, 1899, shows that the tablet is in error
as to Selkirk's death. It should be 1721
The cave in which Selkirk dwelt while on
the island is at the head of the bay now called Robinson Crusoe Bay. It is
around a bold headland west of the present anchorage and landing. Ships have
anchored there, but it affords a very indifferent berth. Both of these
anchorages are exposed to north winds, which, however, do not reach home with
much violence. The holding-ground being good in the first-named bay to the
eastward, the anchorage there may be considered safe, although the undertow at
times makes it wild riding.
I visited Robinson Crusoe Bay in a boat,
and with some difficulty landed through the surf near the cave, which I
entered. I found it dry and inhabitable. It is located in a beautiful nook
sheltered by high mountains from all the severe storms that sweep over the
island, which are not many; for it lies near the limits of the trade-wind
regions, being in latitude 35 ½ degrees. The island is about fourteen miles in length,
east and west, and eight miles in width; its height is over three thousand
feet. Its distance from Chile, to which country it belongs, is about three
hundred and forty miles.
Juan Fernandez was once a convict station.
A number of caves in which the prisoners were kept, damp, unwholesome dens, are
no longer in use, and no more prisoners are sent to the island.
The pleasantest day I spent on the island,
if not the pleasantest on my whole voyage, was my last day on shore,—but by no
means because it was the last,—when the children of the little community, one
and all, went out with me to gather wild fruits for the voyage. We found
quinces, peaches, and figs, and the children gathered a basket of each. It
takes very little to please children, and these little ones, never hearing a
word in their lives except Spanish, made the hills ring with mirth at the sound
of words in English. They asked me the names of all manner of things on the
island. We came to a wild fig-tree loaded with fruit, of which I gave them the
English name. "Figgies, figgies!" they cried, while they picked till
their baskets were full. But when I told them that the cabra they pointed out
was only a goat, they screamed with laughter, and rolled on the grass in wild
delight to think that a man had come to their island who would call a cabra a
goat.
The
man who called a cabra a goat. The man who called a cabra a goat.
The first child born on Juan Fernandez, I
was told, had become a beautiful woman and was now a mother. Manuel Carroza and
the good soul who followed him here from Brazil had laid away their only child,
a girl, at the age of seven, in the little churchyard on the point. In the same
half-acre were other mounds among the rough lava rocks, some marking the
burial-place of native-born children, some the resting-places of seamen from
passing ships, landed here to end days of sickness and get into a sailors'
heaven.
The greatest drawback I saw in the island
was the want of a school. A class there would necessarily be small, but to some
kind soul who loved teaching and quietude life on Juan Fernandez would, for a
limited time, be one of delight.
On the morning of May 5, 1896, I sailed
from Juan Fernandez, having feasted on many things, but on nothing sweeter than
the adventure itself of a visit to the home and to the very cave of Robinson
Crusoe. From the island the Spray bore away to the north, passing the island of
St. Felix before she gained the trade-winds, which seemed slow in reaching
their limits.
If the trades were tardy, however, when
they did come they came with a bang, and made up for lost time; and the Spray,
under reefs, sometimes one, sometimes two, flew before a gale for a great many
days, with a bone in her mouth, toward the Marquesas, in the west, which, she
made on the forty-third day out, and still kept on sailing. My time was all
taken up those days—not by standing at the helm; no man, I think, could stand
or sit and steer a vessel round the world: I did better than that; for I sat
and read my books, mended my clothes, or cooked my meals and ate them in peace.
I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so I made
companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and
sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends,
let fail all else. Nothing could be easier or more restful than my voyage in
the trade-winds.
I sailed with a free wind day after day,
marking the position of my ship on the chart with considerable precision; but
this was done by intuition, I think, more than by slavish calculations. For one
whole month my vessel held her course true; I had not, the while, so much as a
light in the binnacle. The Southern Cross I saw every night abeam. The sun
every morning came up astern; every evening it went down ahead. I wished for no
other compass to guide me, for these were true. If I doubted my reckoning after
a long time at sea I verified it by reading the clock aloft made by the Great
Architect, and it was right.
There was no denying that the comical side
of the strange life appeared. I awoke, sometimes, to find the sun already
shining into my cabin. I heard water rushing by, with only a thin plank between
me and the depths, and I said, "How is this?" But it was all right;
it was my ship on her course, sailing as no other ship had ever sailed before
in the world. The rushing water along her side told me that she was sailing at
full speed. I knew that no human hand was at the helm; I knew that all was well
with "the hands" forward, and that there was no mutiny on board.
The phenomena of ocean meteorology were
interesting studies even here in the trade-winds. I observed that about every
seven days the wind freshened and drew several points farther than usual from
the direction of the pole; that is, it went round from east-southeast to
south-southeast, while at the same time a heavy swell rolled up from the
southwest. All this indicated that gales were going on in the anti-trades. The
wind then hauled day after day as it moderated, till it stood again at the
normal point, east-southeast. This is more or less the constant state of the
winter trades in latitude 12 degrees S., where I "ran down the
longitude" for weeks. The sun, we all know, is the creator of the
trade-winds and of the wind system over all the earth. But ocean meteorology
is, I think, the most fascinating of all. From Juan Fernandez to the Marquesas
I experienced six changes of these great palpitations of sea-winds and of the
sea itself, the effect of far-off gales. To know the laws that govern the
winds, and to know that you know them, will give you an easy mind on your
voyage round the world; otherwise you may tremble at the appearance of every
cloud. What is true of this in the trade-winds is much more so in the
variables, where changes run more to extremes.
To cross the Pacific Ocean, even under the
most favorable circumstances, brings you for many days close to nature, and you
realize the vastness of the sea. Slowly but surely the mark of my little ship's
course on the track-chart reached out on the ocean and across it, while at her
utmost speed she marked with her keel still slowly the sea that carried her. On
the forty-third day from land,—a long time to be at sea alone,—the sky being
beautifully clear and the moon being "in distance" with the sun, I
threw up my sextant for sights. I found from the result of three observations,
after long wrestling with lunar tables, that her longitude by observation
agreed within five miles of that by dead-reckoning.
This was wonderful; both, however, might be
in error, but somehow I felt confident that both were nearly true, and that in
a few hours more I should see land; and so it happened, for then I made the
island of Nukahiva, the southernmost of the Marquesas group, clear-cut and
lofty. The verified longitude when abreast was somewhere between the two
reckonings; this was extraordinary. All navigators will tell you that from one
day to another a ship may lose or gain more than five miles in her
sailing-account, and again, in the matter of lunars, even expert lunarians are
considered as doing clever work when they average within eight miles of the
truth.
I hope I am making it clear that I do not
lay claim to cleverness or to slavish calculations in my reckonings. I think I
have already stated that I kept my longitude, at least, mostly by intuition. A
rotator log always towed astern, but so much has to be allowed for currents and
for drift, which the log never shows, that it is only an approximation, after
all, to be corrected by one's own judgment from data of a thousand voyages; and
even then the master of the ship, if he be wise, cries out for the lead and the
lookout.
Unique was my experience in nautical
astronomy from the deck of the Spray—so much so that I feel justified in
briefly telling it here. The first set of sights, just spoken of, put her many
hundred miles west of my reckoning by account. I knew that this could not be
correct. In about an hour's time I took another set of observations with the
utmost care; the mean result of these was about the same as that of the first
set. I asked myself why, with my boasted self-dependence, I had not done at
least better than this. Then I went in search of a discrepancy in the tables,
and I found it. In the tables I found that the column of figures from which I
had got an important logarithm was in error. It was a matter I could prove
beyond a doubt, and it made the difference as already stated. The tables being
corrected, I sailed on with self-reliance unshaken, and with my tin clock fast
asleep. The result of these observations naturally tickled my vanity, for I
knew that it was something to stand on a great ship's deck and with two
assistants take lunar observations approximately near the truth. As one of the
poorest of American sailors, I was proud of the little achievement alone on the
sloop, even by chance though it may have been.
I was en rapport now with my surroundings,
and was carried on a vast stream where I felt the buoyancy of His hand who made
all the worlds. I realized the mathematical truth of their motions, so well
known that astronomers compile tables of their positions through the years and
the days, and the minutes of a day, with such precision that one coming along
over the sea even five years later may, by their aid, find the standard time of
any given meridian on the earth.
To find local time is a simpler matter. The
difference between local and standard time is longitude expressed in time—four
minutes, we all know, representing one degree. This, briefly, is the principle
on which longitude is found independent of chronometers. The work of the
lunarian, though seldom practised in these days of chronometers, is beautifully
edifying, and there is nothing in the realm of navigation that lifts one's heart
up more in adoration.
CHAPTER XII
Seventy-two days without a port—Whales and
birds—A peep into the Spray's galley—Flying-fish for breakfast—A welcome at
Apia—A visit from Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson—At Vailima—Samoan
hospitality—Arrested for fast riding—An amusing merry-go-round—Teachers and
pupils of Papauta College—At the mercy of sea-nymphs.
To be alone forty-three days would seem a
long time, but in reality, even here, winged moments flew lightly by, and
instead of my hauling in for Nukahiva, which I could have made as well as not,
I kept on for Samoa, where I wished to make my next landing. This occupied
twenty-nine days more, making seventy-two days in all. I was not distressed in
any way during that time. There was no end of companionship; the very coral
reefs kept me company, or gave me no time to feel lonely, which is the same
thing, and there were many of them now in my course to Samoa.
First among the incidents of the voyage
from Juan Fernandez to Samoa (which were not many) was a narrow escape from
collision with a great whale that was absent-mindedly plowing the ocean at
night while I was below. The noise from his startled snort and the commotion he
made in the sea, as he turned to clear my vessel, brought me on deck in time to
catch a wetting from the water he threw up with his flukes. The monster was
apparently frightened. He headed quickly for the east; I kept on going west.
Soon another whale passed, evidently a companion, following in its wake. I saw
no more on this part of the voyage, nor did I wish to.
Meeting with the whale Meeting with the whale
Hungry sharks came about the vessel often
when she neared islands or coral reefs. I own to a satisfaction in shooting
them as one would a tiger. Sharks, after all, are the tigers of the sea.
Nothing is more dreadful to the mind of a sailor, I think, than a possible
encounter with a hungry shark.
A number of birds were always about;
occasionally one poised on the mast to look the Spray over, wondering, perhaps,
at her odd wings, for she now wore her Fuego mainsail, which, like Joseph's
coat, was made of many pieces. Ships are less common on the Southern seas than
formerly. I saw not one in the many days crossing the Pacific.
My diet on these long passages usually
consisted of potatoes and salt cod and biscuits, which I made two or three
times a week. I had always plenty of coffee, tea, sugar, and flour. I carried
usually a good supply of potatoes, but before reaching Samoa I had a mishap
which left me destitute of this highly prized sailors' luxury. Through meeting
at Juan Fernandez the Yankee Portuguese named Manuel Carroza, who nearly traded
me out of my boots, I ran out of potatoes in mid-ocean, and was wretched
thereafter. I prided myself on being something of a trader; but this Portuguese
from the Azores by way of New Bedford, who gave me new potatoes for the older
ones I had got from the Colombia, a bushel or more of the best, left me no
ground for boasting. He wanted mine, he said, "for changee the seed."
When I got to sea I found that his tubers were rank and unedible, and full of
fine yellow streaks of repulsive appearance. I tied the sack up and returned to
the few left of my old stock, thinking that maybe when I got right hungry the
island potatoes would improve in flavor. Three weeks later I opened the bag
again, and out flew millions of winged insects! Manuel's potatoes had all
turned to moths. I tied them up quickly and threw all into the sea.
Manuel had a large crop of potatoes on
hand, and as a hint to whalemen, who are always eager to buy vegetables, he
wished me to report whales off the island of Juan Fernandez, which I have
already done, and big ones at that, but they were a long way off.
Taking things by and large, as sailors say,
I got on fairly well in the matter of provisions even on the long voyage across
the Pacific. I found always some small stores to help the fare of luxuries;
what I lacked of fresh meat was made up in fresh fish, at least while in the
trade-winds, where flying-fish crossing on the wing at night would hit the
sails and fall on deck, sometimes two or three of them, sometimes a dozen.
Every morning except when the moon was large I got a bountiful supply by merely
picking them up from the lee scuppers. All tinned meats went begging.
On the 16th of July, after considerable
care and some skill and hard work, the Spray cast anchor at Apia, in the
kingdom of Samoa, about noon. My vessel being moored, I spread an awning, and
instead of going at once on shore I sat under it till late in the evening,
listening with delight to the musical voices of the Samoan men and women.
A canoe coming down the harbor, with three
young women in it, rested her paddles abreast the sloop. One of the fair crew,
hailing with the naive salutation, "Talofa lee" ("Love to you,
chief"), asked:
"Schoon come Melike?"
"Love to you," I answered, and
said, "Yes."
"You man come 'lone?"
Again I answered, "Yes."
"I don't believe that. You had other
mans, and you eat 'em."
At this sally the others laughed.
"What for you come long way?" they asked.
"To hear you ladies sing," I
replied.
First exchange of courtesies in Samoa. First
exchange of courtesies in Samoa.
"Oh, talofa lee!" they all cried,
and sang on. Their voices filled the air with music that rolled across to the
grove of tall palms on the other side of the harbor and back. Soon after this
six young men came down in the United States consul-general's boat, singing in
parts and beating time with their oars. In my interview with them I came off
better than with the damsels in the canoe. They bore an invitation from General
Churchill for me to come and dine at the consulate. There was a lady's hand in
things about the consulate at Samoa. Mrs. Churchill picked the crew for the
general's boat, and saw to it that they wore a smart uniform and that they
could sing the Samoan boatsong, which in the first week Mrs. Churchill herself
could sing like a native girl.
Next morning bright and early Mrs. Robert
Louis Stevenson came to the Spray and invited me to Vailima the following day.
I was of course thrilled when I found myself, after so many days of adventure,
face to face with this bright woman, so lately the companion of the author who
had delighted me on the voyage. The kindly eyes, that looked me through and
through, sparkled when we compared notes of adventure. I marveled at some of
her experiences and escapes. She told me that, along with her husband, she had
voyaged in all manner of rickety craft among the islands of the Pacific,
reflectively adding, "Our tastes were similar."
Following the subject of voyages, she gave
me the four beautiful volumes of sailing directories for the Mediterranean,
writing on the fly-leaf of the first:
To CAPTAIN SLOCUM. These volumes have been
read and re-read many times by my husband, and I am very sure that he would be
pleased that they should be passed on to the sort of seafaring man that he
liked above all others. FANNY V. DE G. STEVENSON.
Mrs. Stevenson also gave me a great
directory of the Indian Ocean. It was not without a feeling of reverential awe
that I received the books so nearly direct from the hand of Tusitala, "who
sleeps in the forest." Aolele, the Spray will cherish your gift.
Vailima, the home of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Vailima, the home of Robert Louis Stevenson.
The novelist's stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne,
walked through the Vailima mansion with me and bade me write my letters at the
old desk. I thought it would be presumptuous to do that; it was sufficient for
me to enter the hall on the floor of which the "Writer of Tales,"
according to the Samoan custom, was wont to sit.
Coming through the main street of Apia one
day, with my hosts, all bound for the Spray, Mrs. Stevenson on horseback, I
walking by her side, and Mr. and Mrs. Osbourne close in our wake on bicycles,
at a sudden turn in the road we found ourselves mixed with a remarkable native
procession, with a somewhat primitive band of music, in front of us, while
behind was a festival or a funeral, we could not tell which. Several of the
stoutest men carried bales and bundles on poles. Some were evidently bales of
tapa-cloth. The burden of one set of poles, heavier than the rest, however, was
not so easily made out. My curiosity was whetted to know whether it was a roast
pig or something of a gruesome nature, and I inquired about it. "I don't
know," said Mrs. Stevenson, "whether this is a wedding or a funeral.
Whatever it is, though, captain, our place seems to be at the head of it."
The Spray being in the stream, we boarded
her from the beach abreast, in the little razeed Gloucester dory, which had
been painted a smart green. Our combined weight loaded it gunwale to the water,
and I was obliged to steer with great care to avoid swamping. The adventure
pleased Mrs. Stevenson greatly, and as we paddled along she sang, "They
went to sea in a pea-green boat." I could understand her saying of her
husband and herself, "Our tastes were similar."
As I sailed farther from the center of
civilization I heard less and less of what would and what would not pay. Mrs.
Stevenson, in speaking of my voyage, did not once ask me what I would make out
of it. When I came to a Samoan village, the chief did not ask the price of gin,
or say, "How much will you pay for roast pig?" but, "Dollar,
dollar," said he; "white man know only dollar."
"Never mind dollar. The tapo has
prepared ava; let us drink and rejoice." The tapo is the virgin hostess of
the village; in this instance it was Taloa, daughter of the chief. "Our
taro is good; let us eat. On the tree there is fruit. Let the day go by; why
should we mourn over that? There are millions of days coming. The breadfruit is
yellow in the sun, and from the cloth-tree is Taloa's gown. Our house, which is
good, cost but the labor of building it, and there is no lock on the
door."
While the days go thus in these Southern
islands we at the North are struggling for the bare necessities of life.
For food the islanders have only to put out
their hand and take what nature has provided for them; if they plant a
banana-tree, their only care afterward is to see that too many trees do not
grow. They have great reason to love their country and to fear the white man's
yoke, for once harnessed to the plow, their life would no longer be a poem.
The chief of the village of Caini, who was
a tall and dignified Tonga man, could be approached only through an interpreter
and talking man. It was perfectly natural for him to inquire the object of my
visit, and I was sincere when I told him that my reason for casting anchor in
Samoa was to see their fine men, and fine women, too. After a considerable
pause the chief said: "The captain has come a long way to see so little;
but," he added, "the tapo must sit nearer the captain." "Yack,"
said Taloa, who had so nearly learned to say yes in English, and suiting the
action to the word, she hitched a peg nearer, all hands sitting in a circle
upon mats. I was no less taken with the chiefs eloquence than delighted with
the simplicity of all he said. About him there was nothing pompous; he might
have been taken for a great scholar or statesman, the least assuming of the men
I met on the voyage. As for Taloa, a sort of Queen of the May, and the other
tapo girls, well, it is wise to learn as soon as possible the manners and
customs of these hospitable people, and meanwhile not to mistake for
over-familiarity that which is intended as honor to a guest. I was fortunate in
my travels in the islands, and saw nothing to shake one's faith in native
virtue.
To the unconventional mind the punctilious
etiquette of Samoa is perhaps a little painful. For instance, I found that in
partaking of ava, the social bowl, I was supposed to toss a little of the
beverage over my shoulder, or pretend to do so, and say, "Let the gods
drink," and then drink it all myself; and the dish, invariably a
cocoanut-shell, being empty, I might not pass it politely as we would do, but
politely throw it twirling across the mats at the tapo.
My most grievous mistake while at the
islands was made on a nag, which, inspired by a bit of good road, must needs
break into a smart trot through a village. I was instantly hailed by the
chief's deputy, who in an angry voice brought me to a halt. Perceiving that I
was in trouble, I made signs for pardon, the safest thing to do, though I did
not know what offense I had committed. My interpreter coming up, however, put
me right, but not until a long palaver had ensued. The deputy's hail, liberally
translated, was: "Ahoy, there, on the frantic steed! Know you not that it
is against the law to ride thus through the village of our fathers?" I
made what apologies I could, and offered to dismount and, like my servant, lead
my nag by the bridle. This, the interpreter told me, would also be a grievous
wrong, and so I again begged for pardon. I was summoned to appear before a
chief; but my interpreter, being a wit as well as a bit of a rogue, explained
that I was myself something of a chief, and should not be detained, being on a
most important mission. In my own behalf I could only say that I was a
stranger, but, pleading all this, I knew I still deserved to be roasted, at
which the chief showed a fine row of teeth and seemed pleased, but allowed me
to pass on.
The
Spray's course fromthe Strait of Magellan to Torres Strait. The Spray's course
from the Strait of Magellan to Torres Strait.
The
Spray's course from Australia to South Africa. The Spray's course from
Australia to South Africa.
The chief of the Tongas and his family at
Caini, returning my visit, brought presents of tapa-cloth and fruits. Taloa,
the princess, brought a bottle of cocoanut-oil for my hair, which another man
might have regarded as coming late.
It was impossible to entertain on the Spray
after the royal manner in which I had been received by the chief. His fare had
included all that the land could afford, fruits, fowl, fishes, and flesh, a hog
having been roasted whole. I set before them boiled salt pork and salt beef,
with which I was well supplied, and in the evening took them all to a new
amusement in the town, a rocking-horse merry-go-round, which they called a
"kee-kee," meaning theater; and in a spirit of justice they pulled
off the horses' tails, for the proprietors of the show, two hard-fisted
countrymen of mine, I grieve to say, unceremoniously hustled them off for a new
set, almost at the first spin. I was not a little proud of my Tonga friends;
the chief, finest of them all, carried a portentous club. As for the theater,
through the greed of the proprietors it was becoming unpopular, and the
representatives of the three great powers, in want of laws which they could
enforce, adopted a vigorous foreign policy, taxing it twenty-five per cent, on
the gate-money. This was considered a great stroke of legislative reform!
It was the fashion of the native visitors
to the Spray to come over the bows, where they could reach the head-gear and
climb aboard with ease, and on going ashore to jump off the stern and swim
away; nothing could have been more delightfully simple. The modest natives wore
lava-lava bathing-dresses, a native cloth from the bark of the mulberry-tree,
and they did no harm to the Spray. In summer-land Samoa their coming and going was
only a merry every-day scene. One day the head teachers of Papauta College,
Miss Schultze and Miss Moore, came on board with their ninety-seven young women
students. They were all dressed in white, and each wore a red rose, and of
course came in boats or canoes in the cold-climate style. A merrier bevy of
girls it would be difficult to find. As soon as they got on deck, by request of
one of the teachers, they sang "The Watch on the Rhine," which I had
never heard before. "And now," said they all, "let's up anchor
and away." But I had no inclination to sail from Samoa so soon. On leaving
the Spray these accomplished young women each seized a palm-branch or paddle,
or whatever else would serve the purpose, and literally paddled her own canoe.
Each could have swum as readily, and would have done so, I dare say, had it not
been for the holiday muslin.
It was not uncommon at Apia to see a young
woman swimming alongside a small canoe with a passenger for the Spray. Mr.
Trood, an old Eton boy, came in this manner to see me, and he exclaimed,
"Was ever king ferried in such state?" Then, suiting his action to
the sentiment, he gave the damsel pieces of silver till the natives watching on
shore yelled with envy. My own canoe, a small dugout, one day when it had rolled
over with me, was seized by a party of fair bathers, and before I could get my
breath, almost, was towed around and around the Spray, while I sat in the
bottom of it, wondering what they would do next. But in this case there were
six of them, three on a side, and I could not help myself. One of the sprites,
I remember, was a young English lady, who made more sport of it than any of the
others.
CHAPTER XIII
Samoan royalty—King Malietoa—Good-by to
friends at Vailima—Leaving Fiji to the south—Arrival at Newcastle,
Australia—The yachts of Sydney—A ducking on the Spray—Commodore Foy presents
the sloop with a new suit of sails—On to Melbourne—A shark that proved to be
valuable—A change of course—The "Rain of Blood"—In Tasmania.
At Apia I had the pleasure of meeting Mr.
A. Young, the father of the late Queen Margaret, who was Queen of Manua from
1891 to 1895. Her grandfather was an English sailor who married a princess. Mr.
Young is now the only survivor of the family, two of his children, the last of
them all, having been lost in an island trader which a few months before had
sailed, never to return. Mr. Young was a Christian gentleman, and his daughter
Margaret was accomplished in graces that would become any lady. It was with
pain that I saw in the newspapers a sensational account of her life and death,
taken evidently from a paper in the supposed interest of a benevolent society,
but without foundation in fact. And the startling head-lines saying,
"Queen Margaret of Manua is dead," could hardly be called news in
1898, the queen having then been dead three years.
While hobnobbing, as it were, with royalty,
I called on the king himself, the late Malietoa. King Malietoa was a great
ruler; he never got less than forty-five dollars a month for the job, as he
told me himself, and this amount had lately been raised, so that he could live
on the fat of the land and not any longer be called "Tin-of-salmon
Malietoa" by graceless beach-combers.
As my interpreter and I entered the front
door of the palace, the king's brother, who was viceroy, sneaked in through a
taro-patch by the back way, and sat cowering by the door while I told my story
to the king. Mr. W—-of New York, a gentleman interested in missionary work, had
charged me, when I sailed, to give his remembrance to the king of the Cannibal
Islands, other islands of course being meant; but the good King Malietoa,
notwithstanding that his people have not eaten a missionary in a hundred years,
received the message himself, and seemed greatly pleased to hear so directly
from the publishers of the "Missionary Review," and wished me to make
his compliments in return. His Majesty then excused himself, while I talked
with his daughter, the beautiful Faamu-Sami (a name signifying "To make
the sea burn"), and soon reappeared in the full-dress uniform of the
German commander-in-chief, Emperor William himself; for, stupidly enough, I had
not sent my credentials ahead that the king might be in full regalia to receive
me. Calling a few days later to say good-by to Faamu-Sami, I saw King Malietoa
for the last time.
Of the landmarks in the pleasant town of
Apia, my memory rests first on the little school just back of the London
Missionary Society coffee-house and reading-rooms, where Mrs. Bell taught
English to about a hundred native children, boys and girls. Brighter children
you will not find anywhere.
"Now, children," said Mrs. Bell,
when I called one day, "let us show the captain that we know something
about the Cape Horn he passed in the Spray" at which a lad of nine or ten
years stepped nimbly forward and read Basil Hall's fine description of the
great cape, and read it well. He afterward copied the essay for me in a clear
hand.
Calling to say good-by to my friends at
Vailima, I met Mrs. Stevenson in her Panama hat, and went over the estate with
her. Men were at work clearing the land, and to one of them she gave an order
to cut a couple of bamboo-trees for the Spray from a clump she had planted four
years before, and which had grown to the height of sixty feet. I used them for
spare spars, and the butt of one made a serviceable jib-boom on the homeward
voyage. I had then only to take ava with the family and be ready for sea. This
ceremony, important among Samoans, was conducted after the native fashion. A
Triton horn was sounded to let us know when the beverage was ready, and in
response we all clapped hands. The bout being in honor of the Spray, it was my
turn first, after the custom of the country, to spill a little over my
shoulder; but having forgotten the Samoan for "Let the gods drink," I
repeated the equivalent in Russian and Chinook, as I remembered a word in each,
whereupon Mr. Osbourne pronounced me a confirmed Samoan. Then I said
"Tofah!" to my good friends of Samoa, and all wishing the Spray bon
voyage, she stood out of the harbor August 20, 1896, and continued on her
course. A sense of loneliness seized upon me as the islands faded astern, and
as a remedy for it I crowded on sail for lovely Australia, which was not a
strange land to me; but for long days in my dreams Vailima stood before the
prow.
The Spray had barely cleared the islands
when a sudden burst of the trades brought her down to close reefs, and she
reeled off one hundred and eighty-four miles the first day, of which I counted
forty miles of current in her favor. Finding a rough sea, I swung her off free
and sailed north of the Horn Islands, also north of Fiji instead of south, as I
had intended, and coasted down the west side of the archipelago. Thence I
sailed direct for New South Wales, passing south of New Caledonia, and arrived
at Newcastle after a passage of forty-two days, mostly of storms and gales.
One particularly severe gale encountered
near New Caledonia foundered the American clipper-ship Patrician farther south.
Again, nearer the coast of Australia, when, however, I was not aware that the
gale was extraordinary, a French mail-steamer from New Caledonia for Sydney,
blown considerably out of her course, on her arrival reported it an awful
storm, and to inquiring friends said: "Oh, my! we don't know what has
become of the little sloop Spray. We saw her in the thick of the storm."
The Spray was all right, lying to like a duck. She was under a goose's wing
mainsail, and had had a dry deck while the passengers on the steamer, I heard
later, were up to their knees in water in the saloon. When their ship arrived
at Sydney they gave the captain a purse of gold for his skill and seamanship in
bringing them safe into port. The captain of the Spray got nothing of this
sort. In this gale I made the land about Seal Rocks, where the steamship
Catherton, with many lives, was lost a short time before. I was many hours off
the rocks, beating back and forth, but weathered them at last.
I arrived at Newcastle in the teeth of a
gale of wind. It was a stormy season. The government pilot, Captain Cumming,
met me at the harbor bar, and with the assistance of a steamer carried my
vessel to a safe berth. Many visitors came on board, the first being the United
States consul, Mr. Brown. Nothing was too good for the Spray here. All
government dues were remitted, and after I had rested a few days a port pilot
with a tug carried her to sea again, and she made along the coast toward the
harbor of Sydney, where she arrived on the following day, October 10, 1896.
I came to in a snug cove near Manly for the
night, the Sydney harbor police-boat giving me a pluck into anchorage while
they gathered data from an old scrap-book of mine, which seemed to interest
them. Nothing escapes the vigilance of the New South Wales police; their reputation
is known the world over. They made a shrewd guess that I could give them some
useful information, and they were the first to meet me. Some one said they came
to arrest me, and—well, let it go at that.
The
accident at Sydney. The accident at Sydney.
Summer was approaching, and the harbor of
Sydney was blooming with yachts. Some of them came down to the weather-beaten
Spray and sailed round her at Shelcote, where she took a berth for a few days.
At Sydney I was at once among friends. The Spray remained at the various
watering-places in the great port for several weeks, and was visited by many
agreeable people, frequently by officers of H.M.S. Orlando and their friends.
Captain Fisher, the commander, with a party of young ladies from the city and
gentlemen belonging to his ship, came one day to pay me a visit in the midst of
a deluge of rain. I never saw it rain harder even in Australia. But they were
out for fun, and rain could not dampen their feelings, however hard it poured.
But, as ill luck would have it, a young gentleman of another party on board, in
the full uniform of a very great yacht club, with brass buttons enough to sink
him, stepping quickly to get out of the wet, tumbled holus-bolus, head and
heels, into a barrel of water I had been coopering, and being a short man, was
soon out of sight, and nearly drowned before he was rescued. It was the nearest
to a casualty on the Spray in her whole course, so far as I know. The young man
having come on board with compliments made the mishap most embarrassing. It had
been decided by his club that the Spray could not be officially recognized, for
the reason that she brought no letters from yacht-clubs in America, and so I
say it seemed all the more embarrassing and strange that I should have caught
at least one of the members, in a barrel, and, too, when I was not fishing for
yachtsmen.
The typical Sydney boat is a handy sloop of
great beam and enormous sail-carrying power; but a capsize is not uncommon, for
they carry sail like vikings. In Sydney I saw all manner of craft, from the
smart steam-launch and sailing-cutter to the smaller sloop and canoe pleasuring
on the bay. Everybody owned a boat. If a boy in Australia has not the means to
buy him a boat he builds one, and it is usually one not to be ashamed of. The
Spray shed her Joseph's coat, the Fuego mainsail, in Sydney, and wearing a new
suit, the handsome present of Commodore Foy, she was flagship of the
Johnstone's Bay Flying Squadron when the circumnavigators of Sydney harbor
sailed in their annual regatta. They "recognized" the Spray as
belonging to "a club of her own," and with more Australian sentiment
than fastidiousness gave her credit for her record.
Time flew fast those days in Australia, and
it was December 6,1896, when the Spray sailed from Sydney. My intention was now
to sail around Cape Leeuwin direct for Mauritius on my way home, and so I
coasted along toward Bass Strait in that direction.
There was little to report on this part of
the voyage, except changeable winds, "busters," and rough seas. The
12th of December, however, was an exceptional day, with a fine coast wind,
northeast. The Spray early in the morning passed Twofold Bay and later Cape
Bundooro in a smooth sea with land close aboard. The lighthouse on the cape
dipped a flag to the Spray's flag, and children on the balconies of a cottage
near the shore waved handkerchiefs as she passed by. There were only a few
people all told on the shore, but the scene was a happy one. I saw festoons of
evergreen in token of Christmas, near at hand. I saluted the merrymakers,
wishing them a "Merry Christmas." and could hear them say, "I
wish you the same."
From Cape Bundooro I passed by Cliff Island
in Bass Strait, and exchanged signals with the light-keepers while the Spray
worked up under the island. The wind howled that day while the sea broke over
their rocky home.
A few days later, December 17, the Spray
came in close under Wilson's Promontory, again seeking shelter. The keeper of
the light at that station, Mr. J. Clark, came on board and gave me directions
for Waterloo Bay, about three miles to leeward, for which I bore up at once,
finding good anchorage there in a sandy cove protected from all westerly and
northerly winds.
Anchored here was the ketch Secret, a
fisherman, and the Mary of Sydney, a steam ferry-boat fitted for whaling. The
captain of the Mary was a genius, and an Australian genius at that, and smart.
His crew, from a sawmill up the coast, had not one of them seen a live whale when
they shipped; but they were boatmen after an Australian's own heart, and the
captain had told them that to kill a whale was no more than to kill a rabbit.
They believed him, and that settled it. As luck would have it, the very first
one they saw on their cruise, although an ugly humpback, was a dead whale in no
time, Captain Young, the master of the Mary, killing the monster at a single
thrust of a harpoon. It was taken in tow for Sydney, where they put it on
exhibition. Nothing but whales interested the crew of the gallant Mary, and
they spent most of their time here gathering fuel along shore for a cruise on
the grounds off Tasmania. Whenever the word "whale" was mentioned in
the hearing of these men their eyes glistened with excitement.
Captain Slocum working the Spray out of the
Yarrow
River, a part of Melbourne harbor. Captain
Slocum working the Spray out of the Yarrow River, a part of Melbourne harbor.
We spent three days in the quiet cove,
listening to the wind outside. Meanwhile Captain Young and I explored the
shores, visited abandoned miners' pits, and prospected for gold ourselves.
Our vessels, parting company the morning
they sailed, stood away like sea-birds each on its own course. The wind for a
few days was moderate, and, with unusual luck of fine weather, the Spray made
Melbourne Heads on the 22d of December, and, taken in tow by the steam-tug
Racer, was brought into port.
Christmas day was spent at a berth in the
river Yarrow, but I lost little time in shifting to St. Kilda, where I spent
nearly a month.
The Spray paid no port charges in Australia
or anywhere else on the voyage, except at Pernambuco, till she poked her nose
into the custom-house at Melbourne, where she was charged tonnage dues; in this
instance, sixpence a ton on the gross. The collector exacted six shillings and
sixpence, taking off nothing for the fraction under thirteen tons, her exact
gross being 12.70 tons. I squared the matter by charging people sixpence each
for coming on board, and when this business got dull I caught a shark and
charged them sixpence each to look at that. The shark was twelve feet six
inches in length, and carried a progeny of twenty-six, not one of them less
than two feet in length. A slit of a knife let them out in a canoe full of
water, which, changed constantly, kept them alive one whole day. In less than
an hour from the time I heard of the ugly brute it was on deck and on
exhibition, with rather more than the amount of the Spray's tonnage dues
already collected. Then I hired a good Irishman, Tom Howard by name,—who knew all about sharks, both on the land and in the sea, and
could talk about them,—to answer questions and lecture. When I found that I
could not keep abreast of the questions I turned the responsibility over to
him.
The
shark on the deck of the Spray. The shark on the deck of the Spray.
Returning from the bank, where I had been
to deposit money early in the day, I found Howard in the midst of a very
excited crowd, telling imaginary habits of the fish. It was a good show; the
people wished to see it, and it was my wish that they should; but owing to his
over-stimulated enthusiasm, I was obliged to let Howard resign. The income from
the show and the proceeds of the tallow I had gathered in the Strait of
Magellan, the last of which I had disposed of to a German soap-boiler at Samoa,
put me in ample funds.
January 24, 1897, found the Spray again in
tow of the tug Racer, leaving Hobson's Bay after a pleasant time in Melbourne
and St. Kilda, which had been protracted by a succession of southwest winds
that seemed never-ending.
In the summer months, that is, December,
January, February, and sometimes March, east winds are prevalent through Bass
Strait and round Cape Leeuwin; but owing to a vast amount of ice drifting up
from the Antarctic, this was all changed now and emphasized with much bad weather,
so much so that I considered it impracticable to pursue the course farther.
Therefore, instead of thrashing round cold and stormy Cape Leeuwin, I decided
to spend a pleasanter and more profitable time in Tasmania, waiting for the
season for favorable winds through Torres Strait, by way of the Great Barrier
Reef, the route I finally decided on. To sail this course would be taking
advantage of anticyclones, which never fail, and besides it would give me the
chance to put foot on the shores of Tasmania, round which I had sailed years
before.
I should mention that while I was at
Melbourne there occurred one of those extraordinary storms sometimes called
"rain of blood," the first of the kind in many years about Australia.
The "blood" came from a fine brick-dust matter afloat in the air from
the deserts. A rain-storm setting in brought down this dust simply as mud; it
fell in such quantities that a bucketful was collected from the sloop's
awnings, which were spread at the time. When the wind blew hard and I was
obliged to furl awnings, her sails, unprotected on the booms, got mud-stained
from clue to earing.
The phenomena of dust-storms, well
understood by scientists, are not uncommon on the coast of Africa. Reaching
some distance out over the sea, they frequently cover the track of ships, as in
the case of the one through which the Spray passed in the earlier part of her
voyage. Sailors no longer regard them with superstitious fear, but our
credulous brothers on the land cry out "Rain of blood!" at the first
splash of the awful mud.
The rip off Port Phillip Heads, a wild
place, was rough when the Spray entered Hobson's Bay from the sea, and was
rougher when she stood out. But, with sea-room and under sail, she made good
weather immediately after passing it. It was only a few hours' sail to Tasmania
across the strait, the wind being fair and blowing hard. I carried the St.
Kilda shark along, stuffed with hay, and disposed of it to Professor Porter,
the curator of the Victoria Museum of Launceston, which is at the head of the
Tamar. For many a long day to come may be seen there the shark of St. Kilda.
Alas! the good but mistaken people of St. Kilda, when the illustrated journals
with pictures of my shark reached their news-stands, flew into a passion, and
swept all papers containing mention of fish into the fire; for St. Kilda was a
watering-place—and the idea of a shark there! But my show went on.
On
board at St. Kilda. Retracing on the chart the
course of the Spray from Boston. On board
at St. Kilda. Retracing on the chart the course of the Spray from Boston.
The Spray was berthed on the beach at a
small jetty at Launceston while the tide driven in by the gale that brought her
up the river was unusually high; and she lay there hard and fast, with not
enough water around her at any time after to wet one's feet till she was ready
to sail; then, to float her, the ground was dug from under her keel.
In this snug place I left her in charge of
three children, while I made journeys among the hills and rested my bones, for
the coming voyage, on the moss-covered rocks at the gorge hard by, and among
the ferns I found wherever I went. My vessel was well taken care of. I never
returned without finding that the decks had been washed and that one of the
children, my nearest neighbor's little girl from across the road, was at the
gangway attending to visitors, while the others, a brother and sister, sold
marine curios such as were in the cargo, on "ship's account." They
were a bright, cheerful crew, and people came a long way to hear them tell the
story of the voyage, and of the monsters of the deep "the captain had
slain." I had only to keep myself away to be a hero of the first water;
and it suited me very well to do so and to rusticate in the forests and among
the streams.
CHAPTER XIV
A testimonial from a lady—Cruising round
Tasmania—The skipper delivers his first lecture on the voyage—Abundant
provisions-An inspection of the Spray for safety at Devonport—Again at
Sydney—Northward bound for Torres Strait—An amateur shipwreck—Friends on the
Australian coast—Perils of a coral sea.
February 1,1897, on returning to my vessel
I found waiting for me the letter of sympathy which I subjoin:
A lady sends Mr. Slocum the inclosed
five-pound note as a token of her appreciation of his bravery in crossing the
wide seas on so small a boat, and all alone, without human sympathy to help
when danger threatened. All success to you.
To this day I do not know who wrote it or
to whom I am indebted for the generous gift it contained. I could not refuse a
thing so kindly meant, but promised myself to pass it on with interest at the
first opportunity, and this I did before leaving Australia.
The season of fair weather around the north
of Australia being yet a long way off, I sailed to other ports in Tasmania,
where it is fine the year round, the first of these being Beauty Point, near
which are Beaconsfield and the great Tasmania gold-mine, which I visited in
turn. I saw much gray, uninteresting rock being hoisted out of the mine there,
and hundreds of stamps crushing it into powder. People told me there was gold
in it, and I believed what they said.
I remember Beauty Point for its shady
forest and for the road among the tall gum-trees. While there the governor of
New South Wales, Lord Hampden, and his family came in on a steam-yacht,
sight-seeing. The Spray, anchored near the landing-pier, threw her bunting out,
of course, and probably a more insignificant craft bearing the Stars and
Stripes was never seen in those waters. However, the governor's party seemed to
know why it floated there, and all about the Spray, and when I heard his
Excellency say, "Introduce me to the captain," or "Introduce the
captain to me," whichever it was, I found myself at once in the presence
of a gentleman and a friend, and one greatly interested in my voyage. If any
one of the party was more interested than the governor himself, it was the
Honorable Margaret, his daughter. On leaving, Lord and Lady Hampden promised to
rendezvous with me on board the Spray at the Paris Exposition in 1900. "If
we live," they said, and I added, for my part, "Dangers of the seas excepted."
From Beauty Point the Spray visited
Georgetown, near the mouth of the river Tamar. This little settlement, I
believe, marks the place where the first footprints were made by whites in
Tasmania, though it never grew to be more than a hamlet.
Considering that I had seen something of
the world, and finding people here interested in adventure, I talked the matter
over before my first audience in a little hall by the country road. A piano
having been brought in from a neighbor's, I was helped out by the severe thumping
it got, and by a "Tommy Atkins" song from a strolling comedian.
People came from a great distance, and the attendance all told netted the house
about three pounds sterling. The owner of the hall, a kind lady from Scotland,
would take no rent, and so my lecture from the start was a success.
From this snug little place I made sail for
Devonport, a thriving place on the river Mersey, a few hours' sail westward
along the coast, and fast becoming the most important port in Tasmania. Large
steamers enter there now and carry away great cargoes of farm produce, but the
Spray was the first vessel to bring the Stars and Stripes to the port, the
harbor-master, Captain Murray, told me, and so it is written in the port
records. For the great distinction the Spray enjoyed many civilities while she
rode comfortably at anchor in her port-duster awning that covered her from stem
to stern.
From the magistrate's house,
"Malunnah," on the point, she was saluted by the Jack both on coming
in and on going out, and dear Mrs. Aikenhead, the mistress of Malunnah,
supplied the Spray with jams and jellies of all sorts, by the case, prepared
from the fruits of her own rich garden—enough to last all the way home and to
spare. Mrs. Wood, farther up the harbor, put up bottles of raspberry wine for
me. At this point, more than ever before, I was in the land of good cheer. Mrs.
Powell sent on board chutney prepared "as we prepare it in India."
Fish, and game were plentiful here, and the voice of the gobbler was heard, and
from Pardo, farther up the country, came an enormous cheese; and yet people
inquire: "What did you live on? What did you eat?"
The
Spray in her port duster at Devonport, Tasmania,
February 22, 1897. The Spray in her port
duster at Devonport, Tasmania, February 22, 1897.
I was haunted by the beauty of the
landscape all about, of the natural ferneries then disappearing, and of the
domed forest-trees on the slopes, and was fortunate in meeting a gentleman
intent on preserving in art the beauties of his country. He presented me with
many reproductions from his collection of pictures, also many originals, to
show to my friends.
By another gentleman I was charged to tell
the glories of Tasmania in every land and on every occasion. This was Dr.
McCall, M. L. C. The doctor gave me useful hints on lecturing. It was not
without misgivings, however, that I filled away on this new course, and I am
free to say that it is only by the kindness of sympathetic audiences that my
oratorical bark was held on even keel. Soon after my first talk the kind doctor
came to me with words of approval. As in many other of my enterprises, I had
gone about it at once and without second thought. "Man, man," said
he, "great nervousness is only a sign of brain, and the more brain a man has
the longer it takes him to get over the affliction; but," he added
reflectively, "you will get over it." However, in my own behalf I
think it only fair to say that I am not yet entirely cured.
The Spray was hauled out on the marine
railway at Devonport and examined carefully top and bottom, but was found
absolutely free from the destructive teredo, and sound in all respects. To
protect her further against the ravage of these insects the bottom was coated
once more with copper paint, for she would have to sail through the Coral and
Arafura seas before refitting again. Everything was done to fit her for all the
known dangers. But it was not without regret that I looked forward to the day
of sailing from a country of so many pleasant associations. If there was a
moment in my voyage when I could have given it up, it was there and then; but
no vacancies for a better post being open, I weighed anchor April 16,1897, and
again put to sea.
The season of summer was then over; winter
was rolling up from the south, with fair winds for the north. A foretaste of
winter wind sent the Spray flying round Cape Howe and as far as Cape Bundooro
farther along, which she passed on the following day, retracing her course
northward. This was a fine run, and boded good for the long voyage home from
the antipodes. My old Christmas friends on Bundooro seemed to be up and moving
when I came the second time by their cape, and we exchanged signals again,
while the sloop sailed along as before in a smooth sea and close to the shore.
The weather was fine, with clear sky the
rest of the passage to Port Jackson (Sydney), where the Spray arrived April 22,
1897, and anchored in Watson's Bay, near the heads, in eight fathoms of water.
The harbor from the heads to Parramatta, up the river, was more than ever alive
with boats and yachts of every class. It was, indeed, a scene of animation,
hardly equaled in any other part of the world.
A few days later the bay was flecked with
tempestuous waves, and none but stout ships carried sail. I was in a
neighboring hotel then, nursing a neuralgia which I had picked up alongshore,
and had only that moment got a glance of just the stern of a large,
unmanageable steamship passing the range of my window as she forged in by the
point, when the bell-boy burst into my room shouting that the Spray had
"gone bung." I tumbled out quickly, to learn that "bung"
meant that a large steamship had run into her, and that it was the one of which
I saw the stern, the other end of her having hit the Spray. It turned out,
however, that no damage was done beyond the loss of an anchor and chain, which
from the shock of the collision had parted at the hawse. I had nothing at all
to complain of, though, in the end, for the captain, after he clubbed his ship,
took the Spray in tow up the harbor, clear of all dangers, and sent her back
again, in charge of an officer and three men, to her anchorage in the bay, with
a polite note saying he would repair any damages done. But what yawing about
she made of it when she came with a stranger at the helm! Her old friend the
pilot of the Pinta would not have been guilty of such lubberly work. But to my
great delight they got her into a berth, and the neuralgia left me then, or was
forgotten. The captain of the steamer, like a true seaman, kept his word, and his
agent, Mr. Collishaw handed me on the very next day the price of the lost
anchor and chain, with something over for anxiety of mind. I remember that he
offered me twelve pounds at once; but my lucky number being thirteen, we made
the amount thirteen pounds, which squared all accounts.
I sailed again, May 9, before a strong
southwest wind, which sent the Spray gallantly on as far as Port Stevens, where
it fell calm and then came up ahead; but the weather was fine, and so remained
for many days, which was a great change from the state of the weather
experienced here some months before.
Having a full set of admiralty sheet-charts
of the coast and Barrier Reef, I felt easy in mind. Captain Fisher, R.N., who
had steamed through the Barrier passages in H. M. S. Orlando, advised me from
the first to take this route, and I did not regret coming back to it now.
The wind, for a few days after passing Port
Stevens, Seal Rocks, and Cape Hawk, was light and dead ahead; but these points
are photographed on my memory from the trial of beating round them some months
before when bound the other way. But now, with a good stock of books on board,
I fell to reading day and night, leaving this pleasant occupation merely to
trim sails or tack, or to lie down and rest, while the Spray nibbled at the
miles. I tried to compare my state with that of old circumnavigators, who sailed
exactly over the route which I took from Cape Verde Islands or farther back to
this point and beyond, but there was no comparison so far as I had got. Their
hardships and romantic escapes—those of them who escaped death and worse
sufferings—did not enter into my experience, sailing all alone around the
world. For me is left to tell only of pleasant experiences, till finally my
adventures are prosy and tame.
I had just finished reading some of the
most interesting of the old voyages in woe-begone ships, and was already near
Port Macquarie, on my own cruise, when I made out, May 13, a modern dandy craft
in distress, anchored on the coast. Standing in for her, I found that she was
the cutter-yacht Akbar[B], which had sailed from Watson's Bay about three days
ahead of the Spray, and that she had run at once into trouble. No wonder she
did so. It was a case of babes in the wood or butterflies at sea. Her owner, on
his maiden voyage, was all duck trousers; the captain, distinguished for the
enormous yachtsman's cap he wore, was a Murrumbidgee[C] whaler before he took
command of the Akbar; and the navigating officer, poor fellow, was almost as
deaf as a post, and nearly as stiff and immovable as a post in the ground.
These three jolly tars comprised the crew. None of them knew more about the sea
or about a vessel than a newly born babe knows about another world. They were
bound for New Guinea, so they said; perhaps it was as well that three
tenderfeet so tender as those never reached that destination.
[B] Akbar was not her registered name,
which need not be told
[C] The Murrumbidgee is a small river
winding among the mountains of Australia, and would be the last place in which
to look for a whale.
"'Is it a-goin' to blow?'" "'Is
it a-goin' to blow?'"
The owner, whom I had met before he sailed,
wanted to race the poor old Spray to Thursday Island en route. I declined the
challenge, naturally, on the ground of the unfairness of three young yachtsmen
in a clipper against an old sailor all alone in a craft of coarse build;
besides that, I would not on any account race in the Coral Sea.
"Spray ahoy!" they all hailed
now. "What's the weather goin' t' be? Is it a-goin' to blow? And don't you
think we'd better go back t' r-r-refit?"
I thought, "If ever you get back, don't
refit," but I said: "Give me the end of a rope, and I'll tow you into
yon port farther along; and on your lives," I urged, "do not go back
round Cape Hawk, for it's winter to the south of it."
They purposed making for Newcastle under
jury-sails; for their mainsail had been blown to ribbons, even the jigger had
been blown away, and her rigging flew at loose ends. The Akbar, in a word, was
a wreck.
"Up anchor," I shouted, "up
anchor, and let me tow you into Port Macquarie, twelve miles north of
this."
"No," cried the owner;
"we'll go back to Newcastle. We missed Newcastle on the way coming; we
didn't see the light, and it was not thick, either." This he shouted very
loud, ostensibly for my hearing, but closer even than necessary, I thought, to
the ear of the navigating officer. Again I tried to persuade them to be towed
into the port of refuge so near at hand. It would have cost them only the
trouble of weighing their anchor and passing me a rope; of this I assured them,
but they declined even this, in sheer ignorance of a rational course.
"What is your depth of water?" I
asked.
"Don't know; we lost our lead. All the
chain is out. We sounded with the anchor."
"Send your dinghy over, and I'll give
you a lead."
"We've lost our dinghy, too,"
they cried.
"God is good, else you would have lost
yourselves," and "Farewell" was all I could say.
The trifling service proffered by the Spray
would have saved their vessel.
"Report us," they cried, as I
stood on—"report us with sails blown away, and that we don't care a dash
and are not afraid."
"Then there is no hope for you,"
and again "Farewell." I promised I would report them, and did so at
the first opportunity, and out of humane reasons I do so again. On the
following day I spoke the steamship Sherman, bound down the coast, and reported
the yacht in distress and that it would be an act of humanity to tow her
somewhere away from her exposed position on an open coast. That she did not get
a tow from the steamer was from no lack of funds to pay the bill; for the
owner, lately heir to a few hundred pounds, had the money with him. The
proposed voyage to New Guinea was to look that island over with a view to its
purchase. It was about eighteen days before I heard of the Akbar again, which
was on the 31st of May, when I reached Cooktown, on the Endeavor River, where I
found this news:
May 31, the yacht Akbar, from Sydney for
New Guinea, three hands on board, lost at Crescent Head; the crew saved.
So it took them several days to lose the
yacht, after all.
After speaking the distressed Akbar and the
Sherman, the voyage for many days was uneventful save in the pleasant incident
on May 16 of a chat by signal with the people on South Solitary Island, a
dreary stone heap in the ocean just off the coast of New South Wales, in
latitude 30 degrees 12' south.
"What vessel is that?" they
asked, as the sloop came abreast of their island. For answer I tried them with
the Stars and Stripes at the peak. Down came their signals at once, and up went
the British ensign instead, which they dipped heartily. I understood from this
that they made out my vessel and knew all about her, for they asked no more
questions. They didn't even ask if the "voyage would pay," but they
threw out this friendly message, "Wishing you a pleasant voyage,"
which at that very moment I was having.
May 19 the Spray, passing the Tweed River,
was signaled from Danger Point, where those on shore seemed most anxious about
the state of my health, for they asked if "all hands" were well, to
which I could say, "Yes."
On the following day the Spray rounded
Great Sandy Cape, and, what is a notable event in every voyage, picked up the
trade-winds, and these winds followed her now for many thousands of miles,
never ceasing to blow from a moderate gale to a mild summer breeze, except at
rare intervals.
From the pitch of the cape was a noble
light seen twenty-seven miles; passing from this to Lady Elliott Light, which
stands on an island as a sentinel at the gateway of the Barrier Reef, the Spray
was at once in the fairway leading north. Poets have sung of beacon-light and
of pharos, but did ever poet behold a great light flash up before his path on a
dark night in the midst of a coral sea? If so, he knew the meaning of his song.
The Spray had sailed for hours in suspense,
evidently stemming a current. Almost mad with doubt, I grasped the helm to
throw her head off shore, when blazing out of the sea was the light ahead.
"Excalibur!" cried "all hands," and rejoiced, and sailed
on. The Spray was now in a protected sea and smooth water, the first she had
dipped her keel into since leaving Gibraltar, and a change it was from the
heaving of the misnamed "Pacific" Ocean.
The Pacific is perhaps, upon the whole, no
more boisterous than other oceans, though I feel quite safe in saying that it
is not more pacific except in name. It is often wild enough in one part or
another. I once knew a writer who, after saying beautiful things about the sea,
passed through a Pacific hurricane, and he became a changed man. But where,
after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves? At last
here was the Spray in the midst of a sea of coral. The sea itself might be
called smooth indeed, but coral rocks are always rough, sharp, and dangerous. I
trusted now to the mercies of the Maker of all reefs, keeping a good lookout at
the same time for perils on every hand.
Lo! the Barrier Reef and the waters of many
colors studded all about with enchanted islands! I behold among them after all
many safe harbors, else my vision is astray. On the 24th of May, the sloop,
having made one hundred and ten miles a day from Danger Point, now entered
Whitsunday Pass, and that night sailed through among the islands. When the sun
rose next morning I looked back and regretted having gone by while it was dark,
for the scenery far astern was varied and charming.
CHAPTER XV
Arrival at Port Denison, Queensland—A
lecture—Reminiscences of Captain Cook—Lecturing for charity at Cooktown—A happy
escape from a coral reef—Home Island, Sunday Island, Bird Island—An American
pearl-fisherman—Jubilee at Thursday Island—A new ensign for the Spray—Booby
Island—Across the Indian Ocean—Christmas Island.
On the morning of the 26th Gloucester
Island was close aboard, and the Spray anchored in the evening at Port Denison,
where rests, on a hill, the sweet little town of Bowen, the future watering
place and health-resort of Queensland. The country all about here had a
healthful appearance.
The harbor was easy of approach, spacious
and safe, and afforded excellent holding-ground. It was quiet in Bowen when the
Spray arrived, and the good people with an hour to throw away on the second
evening of her arrival came down to the School of Arts to talk about the
voyage, it being the latest event. It was duly advertised in the two little
papers, "Boomerang" and "Nully Nully," in the one the day
before the affair came off, and in the other the day after, which was all the
same to the editor, and, for that matter, it was the same to me.
Besides this, circulars were distributed
with a flourish, and the "best bellman" in Australia was employed.
But I could have keelhauled the wretch, bell and all, when he came to the door
of the little hotel where my prospective audience and I were dining, and with
his clattering bell and fiendish yell made noises that would awake the dead,
all over the voyage of the Spray from "Boston to Bowen, the two Hubs in
the cart-wheels of creation," as the "Boomerang" afterward said.
Mr. Myles, magistrate, harbor-master, land
commissioner, gold warden, etc., was chairman, and introduced me, for what
reason I never knew, except to embarrass me with a sense of vain ostentation
and embitter my life, for Heaven knows I had met every person in town the first
hour ashore. I knew them all by name now, and they all knew me. However, Mr.
Myles was a good talker. Indeed, I tried to induce him to go on and tell the
story while I showed the pictures, but this he refused to do. I may explain
that it was a talk illustrated by stereopticon. The views were good, but the
lantern, a thirty-shilling affair, was wretched, and had only an oil-lamp in
it.
I sailed early the next morning before the
papers came out, thinking it best to do so. They each appeared with a favorable
column, however, of what they called a lecture, so I learned afterward, and
they had a kind word for the bellman besides.
From Port Denison the sloop ran before the
constant trade-wind, and made no stop at all, night or day, till she reached
Cooktown, on the Endeavor River, where she arrived Monday, May 31, 1897, before
a furious blast of wind encountered that day fifty miles down the coast. On
this parallel of latitude is the high ridge and backbone of the tradewinds,
which about Cooktown amount often to a hard gale.
I had been charged to navigate the route
with extra care, and to feel my way over the ground. The skilled officer of the
royal navy who advised me to take the Barrier Reef passage wrote me that H. M.
S. Orlando steamed nights as well as days through it, but that I, under sail,
would jeopardize my vessel on coral reefs if I undertook to do so.
Confidentially, it would have been no easy
matter finding anchorage every night. The hard work, too, of getting the sloop
under way every morning was finished, I had hoped, when she cleared the Strait
of Magellan. Besides that, the best of admiralty charts made it possible to
keep on sailing night and day. Indeed, with a fair wind, and in the clear
weather of that season, the way through the Barrier Reef Channel, in all
sincerity, was clearer than a highway in a busy city, and by all odds less
dangerous. But to any one contemplating the voyage I would say, beware of reefs
day or night, or, remaining on the land, be wary still.
"The Spray came flying into port like
a bird," said the longshore daily papers of Cooktown the morning after she
arrived; "and it seemed strange," they added, "that only one man
could be seen on board working the craft." The Spray was doing her best,
to be sure, for it was near night, and she was in haste to find a perch before
dark.
The
Spray leaving Sydney, Australia, in the new suit
of sails given by Commodore Foy of
Australia. (From a photograph.)
The Spray leaving Sydney, Australia, in the
new suit of sails given by Commodore Foy of Australia. (From a photograph.)
Tacking inside of all the craft in port, I
moored her at sunset nearly abreast the Captain Cook monument, and next morning
went ashore to feast my eyes on the very stones the great navigator had seen,
for I was now on a seaman's consecrated ground. But there seemed a question in
Cooktown's mind as to the exact spot where his ship, the Endeavor, hove down
for repairs on her memorable voyage around the world. Some said it was not at
all at the place where the monument now stood. A discussion of the subject was
going on one morning where I happened to be, and a young lady present, turning
to me as one of some authority in nautical matters, very flatteringly asked my
opinion. Well, I could see no reason why Captain Cook, if he made up his mind
to repair his ship inland, couldn't have dredged out a channel to the place
where the monument now stood, if he had a dredging-machine with him, and
afterward fill it up again; for Captain Cook could do 'most anything, and
nobody ever said that he hadn't a dredger along. The young lady seemed to lean
to my way of thinking, and following up the story of the historical voyage,
asked if I had visited the point farther down the harbor where the great
circumnavigator was murdered. This took my breath, but a bright school-boy
coming along relieved my embarrassment, for, like all boys, seeing that
information was wanted, he volunteered to supply it. Said he: "Captain
Cook wasn't murdered 'ere at all, ma'am; 'e was killed in Hafrica: a lion et
'im."
Here I was reminded of distressful days
gone by. I think it was in 1866 that the old steamship Soushay, from Batavia
for Sydney, put in at Cooktown for scurvy-grass, as I always thought, and
"incidentally" to land mails. On her sick-list was my fevered self;
and so I didn't see the place till I came back on the Spray thirty-one years
later. And now I saw coming into port the physical wrecks of miners from New
Guinea, destitute and dying. Many had died on the way and had been buried at
sea. He would have been a hardened wretch who could look on and not try to do
something for them.
The sympathy of all went out to these
sufferers, but the little town was already straitened from a long run on its
benevolence. I thought of the matter, of the lady's gift to me at Tasmania,
which I had promised myself I would keep only as a loan, but found now, to my
embarrassment, that I had invested the money. However, the good Cooktown people
wished to hear a story of the sea, and how the crew of the Spray fared when
illness got aboard of her. Accordingly the little Presbyterian church on the
hill was opened for a conversation; everybody talked, and they made a roaring
success of it. Judge Chester, the magistrate, was at the head of the gam, and
so it was bound to succeed. He it was who annexed the island of New Guinea to
Great Britain. "While I was about it," said he, "I annexed the
blooming lot of it." There was a ring in the statement pleasant to the ear
of an old voyager. However, the Germans made such a row over the judge's
mainsail haul that they got a share in the venture.
Well, I was now indebted to the miners of
Cooktown for the great privilege of adding a mite to a worthy cause, and to
Judge Chester all the town was indebted for a general good time. The matter
standing so, I sailed on June 6,1897, heading away for the north as before.
Arrived at a very inviting anchorage about
sundown, the 7th, I came to, for the night, abreast the Claremont light-ship.
This was the only time throughout the passage of the Barrier Reef Channel that
the Spray anchored, except at Port Denison and at Endeavor River. On the very
night following this, however (the 8th), I regretted keenly, for an instant,
that I had not anchored before dark, as I might have done easily under the lee
of a coral reef. It happened in this way. The Spray had just passed M Reef
light-ship, and left the light dipping astern, when, going at full speed, with
sheets off, she hit the M Reef itself on the north end, where I expected to see
a beacon.
She swung off quickly on her heel, however,
and with one more bound on a swell cut across the shoal point so quickly that I
hardly knew how it was done. The beacon wasn't there; at least, I didn't see
it. I hadn't time to look for it after she struck, and certainly it didn't much
matter then whether I saw it or not.
But this gave her a fine departure for Cape
Greenville, the next point ahead. I saw the ugly boulders under the sloop's
keel as she flashed over them, and I made a mental note of it that the letter
M, for which the reef was named, was the thirteenth one in our alphabet, and
that thirteen, as noted years before, was still my lucky number. The natives of
Cape Greenville are notoriously bad, and I was advised to give them the go-by.
Accordingly, from M Reef I steered outside of the adjacent islands, to be on
the safe side. Skipping along now, the Spray passed Home Island, off the pitch
of the cape, soon after midnight, and squared away on a westerly course. A
short time later she fell in with a steamer bound south, groping her way in the
dark and making the night dismal with her own black smoke.
From Home Island I made for Sunday Island,
and bringing that abeam, shortened sail, not wishing to make Bird Island,
farther along, before daylight, the wind being still fresh and the islands
being low, with dangers about them. Wednesday, June 9, 1897, at daylight, Bird
Island was dead ahead, distant two and a half miles, which I considered near
enough. A strong current was pressing the sloop forward. I did not shorten sail
too soon in the night! The first and only Australian canoe seen on the voyage
was encountered here standing from the mainland, with a rag of sail set, bound
for this island.
A long, slim fish that leaped on board in
the night was found on deck this morning. I had it for breakfast. The spry chap
was no larger around than a herring, which it resembled in every respect,
except that it was three times as long; but that was so much the better, for I
am rather fond of fresh herring, anyway. A great number of fisher-birds were
about this day, which was one of the pleasantest on God's earth. The Spray,
dancing over the waves, entered Albany Pass as the sun drew low in the west
over the hills of Australia.
At 7:30 P.M. the Spray, now through the
pass, came to anchor in a cove in the mainland, near a pearl-fisherman, called
the Tarawa, which was at anchor, her captain from the deck of his vessel
directing me to a berth. This done, he at once came on board to clasp hands.
The Tarawa was a Californian, and Captain Jones, her master, was an American.
On the following morning Captain Jones
brought on board two pairs of exquisite pearl shells, the most perfect ones I
ever saw. They were probably the best he had, for Jones was the heart-yarn of a
sailor. He assured me that if I would remain a few hours longer some friends
from Somerset, near by, would pay us all a visit, and one of the crew, sorting
shells on deck, "guessed" they would. The mate "guessed"
so, too. The friends came, as even the second mate and cook had
"guessed" they would. They were Mr. Jardine, stockman, famous
throughout the land, and his family. Mrs. Jardine was the niece of King
Malietoa, and cousin to the beautiful Faamu-Sami ("To make the sea
burn"), who visited the Spray at Apia. Mr. Jardine was himself a fine
specimen of a Scotsman. With his little family about him, he was content to
live in this remote place, accumulating the comforts of life.
The fact of the Tarawa having been built in
America accounted for the crew, boy Jim and all, being such good guessers.
Strangely enough, though, Captain Jones himself, the only American aboard, was
never heard to guess at all.
After a pleasant chat and good-by to the
people of the Tarawa, and to Mr. and Mrs. Jardine, I again weighed anchor and
stood across for Thursday Island, now in plain view, mid-channel in Torres
Strait, where I arrived shortly after noon. Here the Spray remained over until
June 24. Being the only American representative in port, this tarry was
imperative, for on the 22d was the Queen's diamond jubilee. The two days over
were, as sailors say, for "coming up."
Meanwhile I spent pleasant days about the
island. Mr. Douglas, resident magistrate, invited me on a cruise in his steamer
one day among the islands in Torres Strait. This being a scientific expedition
in charge of Professor Mason Bailey, botanist, we rambled over Friday and
Saturday islands, where I got a glimpse of botany. Miss Bailey, the professor's
daughter, accompanied the expedition, and told me of many indigenous plants
with long names.
The 22d was the great day on Thursday
Island, for then we had not only the jubilee, but a jubilee with a grand
corroboree in it, Mr. Douglas having brought some four hundred native warriors
and their wives and children across from the mainland to give the celebration
the true native touch, for when they do a thing on Thursday Island they do it
with a roar. The corroboree was, at any rate, a howling success. It took place
at night, and the performers, painted in fantastic colors, danced or leaped
about before a blazing fire. Some were rigged and painted like birds and
beasts, in which the emu and kangaroo were well represented. One fellow leaped
like a frog. Some had the human skeleton painted on their bodies, while they
jumped about threateningly, spear in hand, ready to strike down some imaginary
enemy. The kangaroo hopped and danced with natural ease and grace, making a
fine figure. All kept time to music, vocal and instrumental, the instruments
(save the mark!) being bits of wood, which they beat one against the other, and
saucer-like bones, held in the palm of the hands, which they knocked together,
making a dull sound. It was a show at once amusing, spectacular, and hideous.
The warrior aborigines that I saw in
Queensland were for the most part lithe and fairly well built, but they were
stamped always with repulsive features, and their women were, if possible,
still more ill favored.
I observed that on the day of the jubilee
no foreign flag was waving in the public grounds except the Stars and Stripes,
which along with the Union Jack guarded the gateway, and floated in many
places, from the tiniest to the standard size. Speaking to Mr. Douglas, I
ventured a remark on this compliment to my country. "Oh," said he,
"this is a family affair, and we do not consider the Stars and Stripes a
foreign flag." The Spray of course flew her best bunting, and hoisted the
Jack as well as her own noble flag as high as she could.
On June 24 the Spray, well fitted in every
way, sailed for the long voyage ahead, down the Indian Ocean. Mr. Douglas gave
her a flag as she was leaving his island. The Spray had now passed nearly all
the dangers of the Coral Sea and Torres Strait, which, indeed, were not a few;
and all ahead from this point was plain sailing and a straight course. The
trade-wind was still blowing fresh, and could be safely counted on now down to
the coast of Madagascar, if not beyond that, for it was still early in the
season.
I had no wish to arrive off the Cape of
Good Hope before midsummer, and it was now early winter. I had been off that
cape once in July, which was, of course, midwinter there. The stout ship I then
commanded encountered only fierce hurricanes, and she bore them ill. I wished
for no winter gales now. It was not that I feared them more, being in the Spray
instead of a large ship, but that I preferred fine weather in any case. It is
true that one may encounter heavy gales off the Cape of Good Hope at any season
of the year, but in the summer they are less frequent and do not continue so
long. And so with time enough before me to admit of a run ashore on the islands
en route, I shaped the course now for Keeling Cocos, atoll islands, distant
twenty-seven hundred miles. Taking a departure from Booby Island, which the
sloop passed early in the day, I decided to sight Timor on the way, an island
of high mountains.
Booby Island I had seen before, but only
once, however, and that was when in the steamship Soushay, on which I was
"hove-down" in a fever. When she steamed along this way I was well
enough to crawl on deck to look at Booby Island. Had I died for it, I would
have seen that island. In those days passing ships landed stores in a cave on
the island for shipwrecked and distressed wayfarers. Captain Airy of the
Soushay, a good man, sent a boat to the cave with his contribution to the
general store. The stores were landed in safety, and the boat, returning,
brought back from the improvised post-office there a dozen or more letters,
most of them left by whalemen, with the request that the first homeward-bound
ship would carry them along and see to their mailing, which had been the custom
of this strange postal service for many years. Some of the letters brought back
by our boat were directed to New Bedford, and some to Fairhaven, Massachusetts.
There is a light to-day on Booby Island,
and regular packet communication with the rest of the world, and the beautiful
uncertainty of the fate of letters left there is a thing of the past. I made no
call at the little island, but standing close in, exchanged signals with the
keeper of the light. Sailing on, the sloop was at once in the Arafura Sea,
where for days she sailed in water milky white and green and purple. It was my
good fortune to enter the sea on the last quarter of the moon, the advantage
being that in the dark nights I witnessed the phosphorescent light effect at
night in its greatest splendor. The sea, where the sloop disturbed it, seemed
all ablaze, so that by its light I could see the smallest articles on deck, and
her wake was a path of fire.
On the 25th of June the sloop was already
clear of all the shoals and dangers, and was sailing on a smooth sea as
steadily as before, but with speed somewhat slackened. I got out the flying-jib
made at Juan Fernandez, and set it as a spinnaker from the stoutest bamboo that
Mrs. Stevenson had given me at Samoa. The spinnaker pulled like a sodger, and
the bamboo holding its own, the Spray mended her pace.
Several pigeons flying across to-day from
Australia toward the islands bent their course over the Spray. Smaller birds
were seen flying in the opposite direction. In the part of the Arafura that I
came to first, where it was shallow, sea-snakes writhed about on the surface
and tumbled over and over in the waves. As the sloop sailed farther on, where
the sea became deep, they disappeared. In the ocean, where the water is blue,
not one was ever seen.
In the days of serene weather there was not
much to do but to read and take rest on the Spray, to make up as much as
possible for the rough time off Cape Horn, which was not yet forgotten, and to
forestall the Cape of Good Hope by a store of ease. My sea journal was now much
the same from day to day-something like this of June 26 and 27, for example:
June 26, in the morning, it is a bit
squally; later in, the day blowing a steady breeze.
On the log at noon is 130 miles
Subtract correction for slip 10 "
120 "
Add for current 10 "
130 "
Latitude by observation at noon, 10 degrees
23' S.
Longitude as per mark on the chart.
There wasn't much brain-work in that log,
I'm sure. June 27 makes a better showing, when all is told:
First of all, to-day, was a flying-fish on
deck; fried it in butter.
133 miles on the log.
For slip, off, and for current, on, as per
guess, about equal—let it go at that.
Latitude by observation at noon, 10 degrees
25' S.
For several days now the Spray sailed west
on the parallel of 10 degrees 25' S., as true as a hair. If she deviated at all
from that, through the day or night,—and this may have happened,—she was back,
strangely enough, at noon, at the same latitude. But the greatest science was
in reckoning the longitude. My tin clock and only timepiece had by this time
lost its minute-hand, but after I boiled her she told the hours, and that was
near enough on a long stretch.
On the 2d of July the great island of Timor
was in view away to the nor'ard. On the following day I saw Dana Island, not
far off, and a breeze came up from the land at night, fragrant of the spices or
what not of the coast.
On the 11th, with all sail set and with the
spinnaker still abroad, Christmas Island, about noon, came into view one point
on the starboard bow. Before night it was abeam and distant two and a half
miles. The surface of the island appeared evenly rounded from the sea to a
considerable height in the center. In outline it was as smooth as a fish, and a
long ocean swell, rolling up, broke against the sides, where it lay like a monster
asleep, motionless on the sea. It seemed to have the proportions of a whale,
and as the sloop sailed along its side to the part where the head would be,
there was a nostril, even, which was a blow-hole through a ledge of rock where
every wave that dashed threw up a shaft of water, lifelike and real.
It had been a long time since I last saw
this island; but I remember my temporary admiration for the captain of the ship
I was then in, the Tawfore, when he sang out one morning from the quarter-deck,
well aft, "Go aloft there, one of ye, with a pair of eyes, and see
Christmas Island." Sure enough, there the island was in sight from the
royal-yard. Captain M——had thus made a great hit, and he never got over it. The
chief mate, terror of us ordinaries in the ship, walking never to windward of
the captain, now took himself very humbly to leeward altogether. When we
arrived at Hong-Kong there was a letter in the ship's mail for me. I was in the
boat with the captain some hours while he had it. But do you suppose he could
hand a letter to a seaman? No, indeed; not even to an ordinary seaman. When we
got to the ship he gave it to the first mate; the first mate gave it to the
second mate, and he laid it, michingly, on the capstan-head, where I could get
it.
CHAPTER XVI
A call for careful navigation—Three hours'
steering in twenty-three days—Arrival at the Keeling Cocos Islands—A curious
chapter of social history—A welcome from the children of the islands—Cleaning
and painting the Spray on the beach—A Mohammedan blessing for a pot of
jam—Keeling as a paradise—A risky adventure in a small boat—Away to
Rodriguez—Taken for Antichrist—The governor calms the fears of the people—A
lecture—A convent in the hills.
To the Keeling Cocos Islands was now only
five hundred and fifty miles; but even in this short run it was necessary to be
extremely careful in keeping a true course else I would miss the atoll.
On the 12th, some hundred miles southwest
of Christmas Island, I saw anti-trade clouds flying up from the southwest very high
over the regular winds, which weakened now for a few days, while a swell
heavier than usual set in also from the southwest. A winter gale was going on
in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope. Accordingly, I steered higher to
windward, allowing twenty miles a day while this went on, for change of
current; and it was not too much, for on that course I made the Keeling Islands
right ahead. The first unmistakable sign of the land was a visit one morning
from a white tern that fluttered very knowingly about the vessel, and then took
itself off westward with a businesslike air in its wing. The tern is called by
the islanders the "pilot of Keeling Cocos." Farther on I came among a
great number of birds fishing, and fighting over whatever they caught. My reckoning
was up, and springing aloft, I saw from half-way up the mast cocoanut-trees
standing out of the water ahead. I expected to see this; still, it thrilled me
as an electric shock might have done. I slid down the mast, trembling under the
strangest sensations; and not able to resist the impulse, I sat on deck and
gave way to my emotions. To folks in a parlor on shore this may seem weak
indeed, but I am telling the story of a voyage alone.
I didn't touch the helm, for with the
current and heave of the sea the sloop found herself at the end of the run
absolutely in the fairway of the channel. You couldn't have beaten it in the
navy! Then I trimmed her sails by the wind, took the helm, and flogged her up
the couple of miles or so abreast the harbor landing, where I cast anchor at
3:30 P.M., July 17,1897, twenty-three days from Thursday Island. The distance
run was twenty-seven hundred miles as the crow flies. This would have been a
fair Atlantic voyage. It was a delightful sail! During those twenty-three days
I had not spent altogether more than three hours at the helm, including the
time occupied in beating into Keeling harbor. I just lashed the helm and let
her go; whether the wind was abeam or dead aft, it was all the same: she always
sailed on her course. No part of the voyage up to this point, taking it by and
large, had been so finished as this.[D]
[D] Mr. Andrew J. Leach, reporting, July
21, 1897, through Governor Kynnersley of Singapore, to Joseph Chamberlain,
Colonial Secretary, said concerning the Iphegenia's visit to the atoll:
"As we left the ocean depths of deepest blue and entered the coral circle,
the contrast was most remarkable. The brilliant colors of the waters,
transparent to a depth of over thirty feet, now purple, now of the bluest sky-blue,
and now green, with the white crests of the waves flashing tinder a brilliant
sun, the encircling ... palm-clad islands, the gaps between which were to the
south undiscernible, the white sand shores and the whiter gaps where breakers
appeared, and, lastly, the lagoon itself, seven or eight miles across from
north to south, and five to six from east to west, presented a sight never to
be forgotten. After some little delay, Mr. Sidney Ross, the eldest son of Mr.
George Ross, came off to meet us, and soon after, accompanied by the doctor and
another officer, we went ashore." "On reaching the landing-stage, we
found, hauled up for cleaning, etc., the Spray of Boston, a yawl of 12.70 tons
gross, the property of Captain Joshua Slocum. He arrived at the island on the
17th of July, twenty-three days out from Thursday Island. This extraordinary
solitary traveler left Boston some two years ago single-handed, crossed to
Gibraltar, sailed down to Cape Horn, passed through the Strait of Magellan to
the Society Islands, thence to Australia, and through the Torres Strait to
Thursday Island."
The Keeling Cocos Islands, according to
Admiral Fitzroy, R. N., lie between the latitudes of 11 degrees 50' and 12
degrees 12' S., and the longitudes of 96 degrees 51' and 96 degrees 58' E. They
were discovered in 1608-9 by Captain William Keeling, then in the service of
the East India Company. The southern group consists of seven or eight islands
and islets on the atoll, which is the skeleton of what some day, according to
the history of coral reefs, will be a continuous island. North Keeling has no
harbor, is seldom visited, and is of no importance. The South Keelings are a
strange little world, with a romantic history all their own. They have been
visited occasionally by the floating spar of some hurricane-swept ship, or by a
tree that has drifted all the way from Australia, or by an ill-starred ship
cast away, and finally by man. Even a rock once drifted to Keeling, held fast
among the roots of a tree.
After the discovery of the islands by
Captain Keeling, their first notable visitor was Captain John Clunis-Ross, who
in 1814 touched in the ship Borneo on a voyage to India. Captain Ross returned
two years later with his wife and family and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dymoke,
and eight sailor-artisans, to take possession of the islands, but found there
already one Alexander Hare, who meanwhile had marked the little atoll as a sort
of Eden for a seraglio of Malay women which he moved over from the coast of
Africa. It was Ross's own brother, oddly enough, who freighted Hare and his
crowd of women to the islands, not knowing of Captain John's plans to occupy
the little world. And so Hare was there with his outfit, as if he had come to
stay.
On his previous visit, however, Ross had
nailed the English Jack to a mast on Horsburg Island, one of the group. After
two years shreds of it still fluttered in the wind, and his sailors, nothing
loath, began at once the invasion of the new kingdom to take possession of it,
women and all. The force of forty women, with only one man to command them, was
not equal to driving eight sturdy sailors back into the sea.[E]
[E] In the accounts given in Findlay's
"Sailing Directory" of some of the events there is a chronological
discrepancy. I follow the accounts gathered from the old captain's grandsons
and from records on the spot.
From this time on Hare had a hard time of
it. He and Ross did not get on well as neighbors. The islands were too small
and too near for characters so widely different. Hare had "oceans of
money," and might have lived well in London; but he had been governor of a
wild colony in Borneo, and could not confine himself to the tame life that
prosy civilization affords. And so he hung on to the atoll with his forty
women, retreating little by little before Ross and his sturdy crew, till at
last he found himself and his harem on the little island known to this day as
Prison Island, where, like Bluebeard, he confined his wives in a castle. The channel
between the islands was narrow, the water was not deep, and the eight Scotch
sailors wore long boots. Hare was now dismayed. He tried to compromise with rum
and other luxuries, but these things only made matters worse. On the day
following the first St. Andrew's celebration on the island, Hare, consumed with
rage, and no longer on speaking terms with the captain, dashed off a note to
him, saying: "Dear Ross: I thought when I sent rum and roast pig to your
sailors that they would stay away from my flower-garden." In reply to
which the captain, burning with indignation, shouted from the center of the
island, where he stood, "Ahoy, there, on Prison Island! You Hare, don't
you know that rum and roast pig are not a sailor's heaven?" Hare said
afterward that one might have heard the captain's roar across to Java.
The lawless establishment was soon broken
up by the women deserting Prison Island and putting themselves under Ross's
protection. Hare then went to Batavia, where he met his death.
The
Spray ashore for "boot-topping" at the Keeling
Islands. (From a photograph.) The Spray
ashore for "boot-topping" at the Keeling Islands. (From a
photograph.)
My first impression upon landing was that
the crime of infanticide had not reached the islands of Keeling Cocos.
"The children have all come to welcome you," explained Mr. Ross, as
they mustered at the jetty by hundreds, of all ages and sizes. The people of
this country were all rather shy, but, young or old, they never passed one or
saw one passing their door without a salutation. In their musical voices they
would say, "Are you walking?" ("Jalan, jalan?") "Will
you come along?" one would answer.
For a long time after I arrived the
children regarded the "one-man ship" with suspicion and fear. A
native man had been blown away to sea many years before, and they hinted to one
another that he might have been changed from black to white, and returned in
the sloop. For some time every movement I made was closely watched. They were
particularly interested in what I ate. One day, after I had been
"boot-topping" the sloop with a composition of coal-tar and other
stuff, and while I was taking my dinner, with the luxury of blackberry jam, I
heard a commotion, and then a yell and a stampede, as the children ran away
yelling: "The captain is eating coal-tar! The captain is eating
coal-tar!" But they soon found out that this same "coal-tar" was
very good to eat, and that I had brought a quantity of it. One day when I was
spreading a sea-biscuit thick with it for a wide-awake youngster, I heard them
whisper, "Chut-chut!" meaning that a shark had bitten my hand, which
they observed was lame. Thenceforth they regarded me as a hero, and I had not
fingers enough for the little bright-eyed tots that wanted to cling to them and
follow me about. Before this, when I held out my hand and said,
"Come!" they would shy off for the nearest house, and say,
"Dingin" ("It's cold"), or "Ujan" ("It's
going to rain"). But it was now accepted that I was not the returned
spirit of the lost black, and I had plenty of friends about the island, rain or
shine.
One day after this, when I tried to haul
the sloop and found her fast in the sand, the children all clapped their hands
and cried that a kpeting (crab) was holding her by the keel; and little Ophelia,
ten or twelve years of age, wrote in the Spray's log-book:
A hundred men with might and main
On the windlass hove, yeo ho!
The cable only came in twain;
The ship she would not go;
For, child, to tell the strangest thing,
The keel was held by a great kpeting.
This being so or not, it was decided that
the Mohammedan priest, Sama the Emim, for a pot of jam, should ask Mohammed to
bless the voyage and make the crab let go the sloop's keel, which it did, if it
had hold, and she floated on the very next tide.
On the 22d of July arrived H.M.S.
Iphegenia, with Mr. Justice Andrew J. Leech and court officers on board, on a
circuit of inspection among the Straits Settlements, of which Keeling Cocos was
a dependency, to hear complaints and try cases by law, if any there were to
try. They found the Spray hauled ashore and tied to a cocoanut-tree. But at the
Keeling Islands there had not been a grievance to complain of since the day
that Hare migrated, for the Rosses have always treated the islanders as their
own family.
If there is a paradise on this earth it is
Keeling. There was not a case for a lawyer, but something had to be done, for
here were two ships in port, a great man-of-war and the Spray. Instead of a
lawsuit a dance was got up, and all the officers who could leave their ship
came ashore. Everybody on the island came, old and young, and the governor's
great hall was filled with people. All that could get on their feet danced,
while the babies lay in heaps in the corners of the room, content to look on.
My little friend Ophelia danced with the judge. For music two fiddles screeched
over and over again the good old tune, "We won't go home till
morning." And we did not.
The women at the Keelings do not do all the
drudgery, as in many places visited on the voyage. It would cheer the heart of
a Fuegian woman to see the Keeling lord of creation up a cocoanut-tree. Besides
cleverly climbing the trees, the men of Keeling build exquisitely modeled
canoes. By far the best workmanship in boat-building I saw on the voyage was
here. Many finished mechanics dwelt under the palms at Keeling, and the hum of
the band-saw and the ring of the anvil were heard from morning till night. The first
Scotch settlers left there the strength of Northern blood and the inheritance
of steady habits. No benevolent society has ever done so much for any islanders
as the noble Captain Ross, and his sons, who have followed his example of
industry and thrift.
Admiral Fitzroy of the Beagle, who visited
here, where many things are reversed, spoke of "these singular though
small islands, where crabs eat cocoanuts, fish eat coral, dogs catch fish, men
ride on turtles, and shells are dangerous man-traps," adding that the
greater part of the sea-fowl roost on branches, and many rats make their nests
in the tops of palm-trees.
My vessel being refitted, I decided to load
her with the famous mammoth tridaena shell of Keeling, found in the bayou near
by. And right here, within sight of the village, I came near losing "the
crew of the Spray"—not from putting my foot in a man-trap shell, however,
but from carelessly neglecting to look after the details of a trip across the
harbor in a boat. I had sailed over oceans; I have since completed a course
over them all, and sailed round the whole world without so nearly meeting a
fatality as on that trip across a lagoon, where I trusted all to some one else,
and he, weak mortal that he was, perhaps trusted all to me. However that may
be, I found myself with a thoughtless African negro in a rickety bateau that
was fitted with a rotten sail, and this blew away in mid-channel in a squall,
that sent us drifting helplessly to sea, where we should have been
incontinently lost. With the whole ocean before us to leeward, I was dismayed
to see, while we drifted, that there was not a paddle or an oar in the boat!
There was an anchor, to be sure, but not enough rope to tie a cat, and we were
already in deep water. By great good fortune, however, there was a pole. Plying
this as a paddle with the utmost energy, and by the merest accidental flaw in
the wind to favor us, the trap of a boat was worked into shoal water, where we
could touch bottom and push her ashore. With Africa, the nearest coast to
leeward, three thousand miles away, with not so much as a drop of water in the
boat, and a lean and hungry negro—well, cast the lot
as one might, the crew of the Spray in a little while would have been hard to
find. It is needless to say that I took no more such chances. The tridacna were
afterward procured in a safe boat, thirty of them taking the place of three
tons of cement ballast, which I threw overboard to make room and give buoyancy.
Captain Slocum drifting out to sea. Captain
Slocum drifting out to sea.
On August 22, the kpeting, or whatever else
it was that held the sloop in the islands, let go its hold, and she swung out
to sea under all sail, heading again for home. Mounting one or two heavy
rollers on the fringe of the atoll, she cleared the flashing reefs. Long before
dark Keeling Cocos, with its thousand souls, as sinless in their lives as
perhaps it is possible for frail mortals to be, was left out of sight, astern.
Out of sight, I say, except in my strongest affection.
The sea was rugged, and the Spray washed
heavily when hauled on the wind, which course I took for the island of
Rodriguez, and which brought the sea abeam. The true course for the island was
west by south, one quarter south, and the distance was nineteen hundred miles; but
I steered considerably to the windward of that to allow for the heave of the
sea and other leeward effects. My sloop on this course ran under reefed sails
for days together. I naturally tired of the never-ending motion of the sea,
and, above all, of the wetting I got whenever I showed myself on deck. Under
these heavy weather conditions the Spray seemed to lag behind on her course; at
least, I attributed to these conditions a discrepancy in the log, which by the
fifteenth day out from Keeling amounted to one hundred and fifty miles between
the rotator and the mental calculations I had kept of what she should have
gone, and so I kept an eye lifting for land. I could see about sundown this day
a bunch of clouds that stood in one spot, right ahead, while the other clouds
floated on; this was a sign of something. By midnight, as the sloop sailed on,
a black object appeared where I had seen the resting clouds. It was still a
long way off, but there could be no mistaking this: it was the high island of
Rodriguez. I hauled in the patent log, which I was now towing more from habit
than from necessity, for I had learned the Spray and her ways long before this.
If one thing was clearer than another in her voyage, it was that she could be
trusted to come out right and in safety, though at the same time I always stood
ready to give her the benefit of even the least doubt. The officers who are
over-sure, and "know it all like a book," are the ones, I have
observed, who wreck the most ships and lose the most lives. The cause of the
discrepancy in the log was one often met with, namely, coming in contact with
some large fish; two out of the four blades of the rotator were crushed or
bent, the work probably of a shark. Being sure of the sloop's position, I lay
down to rest and to think, and I felt better for it. By daylight the island was
abeam, about three miles away. It wore a hard, weather-beaten appearance there,
all alone, far out in the Indian Ocean, like land adrift. The windward side was
uninviting, but there was a good port to leeward, and I hauled in now close on
the wind for that. A pilot came out to take me into the inner harbor, which was
reached through a narrow channel among coral reefs.
It was a curious thing that at all of the
islands some reality was insisted on as unreal, while improbabilities were
clothed as hard facts; and so it happened here that the good abbe, a few days
before, had been telling his people about the coming of Antichrist, and when
they saw the Spray sail into the harbor, all feather-white before a gale of
wind, and run all standing upon the beach, and with only one man aboard, they
cried, "May the Lord help us, it is he, and he has come in a boat!"
which I say would have been the most improbable way of his coming. Nevertheless,
the news went flying through the place. The governor of the island, Mr.
Roberts, came down immediately to see what it was all about, for the little
town was in a great commotion. One elderly woman, when she heard of my advent,
made for her house and locked herself in. When she heard that I was actually
coming up the street she barricaded her doors, and did not come out while I was
on the island, a period of eight days. Governor Roberts and his family did not
share the fears of their people, but came on board at the jetty, where the
sloop was berthed, and their example induced others to come also. The
governor's young boys took charge of the Spray's dinghy at once, and my visit
cost his Excellency, besides great hospitality to me, the building of a boat
for them like the one belonging to the Spray.
My first day at this Land of Promise was to
me like a fairy-tale. For many days I had studied the charts and counted the
time of my arrival at this spot, as one might his entrance to the Islands of
the Blessed, looking upon it as the terminus of the last long run, made irksome
by the want of many things with which, from this time on, I could keep well
supplied. And behold, here was the sloop, arrived, and made securely fast to a
pier in Rodriguez. On the first evening ashore, in the land of napkins and cut
glass, I saw before me still the ghosts of hempen towels and of mugs with
handles knocked off. Instead of tossing on the sea, however, as I might have
been, here was I in a bright hall, surrounded by sparkling wit, and dining with
the governor of the island! "Aladdin," I cried, "where is your
lamp? My fisherman's lantern, which I got at Gloucester, has shown me better
things than your smoky old burner ever revealed."
The second day in port was spent in
receiving visitors. Mrs. Roberts and her children came first to "shake
hands," they said, "with the Spray." No one was now afraid to
come on board except the poor old woman, who still maintained that the Spray
had Antichrist in the hold, if, indeed, he had not already gone ashore. The
governor entertained that evening, and kindly invited the "destroyer of
the world" to speak for himself. This he did, elaborating most effusively
on the dangers of the sea (which, after the manner of many of our frailest
mortals, he would have had smooth had he made it); also by contrivances of
light and darkness he exhibited on the wall pictures of the places and
countries visited on the voyage (nothing like the countries, however, that he
would have made), and of the people seen, savage and other, frequently
groaning, "Wicked world! Wicked world!" When this was finished his
Excellency the governor, speaking words of thankfulness, distributed pieces of
gold.
On the following day I accompanied his
Excellency and family on a visit to San Gabriel, which was up the country among
the hills. The good abbe of San Gabriel entertained us all royally at the
convent, and we remained his guests until the following day. As I was leaving
his place, the abbe said, "Captain, I embrace you, and of whatever religion
you may be, my wish is that you succeed in making your voyage, and that our
Saviour the Christ be always with you!" To this good man's words I could
only say, "My dear abbe, had all religionists been so liberal there would
have been less bloodshed in the world."
At Rodriguez one may now find every
convenience for filling pure and wholesome water in any quantity, Governor
Roberts having built a reservoir in the hills, above the village, and laid
pipes to the jetty, where, at the time of my visit, there were five and a half
feet at high tide. In former years well-water was used, and more or less
sickness occurred from it. Beef may be had in any quantity on the island, and
at a moderate price. Sweet potatoes were plentiful and cheap; the large sack of
them that I bought there for about four shillings kept unusually well. I simply
stored them in the sloop's dry hold. Of fruits, pomegranates were most
plentiful; for two shillings I obtained a large sack of them, as many as a
donkey could pack from the orchard, which, by the way, was planted by nature
herself.
CHAPTER XVII
A clean bill of health at Mauritius—Sailing
the voyage over again in the opera-house—A newly discovered plant named in
honor of the Spray's skipper—A party of young ladies out for a sail—A bivouac
on deck—A warm reception at Durban—A friendly cross-examination by Henry M.
Stanley—Three wise Boers seek proof of the flatness of the earth—Leaving South
Africa.
The
Spray at Mauritius. The Spray at Mauritius.
On the 16th of September, after eight restful
days at Rodriguez, the mid-ocean land of plenty, I set sail, and on the 19th
arrived at Mauritius, anchoring at quarantine about noon. The sloop was towed
in later on the same day by the doctor's launch, after he was satisfied that I
had mustered all the crew for inspection. Of this he seemed in doubt until he
examined the papers, which called for a crew of one all told from port to port,
throughout the voyage. Then finding that I had been well enough to come thus
far alone, he gave me pratique without further ado. There was still another
official visit for the Spray to pass farther in the harbor. The governor of
Rodriguez, who had most kindly given me, besides a regular mail, private
letters of introduction to friends, told me I should meet, first of all, Mr.
Jenkins of the postal service, a good man. "How do you do, Mr.
Jenkins?" cried I, as his boat swung alongside. "You don't know
me," he said. "Why not?" I replied. "From where is the
sloop?" "From around the world," I again replied, very solemnly.
"And alone?" "Yes; why not?" "And you know me?"
"Three thousand years ago," cried I, "when you and I had a
warmer job than we have now" (even this was hot). "You were then
Jenkinson, but if you have changed your name I don't blame you for that."
Mr. Jenkins, forbearing soul, entered into the spirit of the jest, which served
the Spray a good turn, for on the strength of this tale it got out that if any
one should go on board after dark the devil would get him at once. And so I
could leave the Spray without the fear of her being robbed at night. The cabin,
to be sure, was broken into, but it was done in daylight, and the thieves got
no more than a box of smoked herrings before "Tom" Ledson, one of the
port officials, caught them red-handed, as it were, and sent them to jail. This
was discouraging to pilferers, for they feared Ledson more than they feared
Satan himself. Even Mamode Hajee Ayoob, who was the day-watchman on board,—till
an empty box fell over in the cabin and frightened him out of his wits,—could not
be hired to watch nights, or even till the sun went down. "Sahib," he
cried, "there is no need of it," and what he said was perfectly true.
At Mauritius, where I drew a long breath,
the Spray rested her wings, it being the season of fine weather. The hardships
of the voyage, if there had been any, were now computed by officers of
experience as nine tenths finished, and yet somehow I could not forget that the
United States was still a long way off.
The kind people of Mauritius, to make me
richer and happier, rigged up the opera-house, which they had named the
"Ship Pantai."[F] All decks and no bottom was this ship, but she was
as stiff as a church. They gave me free use of it while I talked over the
Spray's adventures. His Honor the mayor introduced me to his Excellency the
governor from the poop-deck of the Pantai. In this way I was also introduced
again to our good consul, General John P. Campbell, who had already introduced
me to his Excellency, I was becoming well acquainted, and was in for it now to
sail the voyage over again. How I got through the story I hardly know. It was a
hot night, and I could have choked the tailor who made the coat I wore for this
occasion. The kind governor saw that I had done my part trying to rig like a
man ashore, and he invited me to Government House at Reduit, where I found
myself among friends.
[F] Guinea-hen
It was winter still off stormy Cape of Good
Hope, but the storms might whistle there. I determined to see it out in milder
Mauritius, visiting Rose Hill, Curipepe, and other places on the island. I
spent a day with the elder Mr. Roberts, father of Governor Roberts of
Rodriguez, and with his friends the Very Reverend Fathers O'Loughlin and
McCarthy. Returning to the Spray by way of the great flower conservatory near
Moka, the proprietor, having only that morning discovered a new and hardy
plant, to my great honor named it "Slocum," which he said Latinized it
at once, saving him some trouble on the twist of a word; and the good botanist
seemed pleased that I had come. How different things are in different
countries! In Boston, Massachusetts, at that time, a gentleman, so I was told,
paid thirty thousand dollars to have a flower named after his wife, and it was
not a big flower either, while "Slocum," which came without the
asking, was bigger than a mangel-wurzel!
I was royally entertained at Moka, as well
as at Reduit and other places—once by seven young ladies, to whom I spoke of my
inability to return their hospitality except in my own poor way of taking them
on a sail in the sloop. "The very thing! The very thing!" they all
cried. "Then please name the time," I said, as meek as Moses.
"To-morrow!" they all cried. "And, aunty, we may go, mayn't we,
and we'll be real good for a whole week afterward, aunty! Say yes, aunty
dear!" All this after saying "To-morrow"; for girls in Mauritius
are, after all, the same as our girls in America; and their dear aunt said "Me,
too" about the same as any really good aunt might say in my own country.
I was then in a quandary, it having
recurred to me that on the very "to-morrow" I was to dine with the
harbor-master, Captain Wilson. However, I said to myself, "The Spray will run
out quickly into rough seas; these young ladies will have mal de mer and a good
time, and I'll get in early enough to be at the dinner, after all." But
not a bit of it. We sailed almost out of sight of Mauritius, and they just
stood up and laughed at seas tumbling aboard, while I was at the helm making
the worst weather of it I could, and spinning yarns to the aunt about
sea-serpents and whales. But she, dear lady, when I had finished with stories
of monsters, only hinted at a basket of provisions they had brought along,
enough to last a week, for I had told them about my wretched steward.
The more the Spray tried to make these
young ladies seasick, the more they all clapped their hands and said, "How
lovely it is!" and "How beautifully she skims over the sea!" and
"How beautiful our island appears from the distance!" and they still
cried, "Go on!" We were fifteen miles or more at sea before they
ceased the eager cry, "Go on!" Then the sloop swung round, I still
hoping to be back to Port Louis in time to keep my appointment. The Spray
reached the island quickly, and flew along the coast fast enough; but I made a
mistake in steering along the coast on the way home, for as we came abreast of
Tombo Bay it enchanted my crew. "Oh, let's anchor here!" they cried.
To this no sailor in the world would have said nay. The sloop came to anchor,
ten minutes later, as they wished, and a young man on the cliff abreast, waving
his hat, cried, "Vive la Spray!" My passengers said, "Aunty,
mayn't we have a swim in the surf along the shore?" Just then the
harbor-master's launch hove in sight, coming out to meet us; but it was too
late to get the sloop into Port Louis that night. The launch was in time,
however, to land my fair crew for a swim; but they were determined not to desert
the ship. Meanwhile I prepared a roof for the night on deck with the sails, and
a Bengali man-servant arranged the evening meal. That night the Spray rode in
Tombo Bay with her precious freight. Next morning bright and early, even before
the stars were gone, I awoke to hear praying on deck.
The port officers' launch reappeared later
in the morning, this time with Captain Wilson himself on board, to try his luck
in getting the Spray into port, for he had heard of our predicament. It was
worth something to hear a friend tell afterward how earnestly the good
harbor-master of Mauritius said, "I'll find the Spray and I'll get her
into port." A merry crew he discovered on her. They could hoist sails like
old tars, and could trim them, too. They could tell all about the ship's
"hoods," and one should have seen them clap a bonnet on the jib. Like
the deepest of deep-water sailors, they could heave the lead, and—as I hope to
see Mauritius again!—any of them could have put the sloop in stays. No ship
ever had a fairer crew.
The voyage was the event of Port Louis;
such a thing as young ladies sailing about the harbor, even, was almost unheard
of before.
While at Mauritius the Spray was tendered
the use of the military dock free of charge, and was thoroughly refitted by the
port authorities. My sincere gratitude is also due other friends for many
things needful for the voyage put on board, including bags of sugar from some
of the famous old plantations.
The favorable season now set in, and thus
well equipped, on the 26th of October, the Spray put to sea. As I sailed before
a light wind the island receded slowly, and on the following day I could still
see the Puce Mountain near Moka. The Spray arrived next day off Galets,
Reunion, and a pilot came out and spoke her. I handed him a Mauritius paper and
continued on my voyage; for rollers were running heavily at the time, and it
was not practicable to make a landing. From Reunion I shaped a course direct
for Cape St. Mary, Madagascar.
The sloop was now drawing near the limits
of the trade-wind, and the strong breeze that had carried her with free sheets
the many thousands of miles from Sandy Cape, Australia, fell lighter each day
until October 30, when it was altogether calm, and a motionless sea held her in
a hushed world. I furled the sails at evening, sat down on deck, and enjoyed
the vast stillness of the night.
October 31 a light east-northeast breeze
sprang up, and the sloop passed Cape St. Mary about noon. On the 6th, 7th, 8th,
and 9th of November, in the Mozambique Channel, she experienced a hard gale of
wind from the southwest. Here the Spray suffered as much as she did anywhere,
except off Cape Horn. The thunder and lightning preceding this gale were very
heavy. From this point until the sloop arrived off the coast of Africa, she
encountered a succession of gales of wind, which drove her about in many
directions, but on the 17th of November she arrived at Port Natal.
This delightful place is the commercial
center of the "Garden Colony," Durban itself, the city, being the
continuation of a garden. The signalman from the bluff station reported the
Spray fifteen miles off. The wind was freshening, and when she was within eight
miles he said: "The Spray is shortening sail; the mainsail was reefed and
set in ten minutes. One man is doing all the work."
This item of news was printed three minutes
later in a Durban morning journal, which was handed to me when I arrived in
port. I could not verify the time it had taken to reef the sail, for, as I have
already said, the minute-hand of my timepiece was gone. I only knew that I
reefed as quickly as I could.
The same paper, commenting on the voyage,
said: "Judging from the stormy weather which has prevailed off this coast
during the past few weeks, the Spray must have had a very stormy voyage from
Mauritius to Natal." Doubtless the weather would have been called stormy
by sailors in any ship, but it caused the Spray no more inconvenience than the
delay natural to head winds generally.
The question of how I sailed the sloop
alone, often asked, is best answered, perhaps, by a Durban newspaper. I would
shrink from repeating the editor's words but for the reason that undue
estimates have been made of the amount of skill and energy required to sail a
sloop of even the Spray's small tonnage. I heard a man who called himself a
sailor say that "it would require three men to do what it was
claimed" that I did alone, and what I found perfectly easy to do over and
over again; and I have heard that others made similar nonsensical remarks,
adding that I would work myself to death. But here is what the Durban paper said:
[Citation: As briefly noted yesterday, the
Spray, with a crew of one man, arrived at this port yesterday afternoon on her
cruise round the world. The Spray made quite an auspicious entrance to Natal.
Her commander sailed his craft right up the channel past the main wharf, and
dropped his anchor near the old Forerunner in the creek, before any one had a
chance to get on board. The Spray was naturally an object of great curiosity to
the Point people, and her arrival was witnessed by a large crowd. The skilful manner
in which Captain Slocum steered his craft about the vessels which were
occupying the waterway was a treat to witness.]
The Spray was not sailing in among
greenhorns when she came to Natal. When she arrived off the port the
pilot-ship, a fine, able steam-tug, came out to meet her, and led the way in
across the bar, for it was blowing a smart gale and was too rough for the sloop
to be towed with safety. The trick of going in I learned by watching the
steamer; it was simply to keep on the windward side of the channel and take the
combers end on.
Captain Joshua Slocum. Captain Joshua Slocum.
I found that Durban supported two
yacht-clubs, both of them full of enterprise. I met all the members of both
clubs, and sailed in the crack yacht Florence of the Royal Natal, with Captain
Spradbrow and the Right Honorable Harry Escombe, premier of the colony. The
yacht's center-board plowed furrows through the mud-banks, which, according to
Mr. Escombe, Spradbrow afterward planted with potatoes. The Florence, however,
won races while she tilled the skipper's land. After our sail on the Florence
Mr. Escombe offered to sail the Spray round the Cape of Good Hope for me, and
hinted at his famous cribbage-board to while away the hours. Spradbrow, in
retort, warned me of it. Said he, "You would be played out of the sloop
before you could round the cape." By others it was not thought probable
that the premier of Natal would play cribbage off the Cape of Good Hope to win
even the Spray.
It was a matter of no small pride to me in
South Africa to find that American humor was never at a discount, and one of
the best American stories I ever heard was told by the premier. At Hotel Royal
one day, dining with Colonel Saunderson, M. P., his son, and Lieutenant
Tipping, I met Mr. Stanley. The great explorer was just from Pretoria, and had
already as good as flayed President Krüger with his trenchant pen. But that did
not signify, for everybody has a whack at Oom Paul, and no one in the world
seems to stand the joke better than he, not even the Sultan of Turkey himself.
The colonel introduced me to the explorer, and I hauled close to the wind, to
go slow, for Mr. Stanley was a nautical man once himself,—on the Nyanza, I
think,—and of course my desire was to appear in the best light before a man of
his experience. He looked me over carefully, and said, "What an example of
patience!" "Patience is all that is required," I ventured to
reply. He then asked if my vessel had water-tight compartments. I explained
that she was all water-tight and all compartment. "What if she should
strike a rock?" he asked. "Compartments would not save her if she
should hit the rocks lying along her course," said I; adding, "she
must be kept away from the rocks." After a considerable pause Mr. Stanley
asked, "What if a swordfish should pierce her hull with its sword?"
Of course I had thought of that as one of the dangers of the sea, and also of
the chance of being struck by lightning. In the case of the swordfish, I
ventured to say that "the first thing would be to secure the sword."
The colonel invited me to dine with the party on the following day, that we
might go further into this matter, and so I had the pleasure of meeting Mr.
Stanley a second time, but got no more hints in navigation from the famous explorer.
It sounds odd to hear scholars and
statesmen say the world is flat; but it is a fact that three Boers favored by
the opinion of President Krüger prepared a work to support that contention.
While I was at Durban they came from Pretoria to obtain data from me, and they
seemed annoyed when I told them that they could not prove it by my experience.
With the advice to call up some ghost of the dark ages for research, I went
ashore, and left these three wise men poring over the Spray's track on a chart
of the world, which, however, proved nothing to them, for it was on Mercator's
projection, and behold, it was "flat." The next morning I met one of
the party in a clergyman's garb, carrying a large Bible, not different from the
one I had read. He tackled me, saying, "If you respect the Word of God,
you must admit that the world is flat." "If the Word of God stands on
a flat world—" I began. "What!" cried he, losing himself in a
passion, and making as if he would run me through with an assagai.
"What!" he shouted in astonishment and rage, while I jumped aside to
dodge the imaginary weapon. Had this good but misguided fanatic been armed with
a real weapon, the crew of the Spray would have died a martyr there and then.
The next day, seeing him across the street, I bowed and made curves with my
hands. He responded with a level, swimming movement of his hands, meaning
"the world is flat." A pamphlet by these Transvaal geographers, made
up of arguments from sources high and low to prove their theory, was mailed to
me before I sailed from Africa on my last stretch around the globe.
While I feebly portray the ignorance of
these learned men, I have great admiration for their physical manhood. Much
that I saw first and last of the Transvaal and the Boers was admirable. It is well
known that they are the hardest of fighters, and as generous to the fallen as
they are brave before the foe. Real stubborn bigotry with them is only found
among old fogies, and will die a natural death, and that, too, perhaps long
before we ourselves are entirely free from bigotry. Education in the Transvaal
is by no means neglected, English as well as Dutch being taught to all that can
afford both; but the tariff duty on English school-books is heavy, and from
necessity the poorer people stick to the Transvaal Dutch and their flat world,
just as in Samoa and other islands a mistaken policy has kept the natives down
to Kanaka.
I visited many public schools at Durban,
and had the pleasure of meeting many bright children.
But all fine things must end, and December
14, 1897, the "crew" of the Spray, after having a fine time in Natal,
swung the sloop's dinghy in on deck, and sailed with a morning land-wind, which
carried her clear of the bar, and again she was "off on her alone,"
as they say in Australia.
CHAPTER XVIII
Rounding the "Cape of Storms" in
olden time—A rough Christmas—The Spray ties up for a three months' rest at Cape
Town—A railway trip to the Transvaal—President Krüger's odd definition of the
Spray's voyage—His terse sayings—Distinguished guests on the Spray—Cocoanut
fiber as a padlock—Courtesies from the admiral of the Queen's navy—Off for St.
Helena—Land in sight.
The Cape of Good Hope was now the most
prominent point to pass. From Table Bay I could count on the aid of brisk
trades, and then the Spray would soon be at home. On the first day out from
Durban it fell calm, and I sat thinking about these things and the end of the
voyage. The distance to Table Bay, where I intended to call, was about eight
hundred miles over what might prove a rough sea. The early Portuguese
navigators, endowed with patience, were more than sixty-nine years struggling
to round this cape before they got as far as Algoa Bay, and there the crew
mutinied. They landed on a small island, now called Santa Cruz, where they
devoutly set up the cross, and swore they would cut the captain's throat if he
attempted to sail farther. Beyond this they thought was the edge of the world,
which they too believed was flat; and fearing that their ship would sail over
the brink of it, they compelled Captain Diaz, their commander, to retrace his
course, all being only too glad to get home. A year later, we are told, Vasco
da Gama sailed successfully round the "Cape of Storms," as the Cape
of Good Hope was then called, and discovered Natal on Christmas or Natal day;
hence the name. From this point the way to India was easy.
Gales of wind sweeping round the cape even
now were frequent enough, one occurring, on an average, every thirty-six hours;
but one gale was much the same as another, with no more serious result than to
blow the Spray along on her course when it was fair, or to blow her back
somewhat when it was ahead. On Christmas, 1897, I came to the pitch of the
cape. On this day the Spray was trying to stand on her head, and she gave me
every reason to believe that she would accomplish the feat before night. She
began very early in the morning to pitch and toss about in a most unusual
manner, and I have to record that, while I was at the end of the bowsprit
reefing the jib, she ducked me under water three times for a Christmas box. I
got wet and did not like it a bit: never in any other sea was I put under more
than once in the same short space of time, say three minutes. A large English
steamer passing ran up the signal, "Wishing you a Merry Christmas." I
think the captain was a humorist; his own ship was throwing her propeller out
of water.
Two days later, the Spray, having recovered
the distance lost in the gale, passed Cape Agulhas in company with the
steamship Scotsman, now with a fair wind. The keeper of the light on Agulhas
exchanged signals with the Spray as she passed, and afterward wrote me at New
York congratulations on the completion of the voyage. He seemed to think the
incident of two ships of so widely different types passing his cape together
worthy of a place on canvas, and he went about having the picture made. So I
gathered from his letter. At lonely stations like this hearts grow responsive
and sympathetic, and even poetic. This feeling was shown toward the Spray along
many a rugged coast, and reading many a kind signal thrown out to her gave one
a grateful feeling for all the world.
One more gale of wind came down upon the
Spray from the west after she passed Cape Agulhas, but that one she dodged by
getting into Simons Bay. When it moderated she beat around the Cape of Good
Hope, where they say the Flying Dutchman is still sailing. The voyage then
seemed as good as finished; from this time on I knew that all, or nearly all,
would be plain sailing.
Here I crossed the dividing-line of
weather. To the north it was clear and settled, while south it was humid and
squally, with, often enough, as I have said, a treacherous gale. From the
recent hard weather the Spray ran into a calm under Table Mountain, where she
lay quietly till the generous sun rose over the land and drew a breeze in from
the sea.
The steam-tug Alert, then out looking for
ships, came to the Spray off the Lion's Rump, and in lieu of a larger ship
towed her into port. The sea being smooth, she came to anchor in the bay off
the city of Cape Town, where she remained a day, simply to rest clear of the
bustle of commerce. The good harbor-master sent his steam-launch to bring the
sloop to a berth in dock at once, but I preferred to remain for one day alone,
in the quiet of a smooth sea, enjoying the retrospect of the passage of the two
great capes. On the following morning the Spray sailed into the Alfred
Dry-docks, where she remained for about three months in the care of the port
authorities, while I traveled the country over from Simons Town to Pretoria,
being accorded by the colonial government a free railroad pass over all the
land.
The trip to Kimberley, Johannesburg, and
Pretoria was a pleasant one. At the last-named place I met Mr. Krüger, the
Transvaal president. His Excellency received me cordially enough; but my friend
Judge Beyers, the gentleman who presented me, by mentioning that I was on a
voyage around the world, unwittingly gave great offense to the venerable
statesman, which we both regretted deeply. Mr. Krüger corrected the judge
rather sharply, reminding him that the world is flat. "You don't mean round
the world," said the president; "it is impossible! You mean in the
world. Impossible!" he said, "impossible!" and not another word
did he utter either to the judge or to me. The judge looked at me and I looked
at the judge, who should have known his ground, so to speak, and Mr. Krüger
glowered at us both. My friend the judge seemed embarrassed, but I was
delighted; the incident pleased me more than anything else that could have
happened. It was a nugget of information quarried out of Oom Paul, some of whose
sayings are famous. Of the English he said, "They took first my coat and
then my trousers." He also said, "Dynamite is the corner-stone of the
South African Republic." Only unthinking people call President Krüger
dull.
Cartoon printed in the Cape Town "Owl"
of March 5,
1898, in connection with an item about
Captain Slocum's trip to
Pretoria. Cartoon printed in the Cape Town
"Owl" of March 5, 1898, in connection with an item about Captain
Slocum's trip to Pretoria.
Soon after my arrival at the cape, Mr. Krüger's
friend Colonel Saunderson,[G] who had arrived from Durban some time before,
invited me to Newlands Vineyard, where I met many agreeable people. His
Excellency Sir Alfred Milner, the governor, found time to come aboard with a
party. The governor, after making a survey of the deck, found a seat on a box
in my cabin; Lady Muriel sat on a keg, and Lady Saunderson sat by the skipper
at the wheel, while the colonel, with his kodak, away in the dinghy, took snap
shots of the sloop and her distinguished visitors. Dr. David Gill, astronomer
royal, who was of the party, invited me the next day to the famous Cape
Observatory. An hour with Dr. Gill was an hour among the stars. His discoveries
in stellar photography are well known. He showed me the great astronomical
clock of the observatory, and I showed him the tin clock on the Spray, and we
went over the subject of standard time at sea, and how it was found from the
deck of the little sloop without the aid of a clock of any kind. Later it was
advertised that Dr. Gill would preside at a talk about the voyage of the Spray:
that alone secured for me a full house. The hall was packed, and many were not
able to get in. This success brought me sufficient money for all my needs in
port and for the homeward voyage.
[G] Colonel Saunderson was Mr. Krüger's
very best friend, inasmuch as he advised the president to avast mounting guns.
After visiting Kimberley and Pretoria, and
finding the Spray all right in the docks, I returned to Worcester and
Wellington, towns famous for colleges and seminaries, passed coming in, still
traveling as the guest of the colony. The ladies of all these institutions of
learning wished to know how one might sail round the world alone, which I
thought augured of sailing-mistresses in the future instead of sailing-masters.
It will come to that yet if we men-folk keep on saying we "can't."
On the plains of Africa I passed through
hundreds of miles of rich but still barren land, save for scrub-bushes, on
which herds of sheep were browsing. The bushes grew about the length of a sheep
apart, and they, I thought, were rather long of body; but there was still room
for all. My longing for a foothold on land seized upon me here, where so much
of it lay waste; but instead of remaining to plant forests and reclaim
vegetation, I returned again to the Spray at the Alfred Docks, where I found
her waiting for me, with everything in order, exactly as I had left her.
I have often been asked how it was that my
vessel and all appurtenances were not stolen in the various ports where I left
her for days together without a watchman in charge. This is just how it was:
The Spray seldom fell among thieves. At the Keeling Islands, at Rodriguez, and
at many such places, a wisp of cocoanut fiber in the door-latch, to indicate
that the owner was away, secured the goods against even a longing glance. But
when I came to a great island nearer home, stout locks were needed; the first
night in port things which I had always left uncovered disappeared, as if the
deck on which they were stowed had been swept by a sea.
Captain Slocum, Sir Alfred Milner (with the
tall hat),
and Colonel Saunderson, M. P., on the bow
of the Spray at Cape
Town. Captain Slocum, Sir Alfred Milner
(with the tall hat), and Colonel Saunderson, M. P., on the bow of the Spray at
Cape Town.
A pleasant visit from Admiral Sir Harry
Rawson of the Royal Navy and his family brought to an end the Spray's social
relations with the Cape of Good Hope. The admiral, then commanding the South
African Squadron, and now in command of the great Channel fleet, evinced the
greatest interest in the diminutive Spray and her behavior off Cape Horn, where
he was not an entire stranger. I have to admit that I was delighted with the
trend of Admiral Rawson's questions, and that I profited by some of his
suggestions, notwithstanding the wide difference in our respective commands.
On March 26, 1898, the Spray sailed from
South Africa, the land of distances and pure air, where she had spent a
pleasant and profitable time. The steam-tug Tigre towed her to sea from her wonted
berth at the Alfred Docks, giving her a good offing. The light morning breeze,
which scantily filled her sails when the tug let go the tow-line, soon died
away altogether, and left her riding over a heavy swell, in full view of Table
Mountain and the high peaks of the Cape of Good Hope. For a while the grand
scenery served to relieve the monotony. One of the old circumnavigators (Sir
Francis Drake, I think), when he first saw this magnificent pile, sang,
"'T is the fairest thing and the grandest cape I've seen in the whole
circumference of the earth."
The view was certainly fine, but one has no
wish to linger long to look in a calm at anything, and I was glad to note,
finally, the short heaving sea, precursor of the wind which followed on the
second day. Seals playing about the Spray all day, before the breeze came,
looked with large eyes when, at evening, she sat no longer like a lazy bird
with folded wings. They parted company now, and the Spray soon sailed the
highest peaks of the mountains out of sight, and the world changed from a mere
panoramic view to the light of a homeward-bound voyage. Porpoises and dolphins,
and such other fishes as did not mind making a hundred and fifty miles a day,
were her companions now for several days. The wind was from the southeast; this
suited the Spray well, and she ran along steadily at her best speed, while I
dipped into the new books given me at the cape, reading day and night. March 30
was for me a fast-day in honor of them. I read on, oblivious of hunger or wind
or sea, thinking that all was going well, when suddenly a comber rolled over
the stern and slopped saucily into the cabin, wetting the very book I was
reading. Evidently it was time to put in a reef, that she might not wallow on
her course.
"Reading day and night."
"Reading day and night."
March 31 the fresh southeast wind had come
to stay. The Spray was running under a single-reefed mainsail, a whole jib, and
a flying-jib besides, set on the Vailima bamboo, while I was reading
Stevenson's delightful "Inland Voyage." The sloop was again doing her
work smoothly, hardly rolling at all, but just leaping along among the white
horses, a thousand gamboling porpoises keeping her company on all sides. She
was again among her old friends the flying-fish, interesting denizens of the
sea. Shooting out of the waves like arrows, and with outstretched wings, they
sailed on the wind in graceful curves; then falling till again they touched the
crest of the waves to wet their delicate wings and renew the flight. They made
merry the livelong day. One of the joyful sights on the ocean of a bright day
is the continual flight of these interesting fish.
One could not be lonely in a sea like this.
Moreover, the reading of delightful adventures enhanced the scene. I was now in
the Spray and on the Oise in the Arethusa at one and the same time. And so the
Spray reeled off the miles, showing a good run every day till April 11, which
came almost before I knew it. Very early that morning I was awakened by that
rare bird, the booby, with its harsh quack, which I recognized at once as a
call to go on deck; it was as much as to say, "Skipper, there's land in
sight." I tumbled out quickly, and sure enough, away ahead in the dim
twilight, about twenty miles off, was St. Helena.
My first impulse was to call out, "Oh,
what a speck in the sea!" It is in reality nine miles in length and two
thousand eight hundred and twenty-three feet in height. I reached for a bottle
of port-wine out of the locker, and took a long pull from it to the health of
my invisible helmsman—the pilot of the Pinta.
CHAPTER XIX
In the isle of Napoleon's exile—Two
lectures—A guest in the ghost-room at Plantation House—An excursion to historic
Longwood—Coffee in the husk, and a goat to shell it—The Spray's ill luck with animals—A
prejudice against small dogs—A rat, the Boston spider, and the cannibal
cricket—Ascension Island.
It was about noon when the Spray came to
anchor off Jamestown, and "all hands" at once went ashore to pay
respects to his Excellency the governor of the island, Sir R. A. Sterndale. His
Excellency, when I landed, remarked that it was not often, nowadays, that a
circumnavigator came his way, and he cordially welcomed me, and arranged that I
should tell about the voyage, first at Garden Hall to the people of Jamestown,
and then at Plantation House—the governor's residence, which is in the hills a
mile or two back—to his Excellency and the officers of the garrison and their
friends. Mr. Poole, our worthy consul, introduced me at the castle, and in the course
of his remarks asserted that the sea-serpent was a Yankee.
Most royally was the crew of the Spray
entertained by the governor. I remained at Plantation House a couple of days,
and one of the rooms in the mansion, called the "west room," being
haunted, the butler, by command of his Excellency, put me up in that—like a
prince. Indeed, to make sure that no mistake had been made, his Excellency came
later to see that I was in the right room, and to tell me all about the ghosts
he had seen or heard of. He had discovered all but one, and wishing me pleasant
dreams, he hoped I might have the honor of a visit from the unknown one of the
west room. For the rest of the chilly night I kept the candle burning, and
often looked from under the blankets, thinking that maybe I should meet the
great Napoleon face to face; but I saw only furniture, and the horseshoe that
was nailed over the door opposite my bed.
St. Helena has been an island of
tragedies—tragedies that have been lost sight of in wailing over the Corsican.
On the second day of my visit the governor took me by carriage-road through the
turns over the island. At one point of our journey the road, in winding around
spurs and ravines, formed a perfect W within the distance of a few rods. The
roads, though tortuous and steep, were fairly good, and I was struck with the
amount of labor it must have cost to build them. The air on the heights was
cool and bracing. It is said that, since hanging for trivial offenses went out
of fashion, no one has died there, except from falling over the cliffs in old
age, or from being crushed by stones rolling on them from the steep mountains!
Witches at one time were persistent at St. Helena, as with us in America in the
days of Cotton Mather. At the present day crime is rare in the island. While I
was there, Governor Sterndale, in token of the fact that not one criminal case
had come to court within the year, was presented with a pair of white gloves by
the officers of justice.
Returning from the governor's house to
Jamestown, I drove with Mr. Clark, a countryman of mine, to
"Longwood," the home of Napoleon. M. Morilleau, French consular agent
in charge, keeps the place respectable and the buildings in good repair. His
family at Longwood, consisting of wife and grown daughters, are natives of
courtly and refined manners, and spend here days, months, and years of
contentment, though they have never seen the world beyond the horizon of St.
Helena.
On the 20th of April the Spray was again
ready for sea. Before going on board I took luncheon with the governor and his
family at the castle. Lady Sterndale had sent a large fruit-cake, early in the
morning, from Plantation House, to be taken along on the voyage. It was a great
high-decker, and I ate sparingly of it, as I thought, but it did not keep as I
had hoped it would. I ate the last of it along with my first cup of coffee at
Antigua, West Indies, which, after all, was quite a record. The one my own
sister made me at the little island in the Bay of Fundy, at the first of the
voyage, kept about the same length of time, namely, forty-two days.
After luncheon a royal mail was made up for
Ascension, the island next on my way. Then Mr. Poole and his daughter paid the
Spray a farewell visit, bringing me a basket of fruit. It was late in the
evening before the anchor was up, and I bore off for the west, loath to leave
my new friends. But fresh winds filled the sloop's sails once more, and I
watched the beacon-light at Plantation House, the governor's parting signal for
the Spray, till the island faded in the darkness astern and became one with the
night, and by midnight the light itself had disappeared below the horizon.
When morning came there was no land in
sight, but the day went on the same as days before, save for one small
incident. Governor Sterndale had given me a bag of coffee in the husk, and
Clark, the American, in an evil moment, had put a goat on board, "to butt
the sack and hustle the coffee-beans out of the pods." He urged that the
animal, besides being useful, would be as companionable as a dog. I soon found
that my sailing-companion, this sort of dog with horns, had to be tied up
entirely. The mistake I made was that I did not chain him to the mast instead
of tying him with grass ropes less securely, and this I learned to my cost.
Except for the first day, before the beast got his sea-legs on, I had no peace
of mind. After that, actuated by a spirit born, maybe, of his pasturage, this
incarnation of evil threatened to devour everything from flying-jib to
stern-davits. He was the worst pirate I met on the whole voyage. He began
depredations by eating my chart of the West Indies, in the cabin, one day,
while I was about my work for'ard, thinking that the critter was securely tied
on deck by the pumps. Alas! there was not a rope in the sloop proof against
that goat's awful teeth!
It was clear from the very first that I was
having no luck with animals on board. There was the tree-crab from the Keeling
Islands. No sooner had it got a claw through its prison-box than my sea-jacket,
hanging within reach, was torn to ribbons. Encouraged by this success, it
smashed the box open and escaped into my cabin, tearing up things generally,
and finally threatening my life in the dark. I had hoped to bring the creature
home alive, but this did not prove feasible. Next the goat devoured my straw
hat, and so when I arrived in port I had nothing to wear ashore on my head.
This last unkind stroke decided his fate. On the 27th of April the Spray
arrived at Ascension, which is garrisoned by a man-of-war crew, and the
boatswain of the island came on board. As he stepped out of his boat the
mutinous goat climbed into it, and defied boatswain and crew. I hired them to
land the wretch at once, which they were only too willing to do, and there he
fell into the hands of a most excellent Scotchman, with the chances that he
would never get away. I was destined to sail once more into the depths of
solitude, but these experiences had no bad effect upon me; on the contrary, a
spirit of charity and even benevolence grew stronger in my nature through the
meditations of these supreme hours on the sea.
In the loneliness of the dreary country
about Cape Horn I found myself in no mood to make one life less in the world,
except in self-defense, and as I sailed this trait of the hermit character grew
till the mention of killing food-animals was revolting to me. However well I
may have enjoyed a chicken stew afterward at Samoa, a new self rebelled at the
thought suggested there of carrying chickens to be slain for my table on the
voyage, and Mrs. Stevenson, hearing my protest, agreed with me that to kill the
companions of my voyage and eat them would be indeed next to murder and
cannibalism.
As to pet animals, there was no room for a
noble large dog on the Spray on so long a voyage, and a small cur was for many
years associated in my mind with hydrophobia. I witnessed once the death of a
sterling young German from that dreadful disease, and about the same time heard
of the death, also by hydrophobia, of the young gentleman who had just written
a line of insurance in his company's books for me. I have seen the whole crew
of a ship scamper up the rigging to avoid a dog racing about the decks in a
fit. It would never do, I thought, for the crew of the Spray to take a canine
risk, and with these just prejudices indelibly stamped on my mind, I have, I am
afraid, answered impatiently too often the query, "Didn't you have a
dog!" with, "I and the dog wouldn't have been very long in the same
boat, in any sense." A cat would have been a harmless animal, I dare say,
but there was nothing for puss to do on board, and she is an unsociable animal
at best. True, a rat got into my vessel at the Keeling Cocos Islands, and
another at Rodriguez, along with a centiped stowed away in the hold; but one of
them I drove out of the ship, and the other I caught. This is how it was: for
the first one with infinite pains I made a trap, looking to its capture and
destruction; but the wily rodent, not to be deluded, took the hint and got
ashore the day the thing was completed.
It is, according to tradition, a most
reassuring sign to find rats coming to a ship, and I had a mind to abide the knowing
one of Rodriguez; but a breach of discipline decided the matter against him.
While I slept one night, my ship sailing on, he undertook to walk over me,
beginning at the crown of my head, concerning which I am always sensitive. I
sleep lightly. Before his impertinence had got him even to my nose I cried
"Rat!" had him by the tail, and threw him out of the companionway
into the sea.
As for the centiped, I was not aware of its
presence till the wretched insect, all feet and venom, beginning, like the rat,
at my head, wakened me by a sharp bite on the scalp. This also was more than I
could tolerate. After a few applications of kerosene the poisonous bite,
painful at first, gave me no further inconvenience.
From this on for a time no living thing
disturbed my solitude; no insect even was present in my vessel, except the
spider and his wife, from Boston, now with a family of young spiders. Nothing,
I say, till sailing down the last stretch of the Indian Ocean, where mosquitos
came by hundreds from rain-water poured out of the heavens. Simply a barrel of
rain-water stood on deck five days, I think, in the sun, then music began. I
knew the sound at once; it was the same as heard from Alaska to New Orleans.
Again at Cape Town, while dining out one
day, I was taken with the song of a cricket, and Mr. Branscombe, my host,
volunteered to capture a pair of them for me. They were sent on board next day
in a box labeled, "Pluto and Scamp." Stowing them away in the
binnacle in their own snug box, I left them there without food till I got to
sea—a few days. I had never heard of a cricket eating anything. It seems that
Pluto was a cannibal, for only the wings of poor Scamp were visible when I
opened the lid, and they lay broken on the floor of the prison-box. Even with
Pluto it had gone hard, for he lay on his back stark and stiff, never to
chirrup again.
Ascension Island, where the goat was
marooned, is called the Stone Frigate, R. N, and is rated "tender" to
the South African Squadron. It lies in 7 degrees 35' south latitude and 14
degrees 25' west longitude, being in the very heart of the southeast
trade-winds and about eight hundred and forty miles from the coast of Liberia.
It is a mass of volcanic matter, thrown up from the bed of the ocean to the
height of two thousand eight hundred and eighteen feet at the highest point
above sea-level. It is a strategic point, and belonged to Great Britain before
it got cold. In the limited but rich soil at the top of the island, among the
clouds, vegetation has taken root, and a little scientific farming is carried
on under the supervision of a gentleman from Canada. Also a few cattle and
sheep are pastured there for the garrison mess. Water storage is made on a
large scale. In a word, this heap of cinders and lava rock is stored and
fortified, and would stand a siege.
Very soon after the Spray arrived I
received a note from Captain Blaxland, the commander of the island, conveying
his thanks for the royal mail brought from St. Helena, and inviting me to
luncheon with him and his wife and sister at headquarters, not far away. It is
hardly necessary to say that I availed myself of the captain's hospitality at
once. A carriage was waiting at the jetty when I landed, and a sailor, with a
broad grin, led the horse carefully up the hill to the captain's house, as if I
were a lord of the admiralty, and a governor besides; and he led it as
carefully down again when I returned. On the following day I visited the summit
among the clouds, the same team being provided, and the same old sailor leading
the horse. There was probably not a man on the island at that moment better
able to walk than I. The sailor knew that. I finally suggested that we change
places. "Let me take the bridle," I said, "and keep the horse
from bolting." "Great Stone Frigate!" he exclaimed, as he burst
into a laugh, "this 'ere 'oss wouldn't bolt no faster nor a turtle. If I
didn't tow 'im 'ard we'd never get into port." I walked most of the way
over the steep grades, whereupon my guide, every inch a sailor, became my friend.
Arriving at the summit of the island, I met Mr. Schank, the farmer from Canada,
and his sister, living very cozily in a house among the rocks, as snug as
conies, and as safe. He showed me over the farm, taking me through a tunnel
which led from one field to the other, divided by an inaccessible spur of
mountain. Mr. Schank said that he had lost many cows and bullocks, as well as
sheep, from breakneck over the steep cliffs and precipices. One cow, he said,
would sometimes hook another right over a precipice to destruction, and go on
feeding unconcernedly. It seemed that the animals on the island farm, like
mankind in the wide world, found it all too small.
On the 26th of April, while I was ashore,
rollers came in which rendered launching a boat impossible. However, the sloop
being securely moored to a buoy in deep water outside of all breakers, she was
safe, while I, in the best of quarters, listened to well-told stories among the
officers of the Stone Frigate. On the evening of the 29th, the sea having gone
down, I went on board and made preparations to start again on my voyage early
next day, the boatswain of the island and his crew giving me a hearty handshake
as I embarked at the jetty.
For reasons of scientific interest, I
invited in mid-ocean the most thorough investigation concerning the crew-list
of the Spray. Very few had challenged it, and perhaps few ever will do so
henceforth; but for the benefit of the few that may, I wished to clench beyond
doubt the fact that it was not at all necessary in the expedition of a sloop
around the world to have more than one man for the crew, all told, and that the
Spray sailed with only one person on board. And so, by appointment, Lieutenant
Eagles, the executive officer, in the morning, just as I was ready to sail,
fumigated the sloop, rendering it impossible for a person to live concealed
below, and proving that only one person was on board when she arrived. A
certificate to this effect, besides the official documents from the many
consulates, health offices, and customhouses, will seem to many superfluous;
but this story of the voyage may find its way into hands unfamiliar with the
business of these offices and of their ways of seeing that a vessel's papers,
and, above all, her bills of health, are in order.
The lieutenant's certificate being made
out, the Spray, nothing loath, now filled away clear of the sea-beaten rocks,
and the trade-winds, comfortably cool and bracing, sent her flying along on her
course. On May 8, 1898, she crossed the track, homeward bound, that she had
made October 2, 1895, on the voyage out. She passed Fernando de Noronha at
night, going some miles south of it, and so I did not see the island. I felt a
contentment in knowing that the Spray had encircled the globe, and even as an
adventure alone I was in no way discouraged as to its utility, and said to
myself, "Let what will happen, the voyage is now on record." A period
was made.
CHAPTER XX
In the favoring current off Cape St. Roque,
Brazil—All at sea regarding the Spanish-American war—An exchange of signals
with the battle-ship Oregon—Off Dreyfus's prison on Devil's Island—Reappearance
to the Spray of the north star—The light on Trinidad—A charming introduction to
Grenada—Talks to friendly auditors.
On May 10 there was a great change in the
condition of the sea; there could be no doubt of my longitude now, if any had
before existed in my mind. Strange and long-forgotten current ripples pattered
against the sloop's sides in grateful music; the tune arrested the oar, and I
sat quietly listening to it while the Spray kept on her course. By these
current ripples I was assured that she was now off St. Roque and had struck the
current which sweeps around that cape. The trade-winds, we old sailors say,
produce this current, which, in its course from this point forward, is governed
by the coastline of Brazil, Guiana, Venezuela, and, as some would say, by the
Monroe Doctrine.
The trades had been blowing fresh for some
time, and the current, now at its height, amounted to forty miles a day. This,
added to the sloop's run by the log, made the handsome day's work of one
hundred and eighty miles on several consecutive days, I saw nothing of the
coast of Brazil, though I was not many leagues off and was always in the Brazil
current.
I did not know that war with Spain had been
declared, and that I might be liable, right there, to meet the enemy and be
captured. Many had told me at Cape Town that, in their opinion, war was
inevitable, and they said: "The Spaniard will get you! The Spaniard will
get you!" To all this I could only say that, even so, he would not get
much. Even in the fever-heat over the disaster to the Maine I did not think
there would be war; but I am no politician. Indeed, I had hardly given the matter
a serious thought when, on the 14th of May, just north of the equator, and near
the longitude of the river Amazon, I saw first a mast, with the Stars and
Stripes floating from it, rising astern as if poked up out of the sea, and then
rapidly appearing on the horizon, like a citadel, the Oregon! As she came near
I saw that the great ship was flying the signals "C B T," which read,
"Are there any men-of-war about?" Right under these flags, and larger
than the Spray's mainsail, so it appeared, was the yellowest Spanish flag I
ever saw. It gave me nightmare some time after when I reflected on it in my
dreams.
The
Spray passed by the Oregon. The Spray passed by the Oregon.
I did not make out the Oregon's signals
till she passed ahead, where I could read them better, for she was two miles
away, and I had no binoculars. When I had read her flags I hoisted the signal
"No," for I had not seen any Spanish men-of-war; I had not been
looking for any. My final signal, "Let us keep together for mutual protection,"
Captain Clark did not seem to regard as necessary. Perhaps my small flags were
not made out; anyhow, the Oregon steamed on with a rush, looking for Spanish
men-of-war, as I learned afterward. The Oregon's great flag was dipped
beautifully three times to the Spray's lowered flag as she passed on. Both had
crossed the line only a few hours before. I pondered long that night over the
probability of a war risk now coming upon the Spray after she had cleared all,
or nearly all, the dangers of the sea, but finally a strong hope mastered my
fears.
On the 17th of May, the Spray, coming out
of a storm at daylight, made Devil's Island, two points on the lee bow, not far
off. The wind was still blowing a stiff breeze on shore. I could clearly see
the dark-gray buildings on the island as the sloop brought it abeam. No flag or
sign of life was seen on the dreary place.
Later in the day a French bark on the port
tack, making for Cayenne, hove in sight, close-hauled on the wind. She was
falling to leeward fast, The Spray was also closed-hauled, and was lugging on
sail to secure an offing on the starboard tack, a heavy swell in the night
having thrown her too near the shore, and now I considered the matter of
supplicating a change of wind. I had already enjoyed my share of favoring
breezes over the great oceans, and I asked myself if it would be right to have
the wind turned now all into my sails while the Frenchman was bound the other
way. A head current, which he stemmed, together with a scant wind, was bad
enough for him. And so I could only say, in my heart, "Lord, let matters
stand as they are, but do not help the Frenchman any more just now, for what
would suit him well would ruin me!"
I remembered that when a lad I heard a
captain often say in meeting that in answer to a prayer of his own the wind
changed from southeast to northwest, entirely to his satisfaction. He was a
good man, but did this glorify the Architect—the Ruler of the winds and the
waves? Moreover, it was not a trade-wind, as I remember it, that changed for him,
but one of the variables which will change when you ask it, if you ask long
enough. Again, this man's brother maybe was not bound the opposite way, well
content with a fair wind himself, which made all the difference in the
world.[H]
[H] The Bishop of Melbourne (commend me to
his teachings) refused to set aside a day of prayer for rain, recommending his
people to husband water when the rainy season was on. In like manner, a
navigator husbands the wind, keeping a weather-gage where practicable.
On May 18,1898, is written large in the
Spray's log-book: "To-night, in latitude 7 degrees 13' N., for the first
time in nearly three years I see the north star." The Spray on the day
following logged one hundred and forty-seven miles. To this I add thirty-five miles
for current sweeping her onward. On the 20th of May, about sunset, the island
of Tobago, off the Orinoco, came into view, bearing west by north, distant
twenty-two miles. The Spray was drawing rapidly toward her home destination.
Later at night, while running free along the coast of Tobago, the wind still
blowing fresh, I was startled by the sudden flash of breakers on the port bow
and not far off. I luffed instantly offshore, and then tacked, heading in for
the island. Finding myself, shortly after, close in with the land, I tacked
again offshore, but without much altering the bearings of the danger. Sail
whichever way I would, it seemed clear that if the sloop weathered the rocks at
all it would be a close shave, and I watched with anxiety, while beating
against the current, always losing ground. So the matter stood hour after hour,
while I watched the flashes of light thrown up as regularly as the beats of the
long ocean swells, and always they seemed just a little nearer. It was
evidently a coral reef,—of this I had not the slightest doubt,—and a bad reef
at that. Worse still, there might be other reefs ahead forming a bight into
which the current would sweep me, and where I should be hemmed in and finally
wrecked. I had not sailed these waters since a lad, and lamented the day I had
allowed on board the goat that ate my chart. I taxed my memory of sea lore, of
wrecks on sunken reefs, and of pirates harbored among coral reefs where other
ships might not come, but nothing that I could think of applied to the island
of Tobago, save the one wreck of Robinson Crusoe's ship in the fiction, and
that gave me little information about reefs. I remembered only that in Crusoe's
case he kept his powder dry. "But there she booms again," I cried,
"and how close the flash is now! Almost aboard was that last breaker! But
you'll go by, Spray, old girl! 'T is abeam now! One surge more! and oh, one
more like that will clear your ribs and keel!" And I slapped her on the
transom, proud of her last noble effort to leap clear of the danger, when a
wave greater than the rest threw her higher than before, and, behold, from the
crest of it was revealed at once all there was of the reef. I fell back in a
coil of rope, speechless and amazed, not distressed, but rejoiced. Aladdin's lamp!
My fisherman's own lantern! It was the great revolving light on the island of
Trinidad, thirty miles away, throwing flashes over the waves, which had
deceived me! The orb of the light was now dipping on the horizon, and how
glorious was the sight of it! But, dear Father Neptune, as I live, after a long
life at sea, and much among corals, I would have made a solemn declaration to
that reef! Through all the rest of the night I saw imaginary reefs, and not
knowing what moment the sloop might fetch up on a real one, I tacked off and on
till daylight, as nearly as possible in the same track, all for the want of a
chart. I could have nailed the St. Helena goat's pelt to the deck.
My course was now for Grenada, to which I
carried letters from Mauritius. About midnight of the 22d of May I arrived at
the island, and cast anchor in the roads off the town of St. George, entering
the inner harbor at daylight on the morning of the 23d, which made forty-two
days' sailing from the Cape of Good Hope, It was a good run, and I doffed my
cap again to the pilot of the Pinta.
Lady Bruce, in a note to the Spray at Port
Louis, said Grenada was a lovely island, and she wished the sloop might call
there on the voyage home. When the Spray arrived, I found that she had been
fully expected. "How so?" I asked. "Oh, we heard that you were
at Mauritius," they said, "and from Mauritius, after meeting Sir
Charles Bruce, our old governor, we knew you would come to Grenada." This
was a charming introduction, and it brought me in contact with people worth
knowing.
The Spray sailed from Grenada on the 28th
of May, and coasted along under the lee of the Antilles, arriving at the island
of Dominica on the 30th, where, for the want of knowing better, I cast anchor
at the quarantine ground; for I was still without a chart of the islands, not
having been able to get one even at Grenada. Here I not only met with further
disappointment in the matter, but was threatened with a fine for the mistake I
made in the anchorage. There were no ships either at the quarantine or at the
commercial roads, and I could not see that it made much difference where I
anchored. But a negro chap, a sort of deputy harbormaster, coming along,
thought it did, and he ordered me to shift to the other anchorage, which, in truth,
I had already investigated and did not like, because of the heavier roll there
from the sea. And so instead of springing to the sails at once to shift, I said
I would leave outright as soon as I could procure a chart, which I begged he
would send and get for me. "But I say you mus' move befo' you gets
anyt'ing't all," he insisted, and raising his voice so that all the people
alongshore could hear him, he added, "An' jes now!" Then he flew into
a towering passion when they on shore snickered to see the crew of the Spray
sitting calmly by the bulwark instead of hoisting sail. "I tell you dis am
quarantine" he shouted, very much louder than before. "That's all
right, general," I replied; "I want to be quarantined anyhow." "That's
right, boss," some one on the beach cried, "that's right; you get
quarantined," while others shouted to the deputy to "make de white
trash move 'long out o' dat." They were about equally divided on the
island for and against me. The man who had made so much fuss over the matter
gave it up when he found that I wished to be quarantined, and sent for an
all-important half-white, who soon came alongside, starched from clue to
earing. He stood in the boat as straight up and down as a fathom of
pump-water—a marvel of importance. "Charts!" cried I, as soon as his
shirt-collar appeared over the sloop's rail; "have you any charts?"
"No, sah," he replied with much-stiffened dignity; "no, sah;
cha'ts do'sn't grow on dis island." Not doubting the information, I tripped
anchor immediately, as I had intended to do from the first, and made all sail
for St. John, Antigua, where I arrived on the 1st of June, having sailed with
great caution in midchannel all the way.
The Spray, always in good company, now fell
in with the port officers' steam-launch at the harbor entrance, having on board
Sir Francis Fleming, governor of the Leeward Islands, who, to the delight of
"all hands," gave the officer in charge instructions to tow my ship
into port. On the following day his Excellency and Lady Fleming, along with
Captain Burr, R. N., paid me a visit. The court-house was tendered free to me
at Antigua, as was done also at Grenada, and at each place a highly intelligent
audience filled the hall to listen to a talk about the seas the Spray had
crossed, and the countries she had visited.
CHAPTER XXI
Clearing for home—In the calm belt—A sea
covered with sargasso—The jibstay parts in a gale—Welcomed by a tornado off
Fire Island—A change of plan—Arrival at Newport—End of a cruise of over
forty-six thousand miles—The Spray again at Fairhaven.
On the 4th of June, 1898, the Spray cleared
from the United States consulate, and her license to sail single-handed, even
round the world, was returned to her for the last time. The United States
consul, Mr. Hunt, before handing the paper to me, wrote on it, as General
Roberts had done at Cape Town, a short commentary on the voyage. The document,
by regular course, is now lodged in the Treasury Department at Washington, D.
C.
On June 5, 1898, the Spray sailed for a
home port, heading first direct for Cape Hatteras. On the 8th of June she
passed under the sun from south to north; the sun's declination on that day was
22 degrees 54', and the latitude of the Spray was the same just before noon.
Many think it is excessively hot right under the sun. It is not necessarily so.
As a matter of fact the thermometer stands at a bearable point whenever there
is a breeze and a ripple on the sea, even exactly under the sun. It is often
hotter in cities and on sandy shores in higher latitudes.
The Spray was booming joyously along for
home now, making her usual good time, when of a sudden she struck the horse
latitudes, and her sail flapped limp in a calm. I had almost forgotten this
calm belt, or had come to regard it as a myth. I now found it real, however,
and difficult to cross. This was as it should have been, for, after all of the
dangers of the sea, the dust-storm on the coast of Africa, the "rain of
blood" in Australia, and the war risk when nearing home, a natural
experience would have been missing had the calm of the horse latitudes been
left out. Anyhow, a philosophical turn of thought now was not amiss, else one's
patience would have given out almost at the harbor entrance. The term of her
probation was eight days. Evening after evening during this time I read by the
light of a candle on deck. There was no wind at all, and the sea became smooth
and monotonous. For three days I saw a full-rigged ship on the horizon, also
becalmed.
Sargasso, scattered over the sea in
bunches, or trailed curiously along down the wind in narrow lanes, now gathered
together in great fields, strange sea-animals, little and big, swimming in and
out, the most curious among them being a tiny seahorse which I captured and
brought home preserved in a bottle. But on the 18th of June a gale began to blow
from the southwest, and the sargasso was dispersed again in windrows and lanes.
On this day there was soon wind enough and
to spare. The same might have been said of the sea. The Spray was in the midst
of the turbulent Gulf Stream itself. She was jumping like a porpoise over the
uneasy waves. As if to make up for lost time, she seemed to touch only the high
places. Under a sudden shock and strain her rigging began to give out. First
the main-sheet strap was carried away, and then the peak halyard-block broke
from the gaff. It was time to reef and refit, and so when "all hands"
came on deck I went about doing that.
The 19th of June was fine, but on the
morning of the 20th another gale was blowing, accompanied by cross-seas that
tumbled about and shook things up with great confusion. Just as I was thinking
about taking in sail the jibstay broke at the masthead, and fell, jib and all,
into the sea. It gave me the strangest sensation to see the bellying sail fall,
and where it had been suddenly to see only space. However, I was at the bows,
with presence of mind to gather it in on the first wave that rolled up, before
it was torn or trailed under the sloop's bottom. I found by the amount of work
done in three minutes' or less time that I had by no means grown stiff-jointed
on the voyage; anyhow, scurvy had not set in, and being now within a few
degrees of home, I might complete the voyage, I thought, without the aid of a
doctor. Yes, my health was still good, and I could skip about the decks in a
lively manner, but could I climb? The great King Neptune tested me severely at
this time, for the stay being gone, the mast itself switched about like a reed,
and was not easy to climb; but a gun-tackle purchase was got up, and the stay
set taut from the masthead, for I had spare blocks and rope on board with which
to rig it, and the jib, with a reef in it, was soon pulling again like a
"sodger" for home. Had the Spray's mast not been well stepped,
however, it would have been "John Walker" when the stay broke. Good
work in the building of my vessel stood me always in good stead.
On the 23d of June I was at last tired,
tired, tired of baffling squalls and fretful cobble-seas. I had not seen a
vessel for days and days, where I had expected the company of at least a
schooner now and then. As to the whistling of the wind through the rigging, and
the slopping of the sea against the sloop's sides, that was well enough in its
way, and we could not have got on without it, the Spray and I; but there was so
much of it now, and it lasted so long! At noon of that day a winterish storm
was upon us from the nor'west. In the Gulf Stream, thus late in June,
hailstones were pelting the Spray, and lightning was pouring down from the
clouds, not in flashes alone, but in almost continuous streams. By slants,
however, day and night I worked the sloop in toward the coast, where, on the
25th of June, off Fire Island, she fell into the tornado which, an hour
earlier, had swept over New York city with lightning that wrecked buildings and
sent trees flying about in splinters; even ships at docks had parted their
moorings and smashed into other ships, doing great damage. It was the climax
storm of the voyage, but I saw the unmistakable character of it in time to have
all snug aboard and receive it under bare poles. Even so, the sloop shivered
when it struck her, and she heeled over unwillingly on her beam ends; but
rounding to, with a sea-anchor ahead, she righted and faced out the storm. In
the midst of the gale I could do no more than look on, for what is a man in a
storm like this? I had seen one electric storm on the voyage, off the coast of
Madagascar, but it was unlike this one. Here the lightning kept on longer, and
thunderbolts fell in the sea all about. Up to this time I was bound for New
York; but when all was over I rose, made sail, and hove the sloop round from
starboard to port tack, to make for a quiet harbor to think the matter over;
and so, under short sail, she reached in for the coast of Long Island, while I
sat thinking and watching the lights of coasting-vessels which now began to
appear in sight. Reflections of the voyage so nearly finished stole in upon me
now; many tunes I had hummed again and again came back once more. I found
myself repeating fragments of a hymn often sung by a dear Christian woman of
Fairhaven when I was rebuilding the Spray. I was to hear once more and only
once, in profound solemnity, the metaphorical hymn:
By waves and wind I'm tossed and driven.
And again:
But still my little ship outbraves
The blust'ring winds and stormy waves.
After this storm I saw the pilot of the
Pinta no more.
The experiences of the voyage of the Spray,
reaching over three years, had been to me like reading a book, and one that was
more and more interesting as I turned the pages, till I had come now to the
last page of all, and the one more interesting than any of the rest.
When daylight came I saw that the sea had
changed color from dark green to light. I threw the lead and got soundings in
thirteen fathoms. I made the land soon after, some miles east of Fire Island,
and sailing thence before a pleasant breeze along the coast, made for Newport.
The weather after the furious gale was remarkably fine. The Spray rounded
Montauk Point early in the afternoon; Point Judith was abeam at dark; she
fetched in at Beavertail next. Sailing on, she had one more danger to
pass—Newport harbor was mined. The Spray hugged the rocks along where neither
friend nor foe could come if drawing much water, and where she would not
disturb the guard-ship in the channel. It was close work, but it was safe
enough so long as she hugged the rocks close, and not the mines. Flitting by a
low point abreast of the guard-ship, the dear old Dexter, which I knew well,
some one on board of her sang out, "There goes a craft!" I threw up a
light at once and heard the hail, "Spray, ahoy!" It was the voice of
a friend, and I knew that a friend would not fire on the Spray. I eased off the
main-sheet now, and the Spray swung off for the beacon-lights of the inner
harbor. At last she reached port in safety, and there at 1 a.m. on June 27,
1898, cast anchor, after the cruise of more than forty-six thousand miles round
the world, during an absence of three years and two months, with two days over
for coming up.
Was the crew well? Was I not? I had
profited in many ways by the voyage. I had even gained flesh, and actually
weighed a pound more than when I sailed from Boston. As for aging, why, the
dial of my life was turned back till my friends all said, "Slocum is young
again." And so I was, at least ten years younger than the day I felled the
first tree for the construction of the Spray.
My ship was also in better condition than
when she sailed from Boston on her long voyage. She was still as sound as a
nut, and as tight as the best ship afloat. She did not leak a drop—not one
drop! The pump, which had been little used before reaching Australia, had not
been rigged since that at all.
The first name on the Spray's visitors'
book in the home port was written by the one who always said, "The Spray
will come back." The Spray was not quite satisfied till I sailed her
around to her birthplace, Fairhaven, Massachusetts, farther along. I had myself
a desire to return to the place of the very beginning whence I had, as I have
said, renewed my age. So on July 3, with a fair wind, she waltzed beautifully
round the coast and up the Acushnet River to Fairhaven, where I secured her to
the cedar spile driven in the bank to hold her when she was launched. I could
bring her no nearer home.
If the Spray discovered no continents on
her voyage, it may be that there were no more continents to be discovered; she
did not seek new worlds, or sail to powwow about the dangers of the seas. The
sea has been much maligned. To find one's way to lands already discovered is a
good thing, and the Spray made the discovery that even the worst sea is not so
terrible to a well-appointed ship. No king, no country, no treasury at all, was
taxed for the voyage of the Spray, and she accomplished all that she undertook
to do.
The
Spray in the storm of New York. The Spray in the storm of New York.
To succeed, however, in anything at all,
one should go understandingly about his work and be prepared for every
emergency. I see, as I look back over my own small achievement, a kit of not
too elaborate carpenters' tools, a tin clock, and some carpet-tacks, not a
great many, to facilitate the enterprise as already mentioned in the story. But
above all to be taken into account were some years of schooling, where I
studied with diligence Neptune's laws, and these laws I tried to obey when I
sailed overseas; it was worth the while.
And now, without having wearied my friends,
I hope, with detailed scientific accounts, theories, or deductions, I will only
say that I have endeavored to tell just the story of the adventure itself.
This, in my own poor way, having been done, I now moor ship, weather-bitt
cables, and leave the sloop Spray, for the present, safe in port.
APPENDIX
Again tied to the old stake at Fairhaven.
Again tied to the old stake at Fairhaven.
APPENDIX
LINES AND SAIL-PLAN OF THE
"SPRAY"
Her pedigree so far as known—The Lines of the
Spray—Her self-steering qualities—Sail-plan and steering-gear—An unprecedented
feat—A final word of cheer to would-be navigators.
From a feeling of diffidence toward sailors
of great experience, I refrained, in the preceding chapters as prepared for serial
publication in the "Century Magazine," from entering fully into the
details of the Spray's build, and of the primitive methods employed to sail
her. Having had no yachting experience at all, I had no means of knowing that
the trim vessels seen in our harbors and near the land could not all do as
much, or even more, than the Spray, sailing, for example, on a course with the
helm lashed.
I was aware that no other vessel had sailed
in this manner around the globe, but would have been loath to say that another
could not do it, or that many men had not sailed vessels of a certain rig in
that manner as far as they wished to go. I was greatly amused, therefore, by
the flat assertions of an expert that it could not be done.
Plan
of the after cabin of the Spray. Plan of the after cabin of the Spray.
The Spray, as I sailed her, was entirely a
new boat, built over from a sloop which bore the same name, and which,
tradition said, had first served as an oysterman, about a hundred years ago, on
the coast of Delaware. There was no record in the custom-house of where she was
built. She was once owned at Noank, Connecticut, afterward in New Bedford and
when Captain Eben Pierce presented her to me, at the end of her natural life,
she stood, as I have already described, propped up in a field at Fairhaven. Her
lines were supposed to be those of a North Sea fisherman. In rebuilding timber
by timber and plank by plank, I added to her free-board twelve inches
amidships, eighteen inches forward, and fourteen inches aft, thereby increasing
her sheer, and making her, as I thought, a better deep-water ship. I will not
repeat the history of the rebuilding of the Spray, which I have detailed in my
first chapter, except to say that, when finished, her dimensions were
thirty-six feet nine inches over all, fourteen feet two inches wide, and four
feet two inches deep in the hold, her tonnage being nine tons net, and twelve
and seventy one-hundredths tons gross.
I gladly produce the lines of the Spray,
with such hints as my really limited fore-and-aft sailing will allow, my
seafaring life having been spent mostly in barks and ships. No pains have been
spared to give them accurately. The Spray was taken from New York to
Bridgeport, Connecticut, and, under the supervision of the Park City Yacht
Club, was hauled out of water and very carefully measured in every way to
secure a satisfactory result. Captain Robins produced the model. Our young
yachtsmen, pleasuring in the "lilies of the sea," very naturally will
not think favorably of my craft. They have a right to their opinion, while I
stick to mine. They will take exceptions to her short ends, the advantage of
these being most apparent in a heavy sea.
Some things about the Spray's deck might be
fashioned differently without materially affecting the vessel. I know of no
good reason why for a party-boat a cabin trunk might not be built amidships
instead of far aft, like the one on her, which leaves a very narrow space
between the wheel and the line of the companionway. Some even say that I might
have improved the shape of her stern. I do not know about that. The water
leaves her run sharp after bearing her to the last inch, and no suction is
formed by undue cutaway.
Smooth-water sailors say, "Where is
her overhang?" They never crossed the Gulf Stream in a nor'easter, and
they do not know what is best in all weathers. For your life, build no fantail
overhang on a craft going offshore. As a sailor judges his prospective ship by
a "blow of the eye" when he takes interest enough to look her over at
all, so I judged the Spray, and I was not deceived.
In a sloop-rig the Spray made that part of
her voyage reaching from Boston through the Strait of Magellan, during which
she experienced the greatest variety of weather conditions. The yawl-rig then
adopted was an improvement only in that it reduced the size of a rather heavy
mainsail and slightly improved her steering qualities on the wind. When the
wind was aft the jigger was not in use; invariably it was then furled. With her
boom broad off and with the wind two points on the quarter the Spray sailed her
truest course. It never took long to find the amount of helm, or angle of
rudder, required to hold her on her course, and when that was found I lashed
the wheel with it at that angle. The mainsail then drove her, and the main-jib,
with its sheet boused flat amidships or a little to one side or the other,
added greatly to the steadying power. Then if the wind was even strong or
squally I would sometimes set a flying-jib also, on a pole rigged out on the
bowsprit, with, the sheets hauled flat amidships, which was a safe thing to do,
even in a gale of wind. A stout downhaul on the gaff was a necessity, because
without it the mainsail might not have come down when I wished to lower it in a
breeze. The amount of helm required varied according to the amount of wind and
its direction. These points are quickly gathered from practice.
Deck-plan of the Spray. Deck-plan of the
Spray.
Briefly I have to say that when
close-hauled in a light wind under all sail she required little or no weather
helm. As the wind increased I would go on deck, if below, and turn the wheel up
a spoke more or less, relash it, or, as sailors say, put it in a becket, and
then leave it as before.
Sail-Plan of the Spray The solid lines
represent the
sail-plan of the Spray on starting for the
long voyage. With it she
crossed the Atlantic to Gibraltar, and then
crossed again southwest to
Brazil. In South American waters the
bowsprit and boom were shortened
and the jigger-sail added to form the
yawl-rig with which the rest of
the trip was made, the sail-plan of which
is indicated by the dotted
lines The extreme sail forward is a flying
jib occasionally used, set
to a bamboo stick fastened to the bowsprit.
The manner of setting and
bracing the jigger-mast is not indicated in
this drawing, but may be
partly observed in the plans on pages 287
and 289.
Sail-Plan of the Spray The solid lines
represent the sail-plan of the Spray on starting for the long voyage. With it
she crossed the Atlantic to Gibraltar, and then crossed again southwest to
Brazil. In South American waters the bowsprit and boom were shortened and the
jigger-sail added to form the yawl-rig with which the rest of the trip was
made, the sail-plan of which is indicated by the dotted lines The extreme sail
forward is a flying jib occasionally used, set to a bamboo stick fastened to
the bowsprit. The manner of setting and bracing the jigger-mast is not
indicated in this drawing, but may be partly observed in the plans on pages 287
and 289.
To answer the questions that might be asked
to meet every contingency would be a pleasure, but it would overburden my book.
I can only say here that much comes to one in practice, and that, with such as
love sailing, mother-wit is the best teacher, after experience. Labor-saving
appliances? There were none. The sails were hoisted by hand; the halyards were
rove through ordinary ships' blocks with common patent rollers. Of course the
sheets were all belayed aft.
Steering-gear of the Spray. The dotted lines
are the
ropes used to lash the wheel. In practice
the loose ends were belayed,
one over the other, around the top spokes
of the wheel.
Steering-gear of the Spray. The dotted
lines are the ropes used to lash the wheel. In practice the loose ends were
belayed, one over the other, around the top spokes of the wheel.
The windlass used was in the shape of a
winch, or crab, I think it is called. I had three anchors, weighing forty
pounds, one hundred pounds, and one hundred and eighty pounds respectively. The
windlass and the forty-pound anchor, and the "fiddle-head," or
carving, on the end of the cutwater, belonged to the original Spray. The ballast,
concrete cement, was stanchioned down securely. There was no iron or lead or
other weight on the keel.
If I took measurements by rule I did not
set them down, and after sailing even the longest voyage in her I could not
tell offhand the length of her mast, boom, or gaff. I did not know the center
of effort in her sails, except as it hit me in practice at sea, nor did I care
a rope yarn about it. Mathematical calculations, however, are all right in a
good boat, and the Spray could have stood them. She was easily balanced and
easily kept in trim.
Some of the oldest and ablest shipmasters
have asked how it was possible for her to hold a true course before the wind,
which was just what the Spray did for weeks together. One of these gentlemen, a
highly esteemed shipmaster and friend, testified as government expert in a
famous murder trial in Boston, not long since, that a ship would not hold her
course long enough for the steersman to leave the helm to cut the captain's
throat. Ordinarily it would be so. One might say that with a square-rigged ship
it would always be so. But the Spray, at the moment of the tragedy in question,
was sailing around the globe with no one at the helm, except at intervals more
or less rare. However, I may say here that this would have had no bearing on
the murder case in Boston. In all probability Justice laid her hand on the true
rogue. In other words, in the case of a model and rig similar to that of the
tragedy ship, I should myself testify as did the nautical experts at the trial.
Body-plan of the Spray. Body-plan of the
Spray.
But see the run the Spray made from
Thursday Island to the Keeling Cocos Islands, twenty-seven hundred miles
distant, in twenty-three days, with no one at the helm in that time, save for
about one hour, from land to land. No other ship in the history of the world
ever performed, under similar circumstances, the feat on so long and continuous
a voyage. It was, however, a delightful midsummer sail. No one can know the
pleasure of sailing free over the great oceans save those who have had the
experience. It is not necessary, in order to realize the utmost enjoyment of
going around the globe, to sail alone, yet for once and the first time there
was a great deal of fun in it. My friend the government expert, and saltest of
salt sea-captains, standing only yesterday on the deck of the Spray, was
convinced of her famous qualities, and he spoke enthusiastically of selling his
farm on Cape Cod and putting to sea again.
To young men contemplating a voyage I would
say go. The tales of rough usage are for the most part exaggerations, as also
are the stories of sea danger. I had a fair schooling in the so-called
"hard ships" on the hard Western Ocean, and in the years there I do
not remember having once been "called out of my name." Such
recollections have endeared the sea to me. I owe it further to the officers of
all the ships I ever sailed in as boy and man to say that not one ever lifted
so much as a finger to me. I did not live among angels, but among men who could
be roused. My wish was, though, to please the officers of my ship wherever I
was, and so I got on. Dangers there are, to be sure, on the sea as well as on
the land, but the intelligence and skill God gives to man reduce these to a
minimum. And here comes in again the skilfully modeled ship worthy to sail the
seas.
To face the elements is, to be sure, no
light matter when the sea is in its grandest mood. You must then know the sea,
and know that you know it, and not forget that it was made to be sailed over.
I have given in the plans of the Spray the
dimensions of such a ship as I should call seaworthy in all conditions of
weather and on all seas. It is only right to say, though, that to insure a
reasonable measure of success, experience should sail with the ship. But in
order to be a successful navigator or sailor it is not necessary to hang a
tar-bucket about one's neck. On the other hand, much thought concerning the
brass buttons one should wear adds nothing to the safety of the ship.
Lines of the Spray. Lines of the Spray.
I may some day see reason to modify the
model of the dear old Spray, but out of my limited experience I strongly
recommend her wholesome lines over those of pleasure-fliers for safety.
Practice in a craft such as the Spray will teach young sailors and fit them for
the more important vessels. I myself learned more seamanship, I think, on the
Spray than on any other ship I ever sailed, and as for patience, the greatest
of all the virtues, even while sailing through the reaches of the Strait of
Magellan, between the bluff mainland and dismal Fuego, where through intricate
sailing I was obliged to steer, I learned to sit by the wheel, content to make
ten miles a day beating against the tide, and when a month at that was all
lost, I could find some old tune to hum while I worked the route all over
again, beating as before. Nor did thirty hours at the wheel, in storm, overtax
my human endurance, and to clap a hand to an oar and pull into or out of port
in a calm was no strange experience for the crew of the Spray. The days passed
happily with me wherever my ship sailed.
Comments
Post a Comment