by Ellen Wood
You may be puzzled to know, boys, why he did not wear shoes. It is a common practice for the working sailor to go barefoot, and it was not possible to do otherwise at that time on the Mexican coast. Shoes were not, or scarcely to be, procured there: and the beach-work, combined with the constant wetting from the surf, would have worn out a pair almost in a day.
The hides had to be cured after being collected; or, to speak more intelligibly, to be converted into leather. This process was long, difficult, and disagreeable; the putrid flesh, sticking to the hides in places, oppressed the men with sickening nausea, and rendered William, more delicately reared than they, frequently ill. But ill or well, he must never cease from labour. I cannot tell you whether the same long and troublesome process has to be pursued now by the crews of the vessels going to California for hides; but I can tell you that it was the case at the time of which I am writing. In addition to this labour, the ship had to be tended and worked just as though they were at sea. The winds on the Californian coast are exceedingly violent, especially those blowing from the south-east. Often they would have to put out to sea, and remain out for days together, encountering all the danger and hardship of a storm. So sudden would be the approach of these squalls, that all hands must work away for their lives, and get the vessel from the coast; otherwise she would have been driven on shore, and dashed to pieces. And the curing of these fragrant hides had to be pursued all the same; for the process, once begun, must be continued without interruption, if they would preserve their hides and their leather.
A vastly agreeable life, was it not? Perhaps some of you would like to try it?
But, to linger on the Mexican coast, would for us be neither profitable nor pleasant, and I have promised you some account of the return.
It was in the month of May, 1848 — for you remember we are not writing of very late years — that the “Prosperous” commenced her homeward voyage, after a stay of considerably more than two years on the Californian coast, and nearly three since William Allair’s departure from home. —
Three years! Three years of hardship, toil, and privation! without a word of love or hope from the old house at home! Whether his friends wrote to him or not, he did not know. In the letter William had written from New York, he had been able to give no definite address: and so irregular was the postage system at that time in California, that, had they sent a dozen letters, the chances were he never would have received one.
The “Prosperous” was returning direct to New York, where William would receive his wages, and whence his intention was to proceed immediately to England. Two of the crew were left behind at San Diego: the hard labour, with the incessant exposure on the coast, had wrought their effects: and when the ship was ready to sail, they were so ill that Captain Janns would not bring them away. Earnestly they implored not to be left on that inhospitable, half savage shore; but the captain coarsely answered, with an oath, that sick men were not wanted on board ship. In point of fact, this is true. If a sailor falls sick on board, he must get well as he best can; there is nobody to nurse him. So the men were left; which rendered the vessel two hands short.
As they neared Cape Horn, the weather became fearfully hard. They expected to pass it in July, the very worst month of all the twelve in that region of perpetual winter. By the latter end of June, they had come up with what the experienced sailors called Cape weather. Often, after their long, cheerless watch on deck, the men had scarcely descended to the forecastle, when “All hands ahoy!” would send them back flying: sails must be taken in with double-quick speed, to wear through the squall that was coming. On, would come the blast; long before they were ready for it; sleet, snow, rain, and wind. Such wind! Never on shore let us talk again of the wind taking our breath away! The heavily laden ship would be thrown nearly on her beam ends, her timbers cracking, her top-gallant masts bending, the foam dashing over her bows, as she careered madly through the storm. The hands climbed aloft: what though the hail cut their faces, and nearly blinded them, as it drove horizontally across the ocean, and the violent wind impeded almost entirely their movements! — still they must work the ship. It was no child’s play. The sails were as hard as boards, but they must be hauled and furled, and the men were wet through as they stood upon the yards; their hands, already stiffened and numbed, had to be beaten fiercely on the sails to prevent the fingers freezing. Not so quickly could they get through the business as they might have done under better auspices; it was impossible to go along quickly, with the shrouds and rigging iced over; also, they were short of hands. An hour, an hour and a half, two hours would pass, ere the task was done: and the half-frozen, hard-worked crew would descend from its completion, to find the hour had just struck for their watch on deck to be resumed.
It was on one of these days that the English lad, who had joined the ship at Liverpool at the same time as William Allair, got into trouble with the captain. His name was Robert Stone: commonly known on board as “Bob.” Captain Janns was not of choice language at any time, but in moments of anger it became — well, what would not look orthodox upon paper. Showered down upon the unhappy Bob, it was not orthodox either, at least to his thinking, for he believed he was undeserving of it: and fatigued and worn out with his hard work, he answered insolently. One word led to another on both sides; and the captain, unused to have his harshest mandate reflected on, flew into a foaming passion, and ordered Bob to be seized up. The whole crew was summoned to witness the spectacle. Stone was made fast to the shrouds, his back bared; and the captain himself undertook the office of castigator.
The rope whirled in the air, and descended —
Once I “Oh, spare me! spare me!” shrieked Bob, leaping up with the pain.
Twice!— “I’ll spare you,” retorted the captain, “when I have brought you to your senses! I’ll teach you what it is to brave me.”
Thrice! four times! ever so many times; until the unhappy culprit fainted. And William Allair, sick with horror, thought he should have fainted too. It was a widely different exhibition, this, from the milder one bestowed upon Richard Jenniker in the old schoolroom.
Half an hour elapsed. The larboard watch were keeping their watch on deck. Bob Stone belonged to this watch; but it may be thought by you inexperienced land boys that he was at any rate let off work for that day. No such thing. Bob’s back had been treated to a wash of salt and water, and Bob himself was at his post on deck. Bob had not opened his lips since; and a sullen expression of pain pervaded his countenance. A gloomy silence reigned in the ship. The captain paced the deck, zigzag fashion, for the cargo stowed there left little room for walking; the mate stood to windward, looking at the appearance of the weather; when a sudden command, “Lay aloft there and unfurl the sails,” was heard.
The men of the larboard watch prepared to man the rigging. Bob Stone alone went slowly. By those looking on, it may have been thought he went unwillingly: but that unfortunate back of his may have been alone in fault.
“Do you want another flogging?” roared the captain, as he sprang towards him, with an oath. “What are you loitering for, you skulking land-lubber?”
He dragged himself up painfully: that was evident; and bore a hand with the rest. The captain recommenced his zigzag step, and the mate stretched out his hand for the night glass: he did not much like appearances out to windward.
“What’s that?” cried he.
It was a sudden splash in the water: just as if a heavy weight had dropped, dash, into it. The captain and mate hurried to the vessel’s side.
“A man overboard! A man overboard!” rose up the cry, echoing from one end of the ship to the other. Down came the men from the yards, like cats, eager to get out the quarter boat, before the order could be spoken.
One of the men had dropped from the yards aloft. Which of them? The larboard watch looked at one another: the captain looked at them collectively. The missing one was Bob Stone.
The boat was got off, and rowed towards the spot; but the ill-fated Bob was n
ever seen again. In vain they strained their eyes around; no trace could be discerned of him, and the boat put back again.
“That makes a third hand gone!” was the comment of the sailors, one to another. “How shall we be able to wear the ship round the Cape?”
If William Allair had felt sick at the flogging, how did he feel now? An inward prayer went up to God, that the unhappy lad might have slipped unwittingly from the yards; and not have thrown himself off, in his shame and unhappiness.
Ere the boat had been made fast again, night was closing in; their night. At that period of the year, round Cape Horn, the sun, on favourable days, rises at nine and sets at three: but it is not often they can get to see the sun at all. A dismal scene, it was, that lonesome ship and her isolated crew. Many hundred miles away from available land: exposed to all the inclemencies of a Cape winter; living almost in a perpetual night; in danger of being drifted down by floating masses of ice, tokens of which they had already begun to see; the dreadful hardships of their life and position cannot well be exaggerated. And now the visit of Death! No wonder that the men felt their spirits sinking!
The night set in heavily. Rain, sleet, and hail came down upon them; and the wind howled with an ominous sound. The thermometer had fallen greatly since the morning, which called forth the mate’s opinion that they must be near large ice islands. Mrs Allair had used to complain if William got his feet wet, or was out in the rain so as to damp his jacket. It was a mercy, William thought, that she did not see what he was exposed to now. It may be said that the men lived in water. All the clothing they possessed (and very short and scant it was!) was perpetually wet: there were no means of drying it. Did the sun peep lazily out, their things would be hung up, but they did not dry. After a severe watch of four hours, they would take their clothes off in the forecastle, wring the water from them, and put on the change from which the water had been in a like manner previously wrung. But the discomfort of the wet clothes was nothing, compared to that of the boots — thick boots being indispensable to a Cape Horn attire. Always saturated with wet were they, rendering the feet miserably cold. You may get your feet warm in bed, young gentlemen; but you are not rounding Cape Horn, in a Cape winter. The berths on board the “Prosperous” were as wet as the men, for they could only get into them in their wet clothing.
Perhaps you are indulged with a fire in your bedchamber, when there is a little frost on the ground? Some boys get it, who are coddled up, not brought up. They should try William Allair’s life for a day, just by way of change. His face and hands were often cut with the large, sharp hailstones; and these same hands, their wounds exposed, must hold on by the hulls and spars, a mass of ice, hauling and pulling the stiffened sails, and taking knots with the running rigging, the ropes so hard that there was no bending them. The men’s clothes froze upon them. It was with some difficulty they could prevent their bodies freezing also. There was no comfort for them, no ease, no semblance of either: and their snatches of sleep in their damp berths would be all too frequently interrupted with the arousing cry, “All hands ahoy!”
But, to go back to this night. Its long, tedious eighteen hours wore away; and when the dawn broke, they found the mate’s opinion, that they were coming to the ice, to be correct. On this day the sun was out, and it shone brightly. About twelve o’clock they came in view of an iceberg. It was the most beautiful sight conceivable: the strangest and finest picture possible to be imagined. No painting has ever done justice to an iceberg, neither can any description: an island of ice, shaped like a mountain, its height tapered off into transparent pinnacles, and its general colour azure, shading imperceptibly into the pure white of the pinnacles, whose glittering tops were brilliant in the sun, the waves rising white and foaming at its base. A wondrously grand object was it, as it moved through the clear, blue waters with slow and stately action.
Occasionally it was heard to crack with a noise like thunder, and portions of it dropped away into the sea below, causing the waves to dash aloft and fall again, like so many cascades of silver.
As the ship bore cautiously on her course, innumerable ice islands appeared, some large, some small; and also large tracts, or fields, of floating ice, causing their progress to be exceedingly difficult and dangerous. It was next to impossible to steer the ship blear of them. The captain and crew were quite alive to their peril; they were in constant apprehension that one or other of these masses of ice would drift against the ship and stave her in, in which case nothing could have saved them. “The boats?” suggests some green little boy. How would you steer a boat amidst those floating mounds of ice? And, even if the boats could live, you would be frozen to death in a few hours, off Cape Horn.
On the second day of their reaching these fields of ice, it began to blow a gale when the sun went down. Or it may be better to say, when daylight declined; for the sun had been visible but for a few minutes, and then it looked like a copper-coloured ball. The ship was tossed hither and thither, the hail and sleet whistled around them, and, to add to the dangers of their situation, a dense fog came on. What an anxious night were they about to pass! Eighteen hours of darkness, with a fog so thick that nothing could be discerned at a few yards’ distance, the ship in momentary danger of being stove in by some floating mass of ice, or of going to pieces on an ice island! The captain ordered the ship to be hove-to, and then sent for all hands aft. He told them that they were in imminent peril, and that not a soul must quit the deck that night. The men had their respective stations assigned them, whence they would keep as sharp a look-out as the fog and darkness permitted, feeling that ere the dawn of another day, the ship and all that she contained might have disappeared beneath the waters. They went, silent and anxious, each man to his post. Slowly the night dragged its course along, the various notices that ice was near, from one watch or other, forming the only break to its painful monotony. It was blowing frightfully from the east, and the hail and snow beat sharply against the men. The captain was mostly on deck; if he retired to his cabin for a few minutes, the mate took the command.
At daybreak, nine in the morning, some of the men went below for breakfast, nearly dropping with fatigue and anxiety, and stiff with the ice on their clothes. No refreshment had been given them during the long suspense of that ever-to-be-remembered night; not a taste of anything. The captain and mate had partaken of some in the cabin more than once, but nothing had been offered to the worn-out men. Some snatches of sleep were obtained by them in turn during the daylight; and with three o’clock P.M. again came the dark, and the fatigue and anxiety of the previous night had once more to be endured.
This continued for some days; the fog and the gales, coupled with the dangerous ice, compelling the ship to be still hove-to. William Allair’s station had been, part of the time, the very worst on the ship; it was upon the forecastle, a place excessively exposed to the wind and weather. Anxiety, remorse, despair, and fear — the incessant fear that each hour would be his last — in conjunction with the toil and hardships of his lot, were working their effects upon him, rendering him ill in body as he had long been in mind. A slow fever attacked him, ripening into a remittent one as the days went on.
He became very ill with it. But, ill as he was, he might not quit his work, for it would have rendered another hand to be counted short in the already badly-manned ship. Moments of delirium passed across his brain when lying between the watches in his damp berth in the wretched forecastle, and he would vainly endeavour to close his eyes in sleep. Pictures would arise of his happy home, the home he had so recklessly and blindly given up; a remembrance of the ease he had enjoyed, the serenity of the line of life chalked out for him, contrasting bitterly with his present toil and sufferings. Even the old office, then so despised and hated, was now regarded as a very haven of calmness and rest. Visions of his dear mother were of frequent occurrence. In that state, half sleep, half delirium, induced by fever, he would fancy he saw her. Sometimes she was ill and grieving after him, sometimes she would look wel
l and happy as of yore; but always was she yearning for and anticipating the period of his return. Once he fancied — it was but a repetition of his waking thoughts, his unceasing longings — that he was back again; his mother all joy; his father, though at first chiding, all forgiveness; his sisters clinging round him; his poor brother wild with glee. And what seemed his own sensations? Why, they might be compared to those of one who has quitted misery for Elysium. His toils and troubles at sea were over, and he was with his family, never, never to leave them, never to go near the hated sea again. But he was not quit of the sea yet.
“Eight bells there, below — do you hear?” broke violently his dream; and starting up, he rushed on deck with his shipmates. A day and a night he did lie by; there was no help for it. A miserable place, though, was that forecastle to be in! The water dripped down on all sides of it, lumber and wet clothes filled up its confined space; while the air was unpleasantly fetid and pernicious, chiefly from its being kept closely shut up. As to the living? Why, sick or well, there was the salt junk tub. His head was racked with pain; his limbs were now shivering with ague, now burning with fever; his tongue and throat were parched. How he would have been waited and tended on at home! But here there was no consolation; there were none to help him!