Chapter IV (3)

The Sarah Jane was a most fortunate ship, as far as weather was concerned, at any rate. Catching the first breath of the north-eastern monsoon immediately outside the harbour, under all canvas we bowled briskly down to the line, crossed it with a steady, if light breeze from the northward, and, without experiencing any calm worth mentioning, presently found ourselves in the tender embrace of the south-east trade-winds, and being wafted steadily at the rate of about five knots an hour across the vast placid bosom of the Indian Ocean.

Life at sea under such conditions is very pleasant. For the vicissitudes of a sailor’s life only become hard to bear when weather is bad, food scanty, and officers brutal. When the opposites of these three conditions obtain, the sailor can gladly put up with many evil qualities in the ship itself. The leakiness of our old vessel troubled us not at all as long as the pleasant conditions of which I have spoken continued. Even when we reached the stormy latitudes adjacent to the Cape of Good Hope we were favoured by fair winds until we arrived off Simons Bay, when the wind fell away, and a perfect calm ensued with lowering, ugly-looking weather. But our good fortune still remained. The great sweep of the Agulhas current carried us round the Cape of Storms homeward without any wind worth taking notice of coming upon us out of the leaden-looking sky, and so we rounded the Cape, and with a fine southerly breeze pointed the Sarah Jane jibboom homeward.

The usual routine work of cleaning ship was indulged in. Nothing worthy of notice occurred until losing the trades. In about 7° N. lat. a calm of a week’s duration ensued. Here we fell in with several other ships, and our captain, apparently with a view of getting a little amusement, had a boat out, and went ship-visiting. This suited us admirably. Sailors always enjoy it, perhaps because they get so little of it on board merchant ships. The first two ships we visited were evidently strongly teetotal, for we noticed that while our captain returned on board perfectly sober, he always looked exceedingly glum and disappointed. But at last we spoke a vessel whose captain was in dire want of a little fresh water. We had plenty to spare, and in no long time had filled a couple of puncheons, lowered them over the side into the water, and towed them to the other ship. Her captain’s gratitude was great; in fact, he seemed hardly able to reward us sufficiently. Among other gifts we received a huge hog, two cases of preserved beef, a barrel of cabin biscuits, and two large cases of what appeared to us to be lime-juice. We returned on board, and hoisted in our spoils.

That night a breeze sprang up, and the little company of vessels that had clustered together in the vortex made by the “trades” separated, and pursued their various ways. Next morning we were alone, our ship was by herself on the face of the deep. The steward went to call the captain as usual, but could get no response. Alarmed, he came and reported the matter to the mate, whose watch on deck it was at the time. The mate went down, and, after repeated knockings at the captain’s door which failed to obtain any response, took violent measures, and burst the door open.

The captain was not there. A search was immediately made without result, but presently, to the horror of every one on board, the steward, a rather feeble-minded mulatto, rushed on deck shouting “Fire!” It need not be said how terrible this cry at sea always is, but it is never more so than when on board a badly-found wooden ship. However, all hands rushed aft at the call of the mate, and prepared to do everything that was possible for the subdual of the fire when it should be located. The smoke appeared to be rising from the lazarette, a store-room in the after part of the ship beneath the cabin. The mate and a couple of men tore off the hatch, and, half choked with the smoke that burst up in a great volume, made their way below, only to scramble out again in double quick time and fall fainting on the deck.

Meanwhile everybody was wondering what had become of the captain, until suddenly an awful-looking figure was seen emerging from a ventilator on deck at the fore part of the cabin. It was the captain, who announced his presence with a series of horrible yells. His clothes were in ribands, his face was black, his eyeballs glared. Several of us made a rush at him, conceiving him to have suddenly gone mad, but he eluded our grasp, and, nimble as a monkey, rushed up aloft, and sat mowing on the mainyard. A couple of us started after him, but were recalled by the second mate, who said--

“Let the old ---- alone. We have got something else to do if we want to save our lives.”

And indeed we had. The feeble pump in the bows of the ship, which we used for washing decks, was not of the slightest service as a fire-engine, and drawing water overside by buckets is a tedious process. We could hear the roaring of the flames underneath our feet, we could feel the decks getting hot, and as it appeared that our labour was utterly in vain, and that if we wished to save our lives we must waste no time in getting the boats provisioned and lowered, we turned all our energies in that direction. By the most tremendous exertions we succeeded in getting a fairly satisfactory amount of food and water into the two boats, along with some clothing, a compass, and a sextant. Hardly had we done so before a sudden outburst of flame from the cabin of furious violence warned us that it was time to be gone.

Meanwhile the skipper had been raging, a howling madman, on the mainyard. What was to be done about him? Truth compels me to state that the majority of us were for leaving him to his fate, realizing that to him we owed all our misfortunes. But still, _that_ we could hardly bring ourselves to do when the time came. The ship herself solved the question for us. She seemed to suddenly burst into flame fore and aft, the inflammable cargo, most of which was of cotton and various grasses, burning almost like turpentine. Indeed, some of us were compelled to spring into the sea and clamber on board the boats as best we could. Having done so, it became necessary to put a goodly distance between us and the ship with little delay, for the heat was terrible. And there sat the skipper on the mainyard, while the long tongues of flame went writhing up the well-tarred rigging. Suddenly we saw him spring to his feet, balancing himself for a moment on the yard, and then, with a most graceful curve, he sprang into the sea. He reappeared, swimming strongly, and the mate’s boat picked him up. And here occurred the strangest part of the whole matter, for no sooner was he in the boat than all the previous occurrences seemed to be wiped clean out of his mind, and he was as sane as any man among us. We stared at him in amazement, but he took no notice, saying a word or two on the handling of the boat or the direction in which she was to be steered, but making no comment upon the sudden catastrophe that had overtaken us.

Fortunately for us all, the weather remained perfectly fine, and as we knew we were directly in the track of ships, we were under no apprehensions as to our safety, but we certainly looked upon the skipper as, to say the least of it, uncanny. We watched him closely by day and by night, lest in some new maniacal outbreak he should endanger the lives of us all once more, and this time without hope of recovery. But he remained perfectly quiet and sensible, nor did he betray by any sign whatever any knowledge of what had happened. On the third day we sighted a barque right astern. She came up grandly, and very soon we were all safely on board of the same vessel from which we had received the provisions. Then we found that the two cases we had supposed to contain lime-juice had really been full of lime-juice bottles of rum--which explained matters somewhat.

And now another astonishing thing happened. Captain Scott suddenly conceived the notion that the Jocunda was his own ship, nor could any arguments convince him that he was wrong. The captain humoured him for a while, but at last his mania reached such a height that it became necessary to confine him in irons, and thus he was kept under restraint until our arrival in Plymouth, where no time was lost in placing him in a lunatic asylum.

What became of him I do not know, but at the Board of Trade inquiry all hands had the greatest difficulty in persuading the officials that we were not joined in a conspiracy of lying, and I for one felt that we could hardly blame them.

MAC’S EXPERIMENT

“Mahn, A’am nae carin’ a snap wut ye think aboot ma. A’am a Scoetchman, ye ken, fra Fogieloan; an’ them ’at disna laik ma th’ wye Ah aam, c’n juist dicht ther nebs an’ ma bachle-vamps. Tha rampin’, roarin’ lion uv Auld Scoetland aye gaed his ain wye, an’ A’am thinkin’ ’at maist o’ his weans ’ll dae the same thing. An’ if tha canna dae’t yin day, they’ll dae’t the neist, an’ muckle Auld Hornie himsel’ winna stap them a’thegither.”

It was a long speech for Jock MacTavish, our taciturn shipmate aboard the Yankee whaling-barque Ursus. Like several other luckless deep-water sailors, he had been “shanghaied” in San Francisco, awaking from the combined effects of a drug that would have killed anybody but a sailor, and sundry ugly blows on the head, to find himself booked for a cruise in a “spouter” for an indefinite length of time, and at a remuneration that none of us were ever able to understand. This was bad enough, in all conscience, but it might easily have been much worse, for the Ursus was a really good ship, as whalers go.

At the time when this yarn begins, we had been employing a slackness in the fishing by having a thorough clean up. It was very nearly time, for she was beginning to stink so badly that every morsel of food we ate seemed saturated with rancid whale-oil. So we worked, if possible, harder than usual, with sand and ley, to remove the clotted fat from decks, bulwarks, and boats, until on Christmas Eve she was almost her old clean self again. There remained only the tryworks, but they were certainly in a vile condition of black grease.

At knock-off time (all hands had been working all day) we began discussing our chances of having a merry Christmas on the morrow, and, with the usual argumentativeness of sailors, had got a dozen different theories started. But running through them all there seemed to be a fixed idea that no notice whatever would be taken of a day that we all regarded as the one festival of the year which could, by no possible means, be allowed to pass unhonoured.

No, not all, for when the discussion was at its height, Conkey, a lithe Londoner, whose epithet of Cockney had somehow taken this form, suddenly looked straight to where Mac was sitting stolidly munching a gigantic fragment of prime East India mess beef (it hadn’t been round Cape Horn more than four times), and said, “Wot d’yer sye, Mac? Ain’t ’erd from yer. ’Ow d’yer feel abart workin’ a Crissmuss dye?”

There was an instant silence, while every one fastened his eyes on Mac and awaited his answer. Slowly, as if the words were being squeezed out of him, he replied, “It disna matter a snuff tae me what wye ’tis. Ah belong tae the Free Kirk o’ Scoetland, an’ she disna gie ony suppoert tae siccan heathen practusses as th’ obsairvin’ o’ days, an’ months, an’ yeers.”

Conkey sprang to his feet full of fury, and, in choicest Mile End, informed Mac that, “hif ’e thawt ’e wuz blanky well goin’ ter call ’im a bloomin’ ’eathen an’ not goin’ ter git bashed over it, ’e wuz a bigger blank fool then ’e’d ever seen a-smokin’ tea-leaves ter sive terbacker.” To this outburst Mac only said what begins this yarn, and, in so saying, brought all hands down on him at once. Conkey was restrained from his meditated attack while one after another tried to argue the point with Mac, and to convince him that no man who neglected to keep Christmas Day as a feast of jollity and respite from all work, except under the direst pressure of necessity, could possibly be a Christian.

The contract we had on hand, though, was much too large for us. Metaphorically speaking, Mac wiped the fo’c’sle deck with each of us in succession. His arguments, in the first place, were far too deep for our capacity, had they been intelligible; but couched in the richest Aberdeenshire dialect, and bristling with theological terminology utterly foreign to us, we stood no chance. One by one we were reduced to silence. It was broken by Conkey, who said finally, “Hi don’t know wot ’e bloomin’ well sez, but Hi c’n punch ’is hugly carrotty mug for ’im, an’ ’ere goes.”

Again we restrained our shipmate’s primitive instincts, while Mac slowly rose from his donkey, wiped his sheath-knife deliberately on his pants, put it away, and then, quietly as if it had just occurred to him, turned to the raging Conkey, saying, “See heer, ma laddie, A’al mak’ y’ an oafer. A’al fecht ye. If ye gie ma a lickin’ A’al hae naethin’ mair tae dae wi’ the business; bud if Ah lick you, A’al dae aal Ah can tae get, no juist the day aff, but a guid blow-out o’ vittles in the bairgin, altho’ Ah misdoot ma muckle ther’s naethin’ aft that ye cud mak’ a decent meal o’. Hoo diz that shoot ye?”

For all answer Conkey, breaking away from those who had held him, sprang at Mac, dealing, as he came, two blows, right and left, like flashes. Mac did not attempt to parry them, but seemed to stoop quietly; and suddenly Conkey’s heels banged against the beam overhead. Immediately afterwards there came the dull thump of his head upon the floor. Mac just disengaged himself, and stood waiting till his opponent should feel able or willing to resume.

Truly the latter’s head must have been as thick as his courage was high, for, before any of us had begun to offer assistance, he had struggled to his feet, looking a bit dazed, it is true, but evidently as full of fight as ever. He had learned a lesson, however--that caution in dealing with his sturdy adversary was necessary, and that he must accommodate his undoubted boxing powers to new conditions.

In a crouching attitude, and with two arms held bow-wise in front, he moved nearer the rugged, square-set figure of the Scotchman, who, as before, stood strictly on the defensive. There was a feint by Conkey--we saw Mac’s head go down again--but then came a sharp thud and a swinging, sidelong blow from Conkey, and Mac seemed to crumble into a heap, for, as he stooped to repeat his former successful grip, Conkey had shot upward his right knee with such force that Mac’s nose was a red ruin, and the blow on the ear from Conkey’s left could have done Mac very little good. So far, the advantage undoubtedly lay with the Londoner, but, after a brief spell, Mac pulled himself together, and the two clinched again. Locked together like a pair of cats, except that they neither bit, scratched, nor made a sound, they writhed all over the fo’c’sle unable to strike, but so equally matched that neither could loose himself. Had they been alone, I believe only death would have parted them; but at last, in sheer admiration for the doggedness of their pluck, we laid hold on them and tore them apart, declaring that two such champions ought to be firm friends. As soon as they got their breath, Conkey held out his hand, saying, “Scotty, me cock, ye’re as good a man as me, but Hi’m----hif ye’re a better. If yer think y’are, wy, we’ll just ply the bloomin’ ’and art, but if ye’re satisfied, Hi am.” Taking the proffered hand, Scotty replied, “Mahn, A’am no thet petickler. Ah haena a pickle o’ ambeeshun tae be thocht a better mahn than ma neebours, neither am Ah a godless fule that henkers aefther fechtin’ for fechtin’s sake; but as ye say, we’re baith’s guid’s yin anither, an’ there’s ma han’ upo’ th’ maetter. Ah dinna see ’at we’re ony forrader wi’ oor bairgin tho’.”

Then a regular clamour of voices arose, all saying the same thing, viz. that the heroes should “pull sticks”--that is, one should hold two splinters of wood concealed in his hand with the ends just protruding for the other to choose from, and whichever got the shortest piece should be the loser. It is a time-honoured fo’c’sle way of settling disputes or arranging watches.

They drew, and Scotty won. All faces fell at this, for if we were going to make a bold bid for our Christmas privileges we needed unity, and especially we wanted such a tough nut as Jock MacTavish actively enlisted on our side. The winner lifted our gloom by saying quietly, “Sae A’m with ye, aefther aal, ut seems.” Then, noting the surprise on our faces, he went on, “What’s the differ, think ye, whether Ah win at fechtin’ or drawin’. Ah said Ah’d be with ye if Ah won, sae that’s a’ richt.” And, easy in our minds, we separated, the watch below to their bunks, and the rest to their stations.

* * * * *

Morning broke in glory, such a day as we see, perhaps, two of during a year in our hard, grey climate at home. After wetting down the decks as usual, the mate gave the order to turn-to at cleaning the tryworks--a step which brought us all up “with a round turn,” as we say. Closing together we faced the amazed officer, and Mac, stepping a little in advance, said, “Div ye no ken, Maister Winsloe, ’at this is the day o’ days tae all true Chreestyin’ men. Suner than Ah’d dae ae han’s turrn on Chrissmus Day--except, af coorse, in the wye o’ neceesary seamen’s duties, sic as a trick at the wheel, furrlin’ sail, or the like--Ah’d gae ashore this meenut!”

At this we couldn’t help chuckling, for the nearest land was about three miles beneath our keel, vertically, and at least a thousand horizontally. But the mate was like Lot’s wife after she looked back. The thing was outside his mental dimension altogether. As the real significance of it filtered through, his eyes gleamed, and, with a yell like a Pawnee, he leaped for Scotty--and missed him; for Scotty was a born dodger, and had an eye like a gull’s. The officer’s spring carried him right into our midst, however; and, with a perfect hurricane of bad words, he struck out right and left as if we were the usual mixed gang of Dagoes, Dutchmen, and Kanakas he had been used to. Pluck he certainly did not lack, but his judgment had turned sour.

In a minute he was flat on deck on his face, with Conkey sitting on his head, and the rest of us were marching aft to make an end of the matter with the old man. He reached the deck from below just as we arrived; and, although the most unusual sight might well have given him pause, he showed no sign of surprise.

Advancing to meet us, he said quietly, “Well?” Again Mac was to the fore, and, facing the stately, impassive figure of the skipper, he said, “We’ve juist daundert aeft, sir, tae wuss ye a Murry Chrismuss, an’ tae thenk ye in advance-like for the bit extry vittles, an’ maybe a drap o’ somethin’ cheerin’ tae drink ye’re health in an sic an ahspeeshus occashin.”

For an answer the skipper produced from his hip-pocket a revolver, which he pointed straight at Scotty’s head, while with the other hand he made a comprehensive gesture, which we obeyed by falling back from that dangerous vicinity. As we did so, there was a rioting behind us, and into our midst burst the mate and Conkey, fiercely struggling.

In a moment there was as pretty a rough-and-tumble among us as any fighting-man would wish to see, for the harpooners and the other three mates had sprung in from somewhere, and were making up for lost time with vigour.

Apart from the struggling crowd the skipper stood fingering his shooting-iron, apparently irresolute--indeed, it was hard to decide for a moment what to do. Bloodshed was evidently most distasteful to him, yet there could be no doubt that he would not shrink from it if necessary. But the whole affair was so grotesque, so causeless, that he was undecided how to deal with it, the more especially as his officers were every one mixed inextricably with the crew in a writhing mass.

The problem was solved for him and for us in a most unexpected way. In the midst of the riot there was a tremendous shock, as if the Ursus had suddenly struck a rock while going at full speed; but, as she had barely been going through the water at the rate of two knots an hour, that was an impossible explanation. The concussion, whatever it was, flung every man to the deck, and in one moment all thoughts were switched off the conflict with one another and on to this mysterious danger. All hands rushed to the side and looked overboard, to see the blue of the sea streaked with bands of blood, while not twenty feet away, on the starboard beam, a huge sperm whale lay feebly exhaling breath that showed redly against the blue of the water. Like a trumpet-blast the old man’s voice rang out, “Lower ’way boats!” and with catlike celerity every man flew to his station, the falls rattled, and with an almost simultaneous splash three boats took the water.

“Hold on, starboard bow boat!” roared the old man again, seeing that there was no need of it, and taking that advantage of keeping it in its place given him by the third mate being a few seconds slower than the others in getting away.

Before we had time to realize what a change had come over us all, we were furiously assaulting the monster, but he was in no condition to retaliate. Had we left him alone, he must have died in a few minutes, for protruding from the side of his massive head was a jagged piece of timber, showing white and splintered where it had been freshly broken away.

We had little time to speculate upon the strangeness of the occurrence, for suddenly we were aware that urgent signals were being made from the ship; and, leaving one boat to pass the fluke-line ready for hauling our prize alongside, the other two sped back to the ship. Arriving alongside, we clambered swiftly on board, to hear the skipper’s deep voice calling, “Leave the boats and man the pumps!” A cold shudder ran through us at the words, for in a moment all knew that our ship had received a deadly blow from the wounded whale, and that it was a portion of her that we had seen protruding from his head. And we remembered the awful loneliness of that part of the Pacific, far away from the track of all ships except an occasional whaler, so occasional that our chances of falling in with one was infinitesimal.

The wind fell to a dead calm. There was not a cloud in the heavens, and the sea in our immediate vicinity was not only smooth, but silky, from the slight oiliness we exuded, so that looking down into it was almost like looking up at the sky. After the first alarm had subsided it was evident that we could have several relays at the pumps, their structure not admitting of more than eight men working conveniently at one time. The skipper stood by with the sounding-rod, waiting, in grim silence, to see whether we or the leak were gaining, when Mac, sidling up to him, made some remark that we could not hear. The skipper turned to him and nodded; and immediately we saw our pawky shipmate shedding his two garments. Next thing we knew he was climbing over the side, and those of us who were resting mounted the rail and watched him. I have seen Kanakas diving for pearl-shell, and Malays diving for pearls, but never an olive-skinned amphibian of them all could have held a candle to Jock MacTavish. He swam about under the ship’s bottom, examining her just as coolly as if in Lambeth Baths, his wide, open eyes glaring upward through the water with a most uncanny look in them--like the eyes of a man long dead. Suddenly he popped up alongside, not at all distressed, and, wringing the water from his nose, mounted the side and approached the skipper.

With one accord the clang of the pumps ceased to hear his words, for we felt that they were a verdict of life or death for all of us. “She’ll be a’ recht, sir,” said he. “Ther’s a muckle hole in th’ garburd straake, an’ aboot twenty fit o’ the fause keel awa’; bit a poke fu’ o’ shakins ’ll bung it up brawly wi’ a len’th o’ chain roond her tae keep it in’s plaace.” The pumping was resumed with all the energy of hope renewed, while busy hands made ready a bagful of soft rope-yarns and got up a spare fluke-chain. The bag was made fast in the bight of a rope, which, weighted with a lump of sandstone attached by a slipping lashing of spunyarn, was passed under her bottom. Again Mac went overboard and guided the plug into its place.

Then the chain was passed round her, and placed over the plug by Scotty. On deck we hove it taut, and in four hours we had sucked her out.

Then the skipper called all hands aft, and said, “Boys, ye’re the whitest crowd I’ve ever struck. The best dinner I k’n scare up ’s waitin’ for ye,’n I’ve raided the medsun chest for the only drop of licker thar is aboard. I don’t tech fire-water meself, but I’ll wish ye a Merry Christmas with all me heart. Ther’s only one thing I’d like t’ know; an’ that is, haow a Scotchman comes to risk his life for a Christmas dinner?” “We’el, cap’n,” drawled Mac, “’twus juist a wee bit seekoeloegical expeerimunt.”

Time’s up; but I must add that we humoured the old barky back to ’Frisco--and we didn’t lose that whale either.

ON THE VERTEX

Not the least curious to the uninitiated of the ways by which shipmasters navigate their vessels over the trackless wastes of ocean is that known to the navigator by the name of Great Circle Sailing. Lest the timid reader take alarm at the introduction of so high-sounding a technical term, let me hasten to assure him or her that I have no deep-laid designs upon innocent happiness by imposing a trigonometrical treatise upon them in the guise of an amusing or interesting story. To such baseness I cannot stoop, for one very good reason at any rate, because I have such a plentiful lack of trigonometry myself. Nevertheless, I do think that much more interest might be taken in the ways of our ships and their crews by the people of this essentially maritime nation than is at present the case if, in the course of sea-story telling, the narrators were not averse to giving a few accurate details as to the why and how of nautical proceedings.

Having, I trust, allayed all tremors by these preliminary remarks, let me go on to say that while all sane civilized persons believe this earth of ours to be more or less globular in shape, it probably occurs to but few that the shortest distance from point to point on a globe is along a curve. But in order to get any substantial gain out of this knowledge in the direction of shortening a ship’s passage, it is necessary first of all to have a considerable stretch of sea whereon to draw your curve, which is after all a straight line, since it is the shortest distance between two points. Even the fine open ocean between England and America is hardly sufficient to induce navigators to make use of Great Circle Sailing on outward or homeward passages, the gain being so small. When, however, the captain of an outward bound ship has wriggled through the baffling belt of hesitating winds that have hindered his progress southward from the equator to Cape, and begins to look for the coming of the brave westerly gales that shall send him flying before them to Australia or New Zealand, an opportunity occurs as in no other part of the world for putting the pretty Great Circle theory into practice.

It may be necessary to remind the reader that Great Circles are those which divide a globe into two equal parts, such as the equator and the meridians. If, then, the navigator at Cape in South America draws a thread tightly on a terrestrial globe between that point and, say, the south-east cape of Tasmania, the line it describes will be the arc of a Great Circle, and consequently the shortest distance between the two places. But when he comes to lay down the track which that thread has described upon his Mercator chart he finds that, instead of steering almost a straight course between the two places, he must describe a huge curve, with its vertex or highest southerly point well within the Antarctic circle. Now, no sane seaman would dream of seeking such a latitude upon any voyage but one of exploration, since it is well known what kind of weather awaits the unfortunate mariner there. But, without saying that Captain Jellico was a lunatic, it is necessary to remark that he was no ordinary shipmaster, and those who knew him best often prophesied that one day his persistent pursuit of hobbies and fads would involve him and all his unfortunate crew in some extraordinary disaster.

On the present voyage he commanded an ancient teak built barque that had long ago seen her best days, and was, besides, so slow that any of the ordinary methods of economizing time were a ridiculous waste of energy when applied to her. Of course, she carried stunsails, those infernal auxiliaries that are or were responsible for more sin on board ship than any other invention of man. She was bound to Auckland, and by the time she had waddled as far south as Cape had already consumed as many days as a smart clipper ship would have needed to do the whole passage. Yet Captain Jellico was so proud of the ugly old tub (bathing machine, the men called her), principally because he was half-owner of her, that he was perfectly blind to her slothful and unhandy qualities. Day by day he held forth to his disgusted mate upon the beauty of the Great Circle problem, and the desirability of putting it into practice, announcing his firm intention of carrying it out in its entirety this trip. He wasn’t going to piffle with any “composite” Great Circle track, not he. Half-hearted seamen might choose to follow the great curve down as far as 50° S. or so, and then shirk the whole business by steering due east for a couple of thousand miles, but he would do the trick properly, and touch the vertex, unless, indeed, it happened to be on the mainland of Antarctica. After an hour or two of this sort of talk the mate would go on deck feeling mighty sick, and muttering fervent prayers that his commander would meet with some entirely disabling accident soon, one that would effectually hinder him from carrying out his oft-reiterated intention. But no such answer was afforded to Mr. Marline’s impious aspirations. The steadfast westerly wind began as usual, and the clumsy old Chanticleer, under every rag of canvas, stunsails and all, began to plunder along that hateful curve, steering about south-east by south. Gradually the wind strengthened, until, much to the delight of the scanty crew, the fluttering rags that hung precariously at the yard-arms were taken in and stowed snugly away, the booms and irons were sent down from aloft, and lashed along the scuppers with the spare spars and stunsail carrying, for that passage, at any rate, became only a wretched memory. Sterner and stronger blew the wind as day succeeded day and higher latitudes were successively reached, until, although it was the Antarctic summer, all hands were wearing nearly every garment they possessed in the vain endeavour to keep a little warmth in their thin blood.

One topic now overlaid every other in the endless causeries that were held in the gloomy den where the sailors lived. It was the course steered. The position of the ship is always more or less a matter of conjecture to the men forward, except when some well-known island or headland is sighted, but all sailors are able to judge fairly well from the courses steered what track is being made, and the present persistence in a southerly direction was disquieting in the extreme to them all. The weather worsened every day, and occasional icebergs showed their awful slopes through the surrounding greyness, making every man strain his eyes when on the look-out or at the wheel in painful anxiety lest the ship should suddenly come full tilt upon one of them. A deep discontent was heavy upon the heart of every member of the crew, with the sole exception of the skipper. Snugly wrapped in a huge fur-lined jacket, and with an eared sealskin cap drawn down over his ears, he paced the poop jauntily, as merry as Father Christmas, and utterly oblivious of everything and everybody but the grand way in which he was following up his Great Circle. At last, when a dull settled misery seemed to have loaded all hands so that they appeared to have lost the heart even to growl, a dense mist settled fatefully down upon the ship, a white pall that was not dispelled again by the strong, bitter wind. The skipper hardly ever left the deck, but his almost sleepless vigilance had no effect upon his high spirits. Suddenly at mid-day, when by dead reckoning he was within a day’s sail of the vertex, the sea, which had been running in mountainous masses for weeks past, occasionally breaking over all and seething about the sodden decks, became strangely smooth and quiet, although the wind still howled behind them. Such a change sent a thrill of terrible dread through every heart. Even the skipper, with all his stubborn fortitude, looked troubled, and faltered in his unresting tramp fore and aft the poop. Then gradually the wind failed until it was almost calm, and the enshrouding mist closed down upon the ship so densely that it was hardly possible to see a fathom’s length away. The silence became oppressive, all the more so because underlying it there was the merest suggestion of a sound that always has a fateful significance for the mariner, the hoarse, unsatisfied murmur of the sea sullenly beating against an immovable barrier. And thus they waited and endured all the agony and suspense born of ignorance of the dangers that they knew must surround them, and utter incapability to do anything whatever. Full thirty-six hours crept leaden-footed away before there came any lightening of their darkness. Then gradually the rolling wreaths of mist melted away and revealed to them their position. At first they could hardly credit the evidence of their senses, believing that what they saw hemming them in on every side was but the reluctant fog taking on fantastic shapes of mountain, valley, and plateau. But when at last the wintry sun gleamed palely, and they could discern the little surf glittering against the bases of the ice-cliffs, all elusive hopes fled, and they became fully aware of their horrible position. The vessel lay motionless in a blue lake bounded on every side by white walls of ice, the snowy glare of their cliffs contrasting curiously with the deep blue of the sea. Some of the peaks soared to a height of over one thousand feet, others again rose sheer from the water for several hundreds of feet, and then terminated in flat table-like summits of vast area. But all were alike in their grim lifelessness. They looked as if they had thus existed for ages; it was impossible to imagine any change in their terrible solidity.

After the first shock of the discovery had passed, the relief that always comes from knowing the worst came to them, and they began to speculate upon the manner in which they could have entered this apparently ice-locked lake. Presently the skipper, in a strangely altered voice, ordered the long boat to be got out, a task of great difficulty, since, as in most vessels of the Chanticleer’s class, the long boat was, besides being hampered up by a miscellaneous collection of all the rubbish in the ship, secured as if she was never intended to be used under any circumstances. But the tough job gave the hands something to take their minds off their unhappy position, while the exertion kept off the icy chill of their surroundings. When at last the boat was in the water, although she was so leaky that one man was kept constantly baling, the skipper entered her, and, with four oarsmen, started to explore their prison. With the utmost caution, they surveyed every fathom of the sea line, no detail of the ice-barrier escaping their anguished scrutiny; but when at last, after six hours’ absence, they returned on board, they had been unable to discover the slightest vestige of a passage, no, not so much as would admit their boat. The only conclusion that could be arrived at was that they had passed in through the opening of a horseshoe-shaped berg of enormous area, and that another smaller berg had drifted in after them and turned over in the channel, effectually closing it against their return. Slowly and sadly they had returned to the ship, the skipper looking heartbroken at this tragic termination to his enthusiastic scheme of navigation. After ascertaining his position by means of an artificial horizon, he called all hands aft, and thus addressed them, “Men, we’m all fellow-sufferers now, I reckon, and the only thing to do ’es to wait God’s good time for lettin’ us get out. I find we’m in 61° S., 50° E., and I reckon our only hope lies in the fact that this can’t be no shore ice; it must be a floatin’ berg, ef ’tes a most amazin’ big un. Consequently it must be a driftin’ to the norrard a little; they all do, and sooner or later the sun ’ll melt us out. One good job, we got ’nough pervisions in the cargo ter las’ us six years, an’ as for water, well, I reckon there’s more fresh water froze around us than all the ships in the world ’ud ever want. So we’ll just take care of ourselves, try an’ keep alive,’n look after the old barky, for we shall certinly sail away in her yet.” His speech was received in silence, but all hands looked brighter and happier than they had done for a long time. They towed the vessel into a sort of cove, and moored her firmly with kedges and hawsers to the ice, then turned their attention to the invention of all sorts of expedients for preventing the time hanging too heavily. Better feeding became the order of the day, for the old man at once drew upon the cargo, which included an immense assortment of preserved food of the best brands, as well as many luxuries. And every day there was a slight change in the position, showing that, as the skipper had said, the whole body of ice was drifting north as well as east. So uneventfully and tediously two months passed away, leaving everything pretty much the same, except that the skipper seemed to have aged ten years.

Then one afternoon, when the enwrapped mist was so thick that even the deck beneath their feet was scarcely visible, there came a tremendous crash that made the old vessel quiver from keel to truck. It was followed by loud splashes as of falling blocks of ice, and strange sounds that resembled human voices. Presently the fog lifted, and revealed a great gap in the ice-wall just ahead of the vessel, and on one side of its cliffs the wreck of a splendid ship, whose crew were huddled upon the precipitous crags of the berg. The sight sent all hands into frantic activity on the instant. Toiling like giants, they rescued all the nearly frozen men, who were in such evil case that they could hardly ask whence their rescuers had come, and then, as if incapable of fatigue, they strained every ounce of strength they possessed to warp their long-imprisoned ship out of that terrible dock. Once escaped, it is hardly necessary to say that Captain Jellico lost no time in getting north and running his easting down upon a parallel of 42° S. Great Circle Sailing had lost all its charms for him. And in due time the Chanticleer arrived at Auckland, two hundred and forty-six days out from home, with all her passengers and crew in the best of health and mutually pleased with each other.

A MONARCH’S FALL

Glorious in all his splendid majesty, the great sun issued forth of his chamber, and all the wide sea basked in his beams with a million million smiles. Save the sea and the sun and the sky, there was nought apparently existing--it might well have been the birthday of Light. Also the one prevailing characteristic of the scene to a human eye, had one been there to see, was peace--perfect stainless peace. But we are, by the very fact of our organization, true impressionists, and only by a severe course of training, voluntary or otherwise, do we realize aught but the present fact, the past is all forgotten, the future all unknown. So it was here, beneath that sea of smiling placid beauty a war of unending ferocity was being waged, truceless, merciless; for unto the victors belong the spoils, and without them they must perish--there was none other food to be gotten.

But besides all this ruthless warfare carried on inevitably because without it all must die of hunger, there were other causes of conflict, matters of high policy and more intricate motive than just the blind all-compelling pressure of hunger. The glowing surface of that morning sea was suddenly disturbed simultaneously at many points, and like ascending incense the bushy breathings of some scores of whales became visible. Perfectly at their ease since their instincts assured them that from this silent sea their only enemy was absent, they lay in unstudied grace about the sparkling waters, the cows and youngsters gambolling happily together in perfect freedom from care. Hither they had come from one of their richest feeding-grounds, where all had laid in a stock of energy sufficient to carry them half round the globe without weariness. So they were fat with a great richness, strong with incalculable strength, and because of these things they were now about to settle a most momentous question. Apart from the main gathering of females and calves by the space of about a mile lay five individuals, who, from their enormous superiority in size, no less than the staid gravity of their demeanour, were evidently the adult males of the school. They lay almost motionless in the figure of a baseless triangle whereof the apex was a magnificent bull over seventy feet in length, with a back like some keelless ship bottom up, and a head huge and square as a railway car. He it was who first broke the stillness that reigned. Slowly raising his awful front with its down-hanging, twenty-foot lower jaw exposing two gleaming rows of curved teeth, he said, “Children, ye have chosen the time and the place for your impeachment of my overlordship, and I am ready. Well, I wot that ye do but as our changeless laws decree, that the choice of your actions rests not with yourselves, that although ye feel lords of yourselves and desirous of ruling all your fellows, it is but under the compelling pressure of our hereditary instincts. Yet remember, I pray you, before ye combine to drive me from among ye, for how many generations I have led the school, how wisely I have chosen our paths, so that we are still an unbroken family as we have been for more than a hundred seasons. And if ye must bring your powers to test now, remember, too, that I am no weakling, no dotard weary of rule, but mightiest among all our people, conqueror in more than a thousand battles, wise with the accumulated knowledge of a hundred generations of monarchy. Certainly the day of my displacement must come; who should know that better than I? but methinks it has not yet dawned, and I would not have ye lightly pit your immature strength against mine, courting inevitable destruction. Ponder well my words, for I have spoken.”

A solemn hush ensued, just emphasized by the slumbrous sound of the sparkling wavelets lapping those mighty forms as they lay all motionless and apparently inert. Yet it had been easy to see how along each bastion like flank the rolling tendons, each one a cable in itself, were tense and ready for instantaneous action, how the great muscle mounds were hardened around the gigantic masses of bone, and the flukes, each some hundred feet in area, did not yield to the heaving bosom of the swell, but showed an almost imperceptible vibration as of a fucus frond in a tide rip. After a perfect silence of some fifteen minutes an answer came--from the youngest of the group, who lay remote from the chief. “We have heard, O king, the words of wisdom, and our hearts rejoice. Truly we have been of the fortunate in this goodly realm, and ingrates indeed should we be had our training under so terrible a champion been wasted upon us. But therefore it is that we would forestall the shame that should overtake us did we wait until thy forces had waned and that all-conquering might had dwindled into dotage ere we essayed to put thy teaching into practice. Since thy deposition from this proud place must be, to whose forces could’st thou more honourably yield than to ours, the young warriors who have learned of thee all we know, and who will carry on the magnificent traditions thou hast handed down to us in a manner worthy of our splendid sire! And if we be slain, as well may be, remembering with whom we do battle, the greater our glory, the greater thine also.”

A deep murmur like the bursting of a tidal wave against the sea-worn lava rocks of Ascension marked the satisfaction of the group at this exposition of their views, and as if actuated by one set of nerves the colossal four swung round shoulder to shoulder, and faced the ocean monarch. Moving not by a barnacle’s breadth, he answered, “It is well spoken, oh my children, ye are wiser than I. And be the issue what it will, all shall know that the royal race still holds. As in the days when our fathers met and slew the slimy dragons of the pit, and, unscared by fathom-long claws or ten-ply coats of mail, dashed them in pieces and chased them from the blue deep they befouled, so to-day when the world has grown old, and our ancient heritage has sorely shrunken, our warfare shall still be the mightiest among created things.”

Hardly had the leviathan uttered the last word when, with a roar like Niagara bursting its bonds in spring, he hurled his vast bulk headlong upon the close gathered band of his huge offspring. His body was like a bent bow, and its recoil tore the amazed sea into deep whirls and eddies as if an island had foundered. Full upon the foremost one he fell, and deep answered unto deep with the impact. That awful blow dashed its recipient far into the soundless depths while the champion sped swiftly forward on his course, unable to turn until his impetus was somewhat spent. Before he could again face his foes, the three were upon him, smiting with Titanic fluke strokes, circling beneath him with intent to catch the down-hanging shaft of his lower jaw, rising swiftly end on beneath the broad spread of his belly, leaping high into the bright air and falling flatlings upon his wide back. The tormented sea foamed and hissed in angry protest, screaming sea-birds circled low around the conflict, ravening sharks gathered from unknown distances, scenting blood, and all the countless tribes of ocean waited aghast. But after the first red fury had passed came the wariness, came the fruitage of all those years of training, all the accumulated instincts of ages to supplement blind brutal force with deep laid schemes of attack and defence. As yet the three survivors were but slightly injured, for they had so divided their attack even in that first great onset, that the old warrior could not safely single out one for destruction. Now the youngest, the spokesman, glided to the front of his brethren, and faced his waiting sire--

“What! so soon weary. Thou art older than we thought. Truly this battle hath been delayed too long. We looked for a fight that should be remembered for many generations, and behold----” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the foam circles rise as the vast tail of the chief curved inward for the spring, and he, the scorner, launched himself backwards a hundred fathoms at a bound. After him, leaping like any salmon in a spate, came the terrible old warrior, the smitten waves boiling around him as he dashed them aside in his tremendous pursuit. But herein the pursued had the advantage, for it is a peculiarity of the sperm whale that while he cannot see before him, his best arc of vision is right astern. So that the pursuer must needs be guided by sound and the feel of the water, and the very vigour of his chase was telling far more upon his vast bulk than upon the lither form of his flying enemy. In this matter the monarch’s wisdom was of no avail, for experience could not tell him how advancing age handicaps the strongest, and he wondered to find a numbness creeping along his spine--to feel that he was growing weary. And suddenly, with an eel-like movement the pursued one described a circle beneath the water, rising swift as a dolphin springs towards his pursuer, and dashing at the dangling, gleaming jaw. These two great balks of jaw met in clashing contact, breaking off a dozen or so of the huge teeth, and ripping eight or ten feet of the gristly muscle from the throat of the aggressor. But hardly had they swung clear of each other than the other two were fresh upon the scene, and while the youngest one rested, they effectually combined to prevent their fast-weakening foe from rising to breathe. No need now for them to do more, for the late enormous expenditure of force had so drained his vast body of its prime necessity that the issue of the fight was but a question of minutes. Yet still he fought gallantly, though with lungs utterly empty--all the rushing torrent of his blood growing fetid for lack of vitalising air. At last, with a roar as of a cyclone through his head, he turned on his side and yielded to his triumphant conquerors, who drew off and allowed him to rise limply to the now quiet sea-surface. For more than an hour he lay there prone, enduring all the agony of his overthrow, and seeing far before him the long, lonely vista of his solitary wanderings, a lone whale driven from his own, and nevermore to rule again.