Chapter IV (4)

Meanwhile the three had departed in search of their brother, smitten so felly early in the fight that he had not since joined them. When they found that which had been him it was the centre of an innumerable host of hungry things that fled to air or sea-depths at their approach. A glance revealed the manner of his end--a broken back, while already, such had been the energy of the smaller sea people, the great framework of his ribs was partly laid bare. They made no regrets, for the doing of useless things finds no place in their scheme of things. Then the younger said--

“So the question of overlordship lies between us three, and I am unwilling that it should await settlement. I claim the leadership, and am prepared here and now to maintain my right.”

This bold assertion had its effect upon the two hearers, who, after a long pause, replied--

“We accept, O king, fully and freely, until the next battle-day arrives, when the succession must be maintained by thee in ancient form.”

So the matter was settled, and proudly the young monarch set off to rejoin the waiting school. Into their midst he glided with an air of conscious majesty, pausing in the centre to receive the homage and affectionate caresses of the harem. No questions were asked as to the whereabouts of the deposed sovereign, nor as to what had become of the missing member of the brotherhood. These are things that do not disturb the whale-people, who in truth have a sufficiency of other matters to occupy their thoughts besides those inevitable changes that belong to the settled order of things. The recognition complete, the new leader glided out from the midst of his people, and pointing his massive front to the westward moved off at a stately pace, on a straight course for the coast of Japan.

Long, long lay the defeated one, motionless and alone. His exertions had been so tremendous that every vast muscle band seemed strained beyond recovery, while the torrent of his blood, befouled by his long enforced stay beneath the sea, did not readily regain its normally healthful flow. But on the second day he roused himself, and raising his mighty head swept the unbroken circle of the horizon to satisfy himself that he was indeed at last a lone whale. Ending his earnest scrutiny he milled round to the southward and with set purpose and steady fluke-beat started for the Aucklands. On his journey he passed many a school or smaller “pod” of his kind, but in some mysterious manner the seal of his loneliness was set upon him, so that he was shunned by all. In ten days he reached his objective, ten days of fasting, and impelled by fierce hunger ventured in closely to the cliffs, where great shoals of fish, many seals, with an occasional porpoise, came gaily careering down the wide-gaping white tunnel of his throat into the inner darkness of dissolution. It was good to be here, pleasant to feel once more that unquestioned superiority over all things, and swiftly the remembrance of his fall faded from the monster’s mind. By day he wandered lazily, enjoying the constant easy procession of living food down his ever-open gullet; by night he wallowed sleepily in the surf-torn margin of those jagged reefs. And thus he came to enjoy the new phase of existence, until one day he rose slowly from a favourite reef-patch to feel a sharp pang shoot through his wide flank. Startled into sudden, violent activity, he plunged madly around in the confined area of the cove wherein he lay in the vain endeavour to rid himself of the smart. But he had been taken at a disadvantage, for in such shallow waters there was no room to manœuvre his vast bulk, and his wary assailants felt that in spite of his undoubted vigour and ferocity he would be an easy prey. But suddenly he headed instinctively for the open sea at such tremendous speed that the two boats attached to him were but as chips behind him. He reached the harbour’s mouth, and bending, swiftly sought the depths. Unfortunately for him a huge pinnacle of rock rose sheer from the sea bed some hundred fathoms below, and upon this he hurled himself headlong with such fearful force that his massive neck was broken. And next day a weary company of men were toiling painfully to strip from his body its great accumulation of valuable oil, and his long career was ended.

THE CHUMS

What a depth of mystery is concealed in the phenomena of likes and dislikes! Why, at first sight, we are attracted by one person and repelled by another, independently, to all outward seeming, of personal appearance or habits of observation. This is, of course, a common experience of most people, but one of the strangest instances I have ever known was in my own affection for Jack Stadey and all that grew out of it.

Stadey was a Russian Finn, one of a race that on board ship has always had the reputation of being a bit wizard-like, credited with the possession of dread powers, such as the ability to raise or still a storm, become invisible, and so on. The bare truth about the seafaring Finns, however, is that they make probably the finest all-round mariners in the world. No other sea-folk combine so completely all the qualities that go to make up the perfect seaman. Many of them may be met with who can build a vessel, make her spars, her sails, and her rigging, do the blacksmith work and all the manifold varieties of odd workmanship that go to complete a ship’s equipment, take her to sea, and navigate her on soundest mathematical principles, and do all these strange acts and deeds with the poorest, most primitive tools, and under the most miserable, poverty-stricken conditions. But, as a rule, they are not smart; they must be allowed to do their work in their own way, at their own pace, and with no close scrutiny into anything except results. Now, Jack Stadey was a typical Finn, as far as his slow ungainly movements went, but none of that ability and adaptiveness which is characteristic of his countrymen was manifest in him. To the ordinary observer he was just a heavy, awkward “Dutchman,” who couldn’t jump to save his life, and who would necessarily be put upon all the heaviest, dirtiest jobs, while the sailorizing was being done by smarter men. With a long, square head, faded blue eyes, and straggling flaxen moustache, round shoulders, and dangling, crooked arms, he seemed born to be the butt of his more favoured shipmates. Yet when I first became acquainted with him in the fo’c’sle of the old Dartmouth, outward bound to Hong Kong, something about him appealed to me, and we became chums. The rest of the crew, with one notable exception, were not bad fellows, and Jack shuffled along serenely through the voyage, quite undisturbed by the fact that no work of any seamanlike nature ever came to his share. I came in for a good deal of not ill-natured chaff from the rest for my close intimacy with him, but it only had the effect of knitting us closer together, for there is just that strain of obstinacy about me that opposition only stiffens. And as I studied that simple, childlike man, I found that he had a heart of gold, a nature that had no taint of selfishness, and was sublimely unconscious of its own worth.

We made the round voyage together, and on our return to London I persuaded him to quit the gloomy environment of sailor-town to come and take lodgings with me in a turning out of Oxford Street, whence we could sally forth and find ourselves at once in the midst of clean, interesting life, free from the filthy importunities of the denizens of Shadwell that prey upon the sailor. My experiences of London life were turned to good account in those pleasant days, all too short. Together we did all the sights, and it would be hard to say which of us enjoyed ourselves most. At last, our funds having dwindled to the last five pounds, we must needs go and look for a ship. I had “passed” for second mate, but did not try very hard to get the berth that my certificate entitled me to take, and finally we both succeeded in getting berths before the mast in a barque called the Magellan, bound for New Zealand. To crown the common-sense programme we had been following out, we did a thing I have never seen deep-water sailors do before or since--we took a goodly supply of such delicacies on board with us as would, had we husbanded them, have kept us from hunger until we crossed the line. But sailor Jack, with all his faults, is not mean, and so all hands shared in the good things until they were gone, which was in about three days. To our great disgust, Jack and I were picked for separate watches, so that our chats were limited to the second dog-watch, that pleasant time between six and eight p.m. when both watches can fraternize at their ease, and discuss all the queer questions that appeal to the sailor mind.

Jack never complained, it wasn’t his habit, but, unknown to me, he was having a pretty bad time of it in the starboard watch. Of course, the vessel was short-handed--four hands in a watch to handle an over-sparred brute of nearly a thousand tons--and as a consequence Jack’s ungainly want of smartness was trying to his over-worked watchmates, who were, besides, unable to understand his inability or unwillingness to growl at the hardness of the common lot. The chief man in that watch was a huge Shetlandman, Sandy Rorison, who, broadly speaking, was everything that Jack was not. Six feet two in his stocking vamps, upright as a lower mast, and agile as a leading seaman on board a man-o’-war, there was small wonder that Sandy was sorely irritated by the wooden movements of my deliberate chum. But one day, when, relieved from the wheel, I came into the forecastle for a “verse o’ the pipe,” I found Sandy bullying him in a piratical manner. All prudential considerations were forgotten, and I interfered, although it was like coming between a lion and his kill. Black with fury, Sandy turned upon me, tearing off his jumper the while, and in choking monosyllables invited me to come outside and die. I refused, giving as my reason that I did not feel tired of life, and admitting that I was fully aware of his ability to make cracker-hash of me. But while he stood gasping, I put it to him whether, if he had a chum, any consideration for his own safety would stop him from risking it in the endeavour to save that chum from such a dog’s life as he was now leading Jack Stadey. Well, the struggle between rage and righteousness in that big rough man was painful to see. It lasted for nearly five minutes, while I stood calmly puffing at my pipe with a numb sense of “what must be will be” about me. Then suddenly the big fellow went and sat down, buried his face in his hands, and was silent. I went about my work unmolested, but for nearly a week there was an air of expectation about the whole of us--a sense that an explosion might occur at any moment. Then the tension relaxed, and I saw with quiet delight that Rorison had entirely abandoned his hazing of Jack.

After a most miserable passage of a hundred and ten days we arrived at our port, and almost immediately after came an opening for me to join a fine ship as second mate. It could not be disregarded, although I had to forfeit to the knavish skipper the whole of my outward passage earnings for the privilege of being discharged. So Jack and I parted, making no sign, as is the custom of men, of the rending pain of our separation. When next I saw Jack, several years after, I had left the sea, but on a periodical visit to the docks--a habit I was long curing myself of--I met him, looking for a ship. How triumphantly I bore him westward to my little home I need not say, but when in the course of conversation I found that he and Rorison had been chums ever since I left the Magellan, I was dumbfounded. The more because, in spite of the change in Rorison after my risky interference on that memorable afternoon, I had passed many unhappy hours, thinking, in my conceit and ignorance of the nobleness of which the majority of human kind are capable, given the proper opportunity for showing it, that Jack would have but a sorry time of it after _I_ had left him. Malvolio thought nobly of the soul, and I have had reason, God knows, to think nobly of my fellow-men, even of those who upon a casual acquaintance seemed only capable of exciting disgust. I believe that few indeed are the men and women who have not within them the germ of as heroic deeds as ever thrilled the hearts and moistened the eyes of mankind, although, alas! myriads live and die wanting the occasion that could fructify the germ. Made in His own image, although sorely battered out of the Divine likeness, the Father does delight in showing how, in spite of the distance men generally have placed between themselves and Him, the type still persists, and self-sacrifice, soaring above the devilish cynicism that affects to know no God but self-interest, blazes forth to show to all who will but open their eyes that “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.”

Two more strangely assorted chums surely seldom foregathered than Sandy and Jack. I remember none in real life, though the big trooper George Rouncewell and Phil have been immortalized by Dickens in “Bleak House,” and the probability is that such a friendship had been known to that marvellous man. How the bond between the Shetlandman and the Finn gradually grew and toughened I had no means of knowing, for Jack was a man of so few words, that even my eager questioning never succeeded in drawing from him the information that I thirsted for. However, to resume my story, the pair succeeded in obtaining berths in the same ship again, a big iron clipper, the Theodosia, bound to Melbourne. I did not succeed in meeting Sandy before they sailed, though I tried hard in my scanty leisure to do so. But I determined that when they returned I would have them both home to my little place, and devote some of my holidays to entertaining them. I watched carefully the columns of the Shipping Gazette for news of the ship, and succeeded in tracing her home to Falmouth for orders from Port Pirie. Thence in due time she departed, to my great disappointment, for Sunderland. And the rest of the story must be told as I learned it long afterwards.

It was in the late autumn that they sailed from Falmouth, leaving port on a glorious afternoon with that peerless weather known to west-country fishermen as a “fine southerly.” Up the sparkling Channel they sped with every stitch of canvas set, and a great contentment reigning on board at the prospect of the approaching completion of the voyage under such favourable conditions. Being foul, the Theodosia made slow progress, but so steady was the favouring wind that in two days she picked up her Channel pilot off Dungeness. He was hardly on board before a change came. One of those sudden gales came howling down the stern North Sea, and gradually the labouring ship was stripped of her wings, until in a perfect whirl of freezing spindrift she was groping through the gloom across the Thames estuary. But no uneasiness was felt, because the pilot was on board, and the confidence felt in the well-known skill and seamanship of those splendid mariners makes even the most timid of deep-water sailors feel secure under their charge. No man is infallible, however, and just before midnight a shock, which threw all hands, then standing by to wear ship, off their feet, brought the huge vessel up all standing. Not many minutes were needed to show every man on board that she was doomed. Lying as she was on the weather edge of the Galloper Sand (though her position was unknown even to the pilot), she was exposed to the full fury of the gale, and the blue lights and rockets made but the faintest impression upon the appalling blackness. All hands worked with feverish energy to free the long-disused boats from their gripes, although they were often hurled headlong from this task by the crushing impact of those inky masses of water that rose in terrible might all around. And as the boats were cleared, so they were destroyed until but one remained seaworthy and afloat upon the lee-side, fast by the end of the forebrace. One by one the beaten, bruised, and almost despairing men succeeded in boarding that tiny ark of refuge as it strained and plunged like a terrified creature striving to escape from the proximity of the perishing leviathan. When it appeared that all hands were crowded into the overburdened boat, the watchful skipper mounted the lee rail, and, waiting his opportunity, leapt for his life.

“Cast off, cast off,” shouted a dozen voices as the captain struggled aft to the place of command, but one cry overtopped them all, the frenzied question of Rorison, “Where’s Jack Stadey?” A babel of replies arose, but out of that tumult one fact emerged, he was not among them. The next moment, as a mountainous swell lifted the boat high above the ship’s rail, Rorison had leapt to his feet, and, catching hold of the drooping mainbrace above his head, was hauling himself back on board again. And the boat had gone. Doubtless in the confusion, some man had succeeded in casting the end of the rope adrift that held her, not knowing what had happened, so that the next vast roller swept her away on its crest a hundred fathoms in an instant. The wide mouth of the dark engulfed her. All unheeding the disappearance of the boat, Rorison fought his way about the submerged and roaring decks, peering with a seaman’s bat-like power of vision through the dark for any sign of his chum. Buffeted by the scourging seas, conscious that he was fast losing what little strength remained to him, he yet persisted in his search until, with a cry of joy, he found poor Stadey jammed between the fife-rail and the pumps, just alive, but with a broken leg and arm. Not a word passed between them, but with a sudden accession of vigour, Sandy managed to drag his chum aft and lash his limp body to one of the poop hen-coops. He then cast another coop adrift, and secured it to the side of the first. Having done this, he lashed himself by Stadey’s side, and with one hand feeling the languid pulsation of his chum’s heart, awaited the next comber that should sweep their frail raft away into the hissing sea.

Next morning, under a sky of heavenly glory, two Harwich fishermen found the tiny raft, still supporting the empty husks of those two faithful souls, undivided even unto the end of their hard life, and together entered into rest.

With these two exceptions all hands were saved.

ALPHONSO M’GINTY

Who is there among British seafarers that does not know the “chain-locker”--that den just opposite the Mint like an exaggerated bear-pit? The homeward-bounder, his heart light as thistle-down with the first taste of liberty after his voyage’s long imprisonment, takes no heed of its squalor; no, not even in the drear December slushiness, following upon a Shadwell snowstorm. If he does glance around shudderingly at the haggard faces of the unshipped for a moment, the feel of the beloved half-sheet of blue foolscap ostentatiously displayed in his club-fingered right hand brings the departing look of satisfaction back swiftly enough. It is his “account of wages,” his passport within the swing doors of the office, which he will presently exchange for the few pieces of gold for which he has given such a precious slice of his life.

But the outward-bounder, his hands thrust deep into empty pockets, the bitter taste of begrudged bread parching his mouth, and the scowling face of his boarding master refusing to pass from his mind’s eye; he it is who feels the utter desolation of the crowded “chain-locker” corrode his very soul. After a long day’s tramp around the docks, sneaking on board vessels like a thief, and asking the mate for a “chance” with bated breath, as if begging for pence, unsuccessful and weary, he returns to this walled-in pit of gloom, and jealously eyes the company of miserables like himself, as if in each one he saw a potential snatcher of his last hope of a berth.

Outward-bounders have little to say to each other in the “chain-locker.” They wait, not like honest labourers seeking legitimate employment, but like half-tried prisoners awaiting sentence. This characteristic is so universal that, although we who bided the coming of the Gareth’s skipper had all got our discharges in, and so felt reasonably sure of her, we had not exchanged half a dozen words among the fourteen of us.

But there suddenly appeared in our midst a square-built, rugged-faced man of middle height, whose grey eyes twinkled across his ruined nose, and whose mouth had that droll droop of the lower lip that shows a readiness, not only to laugh in and out of season, but almost pathetically invites the beholder to laugh too. He it was who broke the stony silence by saying in the richest brogue, “Is it all av us bhoys that does be goin’ in the wan ship, I wondher?” Even the most morose among us felt an inclination to smile, we hardly knew why, but just then the swing door of the engaging office burst open, and a hoarse voice shouted, “Crew o’ the Gareth here.”

The words, like some irresistible centripetal force, sucked in from the remotest corner of the large area every man, and in a moment all of us, who had, as we thought, secured our chances by lodging our discharges beforehand, were seized with something of a panic lest we should lose the ship after all. Heavens! how we thrust and tore our way into the office, past the burly policeman who held every one of us at the pinch of the door until he was satisfied of our right to enter. Once within, we felt safe, and stood nervously fingering our caps while the clerk gabbled over the usual formula, to which none of us gave the slightest heed. “Signing on” began and proceeded apace, to the accompaniment of a running fire of questions as to age, nationality, last ship, etc., to which answers, if not promptly forthcoming, were, I am afraid, supplied by the questioner. There was a subdued chuckle, and the man who had spoken outside stood at the counter.

“What name?” snapped the clerk.

“Alphonso M’Ginty, yer anner,” was the answer. No exquisite witticism ever raised a more wholesome burst of laughter. It positively brightened that dull hole like a ray of sea-sunshine.

“How old?” said the clerk, in a voice still tremulous.

“God befrind me, I forgot! Say tirty-five, sor.”

“Your discharge says twenty-five?” returned the clerk.

“Ah yes, yer anner, but it’s said that for the last tirty years!”

“Isn’t it time it was altered then?” retorted the clerk, magisterial again, as he entered fifty-five on the articles. The old fellow’s quaint speech, added to an indefinable aureole of good humour about him, had completely changed the sullen aspect of our crowd, so that for the moment we quite forget that but fourteen of us were engaged to take the 4000-ton ship Gareth to New Zealand first, and then to any other part of the world, voyage not to exceed three years.

So, with even the Dutchmen laughing and chuckling in sympathy with the fun they felt, but didn’t understand, we all dispersed with our advance notes to get such discount as fate and the sharks would allow. In good time we were all aboard, for ships were scarce, and all of us anxious to get away. But when we saw the vast, gaunt hull well down to Plimsoll’s Mark, and the four towering steel giants of masts with their immense spreading branches, and thought of the handful we were to manage them, we felt a colder chill than even the biting edge of the bitter east wind had given us.

We mustered in the dark, iron barn of the fo’c’sle, and began selecting bunks temporarily, until we were picked for watches, when our attention was arrested by the voice of M’Ginty, saying--

“Bhoys!”

All turned towards him where he stood, with a bottle of rum and a tea-cup, and no one needed a second call. When the bottle was empty, and our hearts had gone out to the donor, he said, clearing his throat once or twice--

“Bhoys, fergive me, I’m a ---- imposhtor. I broke me right knee-cap an’ five ribs comin’ home from ’Frisco in the Lamech--fell from the fore-t’galant yard--an’ I bin three months in Poplar Hospital. I can’t go aloft, but I didn’t think what a crime it wuz goin’ to be agin ye all until I see this awful over-sparred brute here. Don’t be harrd on me, bhoys; ye wouldn’t have me starrve ashore, wud yez now, or fret me poor owld hearrt out in the wurrkhouse afther forty-five year on the open sea?”

He stopped and looked around distressfully, and in that moment all our hearts warmed to him. We were a mixed crowd, of course, but nearly half of us were British, and there would have been a stormy scene if any of the aliens had ventured to raise a protest against M’Ginty’s incapacity. We didn’t express our sympathy, but we felt it, and he with native quickness knew that we did. And never from that day forward did the brave old chap hear a word of complaint from any of us about having to do his work.

Just then the voice of the bos’un sounded outside, “Turn to!” and as we departed to commence work, although not a word was said, there was a fierce determination among us to protect M’Ginty against any harshness from the officers on account of his disablement. There was too much of a bustle getting out of dock for any notice to be taken of his stiff leg, which he had so cleverly concealed while shipping, but the mate happening to call him up on to the forecastle head for something, his lameness was glaringly apparent at once to the bos’un, who stood behind him. For just a minute it looked like trouble as the bos’un began to bluster about his being a ---- cripple, but we all gathered round, and the matter was effectually settled at once.

We never regretted our consideration. For, while it was true that he couldn’t get aloft, and those mighty sails would have been a handful for double our number in a breeze of wind, there never was a more willing, tireless worker on deck, and below he was a perfect godsend. His sunny temper, bubbling fun, and inexhaustible stock of yarns, made our grey lives happier than they had ever been at sea before. If we would have allowed it, he would have been a slave to all of us, for we carried no boys, and all the odd domestic jobs of the fo’c’sle had to be done by ourselves. As it was, he was always doing something for somebody, and as he was a thorough sailor in his general handiness and ability, his services were highly appreciated. He made the Gareth a comfortable ship, in spite of her manifold drawbacks.

In due time we reached the “roaring forties” and began to run the easting down. The long, tempestuous stretch of the Southern Ocean lay before us, and the prospect was by no means cheering. The Gareth, in spite of her huge bulk, had given us a taste of her quality when running before a heavy breeze of wind shortly after getting clear of the Channel, and we knew that she was one of the wettest of her class, a vessel that welcomed every howling sea as an old friend, and freely invited it to range the whole expanse of her decks from poop to forecastle. And, in accordance with precedent, we knew that she would be driven to the last extremity of canvas endurance, not only in the hope of making a quick passage, but because shortening sail after really hard running was such an awful strain upon the handful of men composing the crew. So that when once the light sails were secure, an attempt would always be made to “hang on” to the still enormous spread of sail remaining, until the gale blew itself out, or we had run out of its vast area. But for some days the brave west wind lingered in its lair, and we slowly crept to the s’uthard and east’ard with trumpery little spurts of northerly and nor’-westerly breeze. We had reached 47° S. and about 10° E. when, one afternoon, it fell calm.

One of the most magnificent sunsets imaginable spread its glories over the western sky. Great splashes of gorgeous colouring stained the pale blue of the heavens, and illuminated the fantastic crags and ranges of cloud that lay motionless around the horizon, like fragments of a disintegrated world. A long, listless swell came solemnly from the west at regular intervals, giving the waiting ship a stately rhythmical motion in the glassy waters, and making the immense squares of canvas that hung straight as boards from the yards slam against the steel masts with a sullen boom. Except for that occasionally recurring sound, a solemn stillness reigned supreme, while the wide mirror of the ocean reflected faithfully all the flaming tints of the sky. Quietly all of us gathered on the fo’c’sle head for the second dog-watch smoke, but for some time all seemed strangely disinclined for the desultory chat that usually takes place at that pleasant hour. Pipes were puffed in silence for half an hour, until suddenly M’Ginty broke the spell (his voice sounding strangely clear and vibrant), by saying--

“I had a quare dhrame lasht night.”

No one stirred or spoke, and after a few meditative pulls at his pipe, he went on--

“I dhreamt that I was a tiny gorsoon again, at home in owld Baltimore. I’d been wandherin’ and sthrayin’, God alone knows where, fur a dhreadful long while, it seemed, until at lasht, whin I wuz ready t’ die from sheer weariness an’ fright, I hearrd me dear mother’s sweet voice cryin’, ‘Where’s Fonnie avic iver got to this long while?’ Oh!’twas as if an angel from hiven shpoke to me, an’ I cried wid all me hearrt an’ me tongue, ‘Here, mother, here I am!’ An’ she gathered me up in her arrums that wuz so soft an’ cosy, till I felt as if I was a little tired chick neshtlin’ into its mother’s feathers in the snuggest of nests. I didn’t go to sleep, I just let meself sink down, down into rest, happy as any saint in glory. An’ thin I woke up wid a big, tearin’ ache all over me poor owld broken-up body. But bad as that wuz, ’twuz just nothin’ at all to the gnawin’ ache at me hearrt.”

Silence wrapped us round again, for who among us could find any words to apply to such a story as that? And it affected us all the more because of its complete contrast to M’Ginty’s usual bright, cheery, and uncomplaining humour. Not another word was spoken by any one until the sharp strokes on the little bell aft cleft the still air, and, in immediate response, one rose and smote the big bell hanging at the break of the forecastle four double blows, ushering in the first watch of the night. The watch on deck relieved wheel and look-out, and we who were fortunate enough to have the “eight hours in,” lost no time in seeking our respective bunks, since in those stern latitudes we might expect a sudden call at any moment. We had hardly been asleep five minutes, it seemed, when a hoarse cry came pealing in through the fo’c’sle door of “All hands on deck! Shorten sail!” And as we all started wide awake, we heard the furious voice of the southern tempest tearing up the face of the deep, and felt the massive fabric beneath our feet leaping and straining under the tremendous strain of her great breadths of canvas, that we had left hanging so idly at eight bells.

Out into the black night we hurried, meeting the waiting mate at the foremast, and answering his first order of “man the fore tops’ls downhaul” with the usual repetition of his words. Weird cries arose as we hauled with all our strength on the downhauls and spilling lines, while overhead we could hear, even above the roar of the storm, the deep boom of the topsails fiercely fighting against the restraining gear. Then, with a hissing, spiteful snarl, came snow and sleet, lashing us like shotted whips, and making the darkness more profound because of the impossibility of opening the eyes against the stinging fragments of ice. But, after much stumbling and struggling, we got the four huge tops’ls down, and, without waiting for the order, started aloft to furl, the pitiful incapacity of our numbers most glaringly apparent. The pressure of the wind was so great that it was no easy matter to get aloft, but clinging like cats, we presently found ourselves (six of the port watch) on the fore topsailyard.

The first thing evident was that the great sail was very slightly subdued by the gear; it hovered above the yard like a white balloon, making it both difficult and dangerous to get out along the spar. The storm scourged us pitilessly, the great round of the sail resisted all our attempts to “fist” it, and we seemed as helpless as children. Some bold spirits clutched the lifts, and, swinging above the sail, tried to stamp a hollow into it with their feet; but against the increasing fury of the tempest we seemed to be utterly impotent. We were so widely separated, too, that each man appeared to be essaying a giant’s task single-handed, and that horrible sense of fast-oozing strength was paralyzing us. Feeling left our hands; we smote them savagely against that unbending sail without sensation, and still we seemed no nearer the conclusion of our task. But suddenly the ship gave a great lurch to windward, and just for one moment the hitherto unyielding curve of the sail quivered. In that instant every fist had clutched a fold, and with a flash of energy we strained every sinew to conquer our enemy.

* * * * *

Tugging like a madman to get the sail spilled, I glanced sideways, and saw to my horror, by a jagged flash of lightning, the rugged face of M’Ginty.

I had hardly recognized him when, with a roar like the combined voices of a troop of lions, the sail tore itself away from us, and with bleeding hands I clutched at the foot-rope stirrup as I fell back. But at the same moment M’Ginty’s arms flew up. He caught at the empty gloom above him, gasping, “_In manus tuas, Domine_----” and fell. Far beneath us the hungry sea seethed and whirled, its white glare showing ghastly against the thick darkness above. For two or three seconds I hung as if irresolute whether to follow my poor old shipmate or not; then the heavy flapping of the sail aroused me, and springing up again, I renewed my efforts. The ship had evidently got a “wipe up” into the wind, for the sail was now powerless against us, and in less than five minutes it was fast, and we were descending with all speed to renew our desperate fight with the mizen and jigger topsails. The decks were like the sea overside, for wave after wave toppled inboard, and it was at the most imminent risk to life and limb that we scrambled aft, quite a sense of relief coming as we swung out of that turbulent flood into the rigging again.

But I was almost past feeling now. A dull aching sense of loss clung around my heart, and the patient, kindly face of my shipmate seemed branded upon my eyes, as he had lifted it to the stormy skies in his last supplicatory moan. I went about my work doggedly, mechanically; indifferent to cold, fatigue, or pain, until, when at last she was snugged down, and, under the fore lower topsails and reefed foresail, was flying through the darkness like some hunted thing, I staggered wearily into the cheerless fo’c’sle, dropped upon a chest, and stared moodily at vacancy.

Somebody said, “Where’s M’Ginty?” That roused me. It seemed to put new life and hope into me, for I replied quite brightly, “He’s gone to the rest he was talking about in the dog-watch. He’ll never eat workhouse bread, thank God!”

Eager questioning followed, mingled with utter amazement at his getting aloft at all. But when all had said their say one feeling had been plainly manifested--a feeling of deep thankfulness that such a grand old sailor as our shipmate M’Ginty was where he fain would be, taking his long and well-earned rest.

THE LAST STAND OF THE DECAPODS

Probably few of the thinking inhabitants of dry land, with all their craving for tales of the marvellous, the gloomy, and the gigantic, have in these later centuries of the world’s history given much thought to the conditions of constant warfare existing beneath the surface of the ocean. As readers of ancient classics well know, the fathers of literature gave much attention to the vast, awe-inspiring inhabitants of the sea, investing and embellishing the few fragments of fact concerning them which were available with a thousand fantastic inventions of their own naïve imaginations, until there emerged, chief and ruler of them all, the Kraken, Leviathan, or whatever other local name was considered to best convey in one word their accumulated ideas of terror. In lesser degree, but still worthy compeers of the fire-breathing dragon and sky-darkening “Rukh” of earth and sky, a worthy host of attendant sea-monsters were conjured up, until, apart from the terror of loneliness, of irresistible fury and instability that the sea presented to primitive peoples, the awful nature of its supposed inhabitants made the contemplation of an ocean journey sufficient to appal the stoutest heart. A better understanding of this aspect of the sea to early voyagers may be obtained from some of the artistic efforts of those days than anything else. There you shall see gigantic creatures with human faces, teeth like foot-long wedges, armour-plated bodies, and massive feet fitted with claws like scythe-blades, calmly issuing from the waves to prey upon the dwellers on the margin, or devouring with much apparent enjoyment ships with their crews, as a child crunches a stick of barley-sugar. Even such innocent-looking animals as the seals were distorted and decorated until the contemplation of their counterfeit presentment is sufficient to give a healthy man the nightmare, while such monsters as really were so terrible of aspect that they could hardly be “improved” upon were increased in size until they resembled islands whereon whole tribes might live. To these chimæras were credited all natural phenomena such as waterspouts, whirlpools, and the upheaval of submarine volcanoes. Some imaginative people went even farther than that by attributing the support of the whole earth to a vast sea-monster; while others, like the ancient Jews, fondly pictured Leviathan awaiting in the solitude and gloom of ocean’s depths the glad day of Israel’s reunion, when the mountain ranges of his flesh would be ready to furnish forth the family feast for all the myriads of Abraham’s children.

Surely we may pause awhile to contemplate the overmastering courage of the earliest seafarers, who, in spite of all these terrors, unappalled by the comparison between their tiny shallops and the mighty waves that towered above them, set boldly out from shore into the unknown, obeying that deeply rooted instinct of migration which has peopled every habitable part of the earth’s surface. Those who remember their childhood’s dread of the dark, with its possible population of bogeys, who have ever been lost in early youth in some lonely place, can have some dim conception, though only a dim one, after all, of the inward battle these ancients fought and won, until it became possible for the epigram to be written in utmost truth--

“The seas but join the nations they divide.”

But, after all, we are not now concerned with the warlike doings of men. It is with the actualities of submarine struggle we wish to deal--those wars without an armistice, where to be defeated is to be devoured, and from the sea-shouldering whale down to the smallest sea-insect every living thing is carnivorous, dependent directly upon the flesh of its neighbours for its own life, and incapable of altruism in any form whatever, except among certain of the mammalia and the sharks. In dealing with the more heroic phases of this unending warfare, then, it must be said, once for all, that the ancient writers had a great deal of reason on their side. They distorted and exaggerated, of course, as all children do, but they did not disbelieve. But moderns, rushing to the opposite extreme, have neglected the marvels of the sea by the simple process of disbelieving in them, except in the case of the sea-serpent, that myth which seems bound to persist for ever and ever. Only of late years have the savants of the world allowed themselves to be convinced of the existence of a far more wondrous monster than the sea-serpent (if that “loathly worm” were a reality), the original Kraken of old-world legends. Hugest of all the mollusca, whose prevailing characteristics are ugliness, ferocity, and unappeasable hunger, he has lately asserted himself so firmly that current imaginative literature bristles with allusions to him, albeit oftentimes in situations where he could by no possibility be found. No matter, he has supplied a long-felt want; but the curious fact remains that he is not a discovery, but a re-appearance. The gigantic cuttle-fish of actual, indisputable fact is, in all respects except size, the Kraken; and any faithful representation of him will justify the assertion that no imagination could add anything to the terror-breeding potentialities of his aspect. That is so, even when he is viewed by the light of day in the helplessness of death or disabling sickness, or in the invincible grip of his only conqueror. In his proper realm, crouching far below the surface of the sea in some coral cave or labyrinth of rocks, he must present a sight so awful that the imagination recoils before it. For consider him but a little. He possesses a cylindrical body reaching in the largest specimens yet recorded as having been seen, a length of between sixty and seventy feet, with an average girth of half that amount. That is to say, considerably larger than a Pullman railway-car. Now, this immense mass is of boneless gelatinous matter capable of much greater distension than a snake; so that in the improbable event of his obtaining an extra-abundant supply of food, it is competent to swell to the occasion and still give the flood of digestive juices that it secretes full opportunity to dispose of the burden with almost incredible rapidity. Now, the apex of this mighty cylinder--I had almost said “tail,” but remembered that it would give a wrong impression, since it is the part of the monster that always comes first when he is moving from place to place, is conical, that is to say, it tapers off to a blunt point something like a whitehead torpedo. Near this apex there is a broad fin-like arrangement looking much like the body of a skate without its tail, which, however, is used strictly for steering purposes only. So far there is nothing particularly striking about the appearance of this mighty cylinder except in colour. This characteristic varies in different individuals, but is always reminiscent of the hues of a very light-coloured leopard; that is to say, the ground is of a livid greenish white, while the detail is in splashes and spots of lurid red and yellow, with an occasional nimbus of pale blue around these deeper markings. But it is the head of the monster that appals. Nature would seem in the construction of this greatest of all molluscs to have combined every weapon of offence possessed by the rest of the animal kingdom in one amazing arsenal, disposing them in such a manner that not only are they capable of terrific destruction, but their appearance defies adequate description.

The trunk at the head end is sheath-like, its terminating edges forming a sort of collar around the vast cable of muscles without a fragment of bone which connects it with the head. Through a large opening within this collar is pumped a jet of water, the pressure of which upon the surrounding sea is sufficiently great to drive the whole bulk of the creature, weighing perhaps sixty or seventy tons, _backwards_ through the water, at the rate of sixteen to twenty miles per hour, not in steady progression, of course, but by successive leaps. At will, this propelling jet is deeply stained with sepia, a dark-brown inky fluid, which, mingling with the encompassing sea, fills all the neighbourhood of the monster with a gloom so deep that nothing, save one of its own species, can see either to fight or whither to fly. The head itself is of proportionate size. It is rounded underneath, and of much lighter hue than the trunk. On either side of it is set an eye, of such dimensions that the mere statement of them sounds like the efforts of one of those grand old mediæval romancers, whose sole object was to make their reader’s flesh creep. It is perfectly safe to say that even in proportion to size, no other known creature has such organs of vision as the cuttle-fish, for the pupils of such an one as I am now describing are fully two feet in diameter. They are perfectly black, with a dead white rim, and cannot be closed. No doubt their enormous size is for the purpose of enabling their possessor to discern what is going on amidst the thick darkness that he himself has raised, so that while all other organisms are groping blindly in the gloom, he may work his will among them. Then come the weapons which give the cuttle-fish its power of destruction, the arms or tentacles. These are not eight in number, as in the octopus, an ugly beast enough and spiteful withal, but a babe of innocence compared with our present subject. Every schoolboy should know that _octopus_ signifies an eight-armed or eight-footed creature, and yet in nine cases out of ten where writers of fiction and would-be teachers of fact are describing the deadly doings of the gigantic cuttle-fish they call _him_ an octopus; whereas he is nothing of the kind, for, in addition to the eight arms which the octopus possesses, the cuttle-fish flaunts two, each of which is double the length of the eight, making him a _decapod_. This confusion is the more unpardonable, because even the most ancient of scribes always spoke of this mollusc as the “ten-armed one,” while a reference to any standard work on Natural History will show even the humbler cuttle-fish with their full complement of arms--that is, ten. But this is digression.

Our friend has, then, ten arms springing from the crown of his head, of which eight are forty feet in length, and two are seventy to eighty. The eight each taper outward from the head, from the thickness of a stout man’s body at the base to the slenderness of a whip-lash at the end. On their inner sides they are studded with saucer-like hollows, each of which has a fringe of curving claws set just within its rim. So that in addition to their power of holding on to anything they touch by a suction so severe that it would strip flesh from bone, these cruel claws, large as those of a full-grown tiger’s, get to work upon the subject being held, lacerating and tearing until the quivering body yields up its innermost secrets. Each of these destroying, serpent-like arms is also gifted with an almost independent power of volition. Whatever it touches it holds with an unreleasable grip, but with wonderful celerity it brings its prey inwards to where, in the centre of all those infernal purveyors lies a black chasm, whose edges are shaped like the upper and lower mandibles of a parrot, and these complete the work so well begun. The outliers, those two far-reaching tentacles, unlike the busy eight, are comparatively slender from their bases to near (within two feet or so of) their ends. There they expand into broad paddle-like masses, thickly studded with _acetabulæ_, those holding sucking-discs that garnish the inner arms for their entire length. So, thus armed, this nightmare monstrosity crouches in the darkling depths of ocean, like some unimaginable web, whereof every line is alive to hold and tear. Its digestion is like a furnace of dissolution, needing a continual inflow of flesh, and nothing living that inhabits the sea comes amiss to its never-satisfied cravings. It is very near the apex of the pyramid of interdependence into which sea-life is built, but not quite. For at the summit is the sperm whale, the monarch of all seas, whom man alone is capable of meeting in fair fight and overcoming.

The head of the sperm whale is of heroic size, being in bulk quite one-third of the entire body, but in addition to its size it has characteristics that fit it peculiarly to compete with such a dangerous monster as the gigantic decapod. Imagine a solid block of crude indiarubber, between twenty and thirty feet in length, and eight feet through, in shape not at all unlike a railway-carriage, but perfectly smooth in surface. Fit this mass beneath with a movable shaft of solid bone, twenty feet in length, studded with teeth, each protruding nine inches, and resembling the points of an elephant’s tusks. You will then have a fairly complete notion of the equipment with which the ocean monarch goes into battle against the Kraken. And behind it lies the warm blood of the mammal, the massive framework of bone belonging to the highly developed vertebrate animal, governed by a brain impelled by irresistible instinct to seek its sustenance where alone it can be found in sufficiently satisfying bulk. And there for you are the outlines of the highest form of animal warfare existing within our ken, a conflict of Titans, to which a combat between elephants and rhinoceri in the jungle is but as the play of schoolboys compared with the gladiatorial combats of Ancient Rome.