Chapter IV: Part 4

Indeed, Bob seemed to be growing steadily more daring. He used often to mock, even when the old man hadn’t given an order, just for the sake of amusing the rest of the crew. It _was_ amusing to hear the captain call the crew “boys.” If he wanted anything done, it was always “Here, boys! Here, boys!” until someone came to execute his orders. (It rather disappointed me that he didn’t call them “mates,” or “my hearties,” or “my bullies,” in true piratical fashion. But one can’t expect too much!) And Bob would stretch out his neck, and lift up his head like a bird about to sing, and screech, quite as loudly as the skipper himself: “Here, boys! Here, boys!” You could see his bronze throat quivering when he called, just like that of a bird. And then he would lower his head into himself and chuckle.

Bob was especially good-looking in a bright red sweater. He used to wear this sweater whenever it was the least bit chilly, and then he was usually so busy, or perhaps so lazy, that he never seemed to have a chance to take it off, even when it grew warm. Of him, more later.

During those calm days there was a great deal of warm weather. I went about, in my old blue shirt with a sailor collar and my old black pants, very gaily indeed, feeling sailorly and wanting to show the crew that I didn’t put on airs or try to be superior to them. In fact, I admitted my inferiority by asking them questions about ropes, their names and uses. The ropes on a schooner are surely the most complicated things on earth, except those of a square-rigger, which both Mr. Rasmussen and our cook told me were a thousand times more complicated. As for the schooner, there was only about one rope which I could always be sure of--the fore-topsail clew line. That particular rope had broken, and the mate had run in a brand-new one--a bright rope, white among the dark, weather-beaten, dirty ones. I could always tell it by a glance--until it began to get dirty, too.

Again we turned in early. We had discovered that it was really much simpler to do so, because we had neglected bringing a flashlight. There were no lights on the ship except lamps, and there was no lamp in the “bathroom,” and consequently no way to find the water bucket without lighting a match. (I had overturned it two or three times in the rolling.) The ship’s lamps, by the way, were arranged in little rings of brass which projected on arms from the wall, and as the ship rolled crazily the lamps, too, would swing about, but keeping themselves upright in the gimbals.

* * * * *

♦ _Suspended Weather_ ♦

The next day the weather conditions were annoyingly the same. There was no wind; there was nothing but that steady roll, which I now began to enjoy quite a lot, though it did wear on one. I would look up at the horizon as the bow of the ship plunged down, and I would see it away up in the sky above me somewhere. Then, as the bow swung back, the horizon would vanish beneath the forefoot of the schooner. When the bow swung down, how far above it we, on the poop deck, seemed! and then how formidably the bow would loom above us on the return roll!

I joked more than ever with Bill about his “breeze-o’-wind.” But he only chuckled and told me that I wanted to get there too fast, and that we should have the wind yet, and plenty of it, too. I would look out over the restless ocean and see where a tiny breath of air made blue ripples on the silver-gray, and I would nudge Bill and say: “Well, the breeze seems to be coming up a little now!” And Bill would reply: “Yes, we’ll have that wind in no time now!” And the breath of air would die down, and again there would be nothing to break the monotony of the sea.

But, aside from the weather, the day turned out to be a remarkably exciting one for me. For one thing, I had been forbidden by my strict family to do anything whatsoever without the consent of Captain Avery. “Just because you’re not told _not_ to do anything,” they said, “you’re not to assume that you can do it. You have to _ask_ first.” “Oh, that’s easily managed,” I replied. I must ask every time I wanted to go up in the rigging (though, on account of my dizziness, I had not as yet gone up); I should certainly have to ask before going out on the jibboom; I should not be allowed to steer, even though I knew the points of the compass. The most I could do was to ask the names and uses of things. For this I usually sought out Mate Bill. When he was off duty, the two of us would sit together in some concealed corner behind the fo’c’sle, or on the fo’c’sle deck, or on the other side of the after deckhouse from where Captain Avery was at that time; and then we would have “a go of it.” I would ask him questions, and he would take them seriously. He didn’t joke over it, and he didn’t laugh because I didn’t know. He would say: “Now, I approve of answering questions that anyone asks me, if so I can. The steward here, he’d fool you half the time.”

♦ “_Take the Wheel!_” ♦

But I wanted my privileges! I decided that I would begin to acquire them again. I climbed up on the spanker boom often; I had been told that that was all right. I used to walk out on it, leaning against the sail and walking on the windward side of it, until I came almost to where the boom overhung the water. Then, feeling a slight disgust at the strictness of everything, I would stop. Of course I could do this only when the breeze held the sails steady. (Two or three times during that day this happened.) Otherwise I should be flapped off the boom. I used to go by myself on the fo’c’sle deck a good deal, and I would climb around and sit on the forward capstan or on the staysail boom or on the very forward part of the bow, as near the tip as I could. Then I would have a longing upon me to go out on the jibboom. But when I saw those frail footropes, overhanging the open sea itself, and the whole jibboom waving up and down, I decided that, even if I were given permission, it was a little precarious for me. But I said I should come around to it sooner or later--and, after all, it was only my first voyage--and, after all, I could climb better than Richardson--and, after all, I was really doing very well for such an amateur!

I did long to steer, though. How I wished someone would give me a hint or two! I was a little worried about asking anyone save my friend the mate. I resolved that, sometime when he had the wheel, I would ask him. But I found that the mate, because of his rank, hardly ever took the wheel. Sometimes he would take it for a while, during Bob’s trick, so that Bob could go down to dinner; that would be after he had had his own. But I had an itch on me to steer that day. It was after dinner when I felt the itch; they were constantly tampering with the sails, and it was, as usual, Bob’s trick (it seemed to me as though it were almost always Bob’s trick), and Bob had just left the wheel to help close-haul the spanker. I came walking slowly aft at that moment, and Bob called out to me: “Here, take the wheel while I fix this bally sail.”

To be requested to steer!

“Do you know the points?” he shouted.

“Yes!”

“East by north.”

“East by north, bo’s’n!”

A moment afterwards I had picked out the point, and, with the feeling of those hand-worn wooden spokes in my palms, I guided the lubber line about and kept the schooner at east by north. I found it was not so hard; I could really do it! The only thing about it that puzzled me was that, when the ship swung off her course by a tiny eighth of a point, it took a very generous motion of the tiller to bring her back. But oh, how like a sailor I felt! And when Bob left close-hauling the sail, with Roy to help him, and came back to his trick, and saw that the lubber line was still on the dot of east by north, he certainly was pleased. He said: “I’ll have to stand with you, ’cause if I don’t the old man won’t like it. But you’ll get to steer good before long. Now I’m going to do something up forrard. If the old man asks you why you’re steerin’, you tell him I said you could.”

“Can you trust me with her all right?”

“Oh, sure! You’re gettin’ to steer good!”

♦ “_East by North, Bo’s’n!_” ♦

Well, the old man didn’t happen to pass by at that particular moment--perhaps he was down in the cabin--but I certainly did feel a huge sense of responsibility. There I stood, holding the ship to her course very neatly. And, though it took all my concentration at first to keep that tiny black line on that tiny black point, I grew more and more used to it, and before long I got so that I didn’t mind it at all. The bo’s’n came back after a little and looked anxiously at the compass in the binnacle. But it was still all right, and he grinned. Presently the old man really did come by, and he saw that I had the wheel all to myself, and that Bob was standing doing nothing behind me, but watching like a cat. He, too, looked at the compass, and then at me, and then at the compass again. I grinned at him. He looked rather anxiously at Bob, and I heard him whisper: “Don’t let her keep it too long. Do look out for her!” And then I heard Bob’s careless voice reply: “Oh, sure! _She’s_ all right. She steers better than Richardson now.” But, evidently to please the captain, he took the wheel, too. It was companionable to steer with another; yet I liked the feeling of having it alone. I steered more and more accurately all the time, and I got so that I could see when the schooner was about to slide off her point, and would head her off with the wheel.

I had the wheel for the second half of Bob’s trick, and for the first half of Roy’s. That made a whole trick; and the time went like foam. But toward the end of that time my eyes, unused to the strain, grew rather blurred. I could no longer see the line or the point very well, and, afraid of mistakes, I stopped. But I was becoming a sailor! My first voyage, and here I was “jining in” with the crew and the work like anything!

* * * * *

♦ _Tussle with the Spanker_ ♦

That morning, before the steering, I had had a rather amusing and exciting experience. The breeze seemed to be coming up a little, but it was just a whim. The sails were steady for a moment, and the captain wanted the spanker close-hauled. They were always doing something or other with that spanker; I never knew anything like it. Well, the captain decided, there was such a very light breeze, that he could do it himself. He loosed the sheet from the belaying pin on the starboard side of the schooner, leaving only one turn of the rope around the pin, and began to haul, letting all the strain go on to the pin--the true nautical way of close-hauling a sail when you want to do it alone. But the captain, as Bill often said, was “weaker’n a cat,” and to see him leaning back on the rope, clasping his horny hands around it desperately, and yet with the strength of that mighty sail all the time pulling him back toward the belaying pin, was comical. He raised his head, and I could see that at any moment he would begin his call of “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!” I wanted to be helpful as a sailor, and I immediately took hold of the sheet above the belaying pin and hauled and hauled, with the desperate strength which I always had when I wanted to be sailor-like, or wanted to show the crew and the skipper that I _was_ sailor-like. I hauled while Captain Avery took up the slack which I made, by hauling it taut around the belaying pin. The two of us could just hold the sail and close-haul it half-inch by half-inch; but we weren’t making very rapid progress, and the skipper was getting tired of it. And, after all and after all, he began to sing out: “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!”

The bo’s’n came aft in a bound or two, and, with a look of disgust at me to show that he was sick of that infernal “Here, boys!” he, too, began to haul. He took the sheet close under the block, I took it a little farther down, and the captain still stood on the other side of the belaying pin, making frantic gestures and taking up the slack. But evidently the sheet had been working towards the top of the belaying pin, for in a little spurt of wind it crept up to the top and over. The captain started shouting. The boom was too much for Bob and me without that extra turn around the pin, and both Bob and I were dragged rapidly, roughly, and resistingly across the deck. We went fast, because of the savage pull of the boom, but I had time to think quite a lot. I thought that it would pull me overboard; I thought of letting go; then I thought that I _mustn’t_ let go, I must just hang on like grim death and show them that I was sailorly. I felt myself come into a bit too sudden contact with the after capstan, and heard the bo’s’n say “Let go, quick!” Then I saw that he had let go. And, next, everything was a blurred whirling. At last, as I neared the port taffrail, I let go, and the boom went wandering gently out until it was at right angles to the rail. I fell on my knees just against the rail; then, in spite of my jarring encounter with that capstan, I got up briskly and laughed. With Roy helping, all of us hauled the boom in again and made it fast.

* * * * *

In the afternoon the crew, having less than nothing to do, all gathered on deck, sitting on hatches between the poop and the fo’c’sle, in the sun of the mid-afternoon, to talk. They all came out with the exception of Richardson and another Bill--an Irish Bill. There were the mate, the bo’s’n, Roy, the cook, and I. It was the first time the crew had really shown signs of being friendly with one another. Not that they had quarrelled, but they never seemed to have anything much to say; they were gloomy and silent.

♦ _In Conference_ ♦

We carried a spare gaff on the starboard side, under the bulwarks ’way forrard. It seemed to be a favorite place to sit. The mate and I sat down on this gaff, side by side, while the bo’s’n and Roy, who seemed to be great pals, sat on a forward hatch-cover, facing us. I began joking Bill about his “breeze-o’-wind.” “When _is_ it coming, mate?” said I. “Oh, sometime next month!” “We’ll have to publish that,” said I--“‘Bill predicts a breeze-o’-wind for next month.’” “But you wait,” says Bill. “It’s a-comin’ yet, sometime tomorrow!” “That’s far better,” said I.

Then I subsided entirely and let the crew rattle on in their own way. Richardson had now come out of the fo’c’sle and was very feebly and painstakingly splitting up pieces of wood with the steward’s little hatchet. He was doing it slowly, though neatly, and it looked as though he were not accustomed to it. The mate saw him, and I could tell at once, by the way his black eyes began to sparkle so maliciously, that he was going to say something to Richardson. And he said, in that solemn way of his, yet with a downward twist to the corners of his mouth: “Hey, Dick, don’t hurry too much over that!” Richardson is very pleasant, no matter what is said to him, and he replied only with chuckles--rather gloomy ones. Then he fell to work sawing up some boards which had been left over from the lumber cargo; he brought out a small sawhorse and a saw and fell to work. But it went no better. Every stroke seemed to be painful, and he made very slow progress. Again the mate struck in, and said: “Don’t kill yourself over that, Dick!”

The mate began to tell about various incidents of his career, which seems, on the whole, to have been a fairly interesting one. He has stuck to the sea for fifteen years, with hankerings now and then to do landsman’s work, but always sooner or later returning to sailor life. He said: “Once they wanted me to go as mate on a schooner, fer seventy a month. I was workin’ ashore then, an’ I didn’t want to go. But I was wanted badly enough--somehow, it seems I never had no trouble gettin’ a berth as mate--”

“Well, no wonder,” interposed Richardson from his sawhorse. “If you resigned up there at Bridgewater, I would too, by heaven! I wouldn’t stand bein’ hazed by the old man; not I! Why, Bill, it’s you as keeps this crew together at all.”

♦ _In the Old Days_ ♦

“Well,” continued Bill (it seems customary for them to begin everything with a “well”; even I do it, more or less), “the owner of that vessel offered me seventy-five. But ’twas no better. I didn’t want to go. I said I wouldn’t, no matter how much he give me. ‘Not for eighty?’ says he. ‘No, sir!’ says I. ‘Eighty-five?’ ‘No,’ says I, ‘’N’ you might as well make up your mind to it, sir! I’m not goin’ to do a sailor’s work no more.’ ‘Wouldn’t you go fer ninety, Bill?’ ‘No. Don’t you coax no more. I’m not goin’!’ But he kep’ on arguin’, and he riz five dollars every time he opened his mouth, and, by thunder, I went, fer a hundred and ten. That’s how bad I’m wanted! And here I am with Cap’n Avery, fer sixty flat, and a row over that, too!”

The cook had now come out of his galley, and he stood listening, his apron tied behind him, and a curious expression of scorn and disdain on his face. Said he: “You think ye’re so badly off, don’t you? Why, when I used to sail in the old square-riggers, we used to get thirteen dollars a month, flat--no more. And the mate--he didn’t get no more than seventeen. You think the work is so awful hard here, don’t you? Why, listen to me! Every single morning all hands was called on deck at four o’clock; some ships had it half-past three. Then we had to wash, and scrub, and sooge,[1] and sand, and holystone, and squeegee the decks, forrard and aft. ’N’ when that was done we had to go aloft and polish up all the brass work, ’n’ the brass along the bulwarks, and the cook had to polish his kids and pans, and put them in the front of the galley for the old man to examine when he come forrard in the morning. It took till breakfast t’ get all that done. Why, you sluggards would take all day over the work that we used t’ do in an hour! And do you know what? Listen to me--”

But here an interruption came in the shape of an incident which made the crew laugh a great deal. The cook decided that he would come and mingle with us; he would sit on the gaff and swing his legs around, and be chummy. So he walked robustly over to the spare gaff, his hands up under his apron in front. But somehow or other, nimble though the little man is, he missed his aim, as it were, and, instead of sitting _on_ the gaff, he sat down _behind_ it, with his knees over it. By that small miscue the dignity of the little old cook was suddenly spilled, turned upside down. But he pulled himself together again, hitched forward on to the gaff, blinking in the sun, and rocked himself back and forth. Then he began again where he had left off:

“Listen to me a minute. You talked about being hazed by the old man: you listen, and if you call this hazin’, what you’re havin’, I eat rats fer dinner! When our old man used to come on deck, at eight bells, after everythin’ aboard was all fixed up tidy as tidy, ’n’ the deck holystoned ’ntil it was white as chalk all over, he used to bring his glass and come forrard and look away up at the riggin’, t’ see ’f the brass work was shining enough. And if we hadn’t polished it to suit him, he would make us go up aloft and do it all over agin.”

♦ _Peppery Suggestion_ ♦

All this time the cook had an imaginary glass in his hand, and was peering aloft through it, to see if the brass work were polished. He would peer and peer up at the mizzen-mast, and peer and peer at the mainmast, and then peer and peer indefinitely at the foremast. And very queer he looked, peering and peering that way through his imaginary glass.

“’N’ then,” he went on, “after he had looked at that a while, he would come to the door of the galley and look at all the cook’s tin pans and kids, that was spread out in the sun. ’N’ if _they_ wasn’t polished to suit him, they would have t’ be done over, ’n’ the cook would get a good callin’ down, too.--Fer the love o’ Mike, what you laughin’ at, bo’s’n?”

The bo’s’n had been chuckling and giggling, and now he was absolutely bursting with restrained merriment. “I was thinkin’,” said he, “someone ought to have put pepper in the old man’s eyeglass. Then, when he come along and tipped it ’way back to look up, he’d go around howlin’ and howlin’ and stampin’ and swearin’, and be a fine show--and then, if the fust mate ast him what was the matter, he wouldn’t dare say, ’n’ he’d say that the brass was polished so poor it made him curse!” The bo’s’n delivered this strange harangue in the craziest voice you ever heard in your life, all the time chuckling as though about to burst.

“Well,” returned the cook, vehemently, yet very solemnly--“I guess you nor no one else, neither, would dare to do anythin’ like that. He’d regret it all his life, let me tell you! And you wouldn’t do anything about the grub, neither. I suppose all you fellows think you’re in a awful bad way with food. Do you want me to tell you what _we_ used to have to live on? We had salt pork ’n’ hard tack. ’N’ that’s about all. We used to have what we called ‘duff’ on Sundays, but that wasn’t so good as the grub you have all the time. And they didn’t even have potaters! Now, you shrimps git potaters all the time. Then, they on’y had ’em aft! Once we had a great hunk o’ salt beef. It got all soaked up with salt water, but the cook made us eat it. It was hard as a rock, ’n’ it lasted fer days and days, ’cause no one would eat it. ’n’ it kept cropping up, and cropping up, and we couldn’t get rid of it nohow. But we had to keep on chewin’ it (’n’ it was jist like leather), ’ntil every bit of it was gone. Why, we used to have food that cats and dogs wouldn’t ’a’ touched, ’n’ that turkey-buzzards wouldn’t ’a’ picked up.”

“Well!” said the bo’s’n, in a voice of careless scorn, “blamed if I’d eat it, if ’twas as bad as all that.”

“Now, my young man,” said the cook, very severely, “you’d do exactly what everyone else did, you would.”

♦ _Dietetic Argument_ ♦

“Wither me if I would! I’d fire it overboard. Why didn’t you fire it overboard?”

“It was different then,” said the cook--“very different. Sailors couldn’t get fresh and flip then, by thunder. Why, every man of them would be fired and flogged, if they did that.”

“Well,” said the bo’s’n, “why didn’t they come aft and complain? Strikes me it ain’t up to them to eat what’s fit for hounds.”

“Of course it wasn’t up to them!” said the cook, “but they had to do ’t all the same. I tell you, sailors weren’t treated as men at all, then; they weren’t so good as dogs! You think ye’re so hard off, don’t you? I’d like to have seen you in them times. Yes, by thunder, I would!”

“Well, but,” said the bo’s’n, whose careless brain was still working on the meat, “I’d take it out of the fo’c’sle with me, a little piece at a time, every time it come round--and then, when the old man or the steward wasn’t around, I’d fire it over. That’s what I’d do.”

“No you wouldn’t. You’d do what everyone else did--eat it ’ntil it was gone!”

“Well now,” I interposed, “I think the bo’s’n made an intelligent remark then. It would have been simple enough to do that--a little piece at a time.”

“Sure it would!” said the bo’s’n, evidently glad to have someone agree with him. “’Twould be the easiest thing in the world. I’m surprised none o’ you thought of it.”

“Huh!” said the cook--and that was all of that subject.

“Speakin’ o’ dogs and cats,” said the mate, evidently deciding that it was about his turn--“once I was second mate in a schooner, ’n’ the old man had a cat. He was fond o’ that animal, I tell you! But the boys, they got kind o’ mischievous ’bout it ’n’ decided they’d play a trick on the skipper and get rid o’ that cat. So, one time when we was gettin’ a tug out o’ the harbor, one o’ the boys picked up the cat by the tail and threw him down into the tug. Gee! I’ll niver ferget how surprised the boys in the tug looked, to see a cat come flyin’ down. An’ I’ll niver ferget the skipper. He didn’t know what had happened to the beast; he niver did know. ’Cause he’d ’a’ been powerful mad if he’d found out--but he niver did find out what happened to his cat.”

♦ _Analysis of a Lubber_ ♦

There was a silence, as the old man emerged from the cabin door, walked over to the port taffrail, and peered over at us, with a strange look of meddlesome curiosity on his visage, and an ugly, trembling glare. Everyone looked at him, and the bo’s’n said: “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!” in his mocking voice. “You wait!” he added. “He’ll be hollering in a minute.” As a matter of fact, the skipper didn’t start calling; he only looked forrard as though he would like to eat us. I suppose it enraged him to see me preferring the crew’s company to his; and perhaps it also enraged him to see the crew lying all over the deck, so “’xcruciating idle.” Then he went to see about the steering.

“Well,” began the mate, “last night I tried again to beat the points of the compass into Richardson’s head.” This was to me, the crew having dispersed momentarily. “But he can’t learn, and he won’t learn. I never seen a dumber lad.”

“He can’t box the compass, mate?”

“Indeed he can’t! He can’t remember them points for a minute. And he does make the dumbest mistakes, too. Why, early this mornin’, when ’twas his trick, he almost steered us right into a small fisherman crossin’ our bow. The boat got swept towards us, on account o’ leeway, and Richardson held us right to our course ’n’ didn’t know enough to heave to. And the lad was goin’ t’ keep right on goin’ ’ntil we hit the fisherman, but I see what was happenin’, and I come aft and took the wheel out of his hands and hove us to. But he’s dumb!”

“I’m getting so I can steer pretty easily, mate.”

“Oh, you can steer good. A few more tries at it, and you’ll be steerin’ as good as anybody. You steer a good sight better ’n Dick, now.”

How I did love the mate’s flattery of my seamanship!

At this point something occurred which sent a mighty roar of laughter from the crew and gathered them together again for more yarns. Richardson had been steering for a long time. Most of his trick was over, and he was listening impatiently for the welcome sound of eight bells from the ship’s clock below. The clock struck after a few seconds--seven bells. But Richardson was so elated with the idea that his trick was over, and that the watch would now be changed, that he never stopped to wait until the bells had finished striking; he took it for granted that it was eight, and pulled the cord of the after bell (on the deckhouse just over the binnacle, within reach of the helmsman) eight times. First the crew looked puzzled, and then, amid shouts of laughter, Bob yelled out: “Hey there, Dick! What you strikin’?” Richardson looked foolish for a moment. But he quickly recovered his good nature, and said, blushing: “Wasn’t that eight bells?” This time the crew was too convulsed to reply. Only the cook remained solemn. He gave one disgusted look from the galley door. He felt that it was altogether beneath his dignity to laugh. _He_ wouldn’t condescend even to smile.

♦ _Interlude on a Grisly Theme_ ♦

The boys were now back again, sprawled over the hatchways and the deck. But the cook, evidently rather disgusted, as always, with the freshness and the greenness of our crew, went back into his galley, muttering: “Oh, Lordy, Lordy!” and we didn’t see him again that afternoon.

The conversation of the crew changed to an extraordinary subject: teeth. (I won’t repeat all the gory, gory details.) The mate began by saying: “Well, I think when I get to Bridgewater, I’ll have all my teeth pulled out, and get me a set of false ones.”

“Well,” said the bo’s’n, “I imagine that would be a good plan. Does it hurt?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Well, I think some day I’ll do the same. Is’t ’xpensive?”

“Some is and some isn’t. A couple o’ years ago I wanted to have a tooth pulled out, and I see in the paper where a dentist pulled teeth fer twenty-five cents apiece. So I says: ‘That’s the place fer you, Bill,’ ’n’ off I went. Well, when I got there, I had a tooth pulled. ‘How much is it?’ says I. ‘Fifty cents,’ says he. ‘But I see in the paper where you pull teeth fer a quarter!’ ’so I do,’ says he, ’when you have more than one pulled. Fifty cents fer one. A quarter fer each tooth, if you have more than one pulled.’ ‘All right,’ says I, ‘go ahead!’ And he went on pullin’ and pullin’, and he took out nine teeth. I’ve only got seven in my upper jaw now.”

“But,” said the bo’s’n, “does it hoit?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ve got a couple o’ teeth that I’ll have pulled. What do you say we go somewheres in Bridgewater?”

“All right with me,” said mate.

“You have yours pulled first, and see if it hoits, and then I’ll have mine pulled.”

“Agreed.”

“And say, Roy,” went on the bo’s’n, “if you’ll pay fer mine I’ll have three pulled.”

“Agreed,” replied Roy, and that was the end of that. I was rather glad. Enough is enough.

* * * * *

Through the rest of that day the weather was monotonous, but very beautiful. The sea heaved and throbbed endlessly--dappled waves of silver-gray, constantly shifting shadows, pools of dark blue. The sky was clear all day, and the weather was very warm--in fact, uncomfortably so during the early afternoon. The sails stayed white with sunlight, and there were always sun-sparkles on the sea. Of course I had to have my little joke with Bill about the “breeze-o’-wind.” He said that if it didn’t come tomorrow he would never attempt a weather-prophecy again, but that he was almost sure it would come.

♦ _Mate and Bo’s’n_ ♦

And that leads me to say more of Bill. He is the best of mates; at least, in these modern times. In the days of the old clippers he would have needed a great deal of hardening down before he would be acceptable as an officer. But now he is just about as perfect as the mate of a lumber schooner could be. He is unutterably patient, and more willing to work than the men before the mast. In fact, he has a paintbrush in his hand as much as anyone. Of course this attitude--especially his willingness to do small jobs about the deck--wins the crew to him. You remember what Richardson said about his holding the crew together? Well, that’s a fact; he does. They were all dissatisfied with Captain Avery; if it weren’t for Mate Bill, they would certainly resign. And his willingness to work keeps them at work. None of his orders are slighted--except possibly by Bob, the bo’s’n, who, being his brother, is naturally very careless.

I asked Bill if he didn’t like to have Bob for his bo’s’n. He replied that it was nice in some ways to sail with part of the family, but that at the same time he wished that Bob weren’t the bo’s’n, but only a man before the mast, because, being his brother, he was often careless about important orders. And the mate said that Bob often used to sass him back. “Once,” he said, “just the other day, I ast Bob to get to work painting the bulwarks, and I give him the can and the paintbrush and everything. Then Bob says: ‘Aw, drop yerself overboard! I’ve done enough paintin’ t’day!’ Well, I didn’t say nothing; I jist turned around and left him. If I’d done what I ought to have done, I would have heaved him overboard. But I’m not made that way--I have a tender heart. And that’s the trouble with me as a mate: I’m not hard enough.”

Bill had pronounced his one fault--tender-heartedness. But when I looked at him, so brawny, and strong, and brown, and piratical, it seemed rather ridiculous to define him of all persons as tender-hearted. I should rather have liked to see him heave Bob overboard--and then hoist him on deck again by the throat halyards! I imagine that the mate really did have hard times getting things done, with Bob as bo’s’n. Bill used to say that any of the rest of the crew, even Richardson, would probably have made a better bo’s’n than Bob; though Bob was all right, he said, when he didn’t have Bill for mate.

* * * * *

♦ _Steerageway at Last_ ♦

Bill’s weather-prophecies, however belated their fulfillment may be, certainly are _true_, and no joke. When I went on deck the next (and fifth) morning, after a hard sleep and another waking-up by force, the sea was agitated, the sails were full and steady, and the proud _Norman D._ was leaning a very little. The man at the helm seemed to have an easier time of it, now that steerageway was on her. And the whole atmosphere of everything had changed somewhat. Instead of the gloomy, drowsy atmosphere, everything was gay, alert, alive. And yet the sea was not really boisterous, either--only playful and laughing. The sun was out brilliantly, and the whitecapped waves danced. I could feel the wind all through me, and the sails could feel it, and the schooner loved it--loved it. It was not yet so strong as it had been for that short time on the afternoon of the first day; but as it came up, I could feel the schooner leaning more and more, and, though still it was only a playful breeze, there was something ominous in the sound of it. The waves pounded the side of the ship, breaking and breaking; the wings of foam rushed and roared, louder and louder. And then--what did I hear aloft? It was a gentle, high, shrill singing--an unearthly, indescribable sound which for a moment I could not identify. Then I knew: it was the song of the wind through the sails.

For long I have read and heard about that magic sound; but I was beginning to think that it was just part of the poet’s imagination, and that he really meant the dashing of the foam or other sea noises. But no, it is quite true: the wind seeps out between the threads of the sailcloth and sings and sings, and the sound grows louder and more magical as the wind rises. This was sailing, as I had always dreamed of it.

Early in the morning we passed the loveliest small schooner I have ever seen, a small fisherman. She could not have been more than half our size, but in every detail she was as perfect as we. She carried foresail, mainsail, staysail, jib, and flying jib, and those long, pointed sails stretched out in front, full of wind, looked like the white wings of sea gulls. Keeled over on the port tack, she passed close under our stern. We could see the white bone she had in her small white teeth, and we could see that beautiful roundness of full sails. A sea gull--a white albatross sailing by--or, simply, a whitecap upon the waves!

We were off Cape Sable, the most southerly point of Nova Scotia. All day long the breeze rose, keeling us over more and more. The sails were watched as a cat watches a bird, in case a sudden squall should necessitate letting them out, or even reefing them. How I wished that we might have to reef!

♦ _Table Racks_ ♦

The sea rose and rose in all its foaming greenness, until it had reached the point where it had been on the first day; but it did not stop there. It kept on coming up until, to me, it began to look actually raging. When night shut down, the sea was in a tumult; and the effect of the darkness on that raging water seemed to me to intensify its anger. When, for the first time, we ate with table racks, it was marvellously exciting. On previous days there had been enough roll to slop the tea about considerably; but the cook seemed to think that this long, steady, deep cant needed the racks more than a crazy rolling.

Bill thought the worst wasn’t over yet; and since the seas were still becoming angrier and angrier, I believed him, and hoped that it was true. That night I went to sleep in a crazily tilted bunk. I slept as soundly as ever, and had to have another waking in the morning.

I consider that fifth day, the first of wind, as the beginning of the second half of the trip. Somehow, things changed on that day, and we began to see everything in a brighter, even a more piratical light.

I forgot to say that on that day we had seen our first blackfish. Bob was at the wheel, and his keen sailor’s eyes had made out the fountain which, like whales, they blow up. This fish was near the schooner, and playing leisurely about, always blowing. Every now and then we would see its black, shiny back looming up out of the sea like a dark boulder, or the forked, Y-shaped tail. The water which it spouted was so like a whitecap, or a wave throwing up foam, that I didn’t see it nearly so many times as the trained eyes of Bob.

* * * * *

In the way of weather, the next day was without doubt the most exciting of the whole glorious trip. There was not so much talk with the crew, but the weather quite made up for that, and it, after all, was the greatest thing. When I woke up I had a sudden fancy that the ship had turned over, and was sailing upside down. Indeed, when I put my feet on the floor, it slid out from under me, as it were, and I had to be thoroughly awake before I could stand up, even dizzily. The leeward rail was almost buried, and later I discovered the sea spraying in through the scuppers.

♦ _The “Gale-o’-Wind”_ ♦

When I thrust my head out of the cabin door, I was immediately blinded by the force of the wind, and I couldn’t hear my own thoughts for the howling and rushing. A marvellous summer gale, dead from the northeast. Then I thought of Bill. It was just as he had said. I would never doubt or make light of his prophecies again. The sea was a raging wild whirlpool. The great green waves burst up and up, crested with roaring foam, breaking and breaking against the side of the ship, throwing their foam on to the deck. To me it seemed a typhoon. To them it was a summer gale.

I cannot describe the awesome howling and raging of it. The sea swirled wildly, dark green, foaming. The sky was overcast, and that made everything seem more sinister. The sails were close-hauled, but not yet reefed; we were on the starboard tack, and making ten knots--a very satisfactory speed. And I heard again that singing sound aloft in the sails, still more loud and unearthly than the day before.

The sea was nothing but a mad rush of flying foam. Everything seemed one with it--even the wind, even the _Norman D._ herself. Two storm petrels--Mother Carey’s chickens--were blown like clots of dark foam across the sea; they had long, slender, dark wings, and they held them motionless and were scudded across. How I should have loved to see an albatross! Or a whale!

I could barely turn my face to the wind, and this fact helped to create my awed impression of it. When I wanted to walk forward I had to lower my head and hand myself step by step along the deckhouse, staggering even then. I saw some of the crew floundering. But the cook--not he! He walked in a straight, sure, steady line from the galley aft, with his heavy basket of food. When I asked Mate Bill whether this was a breeze, or a wind, or a gale, he said that it was “blowin’ real hard. Yes, it sure is. Any more than this would be uncomfortable--we might have to reef.” And the captain didn’t scorn this either. At breakfast-time, when the table racks were up, the table set, and the bell rung, he came down into the cabin, his white hair blown with the wind, his cheeks fresh and rosy, and said: “Say, folks, it’s blowin’ quite a few up there!” It was. The only one who scorned that wind was--you couldn’t guess. No, not with a hundred guesses! It was Richardson. _Richardson!_ I asked him, just to compare a sailor’s notion of this with a landsman’s, whether he thought it was breeze, wind, or gale. And Richardson said: “Oh, I’d call this a little breeze.” And it was not a joke! He was in dead earnest. He just wanted terribly to impress me.

When again I stuck my head out into that howling, again I was awed speechless. The schooner now had her cutwater buried in foam. The roaring mountains of it which we piled up left her traces for miles upon the sea. I wish we could have seen her from farther off, as she leaned there, like a sea gull flying, or a wisp of foam. Now the sails were no longer so gently, evenly full of wind: they were stretched and puffed out furiously, distorted by the strain into unnatural shapes. I could see, looking at the canvas, how they were tugging at every squall.

♦ Wild Weather ♦

The only place I could think of to sit down on was the canted leeward side of the deckhouse. I sat on the very edge of it, with my feet braced firmly against the taffrail. If that part of the rail had gone, I should have gone with it. But the old man came along, found me sitting there, and decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to do _that_ any longer. He told me that it was dangerous, and that I must get down. Down I got. Then I decided that I would go up on the fo’c’sle deck, and I asked Bill if that were all right. Bill replied that I oughtn’t to do that, because the jib sheets were rather old and frayed, and with that strain on them might give way at any moment, sending the blocks banging about. He told me that he knew a man who had gone forrard on a job in the middle of a gale, and a jib sheet had given way, and he had been killed by a blow of the loose block. So I promised I wouldn’t go there. Then all I could think of to keep myself warm was to run back and forth on deck, and since I couldn’t do that aft, I went cautiously down the poop deck steps and started tearing like a race horse back and forth between the poop and the fo’c’sle, every now and then looking out the scupper holes or over the bulwarks at the foam. The waves were no longer great green hills crowned with their ivory castles: they were furious volcanoes. The sea was hurling aloft thousands of mountains, carving deep and terrifying valleys, and then ruthlessly destroying them again.

It was a curious and difficult experience to run upon the deck. Besides the deep cant to leeward, the ship was rolling head-on, not on the waves of the gale, but simply on the tidal swell; and this roll seemed so much part of the cant that you didn’t notice it until you began to have trouble managing your feet. It _seemed_ as though the schooner were steady and firm. Yet, when you ran to the fo’c’sle, you were running first up a very steep hill which tired your legs dreadfully, then down so steep a hill that you almost fell on your face. Sometimes when I would put my foot down, the deck had slid out from beneath me and was ’way down at the bottom of the sea somewhere, and at the next step the deck was there long before I was, so that I would stumble over it, as it were.

When the cook saw me dashing so madly up and down the deck, he was amused, and shouted from the galley door: “What you doin’? Practisin’ for a relay team?”

“Oh, just keeping warm,” I replied.

“What do you think of the breeze?”

“Breeze!” said I. “I should rather call it a gale.”

“Oh, yes,” said he, “it’s a pretty little wind for this time o’ year. I didn’t expect nothin’ like this.”

♦ _Beating to Windward_ ♦

Again I was so awed by the sinister look of it that I could not speak. It was that way with me every time I looked at the overcast, gloomy sky, the raging sea, the strangely gleaming foam, the howling wind, the singing sails, the mountains of foam which we pushed up in great billows.

* * * * *

How the day went, I never did know; it went like the wind. Most of the time I was either running up and down the deck or standing on the poop deck, just gazing and gazing out to sea; or else I was watching the tactics of the _Norman D._ Of course, since the wind was coming from northeast, we had to tack. It was just as I had hoped, for I had always rather wanted to see how the schooner would tack in a good gale. I was disappointed, however, in the way she didn’t lie close to the wind. She would run no nearer it than four points. The captain said that this was partly because she was light. “She’s light-headed,” he explained; “that means she won’t tack. She lay within three p’ints coming down, loaded.”

We would sail for some two hours on one tack; then the old man would take the wheel, in order to have all hands free for the sails. He would steer “by the wind”--that is, not taking any particular compass-line, but keeping an eye on the sails and sailing as near the wind as possible--and when everything was ready forward, he would roar out in his croaking, harsh old voice; “Ha-a-a-ard a-lee-e-e-ee!” And then the mate, usually on the fo’c’sle deck, would answer out in his more hearty voice: “Hard alee, sir!” And then you would be sure to hear the bo’s’n, from some nook or cranny of the vessel, echoing: “Hard alee, sir!” The ship would swing over until she lay on the other side of the wind--though it always seemed as if the wind, not she, had changed. They tacked neatly, though a little frantically. But the cook disdained their performance, and spent a long time telling me how lazy and slow and ignorant they were, and how much more complicated it was to tack a square-rigged ship, when there were more than ten times as many sails and ropes, each one to be adjusted.

♦ _Darkness_ ♦

As I said, the day went very fast. There was nothing but the gale, the foam, the waves--now and then penetrated by one of the skipper’s terrible whoops. (His voice seemed always on the point of cracking in two; he used to yell out that “Hard alee!” so loudly that his voice would vanish entirely into the air.) I shall never forget the strange, wild, melancholy feeling which that overcast and howling day gave me. I would sit for hours on the corner of the deckhouse, and watch it, and face up into it, and yield to it, and cower before it. It was even more sinister than mountain-tops with the wind droning about them; more so even than the night in which Daddy and I were on the top of Moosilauke--that night of the great gale, with the biting mist and the stinging sleet. We went out together that night, wrapped in blankets, braving it. I remember the mountain feeling which spellbound us, and the loneliness of it--and the way IT glowered at us out of the fog. This was like it. Every trace of that gay, piratical feeling left me. There was nothing but the gale. And, though it was all piratical and sailor-like, it crowded all feelings out of you except the feeling of its awesome self.

But the darkness, when it began to shut down, was the most overwhelming of all. To see the storm growing dark, and the foam still gleaming ghostlike, and to feel the wind howling in a way which it has at night--we almost trembled. The sailors didn’t like it so well as we. They wished that it weren’t from the northeast; anywhere but northeast! said they. The captain was heard to say something about anchoring, and the mate to say something about sailing a hundred miles that day without making an inch of progress to the northeast. While everything was vague rumor, and no one seemed to know much about anything, Bill came aft and was heard to say to the old man: “Are you going to anchor, sir?”

“Yes, I’m goin’ t’ get that mudhook down, Bill, if I can,” said he. We made our way in pretty close to land somewhere off Cape Sable. Down with the sails, and down with the mudhook. And then, through the midst of the gale, with the howling above us all night, and the tossing of the ship, and the noise and confusion down in the cabin, we slept and rolled.

* * * * *