Title: Idylls of the Sea - and Other Marine Sketches
Author: Bullen, Frank Thomas, Strachey, John St. Loe
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Idylls of the Sea - and Other Marine Sketches" ***


[Illustration: (cover)]



IDYLLS OF THE SEA



  IDYLLS OF THE SEA

  AND

  Other Marine Sketches


  BY

  FRANK T. BULLEN, F.R.G.S.
  FIRST MATE
  AUTHOR OF THE ‘CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT’


  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. ST. LOE STRACHEY


  London
  GRANT RICHARDS
  9 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
  1900


  _First printed February 1899_
  _Reprinted April 1899; August 1899; December 1900_



        TO

        MY DEAR WIFE

        THIS LITTLE BOOK

        IS AFFECTIONATELY

        DEDICATED



Most of these sketches are, by the courtesy of the proprietors,
reprinted from the _Spectator_; the others have appeared in various
magazines--the _Cornhill_, _Good Words_, _Sunday Magazine_, _Chambers’s
Journal_, _Country Life_, _National Review_, and _Pall Mall Gazette_.
To the proprietors of all these journals my hearty thanks for their
kind permission to republish are hereby offered.

                                        FRANK T. BULLEN.



PREFACE


In these little sketches of a few out of the innumerable multitude of
ways in which the sea has spoken to me during my long acquaintance with
it, I have tried with ’prentice hand to reproduce for shore-dwellers
some of the things it has told me. If I were to stop and consider what
other men, freeholders upon the upper slopes of the literary Olympus,
have done in the same direction, I should not dare to put forth this
little book.

Let my plea be that I have not seen with their eyes nor heard with
their ears, but with mine own. This may have some weight with my
judges--those who will buy the wares I have to sell.

                                        FRANK T. BULLEN.

_Feb. 1899._



INTRODUCTION


Mr. Bullen’s work in literature requires no introduction. If it ever
did, it has received one so complete from Mr. Kipling, that not another
word is needed. Mr. Kipling, in phrases as happy as they are generous,
has exactly described the character of Mr. Bullen’s writings. After
that, to commend him to the public is superfluous. However, in spite of
this, Mr. Bullen has asked me to write a few words to put in the front
of his book, and I obey. If my introduction does no good, it will at
least do no harm, and I shall at any rate have the pleasure of being in
very good company. His whales and sharks and other monsters of the deep
are creatures with whom one is proud to be associated.

These Idylls--little pictures--strike me as some of the most vivid
things ever written about the sea. I take it that only a man who has
used the sea as a common sailor, and before the mast, really knows it
in all its humours,--has heard all those multitudinous voices that echo
along the vast waste spaces of the deep. The officer is either too busy
with his responsibilities of command, or else is off duty and so not at
close quarters with the winds and waves. As a rule the sailor,--the man
who heaves the lead, stands at the wheel, sits in the crow’s nest for
long hours together, and does the more wearisome and leisurely duties
of the ship, is not a person of sufficient imagination and education to
record the impressions that come to those who do battle with “a remote
and unhearing Ocean.” In Mr. Bullen, perhaps for the first time, we
have a man who has been a fo’c’s’le hand and yet has the power, first
to realise in a literary shape, and then to set down, the wonders of
the flood. It was a most happy combination that for once the man who
saw the tropic dawn from the crow’s nest of a whaler should be able to
communicate the full magic of the scene.

It is not conventionally that I have called Mr. Bullen’s work “vivid.”
It is of writing such as his that we can say, and say truly:

      I watch no longer--I myself am there.

He transports us to the very place he describes--does not merely hand
us a stereoscopic glass in which to observe a well-defined photograph.

One other quality has always struck me in Mr. Bullen’s work. In spite
of the fact that he knows so much science, and makes so keen and
convincing a use of this knowledge, there is always an air of mystery
and enchantment about his writing. De Quincey’s brother told De Quincey
that all his arguments against the supernatural were perfectly sound
here in England, but that they did not hold “to the suth’ard of the
line.” In the Southern Seas were still to be found realms where pure
reason was not supreme. But Mr. Bullen’s experiences and Idylls are
“to the suth’ard of the line.” He deals as a rule with that region of
romance, and hence it is, I suppose, that a sense of something strange
and fateful, and so fascinating, haunts his pictures of the sea.

But I am doing the readers of this book a very ill turn in keeping them
waiting at the door. Let them be assured that there is matter well
worth their marking within, and that if they are capable of taking
pleasure in the sea and its secrets, they cannot fail of entertainment
here.

                                        J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.



CONTENTS


                      IDYLLS OF THE SEA
                                                        PAGE
   1. THE PASSING OF PETER                                 1

   2. THE LOSS OF THE FIRST-BORN                           9

   3. A TRUE SHARK-STORY                                  14

   4. THE SLAVER                                          18

   5. THE CRUISE OF THE ‘DAISY’                           25

   6. ‘RUNNING THE EASTING DOWN’                          32

   7. IN THE CROW’S NEST                                  39

   8. THE BIRTH OF AN ISLAND                              47

   9. A SUBMARINE EARTHQUAKE                              54

  10. THE SILENT WARFARE OF THE SUBMARINE WORLD           61

  11. AN EFFECT OF REFRACTION                             67

  12. A WAKING NIGHTMARE                                  73

  13. THE DERELICT                                        79


              STUDIES IN MARINE NATURAL HISTORY

  14. SOME OCEANIC BIRDS                                  91

  15. THE KRAKEN                                          99

  16. CONCERNING SHARKS                                  112

  17. FLYING-FISH CATCHING AT BARBADOS                   131

  18. UNCONVENTIONAL FISHING                             139

  19. DEVIL-FISH                                         146

  20. OF TURTLE                                          159


                        OTHER SKETCHES

  21. ‘HOVELLING’                                        175

  22. THE LOSS OF THE ‘ST. GEORGE’                       187

  23. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MERCHANT SERVICE               196

  24. CANCER CAY                                         212

  25. A NINETEENTH-CENTURY JONAH                         219

  26. THE TRAGICAL TALE OF THE BOOMERANG PIG             230

  27. A DAY ON THE SOLANDER WHALING-GROUND               238

  28. SEA-ELEPHANTS AT HOME                              245

  29. AN INTERVIEW                                       253

  30. UP A WATERSPOUT                                    261



IDYLLS OF THE SEA



I

THE PASSING OF PETER


For six weeks we had simmered in unwinking sunblaze by day, and by
night had stared with ever-fresh wonder at the blue-black immensity
above, bejewelled with stars as the sand on the sea-shore for
multitude. Among the glorious host of heaven the dazzling moon sailed
on her stately way, the radiant splendour of her rays almost unbearable
in their penetrating power. Beneath us the waveless ocean lay like
another sky, its levelled surface unruffled by the faintest zephyr. On
moonless nights it was often hard to divest oneself of the idea that we
were floating in mid-air, so little difference was there between below
and above. Our passage, already over long, seemed to have ended here,
a thousand miles from land, and far out of the track of other ships.
For some time this wondrous restfulness of all the elements fell upon
our souls like the soothing touch of a mother’s hand upon the fevered
head of her child. In the night watches voices were hushed, and
whispered converse came gently from lips unaccustomed to such topics,
upon subjects exalted and solemn. Even during the day, while engaged
in severe toil--for our careful captain was utilising this unwelcome
opportunity in a general refit--it seemed as if all hands were under
a deep impression of gravity, as though conscious of contact with the
eternities. But this feeling of awe, which was almost involuntary
worship, gradually gave place as the days passed in changeless
procession to an increasing sense of indefinite fear. Each man looked
askance at his fellow’s face, fearfully seeking sight of that shadow
he felt upon his own. One unspoken question trembled on every lip, one
overmastering idea blended with and tinctured all others. A change,
unusual as unwholesome, came over the bright blue of the sea. No longer
did it reflect, as in a limpid mirror, the splendour of the sun,
the sweet silvery glow of the moon, or the coruscating clusters of
countless stars. Like the ashen-grey hue that bedims the countenance
of the dying, a filmy greasy skin appeared to overspread the recent
loveliness of the ocean’s surface. The sea was sick, stagnant, and
foul. From its turbid waters arose a miasmatic vapour like a breath of
decay, which clung clammily to the palate and dulled all the senses.
Drawn by some strange force from the unfathomable depths below,
eerie shapes sought the surface, blinking glassily at the unfamiliar
glare they had exchanged for their native gloom,--uncouth creatures
bedight with tasselled fringes like weed-growths waving around them,
fathom-long medusæ with coloured spots like eyes clustering all over
their transparent substance, wriggling worm-like forms of such elusive
matter that the smallest exposure to the sun melted them, and they were
not. Lower down, vast pale shadows crept sluggishly along, happily
undistinguishable as yet, but adding a half-familiar flavour to the
strange, faint smell that hung about us. Of the ordinary fish which
attend a vessel under healthful conditions few were to be seen. Such
stragglers as occasionally came near were languid and purposeless in
their movements, as if infected by the universal _malaise_ that only
fostered foul and fermenting growths. The sole exceptions were the
sharks, who came and went as stealthily, but as eagerly as ever.

Such a morbific, unwholesome condition of our environment as this
utter cessation of the revivifying motion of the aerial ocean, with
its beneficent reaction upon the watery world beneath, could not fail
sooner or later to affect the health of the crew. Doubtless the heavy
toil in which all hands were continually engaged during the day put off
the coming disaster longer than would otherwise have been the case.
But the ship was ill found, the meat was partially decayed, and the
bread honeycombed by various vermin. The water alone was comparatively
sweet, although somewhat flavoured with tar, for we had caught it as
it fell from the surcharged skies. There was no change of dietary, no
fresh provisions, except when, as a great banquet once in two months,
an allowance of soup and bouilli was served out, which only suggested
a change, hardly supplied it. Men grew listless and uncompanionable.
Each aloof from his fellows took to hanging moodily over the bulwarks
and staring steadfastly at the unpleasant surface of the once beautiful
sea. And the livid impalpabilities that, gigantic and gruesome, pursued
their shadowy, stealthy glidings beneath seemed to be daily growing
more definite and terrible. The watchers glared at them until their
overburdened imagination could support the sight no longer, and they
sought relief by hoarse cries from the undefinable terror. One by one
the seamen fell sick, apparently with scurvy, that most loathsome
ailment, that seems to combine in itself half a dozen other diseases
and reproduces old and long-forgotten wounds. It was accompanied,
too, by partial blindness, as of moon-stroke, rendering the sufferers
utterly unable to see anything at night, even though by day their
sight was still fairly good. Already short-handed, this new distress
added greatly to the physical sufferings of the patient mariners, who
endured with a fortitude seldom seen among merchant seamen the slowly
accumulating burden of their sorrows. The questioning look before noted
as visible in every man’s eyes now took another meaning. As a recent
and a most powerful writer, Joseph Conrad, has noticed, one of the
strongest superstitions current among seamen is the notion that such
an abnormal condition of the elements calls for a human victim. Life
must be paid that the majority may live. Whose would it be? No word was
spoken on the subject, but the sequel showed how deeply seated was the
idea.

At last from among the brooding men one figure detached itself and
became prominent with an unearthly significance. He was an old and
feeble man named Peter Burn, unfitted in any case to endure much longer
the ordinary stress of a sailor’s life. But suddenly his frailty seemed
to obtrude itself persistently upon our notice until his worn-out
frame became almost transparent. Towards the close of this moribund
state of the elements Peter’s mind grew retrospective. His present
surroundings seemed to fade from his knowledge, becoming, as far as
he was concerned, non-existent. Hour after hour he would lie yarning
incessantly of bygone exploits in long-forgotten ships on many seas. In
the long, quiet evenings all hands that were able would gather round
with pipes aglow and listen silently to his babbling, flowing like a
placid stream of sound, contrasting curiously with the lurid language
in which he revived the scenes of riot, bloodshed, and license of his
distant youth. He still relished a pipe, although he hardly seemed
aware whether it was alight or not. But there was always some one
ready to catch it as it fell from his trembling jaws, or to support it
tenderly with one hand while a light was applied with the other. Day by
day his detachment from present things increased. He lived only in the
misty past, his immediate environment became a perfect blank, and he
called his shipmates by strange names. Of any want of the consolations
of religion he manifested no sign, and as there was none to offer them,
the pathos of that dreadful indifference passed unnoticed.

At last, one evening, when a sticky haze rose sluggishly from the
fermenting sea, peopling the immediate vicinity of the ship with
fantastic shapes, Peter raised his voice in an astonishing volume
of sound, commanding his attendants to carry him on deck. They
instantly obeyed. Very tenderly and cautiously they bore him to the
top-gallant forecastle, whence a clear view could be obtained all
around. Through the hedge of mist the moon was rising, a vast blood-red
disc, across the face of which passed in weird procession formless
phantoms of indefinite and ever-varying suggestiveness. Overhead, the
lustreless stars looked down wearily out of a sky that had paled from
its deep azure to a neutral tint of green. From beneath, the foul
effluvia ascended like the air of a charnel-house. Even the gleaming
phosphorescence in the wake of the living things below glared pale
and slow. The heavy silence around was only broken at long intervals
by the melancholy wail of a weary sea-bird that feared to rest on
the glairy sea. On board the voice of our ancient shipmate prattled
on in tones scarcely human and in language unintelligible to any of
us. As the moon, rising clear of the steaming vapours, resumed her
normal appearance, she shot a pallid beam across us where, like a
group of ghosts, we crouched around Peter’s prone form. When the cold
ray touched his face it suddenly changed, and became beautiful, but
only for a moment. Then the withered, toothless jaw dropped, the dim
eyeballs settled in their sockets, and Peter passed from among us. Like
a voice from heaven came the command, breaking the heavy stillness,
“Square away the main-yard.” As men in a dream we obeyed. But the sweet
breeze aroused us as it swept away the fœtid mist in reluctant rolls
and eddies. A joyful sound like the musical murmur of a brooklet arose
from beneath the forefoot as the good ship resumed her long-hindered
journey through the reviving sea, and the long calm was over.

Then when sail had been trimmed, and gear coiled up again, came the
sailmaker softly, a roll of worn canvas under his arm, and his palm and
needle ready. In ten minutes a long white bundle was borne reverently
aft and laid on a hatch, where a mass of sandstone was secured to its
smaller end. The skipper produced a worn Prayer-book, from which, like
one determined to do his duty at all cost, he doggedly read the Order
for the Burial of the Dead right through. All hands stood round in the
moonlight with bare heads and set faces until the skipper’s voice
ceased. Then at a sign from the mate four of us lifted the hatch to the
rail, slowly raised its inner end and held it steadily, while, with
a slow hiss, its burden slid into the sea and disappeared beneath a
shining column of emerald green.



II

THE LOSS OF THE FIRST-BORN


She was his latest bride; the joy of his great heart as well as the
flower of his goodly flock. And as he swept proudly through the foaming
sea, with her graceful form gliding sinuously by his side, at the head
of the mighty school in all the exultation of his overlordship of those
Titans, he often sprang clear into the bright air in the fulness of
his gigantic life and measureless delight of living it. After having
in this way somewhat quieted his exuberant spirits, he swam sedately
enough by the side of his favourite again, and resumed the serious
conversation they had been having. He told her they would arrive at
the island to-morrow, and she would then see what a sweet spot he
had selected for the birthplace of their first-born. There was deep
water right up to the edge of the widespreading reef. Shallow winding
channels, that only sagacious whales, humpbacks like themselves, could
find or thread amid the incessant rolling of the enormous breakers, led
into a spacious lagoon behind, where there was no greater depth than
six fathoms. The floor of those quiet quarters was delightfully jagged,
so that she would be able easily to chafe off every last barnacle and
limpet from the lovely folds of her charming breast. As for food, the
place was alive with tender young squid and sea-slugs, all fat and
juicy. And as he spoke he caressed her lovingly with his fifteen-feet
fin that spread like a wing from the broad expanse of his side, while
she gazed up at him affectionately out of the corner of her tiny eye.

When she instinctively expressed her fear of the ever-vigilant sharks,
who love nothing better than a tender young calf, he comforted her
by an assurance that there was little need to fear them there. If a
stray one should come prowling round she was to attack him at once,
as he would almost certainly be alone. Then his voice took a graver
tone as his wound reminded him of the greatest danger of all, and one
of which she had no experience. He told her how to some of the quiet
haunts of their people came occasionally white things, with long thin
legs, walking on top of the water. They were not nearly as big as a
whale, but there seemed to be smaller living things in them that were
terrible and dangerous. They bit with long sharp teeth, they had arms
hundreds of feet long, and they knew no pity even for languid mother
and new-born calf. They had killed vast numbers of the whale-folk, and
the thought of his escape from them made him ache with fright, though
it was so many years ago. But, happily, they could not come everywhere,
and he had chosen this shelter for her because it was barred against
them.

Even as he spoke, the school swept into sight of a vast barrier of
coral, and, settling down many fathoms, they skirted its base rooted
in the eternal buttresses of the world. Grand and awful was the view,
but they heeded it not, being on business bent, with no admiration to
waste on the gorgeous scene or appreciation of the untellable marvels
of the deep,--matters of every day with them. Presently they rose near
enough to the surface to hear the solemn roar of the league-long line
of resistless breakers overhead, and, turning with them, followed their
lord and leader into one of the channels he had spoken of. It wound
its tortuous way for a couple of miles through the great reef, the
stillness of the placid shallows strangely disturbed by the thundering
return of the displaced water as the troop of leviathans paddled gently
through its intricacies. At length they emerged into a wide lagoon,
bounded on one side by towering masses of black rock rising tier upon
tier for over two thousand feet. In every other direction the sea
raised a rampart of dazzling foam, which seemed never to subside for
one moment, or reveal even a remote chance of entry.

For the next two days they stayed with her, exploring every corner,
finding it truly, as the Master had said, a place of ten thousand for
a refuge from all enemies. At last, when the patient mother-to-be
had settled upon a shady pool beneath a huge overhanging crag as her
favourite spot, they all bade her farewell, formed into line and
departed, leaving her to the unfailing ministrations of the good Nurse
Nature, with a promise to return again in about ten days.

On the second day of her loneliness a little son was born to her, a
pretty, frolicsome creature about eight feet long, his tender, shining,
dark skin elegantly mottled with splashes of grey, while the tiny
furrows of his belly were white as curd. And the proud mother lolled
in her cool corner feeding her babe from her bounteous breast, feeling
supremely happy. He was a very wellspring of joy to her, every move
of his lithe young body, every puff from his tiny spiracle, giving a
new pang of delight. Nor did anything harmful come near. But she never
relaxed her vigilant watch; not the faint splash of a gannet after a
fleeting flying-fish but sent a shudder of apprehensive energy through
her mighty frame.

For one blissful week there was perfect peace. Then came a morning
when the glorious blue sky grew grey and greasy, then black as soot.
A deathlike silence fell. The harmless fish and other denizens of
the reef crept into crevices of the coral, and all the birds fled
wailing away. She was filled with an undefinable dread; a loneliness
unfelt before shrank every fibre with fear. Moving uneasily about
the restricted area of her shelter, her calf clutched closely under
her fin, she saw spear after spear of crimson flame cleave the swart
heavens, while immense boulders of red-hot rock fell in a hurtling
hail around her. A seething torrent of molten lava amid a dense fog of
steam fell with a deafening hiss into the sea. Desperately she sought
to descend, but forgetting the bottom so near, dealt herself a fearful
blow. Then in frantic fear for her youngling, she rushed, holding him
closer to her breast, around the barrier, seeking the passage through
which they had entered. Almost exhausted with her exertions, she found
it, fled along its windings with the rock heaving and groaning around
her, and at last plunged exultantly through the boiling breakers down,
down into peace. But unsatisfied, still she toiled on to leave that
accursed place far behind, nor rested except to breathe her offspring
until she was a hundred miles away.

Then, secure from that terror, she took her ease, thinking poor mother,
that all danger was past. But alas for her hopes! A grim silent shadow
shot past as she lay basking on her side, her calf lazily sucking.
Startled into sudden activity, she sprang forward her full length,
swiftly sweeping her wide fins back and forth in search of her infant.
Again that dark form flew past her side, bearing away on the projecting
sword from its head the body of her first-born writhing in sudden
death.



III

A TRUE SHARK-STORY


“How very hard it is to provide for a young, fast-growing family
nowadays,” said the mother shark, turning, for the hundredth time that
morning, upon her broad side in order to get a better view of what
might be stirring above. For nearly a week she had been fasting--in
fact ever since she came in hurriedly at the close of a great feast
upon the stripped carcase of a recent whale. There, by dint of the
energy of her massive shoulders, her fourteen feet of length, and
fivefold rows of triangular teeth, she had managed to secure a
respectable proportion of the spoil for the replenishing of her own
huge maw as well as for the upkeep of the fourteen sharklings that were
now restlessly darting in and out of their cosy cave at the far end of
her capacious throat.

Within the immediate range of her glance a vast black shadow obscured
a wide, irregularly shaped area of the blazing sunshine. It was so
calm that the shadow seemed stationary. In the direction of this cool
penumbra her gaze lingered earnestly. For hereditary instinct as well
as long experience gave her the knowledge that from the substance of
such shadows came food dropping down, varied and toothsome, actually
alive upon rare occasions. Somewhat impatiently she wondered at the
long time that her little blue and gold attendant had been gone. He was
so seldom absent from his place between her eyes for a whole minute
that she got quite uneasy. But while she fidgeted fretfully, with many
twitchings of her flexible “gaff topsail,” back came the pilot-fish in
a tearing hurry. “Now then, partner, move along, do. There’s a lump of
fat pork almost as big as your head hanging over that ship’s stern. I
don’t quite understand why it doesn’t sink, but it _is_ good. I nibbled
just a crumb, and you can be sure this time that it’s no bagful of
cinders like that nasty mouthful that gave you the chest-ache so bad
this morning.” The latter part of this energetic exordium was lost upon
Mother Shark, being drowned in the wash set up by her great tail-fin,
which was going in grand style, starting her off at such a rate that
two or three stragglers of the family had to skip like shrimps to get
indoors before they were left behind and lost.

Straight as an arrow to the mark went the tiny guide, keeping just in
front of his huge friend’s snout. Together they swept into the shadow,
where, sure enough, a mass of meat hung just below the sea surface,
though gently lifted almost out of water every now and then. “Oh, do
look, Mamma! _there’s_ a big fish. Is he going to eat up that pretty
little one, do you think?”--“Oh, no, my little man,” struck in the
mate, “but you watch him _now_.” As he spoke the great grey body took a
curve laterally, a dazzling glare of white appeared, and there, beneath
the speaker, was a crescentic gap in the smooth, livid underside,
fringed with innumerable points like _chevaux-de-frise_, and as big as
the gape of a coal-sack. Around it the small pilot circled excitedly at
top speed. Slowly it rose beneath the bait, which the mate as gently
slacked away, there was a gulp, and the big joint disappeared. There
was a flash, a splash, and an eddy. Then the rope attached to the
shark-hook concealed in that pork groaned over the rail as it felt the
strain.

“Lay aft the watch,” roared the mate, and amid the trampling of many
feet, a babel of directions, and a tremendous tumult alongside, through
the writhings of the captive monster, she was transferred forward to
the lee gangway, where, by the aid of a stout watch-tackle, she was
hoisted out of water.

“Don’t take him aboard,” cried the captain; “make such an infernal mess
if you do. Just spritsle yard him ’n let him go agen.” So a piece of
scantling was got from the carpenter, pointed at both ends, about four
feet long. This they drove through her jaws from side to side. Another
wedge-shaped piece was planted diagonally down through her broad snout,
the upper end pointing forrard. Then they cut off the wide pectoral
fins, letting the quivering carcase fall into the sea again by the
simple expedient of chopping the hook out. “What abominable cruelty,”
muttered a gentle-faced man among the crowding passengers, as he turned
away sick at heart. But the bustling seamen looked pityingly at him,
wondering doubtless at his lack of sporting instincts. Thus disabled,
the miserable monster plunged blindly in uncertain directions, unable
to steer herself, unheeding the frantic caresses of her faithful little
satellite, who had almost exhausted himself by leaping up at her as she
hung struggling against the vessel’s side. Neither did she notice the
puzzled, wavering movements of her wondering brood. So she disappeared
from the view of the laughing, happy crowd on deck. But whichever way
she rushed she always fetched up to the surface promptly, because of
the vane in her head. Thus for a day and a night she fought aimlessly
with all the forces of amazing vitality pent up in her huge body
against these torturing disablements, until mercifully she fell in with
a couple of ravenous congeners. Scenting fresh blood they made for her
straightway. Like mad things they fell upon her. Long and hard they
strove, tearing their way through the tough framework until assistance
came from all quarters, and a motley multitude of various hungry
ones cleaned up every shred of the welcome banquet, leaving only the
deserted pilot to seek another partner.



IV

THE SLAVER


Ras Nungwe stood out boldly against the deep azure of the midnight
sky, its rugged outlines softened and etherealised by the flood of
molten light flowing from the rising moon. Within the velvety shadow
which extended far to the north-westward from that bold headland lay
our brig, a lonely, almost pathetic object, with sails all vertical in
the utter calm, and taut as boards with the drenching dew. The royals,
peering above the enwrapping dark, gleamed silvery-white where the
unintercepted moon-rays touched them, crowning the homely craft with a
radiant halo of silver sheen. I stood alone in the silent gloom of the
deck completely absorbed in the solemn beauty of the scene, and utterly
unmindful for the present of the severe stress of our encompassing
emergencies. After the fierce heat of the glowing day the caressing
coolness of the hour was a pure delight, for, although not a breath
lifted the down fringing the dog-vane suspended just above my head,
there was a freshness in the atmosphere which belied the thermometer.
A sound rippled along through the quiet, sending a responsive thrill
over my scalp, as of an attuned nerve. Mellow and sustained, the clear
call of the Muezzin from the minaret in Zanzibar Town had travelled
this great distance, bearing its tremendous challenge, “Allah ho
Akbar!” Dropping all consonants on its way, only the open vowels
persisted; but even so, none could mistake the words. Obedient even in
sleep to the call of his faith, Sa’adi, our Suahili steward, turned
upon his mat near the mainmast, and rising to his feet, with hands
outstretched before him, began in low gutturals the majestic ritual of
the Mussulmani, “Bismillahi ’Rahmanni ’Raheem.”

Meanwhile, the swelling tide of moonlight had invaded the sombre area
wherein we lay until the whole of the vessel was shining in purest
light. Every rope, spar, and sail, shimmering in that wonderful
luminosity, looked unearthly, a phantom that the returning sun would
dissipate with his workaday beams. Here and there on the deck, wherever
a little shelter could be found from the soaking dew, lay figures in
many an uneasy attitude, brokenly slumbering and muttering through
the helpless delirium of fever; for all hands save the second mate,
myself, two Malagasy, and two Arabs, were desperately sick. The
poisonous malaria which crawls stealthily to the Zanzibar anchorage
out of the foulness of that most filthy town, aided by the treacherous
exhalations from the soil everywhere, had stricken them down, and
their only hope of recovery seemed to lie in escape from that dangerous
vicinity. Therefore, but principally because of our affection for our
suffering skipper, with his wife and child all tossing in delirium, we
had dared to get under weigh and proceed to sea in such a plight. But
now, relieved by my careful brother officer, I went below, knowing from
painful experience that, stifling as the air might be down in my berth,
it was far safer than on deck.

I awoke streaming as if in the sudatorium of a Hammam, and after a
careful rub down and complete change of rig, returned on deck to
relieve my faithful partner. A small air from the African land was
just lifting the lighter sails, and making a pleasant little ripple
warble alongside. One of the Malagasy, a docile Betsimasaraka, came
to the wheel, necessitating a careful watch over his well-meant but
generally misdirected efforts on my part, since the duty was as yet
strange to him. Still, I had leisure to take my fill of admiring wonder
at the completely changed scene. We now sailed on a sea of silver,
the moon being almost vertical. Out of that radiant level rose the
dark battlements of the great island, its clear-cut outlines in sharp
contrast to the pellucid sky. Far ahead loomed the misty mass of Pemba,
and on the left a long, low streak of gloom, lit up here and there by
gleaming stretches of shining sand, showed the proximity of Africa,
ancient land of mystery. A subdued murmur, like that of a shell, but
with an occasional swell therein, was rather suggested than heard, so
unceasing was its deep monotone, the unresting roll of the Indian Ocean
upon those lonely shores. At no great distance from us a snowy feather
occasionally showed itself where the slumbering sea was momentarily
ruffled in its regular roll by an outlying spur of coral close to the
surface.

In striking contrast to those bright gleams the black blotch made by
some toiling fisherman’s small canoe showed up against the bright
waters like a patch of rock. Presently, out of the misty environs of a
small island to leeward, came the faint but unmistakable sound of oars
strenuously worked. The night-glasses revealed the sinister shape of a
dhow heading towards us, a foam-wreath sparkling at her bows as if she
was going at a great rate. “More slaves,” I thought bitterly, for night
navigation is not favoured by Arabs except upon excursions that do
not bear the light well. Fervently I hoped that some of my countrymen
were lying hidden near enough to stop those incarnate devils on their
infernal errand. Forgetting all else, I strained my eyes through the
glasses at the swiftly approaching dhow. The course he was making would
bring him closely past us, and eventually land him at the extreme
northern end of Zanzibar Island.

Hoping against hope, I swept the horizon earnestly with the glasses,
my gaze lingering for long in the direction where lay the guardship
with five hundred eager fellows on board ready to take any risk to
stop such a villainous craft as was now befouling the seascape, did
they but know of her presence. I had nearly given up all hope, when
to my intense delight I saw coming in our direction from Pemba a tiny
cloud of black smoke. Hardly knowing how to contain myself, I rushed
below, found a rocket, and leaning it against the rail, touched it
off. With a hiss like a bursting steampipe it soared aloft, scaring my
poor Malagasy helmsman almost into a fit, and bursting at a splendid
height into five blazing stars, an imperative call to any cruising
naval launch near. The flying slaver never swerved or halted. On the
contrary, she was evidently adding to her speed. But to my satisfaction
the small black thread of smoke ahead now showed a lurid glow running
through it. Doubtless they had grasped the intention of my signal, and
were making their little craft do her best to obey it. Within a cable’s
length the dhow passed our stern, her straining crew yelling curses at
us in mellifluous Suahili. Pitiful, indeed, would have been our case
could those merciless flesh-hunters then have had their will of us. But
with double-banked sweeps they strove to gain the shore, scenting the
pursuers they could not see. Nearer drew the trailing smoke-wreath,
until beneath it I could discern the slender shape of a steam-launch.
And then I rejoiced to see her change her course so as to cut off the
dhow ere she could reach the objective her crew were straining every
sinew to attain. Breathlessly I watched the manœuvre, disregarding the
unwelcome failure of the gentle breeze that again left us motionless.
At last there was a flash from the launch’s bow, followed by a sullen
boom, the sweetest sound imaginable to my hungry ears. Another flash,
and then the bright foam faded from the dhow’s sides, showing that they
had ceased their efforts to escape. A short silence ensued, followed by
a faint rattle of small-arm fire.

Although the grey light of dawn was now displacing the almost
blue-black of the night sky, the two craft were so far away that I
could not see how my brethren were faring, but almost unconsciously I
breathed a prayer for their success. Then, in gorgeous array of green
and purple and gold, conquering daylight rushed across the sky, paling
the bright moon and quenching the sweet stars in the ineffable glory of
a new morn. All the beauties of the adjacent shores sprang into sight,
completing the splendid picture. But, best of all, over that devilish
dhow now floated the white-and-red folds of St. George’s Cross,
whose appearance anywhere always gives an Englishman an accelerated
heart-beat. How much more, then, when it is seen sheltering those who
were lost, helpless, and hopeless slaves. Before long the dhow was
taken in tow by the launch, which headed towards us. I ran up the old
Red Ensign, dipping it gaily in salute to the victors in so noble a
cause. As she passed close under our stern the officer in charge,
waving his cap, shouted: “Many thanks, sir, for your signal. We should
certainly have missed the prize without it. She has one hundred and
fifteen slaves on board, all ages and both sexes, packed like sardines
in a tin. It is a splendid haul. Good-bye, sir, and a most pleasant
passage to you.” I would have answered him in many words, but something
choked my utterance, and I could only wave my hand in hearty farewell.
I could not help a feeling of satisfaction as I noticed several prone
figures on the dhow’s deck with crimson stains on their dingy white
garments. There are times when the Mosaic law seems to all of us the
only satisfying adjustment of rewards.

Of the long days that followed before we finally cleared those sultry
shores, days of anxiety and nights of constant care, much could be told
did space permit. One by one the haggard, quinine-saturated invalids
resumed their watch, wistfully seeking to help, but so weak that their
faltering steps failed them oftentimes. But gradually they gathered
strength, until by the time that Zanzibar had faded below the blue
horizon every one mustered at watch--changing, and our little company
remained complete.



V

THE CRUISE OF THE ‘DAISY’


Something, doubtless, akin to the contact of the naked soul with its
God is the feeling of conscious nothingness that enwraps a man who
finds himself alone in some tiny craft upon the unbroken circle of the
sea. Even more so, perhaps, when he has a vessel under his feet, than
when he survives upon some frail fabric of hastily gathered flotsam,
the lost company of his fellows. For in the former case he has leisure
for calm thought, need for skill and energy; none of which qualities
will avail him much in the latter, where it is but a question of a
little more or less firm hold upon fleeting life. To this conclusion I
am led from experience of both situations, about the former of which I
would fain speak now.

As the result of a series of adventures while mate of an old Cumberland
brig under the nominal command of one of the most besotted drunkards
I have ever known, I found myself adrift in an Acadian coast village
early in December, friendless and penniless. Already the icy barrier
was rapidly forming which would effectually bar all navigation until
the ensuing spring, and the thought of being thus frozen up in helpless
idleness for months, coupled with the prospect of winter for my young
wife in England without my support, was almost more than I could
bear. Kismet threw in my way the commander, owner, and builder of a
tiny schooner, who, disgusted with his “bad luck,” had freighted his
cockleshell with the harvest of his farm, three hundred barrels of
potatoes, and purposed sailing for the West Indies in order to sell
vessel and cargo. Of ocean navigation he knew nothing, all his previous
nautical experience having been confined to the rugged coasts of Nova
Scotia, so that he was highly elated at the idea of engaging a mate
with a London certificate. Not that he would have hesitated to launch
out into the Atlantic without any other knowledge than he possessed,
without chronometer, sextant, or ephemeris. Like many of the old school
of sea-farers, now perhaps quite extinct, he would have reckoned upon
finding his way to port in time by asking from ship to ship sighted on
the passage, for he was in no hurry. I was in no mood for bargaining--a
way of escape was my urgent need--and in a few hours from our meeting
we were busily rowing the wee craft down the fast-emptying river. The
crew consisted of the skipper, his ten-year-old son, myself, and a
gawky, half-witted lad of sixteen, who strutted under the title of
cook. Bitter, grinding poverty was manifest in every detail of our
equipment, principally in the provisions, which consisted solely of a
barrel of flour, a small tub of evil-smelling meat (source unknown),
and a keg of salt flavoured with a few herrings. Of course, there was
the cargo, and the skipper concealed, moreover, under his pillow a few
ounces of tea, about 3 lb. of wet sugar in an oozing bag, and a bottle
of “square” gin. “Medical comforts,” he explained, with an air of
knowing what ought to be carried on a deep-water voyage.

For the first five hundred miles we groped our way through fantastic
wreaths of frost-fog, its dense whiteness enclosing us like a wall, and
its pitiless embrace threatening to freeze the creeping blood in our
veins, while, invisible, the angry currents of the fiercest tideway
in the world bubbled beneath us like a witch’s cauldron, whose steam
was fluid ice, after whirling us top-wise in defiance of wind and
helm. Strange noises assailed our ears, and a feeling of uncertain
suspension as though sailing in the clouds possessed our benumbed
faculties. But as if guided by an instinctive sense of direction,
the skipper succeeded in fetching the New Brunswick shore, entering
Musquash Harbour without hesitation, and anchoring a scant bowshot
from the frozen strand. Wasting no time, very precious now, we landed,
restoring our feeble circulation by felling a large number of beautiful
young silver birches, which, like regular ranks of glittering ghosts,
stood thickly everywhere. Our sea-stock of fuel provided, we broke up
the armour-plated covering of ice over a swiftly-flowing streamlet and
filled our solitary water-cask, an irksome task, since the water froze
as we poured. With enormous difficulty we shipped these essentials, and
in all haste weighed again, and stole seaward into the gathering gloom.
Night brought a bitter gale, whose direction barely enabled us to creep
under a tiny triangle of canvas towards the narrow portals of the Bay
of Fundy. The flying spray clung to masts and rigging, clothing them
with many layers of ice, till each slender spar and rope gleamed huge
above our heads through the palpable dark. The scanty limits of the
deck became undistinguishable from the levels of an iceberg, to which
offspring of the sombre North our little craft was rapidly becoming
akin. Below, in the stuffy, square den, the “cook” continually fed the
ancient stove with crackling birchwood and made successive kettlesful
of boiling burnt-bread coffee, while the half-frozen skipper and his
mate relieved each other every half-hour for a brief thaw. In such
wise we reached a sheltered nook behind Cape Sable, anchoring in a
culminating blizzard of snow, and fleeing instantly to the steaming
shelter below. Outside our frail shell the tempest howled unceasingly
throughout the long, long night. When the bleak morning broke the
little ship was perched precariously, like some crippled sea-bird, upon
three pinnacles of rock. The sea had retreated from us for nearly a
mile, and all the grim secrets of its iron bed lay revealed under the
cold, grey dawn. Overhead hung gigantic icicles like sheaves of spears
from the massive white pillars that concealed our identity with man’s
handiwork, and at imminent risk we must needs break them down in order
to move the vessel when the inrushing flood should again set her free.
Presently it came, a roaring yellow mass of broken water, laden with
all the varied débris of that awful coast. But we were ready for it,
and by strenuous toil managed to get into a safe anchorage.

Seven short days and long ghastly nights we lay there waiting a chance
to escape. Christmas came and went, bringing with it bitter thoughts of
home, but no word was spoken on the subject. The skipper’s little son
lay feverishly tossing in the delirium of measles, his father’s face
an impenetrable mask, but whether of stoicism or stolidity I could not
tell. At last the wind softened, changed its direction, and breaking
up the gloomy pall of cloud, allowed a few pale gleams of sun to peep
through, welcome as sight to the blind. Scrambling ashore, we cut
down a widespreading young spruce-tree, and after a struggle of two
hours succeeded in getting it on board with all its matted branches
intact. Then, tearing out the anchor in a fury of energy and desire to
be gone, we stood to the southward with our strange deck-load. A few
short hours, and what a change! As if under the breath of some kindly
angel, the ice and snow melted from around us, the pleasant thrill
of expanding life returned. It was no new miracle, only the sweet
influence of that mild but mighty ocean river, the Gulf Stream, into
whose beneficent bosom we had crept like a strayed and perishing child.
How we revelled in the genial warmth. With what delight we bathed our
stiffened limbs in those tepid waters, feeling life and comfort surge
back to us as if from their very source.

Just a little while for recovery, and then round swung the wind again.
The dismal curtains of the sky were drawn, and the melancholy monotone
of the advancing storm wailed through our scanty rigging. Right across
the path of the great stream it blew, catching the waves in their
stately march, and tearing their crests furiously backward. Fiercer
and louder howled the gale, while the bewildered sea, irresistibly
borne north-eastward by the current and scourged southward by the
ever-increasing storm, rose in pyramidal heaps which fell all ways,
only their blinding spray flying steadfastly to leeward. In that welter
of conflicting elements, whence even the birds had fled, we were tossed
like any other bubble of the myriads bursting around. Sail was useless
to steady her, for the towering billows becalmed it; neither dared
we risk our only canvas blowing away. So when it appeared that there
was a little more truth in the trend of the sea, we moored the cable
to the trunk of our tree and cast it overboard. And to that strangely
transformed plant we rode as to a floating anchor, held up head to
sea, save when the persistent swell rose astern in a knoll of advancing
water and hurled us three hundred fathoms forward in a breath. Nine
weary watches of four hours each did I stand by the useless wheel,
breathlessly eyeing the tigerish leap of each monstrous wave until it
swept by leaving us still alive. Yet while the skipper stood his watch
I slept, serenely oblivious of the fearful strife without. So bravely,
loyally did the little _Daisy_ behave that hope rose steadily, until
just as the parting clouds permitted a ray of moonlight to irradiate
the tormented sea, there was a sudden change in her motion. As if
worn out by the unequal strife, she fell off into the sea-trough, a
mountain of black water towered above her, and in one unbearable uproar
she disappeared. Blinded and battered out of all sense, I knew no
more until I found myself clinging to the wheel with a grip that left
indented bruises all over my arms. She had survived, and, as if in
admiration for her valiant fight, the sea fell and left her safe. The
tree-trunk had been sawn right through, but its work was done.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beneath pleasant skies we plodded southward to our destined port,
arriving uneventfully at Antigua after a passage of thirty-five days.



VI

‘RUNNING THE EASTING DOWN’


Despite the inroads made upon sail by steam, a goodly fleet of sailing
ships still survive, many of them magnificent specimens not only of
marine architecture, but also of the cunning handiwork of the modern
“rigger.” The enormous sail-area shown by some of these ships and the
immense spread of their yards would have staggered the daring skippers
of forty years ago, when the China tea-clippers were the greyhounds of
the seas, and the Yankee flyers were wiping the eyes of their sturdy
British compeers. But in order to see these majestic vessels at their
best it is necessary to be on board one of them on a voyage to or
from the Far East. Their troubles are often many and their hindrances
great until they reach those Southern parallels where, after a spell
of “doldrums” varying with the season, they pick up those brave west
winds that, unhindered, sweep in almost constant procession around the
landless Southern slopes of the world. This is no place for weaklings
either among ships or men. If a passage is to be made and a vessel’s
reputation for swiftness, apart from steam-power, to be either
sustained or acquired, here is the field. There is none like unto
it. Not only should canvas, hemp, and steel be of the best, but the
skipper must be stout of heart, not to be daunted by threatening skies,
mountainous seas, or wandering islands of ice. More than all these,
he must to-day be prepared to face the probability of his scanty crew
being quite unable to handle the gigantic pinions of his vessel should
the favouring breeze rise, as it often does, to such a plenitude of
power as to make it most dangerous for them to be longer spread.

To take a typical instance: the 5000 ton four-masted sailing ship
_Coryphæna_, laden with general merchandise for Melbourne, reached the
latitude of Cape Frio on the thirty-fifth day from London. Like all of
her class, she was but weakly manned, but as if to provide against any
possible emergencies of sail-carrying, her enormous masts of mild steel
were quadruply stayed with steel cables, until they were almost like an
integral part of the massive fabric herself. From truck to mast-coat
not a shaking of hemp was used for cordage where steel wire rope or
chain could be made available. Neither were any old-time lashings,
lanyards, or seizings to be seen. Their places were filled by screws
and levers, whereby one man could exert more power on a shroud or a guy
than was formerly possible to a dozen, aided by a complicated web of
tackles. And the sails, those vast breadths of canvas that, when set,
made the mighty hull appear but a trivial thing beneath their superb
spread, were of the heaviest quality woven, their seams, leaches, and
roaches fortified by all the devices known to the sailmaker.

The skipper paced the poop with uncertain steps, hardly able to conceal
his impatience at the dallying of the light airs that only made the
great squares of canvas slam sullenly against the masts, and wear
themselves thin. Longingly his eyes lingered on the western horizon,
hungering for sign of the “Westerlies.” His eager gaze was at last
rewarded by the vision of a sombre arch of lowering cloud, which
slowly upreared its grim segment above the setting sun. The fitful
south-easterly airs, dregs of the “Trades,” which in their feeble
variableness had so sorely tried his patience, gradually sank like the
last few breaths of some expiring monster, leaving the sea glassy and
restful under the dark violet of the evening sky. Only a long, regular
swell came rolling eastward in rhythmical march, its placid undulations
swaying the huge vessel gently as the drowsy rocking of an infant’s
cradle. But its indications were sufficiently precise to satisfy the
skipper, who, after a peaceful pipe, retired early to rest, leaving
orders to call him in the event of any sudden change. His manner,
however, indicated that he expected nothing of the kind. After his
departure the chief officer prowled restlessly about the quarterdeck,
being a man to whom the stagnation of a calm was an unmitigated
calamity. At present his only satisfaction lay in noting how steadily
the celestial bridge astern grew in breadth and altitude, while at the
same time the swell became deeper, longer, and more definite in its
direction.

By four bells the summits of the climbing cumuli forming the
immeasurable arch in the west were right overhead, while the sky within
its radius was now overspread with a filmy veil that hid the stars from
view. Suddenly a chill breath touched his ear, sensitive as a hound’s,
and immediately his fretful lassitude was gone. He stood erect, alert,
every nerve tense, ready for action. “Stand by, the watch!” he roared,
and in response a few dark figures slouched into sight from the shadowy
corners where they had been dozing away the leaden-footed hours. Then
a cool stream of air came steadily flowing from the mysterious centre
of the gloom abaft. “Square the main-yard!” shouted the mate again;
and with eerie, wailing cries the great steel tubes were trimmed to
the coming breeze. The order was hardly executed before, with a rush
and a scream, out leapt the west wind from its lair, while with many
a sharp report and grinding of gear being drawn into its grooves the
huge fabric obeyed the compelling impulse and began her three thousand
league stretch to the eastward. By midnight it blew a gale, to which
the same vessel, had she been bound in the opposite direction, must
needs have shown but a scanty spread of sail. Now, nothing was further
from the intention of the gleeful mate than the starting of a single
thread.

At the relieving of the watch the skipper was called and informed
of the change, so that upon him should rest the responsibility for
“carrying on.” For the driving fragments of storm-rent cloud were low,
and by their meteor speed foretold that this was but a foretaste of
the tempest to follow. Planting himself in his favourite attitude on
the extreme weather-quarter, the captain fixed his eyes on the upper
sails with a look of supreme content, though to an inexperienced gaze
they would have seemed on the point of bursting into shreds, their
very stitch-holes strained to gaping a quarter-inch long. Every one
of her thirty-four wings were spread and drawing, for the wind being
well on the quarter, allowed of the yards being canted forward, while
the ship went “steady as a church,” with a ten-degree list to port.
Still the wind increased and faster drove the ship, until by daylight
she was going a full sixteen knots, which, in spite of the Yankee
yarns anent the _James Baines_, her main skysail, and her twenty-one
knots, is about the maximum possible under sail. The first cheerless
gleams of the new day revealed an awe-inspiring view. Far as could
be seen the ocean surface was torn into snowy foam by the raging
wind, for the sea had not yet time to get into the gigantic stride it
would presently take in sympathy with the irresistible march of the
all-compelling storm. “Fine breeze, sir,” chuckled the mate, rubbing
his hands with delight. “Only hope it’ll hold,” replied the skipper,
peering keenly aft into the eye of the wind. There, to a landsman, the
sight was ominous, almost appalling. Dense masses of distorted nimbus
came hurtling out of the deep gloom, which seemed to grow blacker and
more menacing every hour. So through the howling day the big ship fled
onward like a frightened thing, steady and straight as an ice-yacht
over Lake Michigan, although at times an incipient sea smote her
broadside, and, baffled, cast its crest aloft, where the shrieking
blast caught it and whirled it in needle-like particles as high as the
upper topsails.

When night drew in the sea had fairly risen, and came bellowing along
in mountainous masses many miles in length at a speed that bade fair
to overtake the fleeing ship. Strange it was to note how, as the waves
grew, the ship seemed to dwindle until her huge bulk appeared quite
insignificant. And now, at frequent intervals, enormous bodies of
broken water hurled themselves on board, often filling the spacious
decks flush fore and aft with a seething flood. And still the “old
man,” hung on, his courage and faith in the powers of his ship being
justly rewarded by a week’s run of over two thousand miles without
the loss of a rope-yarn. Then the breeze gradually faltered, swerved
from its steadfast direction, and worked round by the south, until
at south-east it dropped lifeless for an hour or so. Then out from
the north-east it rushed like a raving genie, almost catching the
ship aback, and giving the scanty band of toilers a tremendous task
to handle the immense squares of canvas that thundered like infuriate
monsters against their restraining bonds. But in a short time the gale
had veered round into the westward again, and the _Coryphæna_ resumed
her headlong race to the east. Running upon the arc of a great circle,
she gradually worsened the weather as she reached higher latitudes.
Stinging snow squalls came yelling after her, hiding everything behind
a bitter veil. Past gigantic table-topped icebergs, floating mountains
against whose gaunt sides the awful billows broke with deafening
clangour, flinging their hissing fragments hundreds of feet into the
gloomy sky. At last so fierce grew the following storm that the task of
reducing sail became absolutely necessary. All hands were called and
sped aloft to the unequal conflict. Scourged by the merciless blast,
battered by the threshing sails, they strove for dear life through two
terrible hours of that stern night. A feeble cry was heard,--a faint
splash. Only a man dropped from the main top-gallant yard,--through one
hundred and twenty feet of darkness into the yeasty smother beneath,
and ere the news reached the deck, calm and peaceful below the tumult,
more than a mile astern, swallowed by the ever-unsatisfied maw of the
ravening sea. And onward like a meteor sped the flying ship, “running
her Easting down.”



VII

IN THE CROW’S NEST


Swinging through the clear sky, one hundred feet above the little
stretch of white deck that looks so strangely narrow and circumscribed,
the period of two hours assigned for a spell is often spent in strange
meditations. For all the circumstances are favourable to absolute
detachment from ordinary affairs. A man feels there cut off from the
world, a temporary visitor to a higher sphere, from whose serene
altitude the petty environment of daily life appears separated by a
vast gulf. Rising to that calm plane in the shimmering pearly twilight
of a tropical dawn, he is enabled to view, as from no other standpoint,
the daily mystery and miracle of the sunrise. For he forgets the
tiny microcosm below, involuntarily looking upward into the infinite
azure until his mind becomes consciously akin to eternal verities,
and sheds for a brief space the gross hamperings of fleshly needs and
longings. At such a time, especially if the heavens be one stainless
concave of blue, the advent of the new day is so overwhelming in
its glory that the soul is flooded with a sense of celestial beauty
unutterable. Beautiful and glorious indeed are the changing tints and
varying hues of early dawn upon the fleecy fields of cloud, but the
very changeableness of the wondrous scene is unfavourable to the simple
settlement of wondering, worshipping thought induced by the birth of
unclouded light. At first there appears upon the eastern edge of the
vast, sharply-defined circle of the horizon, that by a familiar optical
illusion seems to bound a sapphire concavity of which the spectator is
the centre, a tremulous, silky paling of the tender blue belonging to
the tropical night. The glowing stars grow fainter, dimmer, ceasing
to coruscate like celestial jewels studding the soft, dark canopy
of the sky. Unlingering, the palpitating sheen spreads zenithwards,
presently sending before it as heralds wide bars of radiance tinted
with blends of colour not to be reproduced by the utmost skill of the
painter. Before their triumphal advent the great cone of the zodiacal
light, which, like a stupendous obelisk rising from the mere shadow
of some ineffable central glow, to which the gigantic sun itself is
but a pale star, has dominated the moonless hours, fades and vanishes.
Far reaching, these heavenly messengers gild the western horizon, but
when the eye returns to their source it has become “a sea of glass
mingled with fire,”--a fire which consumes not, and, while glowing
with unfathomable splendour, has yet a mildness that permits the eye
to search its innermost glories unfalteringly and with inexpressible
delight.

But while the satisfied sight dwells upon this transcendent scene,
forgetting that it is not the only morning in earth’s history when it
is to be lavished upon a favoured world, there is a sudden quickening
of the throbbing light, along the sharp blue edge of the ocean runs a
blazing rim of molten gold, and in a perfect silence, beneath which
may be felt the majestic music of the spheres, the sun has come. Turn
away the head; the trembling eyes cannot for an instant dwell upon
that flaming fervent globe that at one mighty stride is already far
above the horizon. The sweet face of the sea wears a million sparkling
smiles of welcome--everywhere the advent of the Day-bringer has decked
it with countless flashing gems. As if ecstatic in their appreciation
of the banishment of night, a school of porpoises five thousand strong
indulge in riotous gambols. Leaping high into the bright air, their
shining, lithe bodies all a-quiver with pure joy of abundant life, they
churn the kindly sea into foam, leaving in their mad, frolicsome rush a
wide track of white on the smoothness behind them. So flawless is the
calm that even the tiny argosy of the nautilus is tempted to rise and
spread its silken sail, a lovely gauzy curve just a shade or so lighter
in hue than the sapphire of the sea, and so discernible from that
height to the practised eye. In quick succession more and more appear,
until a fairy fleet of hundreds is sailing as if bearing Titania and
her train to some enchanted isles, where never wind blows loudly. But
lo! as if at a signal from a pigmy Admiral, the squadron has vanished
bubble-wise. From where they lately rode in mimic pageant rises,
ghost-like, a vast flock of flying-fish, the hum of whose vibrant
wing-fins ascends to the ear. Many thousands in number, glistening in
the sunblaze like burnished silver, they glide through the air with
incredible speed, the whole shoal rising and falling in wave-like
undulations as if in the performance of preconcerted evolutions. They
have been flying upon a plane of perhaps twenty feet above the sea for
some five hundred yards, and are just about to re-enter the water, when
beneath them appear the iridescent beauties of a school of dolphin (not
the dull-hued mammal, but the poet-beloved fish). At that dread sight
the solid phalanx breaks up, hurled back upon itself in the disorder of
deadly panic. In little groups, in single fugitives, they scatter to
every point of the compass, a hopelessly disorganised mob, whereof the
weaker fall to swift oblivion in the gaping jaws of their brilliant,
vigorous foes beneath. The main body sheer off, sadly thinned, in a
fresh direction, long quivering raiders launching themselves in hot
pursuit upon their rear, devouring as they rush, until eaters and
eaten disappear, and the battlefield lies in placid beauty as if never
disturbed. One hovering bird, a “bo’sun,” with long slender tail
and feathers of purest white, circles around on unmoving, outspread
pinions, slowly turning his pretty head, with dark incurious eyes, upon
the strange biped so awkwardly perched in his dominions of upper air.
Whence and when did he come? A moment since and he was not. Did the
vacant ether produce him? Yet another moment and he is gone as he came,
leaving behind him a palpable sense of loss.

But now all attention is concentrated upon the horizon, where the
trained eye has caught a glimpse of something of greater interest than
either bird or fish. A series of tiny puffs, apparently of steam,
rises from the shining surface, but so evanescent that nothing but
long-practised vision would discern them at so great a distance.
Irregularly, both as to time and position, they appear, a shadowy
procession of faintest indefinite outlines, a band of brief shadows.
Yet upon them eager eyes are bent in keenest attention, for they
represent possibilities of substantial gain, and bring the mind back
from the realms of pure romance with the swiftness of a diving sea-bird
down to the hard necessities of everyday life. They are the breathings
of marine mammalia, mightiest of ocean’s citizens, and strangest of
links between the inhabitants of land and sea. A little keen scrutiny,
however, reveals the disappointing fact that those feathery phantoms
mark the presence of that special species of whales who enjoy complete
immunity from attack either from above or below. Their marvellous
agility, no less than the exiguous covering of fat to which they have
reduced the usually massive blubber borne by their congeners, gives
abundant reason why they should be thus unmolested. So they roam the
teeming seas in the enviable, as well as almost unique, position among
the marine fauna of exemption from death, except by sickness or old
age, as much as any sedate, law-abiding citizen of London. They seem
to be well aware of their privileges, for they draw near the ship
with perfect confidence, heeding her huge shadow no more than if she
were a mass of rock rising sheer from the ocean-bed, and incapable
of harm to any of the sea-folk. From our lofty eyrie we watch with
keenest interest the antics of these great creatures, their amatory
gambols, parental care, elegant ease, and keen sportiveness. Yonder
piebald monster, who seems the patriarch of the school, after basking
placidly in the scorching rays of the sun, now high in the heavens,
gravely turns a semi-somersault, elevating the rear half of his body
(some forty feet or so) out of the water. Then with steady, tremendous
strokes he beats the water, the hundred square feet of his tail falling
flatly with a reverberation like the sound of a distant bombardment.
The others leap out of water, sedately as becomes their bulk, or roll
over and over each other upon the surface, occasionally settling down
until they look like fish of a foot or so in length. They even dare to
chafe their barnacle-studded sides against the vessel’s keel, sending
a strange tremor through her from stem to stern, which is even felt in
the “crow’s nest.” But no one molests them in any way; in fact, it must
be placed to the whaler’s credit that he rarely takes life for “sport,”
though callous as iron where profit of any kind may be secured.

Oh, the heat; as if one’s head were a focus for the sun himself, since
there is little else for many leagues exposed for him to assail except
the mirror-like ocean. Thence, too, the heat rises as if to place us
between two fires, until we feel like the fakirs of India undergoing
their self-imposed penance of the swing. How fervently thankful we
are when at last the glorious orb descends so low that his slanting
rays lose their power in great measure, and permit us again to take
a reviving interest in our surroundings. Yon floating tree, for
instance; we have long been wondering in a vague sort of dream what
it might be. And indeed its appearance is strange enough to warrant
considerable speculation. It has been adrift for months, and except
upon the side which floats uppermost, is covered with barnacles, whose
adhering feet have extended in some instances to a fathom in length,
the tiny shells being almost invisible at the free ends. This wealth
of living covering, waving gently as the log is rocked by the unseen
swell, gives the whole thing an uncanny look, as of some strange
unclassified monster “begotten of the elder slime.” Around it are
playing in shoals fish of many kinds seen only in deep waters--fish
of every luminous tint that can be imagined, and ranging in size from
the lordly albacore, weighing a quarter of a ton, to the tiny caranx
of a couple of inches long. But hush! there is a priceless freshness
in the air. The weary day is shaking off the fervent embrace of her
exhaustless bridegroom. Gentle, lovely shades of colour are replacing
the intense glow. A little, little breeze creeps cautiously along,
ruffling the grateful sea in patches of purple shadow. A more subdued
glory gathers in the west than heralded the sun’s ascending--a tenderer
range of tints, like the afterglow of autumn as compared with the
flaming blossoms of spring. For a few brief moments the gorgeous golden
disc swims upon the edge of the lambent sea, and he is gone. Swiftly
following him, the brilliant hues fade from the sky, shyly the stars
peep out, and it is night.



VIII

THE BIRTH OF AN ISLAND


For many years Pacific mariners, both of white and dusky races, had
known and dreaded the dangers of the Marae Reef. It lay right in the
track of vessels between Opolu and Nieuwe, only visible to the seaman’s
eye from the mast-head on calm days as a slight discoloration of the
brilliant blue sea that everywhere else bared its unstained depths
of single colour. With a fresh Trade blowing there was no difficulty
in locating it, for it made its menace heard as well as seen. The
long, indolent Pacific swell, sweeping majestically from continent to
continent across half the world, met this mushroom growth in its mighty
path and immediately raised its awful voice in thunderous protest
against such an addition to the already innumerable dangers of that
perilous region. Not only so, but as if it would uproot the intruder
from its massy foundations that broadened down into the matrix of the
world, the wrathful wave arose in gigantic billows of foaming white,
in the midst of which momentarily appeared the defiant summits of
living rock, steadfast and secure, while the ageless ocean vainly
sought to uproot it from its eternal base. But such scenes were of the
most infrequent occurrence. The normal conditions of those waters were
peaceful, and the swell scarcely heavy enough to raise even a solitary
breaker once a day. And as the scanty trade between the islands grew
less and less, the danger of the reef, nay, almost its very existence,
passed out of men’s minds.

Still, heedless of either elemental strife or serenest calm, the
microscopic masons toiled on, each in its tiny cell content to fulfil
the conditions of its being and to add its infinitesimal quota to
the world-fragment; then, having justified its existence, to pass
into other forms of usefulness by means of the ever-active alchemy of
Nature. But for those of the builders whose lot it was to reach the
summit of the fabric which their united efforts had reared there was
another ending, or rather transmutation. A swift oblivion awaited them,
a sudden severance from their life-work, as the reef, now awash, was
left temporarily dry by the ebbing tide. Yet all around them uncounted
myriads of their co-workers toiled eagerly upward to the same personal
fate, the same collective achievement, each adding some essential
to form the perfect whole. Thus from generation to generation the
fabric grew, so slowly by man’s reckoning, so swiftly according to the
hasteless chronology of creation, until there came a day when, after
a more placid period even than usual, the bared surface of the reef
became covered with a dazzling floor of minutest fragments, ground from
the countless pinnacles below by the unceasing attrition of the waves.
Tide after tide lapped the infant beach, with kindliest murmur as of
tender welcome, ever bringing fresh store of shining sand, until at
low water of the spring tides there was a new spot of earth’s surface
gleaming white in that expanse of blue, like a snowflake new-fallen
upon a vast sapphire.

A little bird, grey of feather and with long, slender legs, drifted
softly out of the surrounding void, and alighted daintily upon this
glistening earth-bud with a sweet, low chirp of content that also
sounded like a note of welcome. With delicate, mincing steps the
graceful visitor pattered over the crisp sand, prying with keen black
eyes and fine, nervous beak into every cranny and worm-hole, and
finding apparently many a tasty morsel to reward her visit. Evening
brought another guest on family cares intent,--a huge turtle, whose
broad, buckler-like carapace rose shining out of the limpid wave
like the dome of some naiad’s pearly palace under the silvern glow
of the broad moon. But instinct, that infallible guide to the lesser
intelligences of animate creation, warned the expectant parent that
here, for some time at any rate, no safe _cache_ might be found for the
deposit of those precious round eggs of hers. So, after a leisurely
survey of the scanty circlet, she dragged her huge bulk lingeringly
into the clear waters again, and was immediately transformed from a
crawling reptile into a swift and graceful creature that cleft the
waves like an arrow. Thenceforward many visitants came and went,
birds, crustacea, and fish, most of them exchanging benefits with the
new land, although any nascent germs of vegetation lay biding their
appointed time until the sea should finally refrain from flinging an
occasional lustration across the smiling face of the new-born islet. In
due process of the suns, however, a wandering coco-nut came with many a
backward sweep and much dallying upon the outskirts of the surrounding
reef among the bewildering eddies, until at last a friendly wavelet
caught it and spun it up high and dry, where it lay at rest, kept from
rolling seaward again by a little ridge left in the sand, the impress
of a more than usually vigorous breaker. In that soft scene of mild
delight day succeeded day like the passing of a sunny afternoon dream,
undisturbed by any clamorous voice of wind or hoarse note of ravin from
the sea. Balmy airs, like the sweet breath of love, scarcely dimpled
the serene face of the blue ocean around. In a beneficent flood the
golden sunshine lavished its treasures upon the lonely ocean beneath by
day, and by night the unaging glory of the silver stars, among whose
countless hosts the quiet beauty of the lovely moon pursued her stately
way, was perfectly reproduced in the same limitless mirror.

Beneath these gentle, yet irresistible, influences that solitary
coco-nut felt its dim interior ferment with life. And out from the
dead dryness of its husk sprang two slender arms; tender, beseeching
things of a living green in almost startling contrast to the withered,
storm-tossed envelope from whence they had emerged. In obedience to
some hidden impulse one of them bent downwards and by slow persistence
wrought its way into the sand, while the other lifted itself erect and
presently unfolded a delicate green fan. Unwatched, unadmired, save by
that Infinite Intelligence that fills the remotest corners of earth and
sea with loveliness for Its own delight, the tiny tree strengthened
daily, mooring itself ever deeper by spreading rootlets that reached
down through the interstices of the reef beneath, and raising higher
and higher in perfect beauty its feathery fronds of palest green, the
earliest pioneer of the vegetable kingdom in this youthful patch of
Mother Earth. After a while, as the coast-line extended and more of
the dry land held its own against the engirdling deep, other plants of
lower stature, but equal charm, managed to find a congenial root-hold
in this seemingly barren patch of sand. Humble as they were, they gave
to the islet the friendly tint that all eyes love, and made it more
complete. Several migrant sea-birds halted here, and, finding the spot
exactly suited to their needs, made it their home, laying their large
eggs barely upon the smooth sand, and rearing in happy aloofness from
all enemies their voracious broods. Turtles no longer disdained the
scanty beach as a safe hatching place for their plentiful stores of
eggs, and strange waifs from far-away lands were arrested in their
weary oscillations about the never-resting ocean and peacefully brought
here to a final abiding-place.

So fared the uneventful, unnoted procession of days, months, and years,
until one morning the now abundant, happy life of the island awoke,
as was its wont, at the first warm breath of a new day. A soft blush
of indescribable colour-blends replaced the dark violet of the night
sky, whose shadows retreated before that conquering dawn as if in haste
to allow the advent of its coming glory. Soon, heralded by spears,
streamers, and sheaves of shining gold, the majestic silence of his
entry smiting the waiting hemisphere like the trump of an archangel,
the great sun rose. His first level rays glided across the glowing sea
and fell upon the wan, upturned face of a man, flung like any other
fragment of jetsam up from the heaving bosom of the Pacific, and left
apparently lifeless on the sand near the trunk of the now sturdy tree.
Under that loving touch of reviving warmth the pale, set features
relaxed, a shudder as if of re-entering vitality shook the gaunt limbs,
and presently the eyes unclosed. The first human visitor to the island
sat up and stared vacantly around. His upturned eyes caught sight of
the great green bunches of delicious young fruit hanging some twenty
feet above his head, and the sight was tantalising beyond measure
to his leathery, cracking tongue and throat. He was far too weak to
attempt such a task as climbing the tree would have been; but a few of
the eggs that lay near soon supplied him with fresh vigour, although
the outraged birds protested all they knew against this strange
experience, unlike anything hitherto troubling their peaceful life.
But as the man grew stronger his proceedings troubled the original
freeholders more and more. For he collected a great heap of driftwood,
including the mast of his own vessel, upon which he had been borne
hither, and presently from out of the midst of the heap arose a heavy
black pillar of smoke. Then through the smoke burst flashes of fire,
before which all but those birds with young, whom no terrors would
have driven them from, fled shrieking away. As the man grew stronger
he climbed the tree, and drank greedily from the sweet liquid filling
the young nuts; but while he sat there among the far-spreading leaves,
he saw a sight that touched him deeper than would the most beautiful
Nature picture in the world,--a schooner making for the island. They
had seen his smoke-pillar at a great distance and altered their course
to his rescue. So he went away, leaving behind him a terrible memory
as of the ravages of some unthinkable monster whose visit had changed,
not only the face of Nature, but all the habits and customs of the
island-folk.



IX

A SUBMARINE EARTHQUAKE


There was a delicate tint of green over all the sky instead of its
usual deep, steadfast blue. All around the horizon the almost constant
concomitants of the Trade winds, fleecy masses of cumuli, were lying
peacefully, their shape unaltered from hour to hour. Their usual snowy
whiteness, however, was curiously besmirched by a shading of dirty
brown which clung around their billowy outlines, giving them a stale
appearance greatly at variance with the normal purity of these lovely
cloud-forms. The afternoon sun, gliding swiftly down the shining slope
of heaven toward the western edge of that placid sea, had an air of
mystery about his usually glorious disc, a wondrous glow of unnameable
tints that, streaming away from him into the clear firmament, encircled
him with a halo of marvellous shades, all lacking the palpitating
brightness usually inseparable from solar displays near the Equator.
And over the sea-surface also was spread, as upon a vast palette, great
splashes of colour, untraceable to any definite source, mysterious
in their strange beauty. At irregular intervals, across that silent
expanse of peaceful limpidity, came, in stately onset, an undulating
throb of ocean’s heart,--a shining knoll of water one hundred leagues
in length, but so mobile, so gentle in its gliding incidence, that
it was beautiful as the heaving bosom of a sleeping naiad. The very
silence, deep and solemn as that of the stellar spaces, was sweet,--a
peaceful sweetness that fell upon the soul like the most exquisite
music, and soothed as does a dreamless sleep.

And yet, in spite of the indescribable charm of that divine day, there
was on board the solitary ship that gave the needed touch of human
interest to that ocean Elysium a general air of expectancy, a sense
of impending change which as yet could not be called uneasiness, and
still was indefinably at variance with the more manifest influences
that made for rest of mind and body. The animals on board, pigs and
cats and fowls, were evidently ill at ease. Their finer perceptions,
unbiassed by reasoning appreciation of Nature’s beauties, were
palpably disturbed, and they roamed restlessly about, often composing
themselves as if to sleep, only to resume their agitated prowling
almost immediately. Lower sank the sun, stranger and more varied grew
the colour-schemes in sky and sea. Up from the Eastern horizon crept
gradually a pale glow as of a premature dawn, the breaking of an
interpolated day shed by some visitant sun from another system. The
moon was not yet due for six hours, so that none could attribute this
unearthly radiance to her rising. Busy each with the eager questionings
of his own perturbed mind, none spoke a word as the sun disappeared,
but watched in suspense that was almost pain the brightening of this
spectral glare. Suddenly, as if reflected from some unimaginable
furnace, the zenith was all aflame. That fiery glow above turned the
sea into the semblance of a lake of blood, and horror distorted every
face. The still persisting silence now lay like the paralysis of a
trance upon all, and an almost frantic desire for sound racked them to
the core.

At last, when it seemed as if the tension of their nerves had almost
reached the snapping point, there was an overwhelming sulphurous
stench, followed by a muttering as of thunder beneath the sea. A
tremendous concussion below the keel made the stout hull vibrate
through every beam, and the tall masts quivered like willow twigs
in a squall. The air was full of glancing lights, as if legions of
fire-flies disported themselves. Slowly the vessel began to heave
and roll, but with an uncertain staggering motion, unlike even the
broken sea of a cyclone centre. Gradually that dreadful light faded
from the lurid sky, and was replaced by a smoky darkness, alien to
the overshadowing gloom of any ordinary tempest. Strange noises arose
from the deep, not to be compared with any of the manifold voices of
the ocean so well known to those who do business in great waters.
And the myriad brightnesses which make oceans’ depths so incomparably
lovely throughout the tropical nights were all gone. All was dark
beneath as above. Not only so, but those anxious mariners could feel,
though they could not see, that while the atmospheric ocean was calm
almost to stagnation, the hidden deeps under them were being rent
and disintegrated by such an unthinkable storm as the air had never
witnessed. The fountains of the great deep were broken up, but the
floods issuing therefrom were of cosmic flame, able to resolve even
that immensity of superincumbent ocean into its original gases and
change the unchangeable.

Tossing helplessly upon that tortured sea, face to face with those
elemental forces that only to think of makes the flesh shrink on
the bones like a withered leaf, the men suffered the passage of the
hours. What was happening or was about to happen they could only dimly
imagine. They could but endure in helplessness and hope for the day.
Yet their thoughts would wander to those they loved, wondering dimly
whether the catastrophe apparently impending was to be universal and
the whole race of man about to be blotted out,--whether the world were
dying. What _they_ suffered could not be told, but the animals died.
Perhaps the scorching heat-waves which continually arose, making mouths
and nostrils crack like burnt leather, and cauterising taste and smell
as if with the fumes of molten sulphur, had slain the beasts. The
discovery of this ghastly detail of the night’s terrors did not add
much to their fears. It could not; for the mind of man can only contain
a limited amount of terror, as the body can only feel a limited amount
of pain, which is something to be deeply thankful for.

Shortly after midnight there was a deafening uproar, a hissing as of
the Apocalyptic Star being quenched, and immediately the gloom became
filled with steam, an almost scalding fog, through which as through a
veil came a red sheen. At the same time a mighty swell swept toward
them from east to west, striking the ship full in the stem. Gallantly
she rose to the advancing wall of water until she seemed upreared
upon her stern, but in spite of her wonderful buoyancy a massive sea
broke on board, clearing the decks like a besom of destruction. Down
the receding slope of this gigantic billow she fled, as if plunging
headlong to the sea-bed, and before she had time to recover herself
was met by another almost as huge. Clinging for life to such fragments
as still held on the clean-swept decks, the crew felt that at last
all was over. But the good ship survived the third wave, being then
granted a brief respite before another series appeared. This allowed
all hands a breathing space, and an opportunity to notice that there
was a healthier smell in the air, and that the terror-striking noises
were fast dying away. When the next set of rollers came thundering
along they were far less dangerous than before, nor, although they
made a clean breach over the much-enduring ship, were they nearly as
trying to the almost worn-out crew. And now, breaking through the
appalling drapery that had hidden the bright face of the sky, suddenly
shone the broad smile of the silver moon. Like the comforting face of
a dear friend, that pleasant sight brought renewed hope and vigour
to all. Again the cheery voices of the officers were heard, and all
wrought manfully to repair the damage done by the terrible sea. One
by one the glittering stars peeped out as the gloomy canopy melted
away, revealing again the beautiful blue of the sky. A gentle breeze
sprang up, but for awhile it was only possible to lay the ship’s head
approximately on her course, because the compasses were useless. The
needles had temporarily lost their polarity in the seismic disturbance
that had taken place beneath them. But that was a small matter. As long
as the celestial guides were available, the navigators could afford to
wait until, with the rest of Nature’s forces, magnetism regained its
normal conditions. So, during the energetic labours of the men, the
morning quickly came, hailed by them as a sight they had never again
expected to see. And what a dawn it was. Surely never had the abundant
day been so delightful, the heaven so stainless, the air so pure. All
the more because of the extraordinary contrast between sky and sea; for
old ocean was utterly unlike any sea they had ever before sailed upon.
As far as the eye could reach the surface was covered with floating
pumice, so that the vessel grated through it as if ploughing over a
pebbly beach. Wherever the water could be seen it was actually muddy,
befouled like any ditch. Dead fish, floating and distorted, added to
the ugliness of what overnight was so beautiful. Most pathetic of all,
perhaps, upon that dead sea was the sight of an occasional spot of
white, a tiny patch of ruffled feathers floating, that had been one
of the fearless winged wanderers who add so much to the beauty of the
sea, its joyous life quenched by the poisonous fumes of the submarine
earthquake.



X

THE SILENT WARFARE OF THE SUBMARINE WORLD


All imaginative minds are inevitably impressed by the solemn grandeur
of the sea. Some shudder at its awful loneliness, its apparent
illimitability, its air of brooding, ageless mystery in calm. Others
are most affected by its unchainable energy, the terror of its gigantic
billows, its immeasurable destructiveness in storms. Yet others, a
less numerous class, ponder over its profundities of rayless gloom and
uniform cold, where incalculable pressures bear upon all bodies, so
that cylinders of massive steel are flattened into discs, and water
percolates through masses of metal as though they were of muslin.
But there is yet another aspect of the oceanic wonders that engages
the meditations of comparatively few, and this is perhaps the most
marvellous of them all.

Placid and reposeful, tempest-tossed or current-whirled, the
unchangeable yet unresting surface of the ocean reveals to the voyager
no inkling of what is going on below its mobile mask, and even when
furrowed deepest by the mighty but invisible ploughshare of the storm,
how slight is the effect felt twenty feet deep. Yet in those soundless
abysses of shade beneath the waves a war is being incessantly waged
which knows no truce, ruthless, unending, and universal. On earth the
struggle for existence is a terrible one, exciting all our sympathies
when we witness its pitilessness, being ourselves by some happy
accident outside the area. Nature, “red in tooth and claw,” weeding
out the unfit by the operation of her inexorable laws, raises many a
doubting question in gentle souls as to why all this suffering should
be necessary. They see but a portion of the reversed pattern woven
by the eternal looms. But the fauna of the land are by an enormous
majority herbivorous, mild in their habits, and terrified at the
sight of blood. Even the carnivora, fierce and ravenous as are their
instincts, do not devour one another except in a few insignificant and
abnormal cases, such as wolves driven mad by starvation. Much less do
they eat their own offspring, although there are many instances of this
hideous appetite among the herbivores, which are familiar to most of us.

In striking contrast to these conditions, the tribes of ocean are all
devourers of each other, and, with the exception of the mammalia and
the sharks, make no distinction in favour of their own fruit. One
single instance among the inhabitants of the sea furnishes us with a
variation. The halicore, dugong, or manatee (_Sirenia_), now nearly
extinct, are, without doubt, eaters of herbage only. This they gather
along the shores whose waters are their habitat, or cull from the
shallow sea bottoms. For all the rest, they are mutually dependent upon
each other’s flesh for life, unscrupulous, unsatisfied, and vigorous
beyond belief. “Væ Victis” is their motto, and the absence of all
other food their sole and sufficient excuse. Viewed dispassionately,
this law of interdependence direct is a beneficent one in spite of its
apparent cruelty. Vast as is the sea, the fecundity of most of its
denizens is well known to be so great that without effective checks
always in operation it must rapidly become putrid and pestilential from
the immense accumulation of decaying animal matter. As things are, the
life of a herring, for instance, from first to last is a series of
miraculous escapes. As ova, their enemies are so numerous, even their
own parents greedily devouring the quickening spawn, that it is hard
to understand how any are overlooked and allowed to become fish. Yet
as fry, after providing food for countless hordes of hungry foes, they
are still sufficiently numerous to impress the imagination as being
in number like the sands of the sea. And so, always being devoured
by millions, they progress towards maturity, at which perhaps one
billionth of those deposited as ova arrive. This infinitesimal remnant
is a mighty host requiring such supplies of living organisms for its
daily food as would make an astronomer dizzy to enumerate. And every
one is fat and vigorous; must be, since none but the fittest can have
survived. Their glittering myriads move in mysteriously ordered march
along regular routes, still furnishing food for an escort of insatiable
monsters such as whales, sharks, etc.; while legions of sea-fowl above
descend and clamorously take their tiny toll. In due season they arrive
within the range of man. He spreads his nets and loads his vessels,
but all his spoils, however great they may appear to him, are but the
crumbs of the feast, the skimmings of the pot.

This marvellous system of supply and demand is, of course, seen in its
highest development near land, or at any rate where the bed of the sea
is comparatively near the surface, as on the Banks of Newfoundland,
the Agulhas Banks, and many others. But in the deepest waters of
the ocean, far from any shore, there are immense numbers of swift
predatory fish, such as the bonito, the dolphin (_coryphæna_), and
the albacore. Mammalia also, like the porpoise, grampus, and rorqual,
require enormous supplies of fish for their sustenance, and never fail
to find them. As we ascend the scale of size the struggle becomes
majestic--a war of Titans, such as no arena on earth has seen since the
Deluge. The imagination recoils dismayed before the thought of such a
spectacle as is afforded by the gigantic cachalot descending to the
murky depths where in awful state the hideous Kraken broods. No other
name befits this inexpressible monster as well as the old Norse epithet
bestowed in bygone days upon the greatest of the mollusca by terrified
fisher-folk of Scandinavia. Vast, formless, and insatiable, he crouches
in those fathomless silences like the living embodiment of sin, an
ever-craving abysmal mouth surrounded by a Medusa-like web of unresting
arms. His enormous flaccid bulk needs a continual holocaust to supply
its flood of digestive juices, and that need is abundantly supplied.
Then comes the doughty leviathan from above, and in noiseless majesty
of power, disdaining subterfuge, rushes straight to the attack, every
inch of his great frame mutely testifying to the enormous pressure of
the superincumbent sea. Sometimes, stifling for air, the whale rises to
the surface dragging upward his writhing prey, though almost as bulky
as himself. In his train follow the lesser monsters eager for their
share, and none of the fragments are lost.

But see the grampus hurl himself like some flying elephant into the
“brown” of a school of scared porpoises. In vain do they flee at
headlong speed anywhither. The enemy pursues, he overtakes, he swallows
at a gulp, even as do his victims the lesser creatures upon which they
fatten in their turn. So with the huge mackerel, which seamen call the
albacore, although as far as one can see there is no difference between
him and the tunny of the Mediterranean but in size. What havoc he makes
among a school of his congeners the bonito! A hungry lion leaping into
the midst of a flock of deer will seize one, and retire to devour it
quietly. But this monster clashes his jaws continually as he rushes to
and fro among the panic-stricken hosts, scattering their palpitating
fragments around him in showers. In like manner do his victims play
the destroyers’ part in their turn. Yonder flight of silvery creatures
whose myriads cast a dense shade over the bright sea are fleeing for
life, for beneath them, agape for their inevitable return, are the
serried ranks of their ravenous pursuers. Birds intercept the aerial
course of the fugitives, who are in evil case indeed whithersoever they
flee. But descending the scale, we shall find the persecuted _Exoceta_
also on the warpath in their thousands after still smaller prey.

Time would fail to tell of the ravages of the swordfish, also a
mackerel of great size and ferocity, who launches himself torpedo-like
at the bulky whale, the scavenger-shark, or a comrade, with strict
impartiality. And of the “killer” whale, eater of the tongue only of
the mysticetus; the thresher-shark, aider and abettor of the killer; or
the saw-fish, who disembowels his prey that his feeble teeth may have
tender food. Their warfare knows no armistice; they live but to eat and
be eaten in their turn, and as to eat they must fight, the battle rages
evermore. The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of
cruelty, but they are peaceful compared with the sombre depths of the
sea.



XI

AN EFFECT OF REFRACTION


All hands were asleep. The conduct of the watch on deck, though
undoubtedly culpable, had just this excuse, that the ship was far out
of the track of other vessels, and lying lapped in a profound calm,
still as a ship can ever be upon the ocean’s never-resting bosom. It
was my trick at the wheel, and although I had certainly been asleep
like the rest of my shipmates, I presently found myself wide awake, as
if an unfelt breath had in an instant swept my brain clear of those
bewildering mist-wreaths that usually hinder the mind on its return
to tangible things from its wanderings in the realms of the unknown.
Instinctively I glanced aloft, where the sails hung flatly motionless,
except for an occasional rippling flap, soft-sounding as the wing of a
mousing owl, as the vessel swayed dreamily over the caressing swell.
Overhead, the bright eye of Aldebaran looked down with a friendly gaze,
but not an air even of the faintest was there to stir the slumbering
keel. On the companion, a few feet away, the shapeless form of the
mate was dimly discernible, as in some incomprehensible tangle of limbs
he lay oblivious of his surroundings. Through the open after-leaf of
the cabin skylight came the close, greasy-smelling reek of the little
den below. The useless compass answered my inquiring peep with a vacant
stolidity, as if it were glued to the bottom of its bowl. Only the
clock seemed alive and watchful, telling me that for still another hour
I must remain at my post, although my presence there was the merest
formality.

So I turned my thoughts listlessly in the direction of the sailor’s
usual solace during long spells of lonely watch--the building of airy
visions of shore delights, when, the long voyage over, I should be free
once more for a short time with a little handful of fast-disappearing
gold wherewith to buy such pleasures as I could compass. As I thus
dreamed, the heavy minutes crawled away on leaden-shod feet, while
the palpable silence enwrapped me, almost making audible the regular
rhythm of my heart. But gradually out of this serene outward and inward
quiet there stole over me a nameless sense of fear, why or of what I
had no idea. Nay, I hardly recognised this benumbing stealthy change
in the calm normal flow of my being _as_ fear. It was an indefinite
alteration of all my faculties from healthy restful regularity to a
creeping stagnation, as of some subtle poison disintegrating my blood
and turning it into chilly dust. All the moisture of my body seemed
evaporating, my skin grew tighter, and my breath came in burning gasps
that scorched my nostrils and throat. Yet, while this disabling of
all my physical constituents was progressing, my mind was actively
rebelling against the mysterious paralysis of its usually willing
co-operators. Eagerly, fiercely, it demanded a reason, urged to instant
action of some kind. Then, still in the same fateful, hasteless manner,
my terror took a more definite shape. It, whatever was thus sapping my
most vital forces, was behind me, I felt it; I realised it; but what or
who or how it was I could not or dared not imagine. Dimly I dwelt upon
what I felt ought to be certain, that only about six feet of clear deck
separated me from the vacant plane of the sea, but that certainty would
not appear sure, as it ought to have done.

At last, by what seemed to me a superhuman effort of will, I summoned
all my resources and turned my body round. There lay the sleeping sea,
besprinkled all over with reflections of innumerable stars that shone
scarcely less brilliant on the smooth face of the deep than they did
in the inscrutable dome above. But among those simulated coruscations
lay what looked like the long straight folds of a shroud. Broadening
as it neared me, it faded away before its skirts reached the ship. My
dry, aching eyeballs followed its pallid outlines horizonwards until
at that indefinable limit where sea and sky seem to meet my fear took
shape. There in the blue-black heaven, its chin resting on the sea
margin, glared a gigantic skull, perfect in all its ghastly details,
and glowing with that unearthly light that only emanates from things
dead. Yet the cavernous openings of that awful visage, deep within
their darkness, showed a lurid suggestion of red that burned and faded
as if fed from some hidden furnace beyond. This horrible apparition,
so utterly at variance with the placid loveliness of its setting,
completed my undoing. I actually felt thankful for its appalling
hideousness as the sense that my endurance limit was reached came upon
me. With a feeling of unspeakable gratitude and relief, I felt my
parched-up bones melt, my whole framework collapsed, and I sank slowly
to the deck, all knowledge fading like the last flicker of an exhausted
lamp. But with the last gleam of sight I saw the Thing, elongated out
of all proportion, suddenly snap the unseen ligament that bound it to
the horizon. And immediately, some distance above, the sweet cool face
of the lovely moon shone full-orbed, to commence her triumphal march
across the sky. Then for an age I died.

By slow, painful stages life returned to me, as if the bewildered
spirit must creep and grovel through obscene tunnels and tortuous
grooves of interminable length before it could again reanimate the
helpless tabernacle awaiting it. But so great had been the shock, so
complete the disorganisation of all my powers, that for what seemed
hours after I became fully conscious again, I was unable to raise an
eyelash. The same profound peace still reigned, not a sound, hardly
a movement of the vessel. Slowly my eyes unclosed. I lay in a lake
of moonlight streaming from the radiant globe sailing up the blue,
now well advanced in her stately progress among the paling stars. As
I looked up at the splendid satellite I wondered vaguely how I could
ever have connected such a well-beloved object with the brain-withering
terror of the immediate past. The problem was beyond me, never an acute
reasoner at the best of times, but now mentally palsied by what I had
undergone. While I still lay in sentient inability to move I heard the
mate rise to his feet with a resounding yawn. The familiar noise broke
the spell that held me. I rose to my feet involuntarily and peered in
at the clock, which was on the stroke of four. “Eight bells, sir,” I
said, but in a voice so harsh and strange that the officer could not
believe his ears. “What’s that?” he queried wonderingly. I repeated
the words. He rose and struck the bell, but came aft immediately he
had done so and peered into my face as if to see who it was. “Ain’t ye
well?” he asked. “Y’ look like a cawpse.” I made some incoherent reply,
upon which he said quickly, “Here, go for’ard ’n turn in, ’relse I’m
damned if ye won’t be sick.” Listlessly I answered “Ay, ay, sir,” and
shambled forward to my stuffy bunk. My shipmates, heavy with sleep,
took no notice of me, and I turned in, to lie tossing feverishly,
every sinew in my body vibrating with pain so as to be almost
unbearable. A long spell of what I suppose was brain fever followed,
during which the terrible vision of that middle watch was re-enacted a
thousand times with innumerable fantastic additions. Out of that weary
waste of life I emerged transformed from a ruddy, full-faced youth into
a haggard, prematurely old man, while nothing but my stalwart physique
enabled me to survive. For the rest of the voyage my shipmates looked
upon me with awe, as upon one who had made a fearsome voyage into the
unseen world lying all around us, and been permitted to return wise
beyond the power of mortal speech to express. But my silence upon the
subject was only because I really had nothing to tell. Whence came
that marrow-freezing fear I shall never know, or why. What I _saw_
was simply such a grotesque distortion of the moon’s disc as is often
witnessed in low latitudes, when either sun or moon rising appears
to have the lower limb glued to the horizon for quite an appreciable
time, while fragments of mist or cloud passing over the luminous and
elongated face cause strange patterns to appear upon it. And when
suddenly the connection seems to break, the luminary apparently springs
several degrees at a bound into the clear sky above. Just an effect of
refraction--nothing more.



XII

A WAKING NIGHTMARE


Curious indeed was the freak of fortune which, before I was thirteen
years old, threw me like a frond of drifting seaweed upon one of the
scattered cays of the Mexican Gulf. About the manner of my arrival I
propose to say nothing here; sufficient for present purposes to note
that I was entirely alone upon that desolate patch of sand, hardly
worthy of the name of islet, its very existence as a fragment of dry
land dependent upon a bristling barrier of black boulders that bared
their ravening fangs at every ebb. When the tide was up their position
was solely marked by long lines of snowy breakers whose magnitude,
accumulated by a protracted struggle shorewards over the vast outlying
coral banks, was enormous,--so huge, in fact, that it was seldom
possible, even when standing upon the apex of the islet, to see the
horizon line, which stretched its perfect circle all around.

The defending fringe of jagged rocks formed by no means a continuous
barrier. In fact it was more properly a series of parallels
sufficiently separated to have admitted small vessels between them,
should the turbulent swell ever be quiet enough to permit such daring
navigation. At one point a sort of causeway ran seaward some hundreds
of feet at right angles to the beach. The crags of which this was
composed were bared at half ebb, but from their tops one could in
places look down into blue hollows where no bottom could be seen.
Except when the wind was high, this ridge, though exceedingly difficult
to traverse, from its broken character, was protected from battering
seas. Lying, as it did, so much nearer the land, and in a different
direction to the other barriers, it was sheltered by them to such an
extent that only upon rare occasions was it swept from end to end by a
lingering, lolloping swell that did not break.

Driven by that same pitiless necessity that had compelled me to ferret
out the means of existence somehow since I reached my tenth year, it
was no long time before I discovered that this rugged spur was the
best place for fishing, especially with regard to Crustacea, because a
multitude of fish inhabited the irregular cavities of the reef beneath.
And since I had water in abundance, a 400-gallon tank full having
washed ashore from the wreck, while of biscuit and fishing-tackle there
was also some store, I spent a good deal of my time upon the uneven
pathway formed by this natural pier. Contenting myself with small bait
cut from some luckless baby octopus I always waylaid at starting. I
was untroubled by fish too large for my immature strength, though on
several occasions I only just succeeded in tearing half the palpitating
body of my catch out of the eager jaws of some monster that rushed at
him as he made his involuntary journey upwards.

Although so young, I was fairly seasoned to alarms and not at all
nervous, which was as well, for if I had been I should probably have
died of fright during the first night of my stay on the islet. But
there was one inexplicable noise that always made me feel as if I had
swallowed a lump of ice accidentally when I heard it. Even while on
board the ship I never felt easy about it, the less so because I could
never find an explanation of its origin. It sounded as if some giant
had smitten the sea flatly with a huge paddle, or, still more, as if
an extra large whale were “lob-tailing”--_i.e._ poised in the water
head downwards, and striking deliberate blows upon its surface with
his mighty flukes. This is a favourite habit with the larger cetacea,
but only in the daytime, although I did not then know of it. The noise
which scared me, however, was only heard at night, when, with a calm
sea and not a breath of wind stirring, it assailed my ears like a
summons from the unseen world. For this cause alone I was always glad
to see the blessed daylight flooding the sky again.

Several days wore away uneventfully enough, and I was getting quite
inured to silence and solitude, when it befell that the ebb came
late in the afternoon. By the slant of the sun I judged it must be
somewhere about five o’clock when I climbed out along the slippery
causeway to my favourite spot--a smooth hollow in the crest of a great
boulder, from which comfortable perch I could look down on either
side into deep, blue water. Here I seated myself cosily, and soon
hauled up a dozen or so of sizable fish. Then, having ample provision,
I rolled up my line, and lounged at ease, sleepily surveying the
unspeakable glories of the sunset. Whether in the body or out of the
body I cannot tell, but the time slipped away unnoticed by me, till
suddenly I started up, every nerve tingling with fear at the sound I
so much dreaded somewhere very close at hand. I trembled so violently
that I could not go back just yet; indeed, I could not stand, but sank
into my stony seat. At that moment I turned my head to the right, and
saw rising out of the water apparently quite slowly a hideous shape,
if shape it could be said to possess any. In the gathering gloom it
appeared almost like a gigantic bat as far as its general outline could
be seen, but I never heard of a water-bat. For quite an appreciable
space it hung in the quiet air, changing all the placid beauty of the
evening into brain-benumbing horror for me; then with an unfolding
movement it fell upon the glassy surface, producing the awe-inspiring
sound I had so often shuddered at, its volume augmented tenfold by its
nearness. Like some fascinated bird, I remained motionless, staring
at the rapidly smoothing spot where the awful thing had disappeared.
Then suddenly the sea at my feet became all black, and out of its
depths there arose close at my side a monster that was the embodied
realisation of my most terrified imaginings. Its total area must have
been about 200 square feet. It was somewhat of a diamond shape, with a
tapering, sinewy tail about as long again as its body. Where I judged
its head to be was a convex hollow, which opened widely as it rose,
disclosing rows of shining teeth, set like those of a human being. At
each side of this gulf rose a spiral horn about two feet long, looking
like twisted whalebone, and guarding the eyes which lay between them.
Oh, those eyes! Though not much more than twice as large as a horse’s,
as they glared through the wide slits within which they festered the
ruddy sheen of the sunset caught them, making them glow bloodily with
a plenitude of ghastly ferocity that haunts me yet. And on either side
of the thing undulated gigantic triangular wings, raising its mass into
the air with noiseless ease.

All this and more I saw in the breathless space of its ascent; then it
hung between me and heaven, the livid corrupt-looking corrugations of
its underside all awork, as it seemed, to enfold my shrinking flesh.
Those fractions of a second, stretched into hours, during which my
starting pupils photographed every detail of the loathsome beast,
passed away at last, and it descended slantingly over me. Then amidst a
roar of water in my ears the darkness swallowed me up, and I knew no
more. I am inclined to think that I owe my life to the trancelike state
into which I had fallen, for although it appeared a frightfully long
time before I saw the sweet evening light again, I was not nearly so
exhausted as I have been on other occasions, when compelled to take a
long dive. But after I had scrambled up on to the rock again, wondering
to find myself still alive, such a recurrence of overmastering fear
seized me that it was all I could do to crawl crab-wise over the stony
pinnacles back to the sand again. My strength only held out until I had
reached a spot above high-water mark. There I subsided into blissful
unconsciousness of all things, and knew no more until a new day was
far advanced, and the terror of the previous night only a distressing
memory apparently of some previous stage of existence. Years afterwards
I learned that the hideous thing which had thus scared me almost to
death was one of the _raiidæ_, or skate tribe. Locally it is known
as the alligator guard, or devil fish, and, truly, its appearance
justifies such an epithet. It is apparently harmless to man, but why,
alone among the Cephalopteridæ, it should have the curious habit of
taking these nocturnal leaps out of water is a mystery.



XIII

THE DERELICT


She had been a staunch, well-found wooden barque of about 800 tons,
English built, but, like so many more of our sturdy old sailing
ships, in the evening of her days she had been bought by the thrifty
Norwegians. She bore on her ample stern the faded legend, _Olaf
Trygvasson, Trondhjem_. Backwards and forwards across the North
Atlantic to Quebec in summer, and to the Gulf Ports in winter, she had
been faithfully drogueing timber for them for several seasons, her
windmill-pump steadily going and the owners’ profits accumulating.

This last voyage, however, had been unfortunate from its commencement.
To the serious annoyance of Trygvasson and Company, no outward freight
was obtainable, while the passage was half as long again as it should
have been. A cargo was secured at last in Pensacola, with which not
only was her capacious hold crammed, but the whole deck fore and aft
as high as the shearpoles was piled with the balks, so that from the
forecastle-head to the taffrail she was flush--a windswept stretch
of slippery uneven planks with just a hole left here and there for
the hard-bitten mariners to creep down to their darksome dens below.
They were hardly clear of the harbour when one of those hurricane-like
squalls so common to the Florida Gulf burst upon her, tearing a whole
suit of sails from the yards and stays and sending them fleeting
to leeward like fluttering clouds of spindrift. Then gale after
gale buffeted her with unrelenting severity, treating the stolid,
long-suffering crew with persistent cruelty as they crept wearily
about the bitter eminence of the deck-load or clung half-frozen to
the yards wrestling with the crackling ice-laden canvas. There were
no complaints, for Scandinavian seamen endure the bitterest hardships
with wonderful patience, growling--that well-used privilege of British
seamen--being almost unknown among them.

At last there came a day when the wind grew more savage than they had
yet borne,--wind with a wrathful tearing edge to it, as well as a force
against which none of their canvas would stand for a moment. As a last
resource they hove her to under a tarpaulin cut from the lazarette
hatch, only two feet square, which they lashed in the mizen rigging.
This steadied her for some hours, keeping her head to the wind fairly
well, until a sea came howling down out of the grey hopelessness to
windward and caught her on the weather quarter. It twisted her up into
the wind, wrenching off the rudder-head as you would behead a shrimp.
Helpless, she fell off on the other tack just in time for a black
mountain of solid water to hurl itself upon the bluff of her bow and
sweep aft, tearing away with it boats, men, and all else that stood or
lay in its way. When that great flood had subsided she was a silent
ship. The only member of the crew left on deck was he who had been the
helmsman, but was now only a heap of broken bones lying in a confused
tangle just in the little space behind the wheel.

And then, being entirely at the mercy of the howling wind and scourging
sea, the doomed ship was gradually stripped of her various furniture.
Yards, released from position by the carrying away of the braces,
battered and banged about until they and their supporting spars fell
in ruin on the deckload and thundered alongside at the sturdy hull.
While this dismantling was in progress, a small boy of about thirteen
cowered in the murky cabin as far out of reach of the invading flood of
salt water as he could get, wondering wearily when the clamour overhead
would subside and somebody come below again. He was a London waif,
who, unwanted and forlorn, had been for several years drifting about
the world, the sport of every cross current of mischance until he had
landed at Pensacola, where Captain Neilsen, of the _Olaf Trygvasson_,
had in pity for his youthful loneliness given him a passage to London
in exchange for his services as cabin-boy. Although fairly well versed
in seafaring--for he had been nearly two years at the poor business--he
marvelled mightily at the uproar above and how it was he heard no
voices. The noise of falling spars, the dull crashing blows of the sea,
and the melancholy wailing of the wind were still so deafening that he
was able as yet to console himself with the thought that puny human
cries would be inaudible. But at last his suspense grew unbearable, and
dropping into the water, which was well above his waist, he struggled
on deck, to find himself sole representative of the crew, and the
vessel derelict.

A horror of great loneliness fell upon him. Long experience of hardness
had made him dry-eyed upon most occasions where tears would seem to be
indicated in one so young, but something clutched his throat now that
made him burst into a passionate fit of crying. In the full tide of
it he suddenly stopped and screamed frantically, “Larsen! Petersen!
Jansen!” but there was no voice nor any that answered.

The wind died away and the sea went down. There was a break in the
pall of gloomy clouds, through which the afternoon sun gleamed warmly,
even hopefully. But the brave and much-enduring old vessel was now
water-logged, kept afloat solely by her buoyant cargo. She lay over at
an angle of about 45°, the waves lap-lapping the edge of the deckload
on the lee-side. Without motive-power or guidance, the sport of the
elements, she drifted helplessly, hopelessly anywhither, a danger to
all navigation during the hours of darkness because almost invisible.
And since she moved not except with the natural oscillation of the
ocean, the rank parasitic life with which the sea teems fastened upon
her hungrily wherever the water reached, so that in a short time she
began to smell ancient and fish-like as Caliban.

Amidst that rapidly increasing growth of weed and shell, the lonely
lad moved ghost-like, his sanity preserved as yet by the natural
hopefulness of youth. But a fixed melancholy settled and strengthened
upon him. He ate barely sufficient to support his frail life, although
there was a sufficiency of coarse food and water for many days. At
intervals he held long rambling conversations with himself aloud,
peopling the solemn silence around him with a multitude of the
creatures of his fancy. But mostly he crouched close down to the lee
edge of the deckload, gazing for hours at a stretch into the fathomless
blue depths beneath him; for the weather had completely changed, the
drift of the derelict having been southward into a region of well-nigh
perpetual calm, apparently unvisited by storms or tenanted ships.

Day after day crawled by--how many the solitary child never knew, for
he kept no reckoning. Longer and longer grew the dark festoons of dank
weed around the battered hulk, while the barnacles, limpets, and other
parasites flourished amazingly. In those calm waters whither she had
drifted fish of all shapes and sizes, usually unseen by mortal eyes,
abounded. They swarmed around the weed-bedraped hull as they do about
a half-tide rock in some quiet cove unvisited by man. As the calm
persisted these marine visitants grew quainter and more goblin-like
of shape, fresh accessions to their numbers continually reaching the
surface. Pale eyes unfamiliar with the naked sunlight blinked glassily
at the garish day out of hideous heads, and the motion of these
denizens of the cold darkness below was sluggish and bewildered. The
water became thick with greasy scum and the usually invigorating air
took on a taint of decay, the stench of a stagnant sea. To the boy’s
disordered vision these gruesome companions grew more uncanny than the
dreams of a madman, but still, though they daily multiplied until the
water seemed alive with them, the strange fascination they exerted
over him conquered his natural repugnance to slimy things all legs and
eyes, that crawled horribly near. He could hardly spare sufficient time
for such scanty meals as he needed, and must fetch from his hoard in
an upper bunk on the weather-side of the cabin well out of reach of
the encroaching, restless flood that invaded almost every other nook.
Far into the night, too, under the stately stars, when the glazing
sea was all aglow with living fires brightening and fading in long
lines running in a multitude of directions and of a rich variety of
colours, he remained, as if chained to the rail, staring steadfastly
down at the phantasmagoria below with eyes that scarcely blinked,
though they ached and burned with the unreasoning intensity of his
gaze. His babbling ceased. He spoke no word now, only brooded over the
unhealthful waters like some paralysed old man. Voices came whispering
strange matters in his ears, tales without beginning or end, incoherent
fragments of mystery that wandered through the twilight of his mind and
left no track of sense.

At last one night he crept wearily into his bunk for a morsel of food,
meaning to bring it on deck and resume his unmeaning watching of the
sea. But when he had put a biscuit in the breast of his jumper and
tried to clamber back over the black flood that with sullen noise swept
to and fro in the darkened cuddy, he found himself unable to move, much
less to creep monkey-wise from point to point to the scuttle. So he
lay back and slept, never heeding the weakness and want of feeling in
his wasted limbs. When he awoke it was day, a long shaft of sunlight
piercing an opening in the deck over his head and irradiating the
gloomy den in which he lay. Suddenly there was a sound of voices, a
cheery, hearty hail of “Anybody aboard this hooker? Hullo, derelict,
ahoy!” He heard and smiled feebly. Such voices had been his constant
companions for days, and although he felt dimly that they sounded
different now, he was only too certain that they would change into
malignant mockeries again directly. Then all was still once more, save
for the ceaseless wash of the waves against the weed-hung bulkheads of
the cabin.

Outside upon the shining sea rode that most beautiful of all craft, a
whale-boat, whose trim crew lay on their oars gazing curiously and with
a certain solemnity upon the melancholy ruin before them. The officer
in charge, a young lieutenant in the smart uniform of the American
navy, stood in the stern-sheets pondering irresolutely, the undertones
of his men falling unmeaningly upon his ears. At last he appeared to
have made up his mind, and saying, “Pull two, starn three,” put the
tiller hard over to sheer the boat off to seaward, where the graceful
shape of his ship showed in strong relief against the blue sky. But
the sturdy arms had barely taken twenty strokes when, as if by some
irresistible impulse, the officer again pressed the tiller to port,
the boat taking a wide sheer, while the crew glanced furtively at his
thoughtful face and wondered whatever he was about. Not until the boat
headed direct for the wreck again did he steady the helm. “In bow,
stand by to hook on!” he cried sharply, and as the boat shot along
the lee-side, “unrow.” “Jemmy,” to his after-oarsman, “jump aboard
and see if you can get below, forrard or aft. If she isn’t bung full
you might find something alive.” “Ay, ay, sir,” said Jemmy, a sturdy
little Aberdonian, and in ten seconds he was scrambling over the
slippery timbers towards the cuddy scuttle. Plump! and he disappeared
down the dark hole. Two minutes’ breathless suspense followed, a
solid block of silence, then a perfect yell of delight startled all
the watchers nearly out of their wits. The dripping head of the daring
Scot reappeared at the scuttle ejaculating in choicest Aberdeen: “Sen’s
anither han’ here gin ye wull, sir. Ah’ve fun’ a laddie leevin, an’
thet’s a’.” In a moment another man was by his side, and the frail
little bundle of humanity was passed into the boat with a tender
solicitude beautiful to see in those bronzed and bearded men.

The lieutenant, in a voice choked with emotion, said, “Poor little
chap! Somehow I felt as if I _couldn’t_ leave that ship. Give way, men;
he’s so nearly gone that we must get him aboard sharp if we’re going to
save him after all.” The crew needed no spur, they fairly made the boat
fly towards the ship, while the officer, with a touch almost as gentle
as a mother’s, held the boy in his arms. When she arrived alongside the
_Essex_ everything was in readiness, the fact of a life being at stake
having been noted a long way off. He was gently lifted on board and
handed over to the doctor’s care, while the crew were piped to gunnery
practice and the dangerous obstruction of the derelict smashed into a
mass of harmless fragments.

A few days of such unceasing care as a king might desire in vain, and
the boy took firm hold on life again. But his youthful elasticity of
spirit has never returned to him. A settled gravity has taken its
place, remaining from the time when he kept his long and lonely vigil
on the _Olaf Trygvasson_, derelict.



STUDIES IN

MARINE NATURAL HISTORY



XIV

SOME OCEANIC BIRDS


It is surely a matter for congratulation that the sentiment of mankind
toward what we are pleased to call the lower animals is certainly,
if slowly, tending in the direction of kinder and more merciful
appreciation of them in nearly all their varieties as knowledge of them
grows from more to more. As perhaps is but natural, this benevolent
feeling is most strongly marked for birds, those feathered Zingari
of the air whose blithe evolutions above are more envied by man than
any other power possessed by the vastly varied members of the animal
kingdom. In obedience to the growing demand for more intimate knowledge
of birds and their habits whole libraries have been written, and
still this literature increases; but while in this there is nothing
to cavil at, one cannot help feeling that the marvellous life of the
sea-birds has received far from adequate attention. Like so many
other denizens of that vast and densely populated world of waters,
their inaccessibility has hindered that close observation by trained
naturalists necessary in order to describe them as they deserve, while
as yet no marine Richard Jefferies or White of Selborne has arisen. And
this want is really to be wondered at, seeing how fascinating is the
study of oceanic fauna, and remembering what a wealth of leisure is
enjoyed by masters of sailing ships, which alone afford opportunities
for observing the life of the sea-people.

Easily first in point of interest, as well as size, comes the lordly
albatross, whose home is far south of the Line, and whose empire is
that illimitable area of turbulent waves which sweep resistless round
the world. Compared with his power of vision (sailors give all things
except a ship the epicene gender “he”), the piercing gaze of the
eagle or condor becomes myopic, unless, as indeed may be the case, he
possesses other senses unknown to us by means of which he is made aware
of passing events interesting to him occurring at incredible distances.
Out of the blue void he comes unhasting on motionless pinions, yet at
such speed that, one moment a speck hardly discernible, turn but your
eyes away, and ere you can again look round he is gliding majestically
overhead. Nothing in Nature conveys to the mind so wonderful an idea of
effortless velocity as does his calm appearance from vacancy. Like most
of the true pelagic birds, he is a devourer of offal, the successful
pursuit of fish being impossible to his majestic evolutions. His
appetite is enormous, but his powers of abstinence are equally great,
and often for days he goes without other nourishment than a drink of
the bitter sea. At the Gargantuan banquet provided by the carcass of a
dead whale, he will gorge himself until incapable of rising from the
sea, yet still his angry scream may be heard as if protesting against
his inability to find room for more provision against hungry days
soon to follow. Despite his incomparable grace of flight when gliding
through mid-air with his mighty wings outspread, when ashore or on deck
he is clumsy and ill at ease. Even seated upon the sea his proportions
appear somewhat ungainly, while his huge hooked beak seems too heavy to
be upheld. On land he can hardly balance himself, and the broad silky
webs of his feet soon become lacerated. Thus his visits to the lone
and generally inaccessible rocks which are his breeding places are as
brief as may be, since even conjugal delights are dearly purchased with
hunger and painful restraint. A true child of the air, land is hateful
to him, and only on the wing does he appear to be really at home and
easeful.

The other members of the albatross family, who, with their chief
(_Diomedea exulans_), are all classed by whalers under the ugly name
of “gooneys,” bear few of the majestic characteristics of their great
head. The “mallymoke,” which comes nearest to the albatross in size and
beauty, is actually found north of the Line, a fact which severs this
bird very widely from the albatross in geographical range. Also, he
is much livelier and more given to bustle fussily about. It costs him
far less exertion to rise from the sea for flight than the unwieldy
paddling run along the surface necessary to give sufficient impetus
for raising the huge albatross, and consequently his alightings are
much more frequent. But he is undoubtedly a beautiful bird, suffering
only by comparison with the most splendid of all sea-fowl. A brown
kind of albatross, with a dirty white beak, is very much in evidence
south of 20° S., dropping continually into the turbulence of a ship’s
wake, and diving to considerable depths after scraps. Sailors call them
Cape hens, for some misty reason which is never given. Among Southern
birds they occupy much the same place in the esteem of those who are
acquainted with them as does the sparrow at home.

A general favourite among seamen is the Cape pigeon, a pretty, busy
little sea-bird about the size of a dove, but plumper, with a black
head and an elaborate pattern in black and grey upon the white of its
open wings. Around the stern of any passing ship large numbers of
these fluttering visitors hover continually, their shrill cries and
unwearying manœuvres contrasting pleasantly with the deep monotone
made by the driving keel through the foaming sea. In common with most
Southern sea-birds having hooked beaks, they are easily caught with
hook and line, but will not live in captivity. Thoughtless passengers,
wearied with what they call the tedium of the voyage, often amuse
themselves by shooting these graceful wanderers, although what
satisfaction may be found in reducing a beautiful living thing to a
useless morsel of draggled carrion is not easy to see. Occasionally a
passing ship finds herself accompanied for a very short time by large
flocks of small dove-coloured birds, who, however, do not seem to care
much for the association with vessels so characteristic of sea-birds
generally. These are known as whale-birds, probably because in the
_mêlée_ that goes on round the carcass of a dead whale they are never
seen. Indeed they would stand but little chance of a meal among the
hordes of larger and more voracious feasters. Mention must also be made
of a peculiar and unprepossessing member of the petrel family, which
looks much like a disreputable albatross, but is somewhat scarce. Known
indifferently among whalemen as the “Nelly” or the “stinker,” it seems
probable that this bird is the Southern representative of the Arctic
fulmar, which is abundant in the North. His chief peculiarity is his
forwardness. No sooner does a whale give up the ghost than the Nelly
boldly alights upon the black island-like mass and calmly commences
to peck away at the firm blubber, while thousands upon thousands of
other birds wait impatiently around, not daring to do likewise. Hence
the terrible threat current in whaleships, “I’ll ’light on ye like a
stinker on a carcass.”

At the bottom of the size scale, but in point of affectionate interest
second to none, comes the stormy petrel, or Mother Carey’s chicken, a
darling wee wanderer common to both hemispheres, and beloved by all
sailors. With its delicate glossy black-and-brown plumage just flecked
with white on the open wings, and its long slender legs reaching out
first on one side and then on the other as if to feel the sea, it
nestles under the very curl of the most mighty billows or skims the
sides of their reverberating green abysses content as hovers the lark
over a lush meadow. Howling hurricane or searching snow-blasts pass
unheeded over that velvety black head. The brave bright eye dims not,
nor does the cheery little note falter even if the tiny traveller must
needs cuddle up close under the lee of some big ship for an occasional
crumb. Only once have I known an individual cruel or senseless enough
to harm a stormy petrel, and then the execrations of his shipmates
fairly scared him into repentance. They seem to have solved the secret
of perpetual motion, and often at night a careful listener may hear
their low cry, even if he be not keen-sighted enough to see them flit
beneath him.

Quite apart from these true oceanic nomads are the large class of
sea-birds who, while gathering their food exclusively from the sea,
never go to any great distance from land. This difference between them
and the birds before mentioned is so strongly marked, that unobservant
as sailors are generally, there are few who do not recognise the
vicinity of land upon catching sight of a man-o’-war bird, booby,
gannet, or bo’sun. All these birds, whose trivial designations seem
somehow more appropriate than the nine-jointed nomenclature of the
schools, frequent for preference more accessible shores than the craggy
pinnacles generally chosen by the bolder outfliers. Of the first-named,
the “man-o’-war” or “frigate” bird, very little can be said to his
credit. Michelet has rhapsodised about him in a curious effusion, of
which one can only say that he seems to have confused three distinct
birds under one head. Were this bird to receive an entirely appropriate
title, it would be “pirate” or “buccaneer,” since it is only upon the
rarest occasions that he condescends to fish for himself, choosing
rather to rob humbler birds of their well-earned prey. No sea-bird
mounts so high as he, rising into the clear blue until only a black
speck to the unassisted eye. Usually, however, he contents himself
with a circling poise at an altitude of about 200 feet, whence he
keeps steadfast watch upon all that transpires beneath. With his long
tail dividing and closing like the halves of a pair of shears, and the
brilliant scarlet pouch at his neck occasionally inflated, he waits,
waits, until some fussy booby, like an overladen housewife hurrying
home from market, comes flapping along towards her nest. Then the broad
pinions suddenly close, and down like a meteor comes the marauder. With
a wild shriek of terror booby disgorges her fish, but ere it reaches
the water out hash the black wings again, and with a grand swoop the
assailant has passed beneath his frightened victim, caught the plunder,
and soared skyward. In like manner these birds may sometimes be seen
to catch a flying fish on the wing, a truly marvellous feat. It is,
nevertheless, a pathetic sight to see them, when old age or sickness
overtakes them, sitting in lonely dignity among the rocks where they
breed, helplessly awaiting with glazing eyes and dropping plumage the
tardy coming of deliverance.

As for the booby, whose contemptuous name is surely a libel, space is
now far too brief to do anything like justice to its many virtues. In
a number of ways it corresponds very closely with the manners of our
domestic fowls, notably in its care of its brood, and utter change in
its habits when the young ones are dependent upon it. Of stupidity the
only evidences really noticeable are its indifference to the approach
of generally dreaded dangers when it is drowsy. At night one may
collect as many from their resting-places as can be desired, for they
make no effort to escape, but look at their enemy with a full, steady
eye wherein there is no speculation whatever. Numberless instances
might be collected where the tameness, as well as the abundance, of
boobies have been the means of preserving human life after shipwreck,
while their flesh and eggs are by no means unpalatable. Of several
other interesting members of the great family of oceanic birds we have
now no room to speak, but hope to return to the subject later on.



XV

THE KRAKEN


Never, within the history of mankind, does there appear to have been
a time when dwellers by the sea did not believe in some awful and
gigantic monsters inhabiting that unknown and vague immensity.

Whether we turn to Genesis to find great sea-monsters first of
created sentient beings, or ransack the voluminous records of ancient
civilisations, the result is the same. What a picture is that of the
Hindu sage in the Fish Avatar of Krishna, finding himself and his eight
companions alone in their ark upon the infinite sea, being visited by
the god as an indescribably huge serpent extending a million leagues,
shining like the sun, and with one stupendous horn, sky-piercing.

In the brief compass of this chapter I do not propose to _réchauffer_
any sea-serpent stories, ancient or modern. More especially because my
subject is the Kraken, and while I hold most firmly that the gigantic
mollusc which can alone be given that title is the _fons et origo_ of
all true sea-serpent stories, it is with facts relating to the former
that I have alone to deal. As might have been expected, all stories of
sea-monsters have a strong family likeness, showing pretty conclusively
their common derivation, with such differences as the locality and
personality of the narrative must be held accountable for. But among
sea-folk, as among all people leading lives in close contact with the
elemental forces of Nature, legends persist with marvellous vitality,
and so the story of the Kraken is to be found wherever men go down to
the sea in ships, and do business in great waters.

Substantially the story is: that long low-lying banks have been
discovered by vessels, which have moored thereto, only to find the
supposed land developing wondrous peculiarities. Amid tremendous
turmoil of seething waters, arms innumerable, like a nest of mighty
serpents, arose from the deep, followed at last by a horrible head, of
a bigness and diabolical appearance unspeakably appalling. Fascinated
by the terrible eyes that, large as shields, glared upon them, the
awe-stricken seamen beheld some of the far-reaching tentacles, covered
with multitudes of mouths, embracing their vessel, while others
searched her alow and aloft, culling the trembling men from the rigging
like ripe fruit, and conveying them forthwith into an abysmal mouth
where they vanished for ever.

Such a story, especially when embellished by professional
story-tellers, has of course met with well-merited scepticism, but
sight has been largely lost of the fact that from very early times
much independent testimony has been borne to the existence of immense
molluscæ in many waters, sufficiently huge and horrific to have
furnished a substantial basis for any number of hair-raising yarns. And
having myself for some years been engaged in the sperm whale fishery,
all over the globe, I now venture to bear the testimony of another
eyewitness to the truth of many Kraken legends, however much they may
have been, and are now, doubted.

To eager students of marine natural history, nothing can well be
stranger than the manner in which, with two or three honourable
exceptions, the sperm whale fishers of the world have “sinned their
mercies.” To them as to no other class of sea-farers have been
vouchsafed not glimpses merely, but consecutive months and years of the
closest intimacy with the secret things of old ocean, embracing almost
the whole navigable globe. And when, unpressed for time, they have
leisurely entered those slumbrous latitudes so anxiously avoided by the
hurried, worried merchantman, how utterly have they neglected their
marvellous opportunities of observation of the wonders there revealed.
It may not be generally known that during long-persisting calms the
sea surface changes its character. From limpid blue it becomes greasy
and pale, from that health-laden odour to which the gratified nostrils
dilate, and the satisfied lungs expand, there is a gruesome change to
an unwholesome stench of stagnation and decaying things, such as the
genius of Coleridge depicted when he sang:

      The very deep did rot; O Christ!
      That ever this should be!
      Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
      Upon the slimy sea.

Strangest of all the strange visitors to the upper world at such times
is the gigantic squid, or cuttle-fish. Of all the Myriad species
of mollusca this monster may fairly claim chief place, and neither
in ancient or modern times have any excited more interest than he.
Gazing with childlike fear upon his awe-inspiring and uncanny bulk,
the ancients have done their best to transmit their impressions to
posterity. Aristotle writes voluminously upon the subject, as he did
about most things, but his cuttles are such as are known to most of us.
Pliny leaves on record much concerning the Sepiadæ which is evidently
accurate in the main, mentioning especially (lib. ix. caps. iv. and
xxx.) one monster slain on the coast of Spain which was in the habit
of robbing the salt-fish warehouses. Pliny caused the great head to
be sent to Lucullus, and states that it filled a cask of fifteen
amphoræ. Its arms were thirty feet long, so thick that a man could
hardly embrace them at their bases, and provided with suckers, or
acetabula, as large as basins holding four or five gallons. But those
who have leisure and inclination may pursue the subject in the works
of Ælian, Paulinus (who describes the monster as a gigantic crab),
Bartholinus, Athanasius Kircher, Athenæus, Olaus Magnus, and others.
Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, in his _Natural History of Norway_, has
done more than any other ancient or modern writer to discredit reports,
essentially truthful, by the outrageous fabrications he tells by way of
embellishment of the facts which he received. Least trustworthy of all,
he has been in this connection most quoted of all, but here he shall be
mentioned only to hold his inventions up to the scorn they so richly
deserve.

The gigantic squid is, unlike most of the cephalopoda, a decapod, not
an octopod, since it possesses, in addition to the eight branchiæ
with which all the family are provided, two tentacula of double their
length, having acetabula only in a small cluster at their ends. This
fact was noticed by Athanasius Kircher, who describes a large animal
seen in the Sicilian seas which had _ten_ rays, or branches, and a
body equal in size to that of a whale; which, seeing how wide is the
range in size among whales, is certainly not over-definite. Coming down
to much later days, we find Denys de Montfort _facile princeps_ in
his descriptions of the Kraken (_Hist. Nat. de Molluscs_, tome ii. p.
284). Unfortunately, his reputation for truthfulness is but so-so, and
he is reported to have expressed great delight at the ease with which
he could gull credulous people. Still the best of his stories may be
quoted, remembering that, as far as his description of the monster is
concerned, he does not appear to have exaggerated at all.

He records how he became acquainted with a master mariner of excellent
repute, who had made many voyages to the Indies for the Gothenburg
Company, by name Jean Magnus Dens. To this worthy, sailing his ship
along the African coast, there fell a stark calm, the which he, even
as do prudent shipmasters to-day, turned to good account by having his
men scrape and cleanse the outside of the vessel, they being suspended
near the water by stages for that purpose. While thus engaged, suddenly
there arose from the blue placidity beneath a most “awful monstrous,”
cuttle-fish, which threw its arms over the stage, and seizing two of
the men, drew them below the surface. Another man, who was climbing
on board, was also seized, but after a fearful struggle his shipmates
succeeded in rescuing him. That same night he died in raving madness.
The mollusc’s arms were stated to be at the base of the bigness of a
fore-yard (_vergue d’un mât de misaine_), while the suckers were as
large as ladles (_cueillier à pot_).

One who should have done better--Dr. Shaw, in his lectures--calmly
makes of that “fore-yard” a “mizen-mast,” and of the “ladles”
“pot-lids,” which may have been loose translation, even as the scraping
“_gratter_” is funnily rendered “raking,” as if the ship’s bottom were
a hayfield, but looks uncommonly like editorial expansion, which the
story really does not require.

Another story narrated by Denys de Montfort relates how a vessel was
attacked by a huge “poulp,” which endeavoured to drag down vessel and
all; but the crew, assisted by their patron, St. Thomas, succeeded in
severing so many of the monster’s arms from his body that he was fain
to depart, and leave them in peace. In gratitude for their marvellous
deliverance they caused an _ex voto_ picture to be painted of the
terrible scene, and hung in their parish church, for a testimony to the
mighty power of the saint.

In the _Phil. Trans._ of the Royal Society (lxviii. p. 226), Dr.
Schewediawer tells of a sperm whale being hooked (_sic_) which had in
its mouth a tentaculum of the Sepia Octopodia, twenty-seven feet long.
This was not its entire length, for one end was partly digested, so
that when _in situ_ it must have been a great deal longer. When we
consider, says the learned doctor, the enormous bulk of the animal to
which the tentaculum here spoken of belonged, we shall cease to wonder
at the common saying of sailors that the cuttle-fish is the largest in
the ocean.

In Figuier’s _Ocean World_ he quotes largely from Michelet, that
great authority on the Mollusca, giving at length the latter’s highly
poetical description of the vast family of “murderous suckers,” as he
terms the cephalopoda.

In the same work, too, will be found a most matter-of-fact description
and illustration of the meeting of the French corvette _Alecton_ with
an immense calamary between Teneriffe and Madeira. This account
was furnished by Lieutenant Bayer to the Académie des Sciences, and
is evidently a sober record of fact. The monster’s body was hauled
alongside, and an attempt was made to secure it by means of a hawser
passed round it, but of course, as soon as any strain was put upon the
rope, it drew completely through the soft gelatinous carcass, severing
it in two. The length of this creature’s body was fifty feet. But M.
Figuier is not satisfied; he says that even this account must be taken
_cum grano salis_, so unwilling is he to believe in a monster that
would evidently settle the great Kraken and sea-serpent question once
for all.

Even Dr. Solander and Mr. Banks, after finding a cuttle six feet long
floating upon the sea near Cape Horn, which was quite beyond all their
previous experience, could not bring themselves to believe in the
existence of any larger. So at the beginning of this century, while
people had largely consented to accept the sea-serpent, they would
have none of the Kraken or anything which might reasonably explain the
persistence of evidence about him. But had these scientific sceptics
only taken the trouble to interview the crews of the South Sea whalers,
that sailed in such a goodly fleet from our ports during the first
half of the century, they must have been convinced that, so far from
the Kraken being a myth, he is one of the most substantial of facts,
unless, indeed, they believed that all whalemen were in a conspiracy
to deceive them on that point.

Any thoughtful observer who has ever seen a school of sperm whales,
numbering several hundreds, and understood, from the configuration of
their jaws, that they must of necessity feed upon large creatures,
can never after feel difficulty in believing that, in order to supply
the enormous demand for food made by these whales, their prey must be
imposing in size and abundant in quantity.

On my first meeting with the cachalot, on terms of mutual destruction,
I knew nothing of his habits, and cared less. But seeing him, when
wounded, vomiting huge masses of white substance, my curiosity was
aroused, and when I saw that these masses were parts of a mighty
creature almost identical in structure with the small squid so often
picked up on deck, where it falls in its frantic efforts to escape from
dolphins (_Coryphæna_), albacore, or bonito, my amazement was great.
Some of these fragments were truly heroic in size.

Surgeon Beale, in his book on the sperm whale, only credits the
cachalot with being able to swallow a man, but with all the respect due
to so great a writer, I am bound to say that such masses as I have seen
ejected from the stomach of the dying whale could only have entered a
throat to which a man was as a pill is to us. We can, however, only
speak of what we have seen, and perhaps Dr. Beale had never seen such
large pieces ejected.

In an article in _Nature_ of June 4, 1896, I have described an
encounter which I witnessed between a gigantic squid and a sperm
whale, in the Straits of Malacca, which, as far as I am concerned, has
settled conclusively the Kraken and sea-serpent question for me. This
terrific combat took place under the full glare of a tropical moon,
upon the surface of a perfectly calm sea, within a mile of the ship.
Every detail of the struggle was clearly visible through a splendid
glass, and is indelibly graven upon my mind. It was indeed a battle
of giants--perhaps all the more solemnly impressive from being waged
in perfect silence. The contrast between the livid whiteness of the
mollusc’s body and the massive blackness of the whale,--the convulsive
writhing of the tremendous arms, as, like a Medusa’s head magnified
a thousand times, they wound and gripped about the columnar head of
the great mammal,--made a picture unequalled in all the animal world
for intense interest. The immense eyes, at least a foot in diameter,
glared out of the dead white of the head, inky black, appalling in
their fixity of gaze. Could we have seen more nearly, and in daylight,
we should have also found that the sea was turned from its normal
blue into a dusky brown by the discharge of the great cephalopod’s
reservoir of sepia, which in such a creature must have been a tank of
considerable capacity. Each of those far-reaching arms were of course
furnished with innumerable sucking discs, most of them a foot in
diameter, and, in addition to the adhering apparatus, provided with
a series of claws set round the inner edges of the suckers, large as
those of a grizzly bear. Besides the eight arms, there were the two
tentacula, double the length of the arms, or over sixty feet long--in
fact, about the length of the animal’s body, and quite worthy of
being taken for a pair of sea-serpents by themselves. But the whale
apparently took no heed of the Titanic struggles of this enormous
mollusc. He was busy wielding his mighty jaws, not in mastication,
but in tearing asunder the soft flesh into convenient lumps for being
swallowed. All around were numerous smaller whales or sharks, joining
in the plentiful feast, like jackals round a lion. Every fisherman
worth his salt knows how well all fish that swim in the sea love the
sapid flesh of the cephalopoda, making it the finest bait known, and
in truth it is, and always has been, a succulent dainty, where known,
for mankind as well. But it is evident from the scanty number of times
that the gigantic cuttle-fish has been reported, that his habitat
is well beneath the surface, yet not so far down but that he may be
easily reached by the whale, and also find food for his own vast bulk.
Probably they prey upon one another. From what we know of the habits
of those members of the family who live in accessible waters, it is
evident that nothing comes amiss to them in the way of fish or flesh,
dead or alive.

The Prince of Monaco, who is a devotee of marine natural history, was
fortunate enough to witness some bay whalers at Terceira early this
year catching a sperm whale. He and his scientific assistants were
alike amazed at seeing the contents of the whale’s stomach ejected
before death, but their amazement became hysterical delight when they
found that the ejecta consisted of portions of huge cuttle-fish, as yet
unknown to scientific classification. The species was promptly named
after the Prince, _Lepidoteuthis Grimaldii_, and a paper prepared and
read before the Académie des Sciences at Paris. So profoundly impressed
was the Prince with what he had seen, that he at once determined to
convert his yacht into a whaler, in order to become better acquainted
with these wonderful creatures, so long known to the obtuse and
careless whale-fishers. One interesting circumstance noted by the
Prince was the number of circular impressions made upon the tough and
stubborn substance of the whale’s head, hard as hippopotamus hide,
showing the tremendous power exerted by the mollusc as well as his
inability to do the whale any harm.

But were I to describe in detail the numerous occasions upon which I
have seen, not certainly the entire mollusc, but such enormous portions
of their bodies as would justify estimating them as fully as large as
the whales feeding upon them, it would become merely tedious repetition.

As I write, comes the news that an immense squid has just been found
stranded on the west coast of Ireland, having arms thirty feet in
length, a formidable monster indeed.

In conclusion, it may be interesting to know that these molluscs
progress, while undisturbed, literally on their heads, with all the
eight arms which surround the head acting as feet as well as hands to
convey food to the ever-gaping mouth; but when moving quickly, as in
flight, or to attack, they eject a stream of water from an aperture
in the neck, which drives them backwards at great speed, all the arms
being close together. Close to this aperture is the intestinal opening,
a strange position truly. Strangest, perhaps, of all is the manner in
which some species grow, at certain seasons, an additional tentacle,
which, when complete, becomes detached and floats away. In process
of time it finds a female, to which it clings, and which it at once
impregnates. It then falls off, and perishes. It is probable that the
animal kingdom, in all its vast range, presents no stranger method than
this of the propagation of species.



XVI

CONCERNING SHARKS


Among the most fascinating of natural history studies, but withal one
of the most difficult, is that of the _Squalidæ_, or shark family. The
plodding perseverance of German professors has furnished students with
an elaborate classification of these singular creatures in all their
known genera, but of their habits little is really known. A mass of
fable has clustered round them, much of it surviving from very remote
times, and added to periodically by people who might, if they would,
know better. The reiteration of shark stories has in consequence
resulted in more ignorant prejudice against the really useful _squalus_
than has perhaps fallen to the lot of any other animal, although most
observant people know how absurd are many of the popular beliefs about
much better known creatures. Strangely enough, the detestation in which
the shark is generally held is largely the fault of sea-farers. It
never seems to occur to shore-going folk how few are the opportunities
obtained by the ordinary sailor-man of studying the manners and
customs of the marine fauna. Merchant ships, even sailing vessels, must
“make a passage” in order to pay, and, except when unfortunate enough
to get becalmed for a long spell, are rarely in a position favourable
to close observation of deep-sea fishes and their ways. Men-of-war,
especially surveying ships, who spend much time in unfrequented waters,
and are often stationary for weeks at a time, are in a much better
plight, and give the eager student of marine natural history great
facilities for closely watching the sea-folk. Yet those are seldom
taken advantage of as they might be for the rectification of the
abundant errors that are to be found in books that deal in a popular
way with the life-histories of sea-monsters. The only class of mariners
who have had, so to speak, the home life of the sea-people completely
open to them, who for periods of time extending to three or four years
were in daily contact with the usually hidden sources of oceanic lore,
were the South Sea whalers, whose calling is now almost a thing of the
past. But even they wasted their invaluable privileges most recklessly,
the contributions which they have made to science being exceedingly
trivial.

Thus it comes about that the very men who should have either verified
or disproved the really stupid stories current concerning sharks
have chosen instead to adopt them blindly, and have, therefore, for
centuries been guilty of the most revolting cruelty towards these
strange fish. In this connection it is interesting to note the remote
times in which shark legends arose. Aristotle, whose multifarious
researches extended into so many fields of knowledge, furnishes us with
almost the first recorded mention of the shark, and his designation
of them is perpetuated in the scientific nomenclature of a very
numerous species to-day, the _Lamiæ_. From another name for the same
creature πρίστις, we get _Pristiophoridæ_, or saw-fish, a curious
shark confounded by an enormous number of otherwise well-read people
with swordfish (_Xiphias_), which is really a huge mackerel with a
keen bony elongation of the upper jaw. Lycophron has recorded that
Hercules, in the course of his superhuman adventures, was swallowed
by a shark (Κάρχαρος), in whose maw he remained for three nights (why
not days as well?), thence being surnamed Trinox, or Trihesperides.
Theophrastus, pupil of Aristotle and Plato, observes that the Red Sea
abounds with sharks, a remark which is as true in our day as it was in
his. The Hercules myth was doubtless founded upon the reports of some
actual witnesses of the voracious habits of these insatiable monsters,
magnified and distorted, as most natural events were in those days,
by superstitious terror. Even down to the present year of grace most
people believe that quite a moderate-sized _squalus_ is capable of
swallowing a man entire, in spite of the abundant ocular evidence to
the contrary afforded them by the specimens in museums, whose jaws,
generally denuded of flesh, give a greater idea of their capacity
than is warranted by the living creature. It is refreshing to find,
however, that even in those dark ages for all kinds of animals such a
judicial writer as Plutarch speaks a good word for this universally
feared and detested fish. He says that in parental fondness, in suavity
and amiability of disposition, the shark is not excelled by any other
creature. Keen as is my desire to see tardy justice awarded to the
shark, I should hesitate to endorse the eminent Greek’s statement
as far as the last two qualities are concerned. My long and close
acquaintance with the _Squalidæ_ does not furnish me with any evidence
in their favour on either of these heads. But in parental affection
they are only equalled by the _Cetacea_, no other fish having, as far
as I am aware, any reluctance to devour its own offspring. Plutarch’s
testimony, however, speaks volumes for his powers of observation and
courage of his opinions, for verily in it he is _contra mundum_.
Oppian, having seen the body of a huge shark in the museum at Naples,
voices in his fifth _Halieutic_ the general feeling in his day by the
following remarkable outburst: “May the earth which I now feel under
me, and which has hitherto supplied my daily wants, receive, when I
yield it, my latest breath. Preserve me, O Jupiter! from such perils
as this, and be pleased to accept my offerings to thee from dry land.
May no thin plank interpose an uncertain protection between me and the
boisterous deep. Preserve me, O Neptune! from the terrors of the rising
storm, and may I not, as the surge dashes over the deck, be ever cast
out amidst the unseen perils that people the abyss. ’Twere punishment
enough for a mortal to be tossed about unsepulchred on the waves, but
to become the pasture of a fish, and to fill the foul maw of such a
ravenous monster as I now behold, would add tenfold to the horrors of
such a lot.”

Olaus Magnus, upon whom we may always depend for something startling
and original both in prose and picture, exhibits to our wondering gaze
an agonised swimmer rising half out of the sea with three ravenous
dog-fish hanging to him as hounds to a stag. In the distance is a huge
ray or skate (one of the same family, by the by) with a human face,
intended probably for a kind of sea angel, towards which wondrous
apparition the despairing wretch stretches forth his appealing arms.
Coming down to mediæval times, Rondolet babbles of a shark, taken
at Marseilles, in whose stomach was discovered the body of a man in
complete armour, a tough morsel to swallow in more senses than one.
He also tells of a shark accidentally stranded near the same port
and lying upon the shore with mouth wide gaping. Into this inviting
portal there entered a man accompanied by a dog. The venturesome
pair roamed about the darksome cavern making all sorts of strange
discoveries, finally emerging into the outer air swelling with
importance at having accomplished so curious a feat. Enlarging upon
this most obvious “yarn,” the learned Dr. Badham gravely remarks that
it greatly strengthens the probability that the fish which swallowed
Jonah was a shark (_Piscis anthropophagus_), but that he is quite
certain it could not have been a whale, from the well-known smallness
of the latter’s gullet. Without commenting upon the Old Testament
story, there can be no doubt whatever that in the cachalot, or sperm
whale, we have a marine monster capable of swallowing Jonah and his
companions of Tarshish at a gulp--I had almost said ship and all,
such is the capacity of that vast cetacean’s throat. But Dr. Badham,
while posing as an eminent authority, further exposes his bountiful
want of acquaintance with his subject by observing that the liver of a
medium-sized shark will yield two tons and a half of oil! As it is a
huge shark that will scale that much altogether, he must have imagined
them to be even better supplied with liver than Mulvaney’s hepatic
Colonel--in fact, all liver and some over.

A very favourite shark fable is to the effect that these fish prefer
negroes to Europeans as food. The inventor of this was probably Père
Labat, a mediæval French li--, I mean historian. After enlarging upon
it for awhile he proceeds to embellish it with the addition that
the shark prefers Englishmen to Frenchmen, because their flesh is
more sapid and juicy from being better nourished. That was probably
before the French acquired their reputation for cookery. Numberless
variants of this fantastic fable are extant, all, without exception, as
baseless as the original yarn from which they have lineally descended.
The annals of the slave-trade have, as might be expected, produced a
plentiful crop of shark stories, of which apparently only the untrue
ones survive. It may perhaps be true that the fiendish flesh dealers
on the “West Coast” really did surround themselves with a cordon of
slaves when they went bathing in the sea, having relays ready to supply
the places of those occasionally snatched away by the sharks. Highly
improbable though, since it would have been so expensive. Little doubt
can attach to the supposition that, with their instinct for offal so
marvellously developed as it is, great numbers of sharks followed
the slave-ships across the seas, from whose pestilential holds the
festering corpses were daily flung. But when Pennant tells us that
the slaving captains used to hang the body of a slave from yard-arm
or bowsprit-end that they might be amused by the spectacle of sharks
leaping twenty feet out of the sea and tearing the bodies to fragments,
he is stating that which is not only grotesquely untrue, but manifestly
absurd. Sharks do not leap out of water. In making this statement I am
liable to be contradicted, as I have been before in the columns of the
_Spectator_, but never, _nota bene_, except upon hearsay, or personal
evidence that had grave elements of doubt about it. Sharks can of
course raise their bodies _partly_ out of water by an upward rush, a
supreme effort rarely made by a naturally and habitually sluggish fish;
but, after an experience among many thousands of sharks under the most
varied conditions in all parts of the world where they abound, I repeat
emphatically that it is impossible for a shark to raise his entire body
out of water and seize anything suspended in the air. And anyone who
has carefully watched one shark seizing anything in the water or on the
surface will find it difficult to disagree with me.

One more “authority” and we will get to firsthand facts. Sir Hans
Sloane, in a very particular account of the shark, remarkable in many
respects for its accuracy, perpetrates the following:--“It has several
ducts on the head filled with a sort of gelly, from which, being
pressed by the water, issues an unctuous, _viscid_, slippery, and
mucilaginous matter, very proper to make the fish very glib to sail the
readier through the water. Most fish have something analagous to this.”
That any fish should secrete a lubricant, at once unctuous and viscid,
for the purpose of accelerating its progress through the limpid element
in which it lives, would be curious indeed were such a contradictory
fact possible, but that Sir Hans Sloane should say so, when the
most cursory acquaintance with his subject would have shown him the
absurdity of such a statement, would be far stranger were it not for
the evidence afforded by the _Phil. Trans._ of the wildest flights of
imagination on the part of savants even down to comparatively recent
times. But probably enough space has been given to ancient fables about
the shark.

The whole family of the _Squalidæ_, with the doubtful exceptions of
the saw-fish (_Pristiophoridæ_) and the _Raiidæ_, or skates, are
scavengers, eaters of offal. As such their functions, though humble,
are exceedingly useful and important; for although the myriads of
_Crustacea_ are scavengers pure and simple, their united efforts would
be ineffectual to keep the ocean breadths free from the pollution of
putrefying matter, since the vast majority of them dwell upon the
bottom of comparatively shallow waters. Now when the body of some
immense sea-monster, such as a whale, is bereft of life and rapidly
rots, it usually floats. Then the office of the sharks is at once
apparent. The only large fish that feeds upon garbage, they are
possessed of an enormous appetite, as well as a digestive apparatus
that would put to shame that of the ostrich, who is popularly credited
with a liking for such dainties as nails and broken glass for _hors
d’œuvres_. The shark is ever hungry, and nothing, living or dead, comes
amiss to his maw; but owing to the peculiar shape and position of his
mouth it is only in rare instances that he is able to catch living
prey, as, for instance, when the dog-fish of our coasts, a common
species of shark hated by fishermen, gets among the nets enclosing a
fine catch of herring or mackerel. Then the gluttonous rascal is in
for a good time. Heedless of the flimsy barrier of twine, he gorges
to bursting-point upon the impounded school, and usually concludes
his banquet by tearing great gaps in the net, incidentally allowing
the rest of the prisoners to escape. It is therefore hardly a matter
for surprise that the despoiled and exasperated toilers of the sea,
when they do succeed in capturing a dog-fish, should wreak summary
vengeance upon him by such fantastic mutilation as their heated fancy
suggests. They have also some curious ideas that the erratic antics
performed by a blind, finless, and broken-jawed dog-fish will frighten
away his congeners; and, as the shark is almost universally disdained
as food, this practice of dismembering them and returning them alive
to the sea, _pour encourager les autres_, seems to the fishermen an
eminently satisfactory one. Unfortunately for their theory, the fact
is, that supposing a sound and vigorous shark to meet with one of
his kind incapable of flight or fight, the hapless flounderer would
be promptly devoured by his relative, doubtless with the liveliest
gratification. The shark has no scruples or preferences. Whatever he
can get eatable (from his liberal point of view) he eats: of necessity,
since he bears within him so fierce a craving for food that he will
continue to devour even when disembowelled, until even his tremendous
vitality yields to such a wound as that. Hence his bad name as a
devourer of human flesh. An ordinary man in the water is, as a rule,
the most defenceless of animals; and even a strong swimmer is apt to
become paralysed with fear at the mere rumour of a shark being in his
vicinity. If there be no shelter near, his nerveless limbs refuse their
office, he floats or sinks with hardly a struggle, and the ravenous
_squalus_ finds in him not only an easy prey, but no doubt a most
savoury morsel. This is no reason for suggesting that the shark prefers
the flesh of _homo sapiens_ to all other provender. As I have already
said, his tastes are eclectic. Nay, it is highly doubtful whether he
has any sense of taste at all. All experiences point to the contrary,
for it is common knowledge that sharks will gobble up anything thrown
overboard from a ship, from a corpse swathed in canvas to a lump of
coal. This omnivorousness has been noticed in an able article published
in _Chambers’s Journal_ many years ago, the writer putting forward
as a plausible reason for it the number of parasites that infest
the stomachs of these fish. In this, however, they are by no means
singular, all fish harbouring a goodly number of these self-invited
boarders, the shark certainly entertaining no more than the average.

The presence of any large quantity of easily obtainable food is always
sufficient to secure the undivided attention of the shark tribe.
When “cutting in,” whales at sea I have often been amazed at the
incredible numbers of these creatures that gather in a short space of
time, attracted by some mysterious means from heaven only knows what
remote distances. It has often occurred to us, when whaling in the
neighbourhood of New Zealand, to get a sperm whale alongside without a
sign of a shark below or a bird above. Within an hour from the time of
our securing the vast mass of flesh to the ship the whole area within
at least an acre has been alive with a seething multitude of sharks,
while from every airt came drifting silently an incalculable host of
sea-birds, converting the blue surface of the sea into the semblance of
a plain of new-fallen snow. The body of a whale before an incision is
made in the blubber presents a smooth rounded surface, almost as hard
as india-rubber, with apparently no spot where any daring eater could
find tooth-hold. But, oblivious of all else save that internal anguish
of desire, the ravening sea-wolves silently writhed in the density
of their hordes for a place at the bounteous feast. Occasionally one
pre-eminent among his fellows for enterprise would actually set his
lower jaw against the black roundness of the mighty carcass, and,
with a steady sinuous thrust of his lithe tail, gouge out therefrom a
mass of a hundredweight or so. If he managed to get away with it, the
space left presented a curious corrugated hollow, where the serrated
triangular teeth had worried their way through the tenacious substance,
telling plainly what vigorous force must have been behind them. But
it was seldom that we permitted such premature toll to be taken of
our spoil. The harpooners and officers from their lofty position on
the cutting stage slew scores upon scores by simply dropping their
keen-edged blubber spades upon the soft crowns of the struggling fish,
the only place where a shark is vulnerable to instant death. The weapon
sinks into the creature’s brain, he gives a convulsive writhe or two,
releases his hold and slowly sinks, followed in his descent by a knot
of his immediate neighbours, all anxious to provide him with prompt
sepulture within their own yearning maws.

At such a time as this the presence of a man in the water, right in
the midst of the hungry host, passes unnoticed by them as long as he
is upon the surface and in motion. Among the islands, while engaged in
the “humpbacked” whale fishery, the natives were continually in and
out of the water alongside where the sharks swarmed innumerable, but
we never saw or heard of one being bitten. And some of _those_ sharks
were of the most enormous dimensions--approaching a length of thirty
feet and of a bulk almost equal to one of our whale-boats. With that
unerring instinct for spoil characteristic of the sharks, they begin to
congregate in these seas almost contemporaneously with an attack upon
a whale by whale-fishers. Now, one of the most frequent experiences
in this perilous trade is that of a “stove” boat, necessitating a
subsequent sojourn in the sea unprotected--sometimes for hours. Under
such circumstances--and they have many times fallen to my share--I
am free to confess that I have always had a curious feeling about my
legs as if they were much too long, and whenever anything touched
them a sympathetic thrill of apprehension would run up my spine; but
my legs are still of the usual length. Nor did I ever hear of a man
being attacked in the water at such times. In fact, it is an article of
faith with whalemen that sharks have sufficient intelligence to know
that the human hunters of the whale are busily providing a feast for
them, and that therefore a truce is then rigidly observed between them;
for, although the ravenous creatures cannot refrain from attempting
to sample the blubber _in situ_, their opportunity arrives when the
mountainous mass of reeking meat, stripped of its external coating of
fat, is cut adrift from the ship’s side and allowed to float away.
Then do they attack it in their thousands, and in an incredibly short
time reduce it to a cleanly picked skeleton, for even their prowess
is not equal to devouring the enormous framework of bone. But what
they are capable of in the way of feeding may be judged from the fact
that a humpbacked whale of about eighty tons in weight, which sank,
after we had killed him, in about ten fathoms of water and which we
were unable to raise for six hours for want of suitable gear, was so
reduced in size by the time we lifted him to the surface again as not
to be worth towing to the ship. In those latitudes, _i.e._ among the
South Pacific Islands, are, I believe, to be found the largest sharks
in the world, certainly the largest of those voracious kinds that so
ably fill the office of sea-scavengers. Very large specimens of the
basking shark, some nearly thirty feet long and of much greater girth
than the ordinary ones, have been found in our own seas, but these
unwieldy creatures are as harmless as whales, and quite as timid. There
is a very circumstantial account in _Nature_ of several years ago of a
curious shark caught at Taboga Island, Gulf of Panama, by the crew of
the Royal Italian corvette _Vettor Pisani_. When accurately measured
it was found to be 8.9 metres long, and its greatest girth 6.5 metres.
The mouth of this monster was at the point of its snout instead of
beneath it, but the teeth were rudimentary and covered with membrane.
So harmless was it that it afforded harbourage within its mouth to
several _Remora_, a curious hanger-on of the shark family, of whom more
presently. Dr. Günther classifies this very queer fish as _Rhinodon
typicus_. Sharks of the size I have mentioned as abounding in the South
Pacific have often seven rows of teeth ranked behind each other. Only
the first row were erect, the others lay flat as if ready to replace a
sudden loss of those in use. But, after watching their operations upon
pieces of “kreng,” I am bound to say that swallowing a man whole, even
by the largest of them, appears to me an utterly impossible feat.

Another peculiarity of the shark is that their colossal bodies are
built upon a framework of cartilage, not bone. This may possibly
account for their complete recovery from the most fundamental
injuries. I once caught an eight-feet-long shark in the North Atlantic
whose appearance suggested nothing out of the common. But, having
a desire to make one of those useless articles dear to sailors,
a walking-stick of a shark’s backbone, I went to the trouble of
extracting the spine. I found to my amazement that in the middle of it
there was not only a solid mass of bone of over a foot long, but it was
at this place quite double the normal thickness. Further investigation
revealed the fact that at some period of his career this creature had
been transfixed by a harpoon which had torn out, nearly severing his
body in two halves. Several of the ribs were re-knit and thickened in
the same way. This splendid recuperative power renders the shark almost
invulnerable, except, as before noticed, to a direct severing of the
brain, or such a radical dismemberment as lopping off the tail.

Slothfulness is a distinctive feature of all the sharks. They are able
to put on a spurt at times, but want of energy characterises them all.
This habit reaches its climax in the _Remora_, to which allusion has
already been made. As if in pursuance of a widely held opinion that
lazy people are the most prolific inventors, this small _squalus_ has
evolved an arrangement on the top of his head whereby he can attach
himself to any floating body and be carried along without effort on
his part. All the functions are easily performed during attachment,
and nothing short of doing damage to the fish will dislodge him.
It is fairly well known that the Chinese and East African folk have
utilised the _Remora_ for catching turtle in a most ingenious way.
More energetic than any other sharks are the saw-fish, whose snouts
are prolonged into a broad blade of cartilage, which is horizontal
when the fish is swimming in a normal position, and has both its edges
set with slightly curved teeth about an inch apart. The end of this
formidable-looking weapon is blunt and comparatively soft, so that it
is quite incapable of the feats popularly attributed to it of piercing
whales’ bodies, ships’ timbers, etc. It attacks other fish by a swift
lateral thrust of the saw beneath them, the keen edge disembowelling
them. Then it feeds upon the soft entrails, which are apparently the
only food it can eat, from the peculiar shape of its mouth. It has an
enormous number of small teeth, sometimes as many as fifty rows in one
individual, but they are evidently unfit for the rough duties required
of teeth by the garbage-eating members of the family.

Another peculiarity which differentiates the _Squalidæ_ from all other
fish, and would seem to link them with the mammalia, is the way in
which they produce their young. But here arise such diversities as to
puzzle the student greatly; for some sharks are viviparous, bearing
fifteen sharklets at once, that play about the mother in the liveliest
manner, and are cared for by her with the utmost solicitude. At the
approach of danger they all rush to the parent and hurry down her
throat, hiding in some snug chamber till their alarm has subsided,
when they emerge again and immediately recommence their gambols. The
pretty little blue and gold _Caranx_ (pilot-fish) that is so faithful
a friend and companion to the shark also hides at times in the same
capacious retreat. That this is a fact cannot be disputed, since sharks
have often been caught and cut open, and the lively prisoners taken
from within. Upon several occasions I have witnessed this, and I once
kept a family of a dozen for over a week in a tub of water, feeding
them on scraps, until some busybody gave them to the cat and made
her very unwell. I have also seen the young ones and the pilot left
behind when a shark has been caught, their frantic leapings upward at
their departing protector being quite a moving sight. Other sharks are
ovoviviparous, laying eggs over the hatching of which they watch and
afterwards care for the young as tenderly as do the others. Another
species pack their eggs in a sort of pouch as the skates do. This
envelope contains all the nourishment necessary to the well-being of
the young until they are able to provide for themselves, but the parent
has no further concern with them. As instances of the intelligence
of the shark many well-authenticated stories might be told did space
permit, but two must suffice. While lying in the harbour of Tamatave
every device we could conceive was put in practice in order to catch
some of the sharks with which those waters abounded, but none were
successful, for they carefully avoided all bait attached to lines
strong enough to hold them. And the well-known habit of the “thresher”
shark (_Alopecias vulpes_), of hunting with the killer-whale (_Orca
gladiator_), assisting these furies to destroy a whale and afterwards
amicably dividing the spoil with them, has been enlarged upon many
times. Its absolute certainty does not admit of a doubt.



XVII

FLYING-FISH CATCHING AT BARBADOS


Among the many divers methods of garnering the harvest of the sea,
one of the most interesting and peculiar is the _Exocetus_ fishery
of Barbados. Notwithstanding the incredible numbers of Flying-fish
(_Exocetus volitans_) that crowd every tropical sea, Barbados is the
only place where a systematic fishery of them has ever been established
for commercial purposes. This is the more strange when the ease with
which they may be taken, and the pleasant conditions under which the
fishery is carried on, is considered, while the succulent delicacy of
the fish is certainly a thing to remember. Familiar as the appearance
of these wonderful little creatures is to ocean travellers, very
little is generally known with regard to their habits, haunts, and
mode of life. They are usually the recipients of much misspent pity.
Relentlessly pursued by the albacore, bonito, and dolphin, they seek
the air in shoals, only to be gaily annexed by hovering birds, or to
fall gasping upon the deck of some passing ship. Their fate seems
a hard one; but who pities their prey? They in their turn pursue as
relentlessly and persecute as ruthlessly the smaller fish; and so the
balance is held as truly as nature ever holds it where man does not
interfere.

The most common and widely distributed variety of the flying-fish is
_E. volitans_, whose range is world-wide between the limits of about
thirty-five degrees north and thirty degrees south, though they are
most plentifully found within the tropics. They are usually from six to
twelve inches in length, body nearly quadrangular, colour of the head
and back blue, abdomen silvery, lower lobe of the tail one-half longer
than the upper. Some have no teeth, while others are well furnished;
and naturalists are unable to agree as to whether they are different
varieties, as they are in all other respects identical. The pectoral
fins, or wings as they might well be called, are nearly as long as the
fish, folding neatly and compactly into the sides of the body while the
fish is in the water. The ventral fins are small in this species, and
do not appear to be used as wings, merely serving to balance and guide
the fish in the air. A very common error made in natural histories
where this fish is mentioned is in the statement that it does not fly.
“Its supposed flight is nothing more than a prolonged leap; it cannot
deviate from a straight line, and cannot rise a second time without
entering the water.” This, briefly, is the sort of thing one meets
with in text-books where reference is made to this fish.

The simplest way of dealing with it is the Professor’s method of
answering the query of the French Academy whether their definition of
a crab was correct. The story is so well known that it does not need
repetition. As the result of personal observation extending over a
good many years, I assert that the Exocetus _does fly_. I have often
seen a flying-fish rise two hundred yards off, describe a semicircle,
and meeting the ship, rise twenty feet in the air, perpendicularly,
at the same time darting off at right angles to its previous course.
Then, after another long flight, when just about to enter the water,
the gaping jaws of a dolphin emerging from the sea gave it pause, and
it rose again, returning almost directly upon its former course. This
procedure is so common, that it is a marvel it has not been more widely
noticed. A flying-fish of mature size can fly a thousand yards. It does
not flap its fins as a bird, but they vibrate, like the wings of an
insect, with a distinct hum. The only thing which terminates its flight
involuntarily is the drying of its fin membranes, and their consequent
stiffening.

A marvellous provision of nature is apparent in the economy of this
fish. Its swim-bladder can be inflated so as to occupy the whole cavity
of the abdomen. Another membrane in the mouth is inflated through
the gills. These two reservoirs of air form an excellent substitute
for the air-cells within the bones of birds, and have the additional
advantage of being voluntary in their action.

The only other species of flying-fish which is sufficiently distinct
to call for notice is _E. nigricans_, locally known as ‘Guineamen.’
They often exceed eighteen inches in length, and weigh two or three
pounds. In these the ventral fins are also very large, giving the fish
the appearance of a huge dragon-fly as it darts through the lucent air.
The markings of the body are black instead of blue, while the fins are
black with a transverse band of silver.

Another strange thing about the natural histories that I have been
able to consult is that no idea seems to be formed of where and how
these fish spawn. Being met with all over the ocean, where its profound
depth precludes all idea of their visiting the bottom, the locality of
their breeding-places has puzzled the savants. There can, however, be
no doubt that they deposit their ova in the massive banks of _Sargasso
bacciferum_, or Gulf-weed, which is met with in such vast quantities
as to impede a vessel’s progress through it. Through the pleasant
groves and avenues of these floating forests, the young fry in millions
disport in comparative security, while finding abundant food among the
myriad lower forms of life that abound there. Of course, this remark
can only apply to the Atlantic. Not having had opportunities enough of
observation, I am unable to say where they spawn in the other oceans
they frequent. On the coral reefs of the Leeward Islands and the sandy
cays of the Caribbean Sea, I have often amused myself by catching the
young fry thrown up with piles of Gulf-weed on the beach, and seen
masses of the spawn, like huge bunches of white currants, entangled
among its close-knit fronds.

Barbados, situated in the heart of the north-east Trades, is one of
the favourite haunts of the flying-fish. Its steep shore-lines afford
the blue depths which the flying-fish loves, and permit it to range
very near to land. Thus the fishermen rarely go more than ten or
twelve miles from home. When this industry was first commenced by the
Barbadians, or what led to its establishment, I have been unable to
discover; but it certainly has been for many years the mainstay of a
large part of the population, and the source whence the most popular
food known on the island is derived. There are (or were) about two
hundred boats engaged in the fishery. Nowise notable for grace of form
or elegance of rig, they are substantial undecked vessels, of from five
to fifteen tons capacity, built in the roughest manner, and furnished
in the most primitive way. The motive power is a gaff-mainsail and
jib, and a couple of sweeps for calms. They are painted a light blue,
as nearly approaching the hue of the sea as may be, and every care is
taken to make them noiseless.

The fleet leaves the “canash” (harbour) before daybreak, each skipper
taking his own bearings, and making for the spot which he thinks
will furnish the best results. As the gorgeous tropical dawn awakes,
the boats’ peaks are drooped, luffs of sails are hauled up, and the
fishermen get to business. The tackle used is of the simplest kind. A
wooden hoop three feet in diameter, to which is attached a shallow net
with inch meshes; a bucketful of--well, not to put too fine a point on
it--stinking fish; a few good lines and hooks, and a set of granes,
form the complete lay-out. The fishermen are of all shades, from a deep
rich ebony upwards, by fine gradations, to the cadaverous white so
common in the island. Their simple fishing costume is usually one sole
garment--the humble flour or potato sack of commerce, with holes cut in
the bottom and sides, through which to thrust head and arms.

As soon as the boat is hove-to and her way stopped, the usual exuberant
spirits and hilarious laughter are put and kept under strong restraint,
for a single sound will often scare away all fish in the vicinity,
and no more be seen that day. The fisherman leans far over the boat’s
side, holding the hoop diagonally in one hand. The other hand, holding
one of the malodorous fish before mentioned, is dipped into the sea,
and the bait squeezed into minute fragments. This answers a double
purpose--it attracts the fish; and the exuding oil forms a “sleek” or
glassy surface all around, through which one can see to a great depth.
Presently, sundry black specks appear far down; they grow larger and
more numerous, and the motionless black man hanging over the gunwale
scarcely breathes. As soon as a sufficient number are gathered, he
gently sweeps the net downwards and towards the boat withal, bringing
it to the surface by drawing it up against the side. Often it will
contain as many fish as a man can lift; but so quietly and swiftly
is the operation performed, that the school is not startled, and it
very often happens that a boat is filled (that is, seven or eight
thousand fish) from one school. More frequently, however, the slightest
noise, even a passing shadow, will alarm the school; there is a flash
of silvery light, and the water is clear, not a speck to be seen.
Sometimes the fleet will return with not one thousand fish among them,
when prices will range very high, until next day, when, with fifty or
sixty boats bringing five or six thousand each, a penny will purchase a
dozen.

Occasionally, in the midst of a good spell of fishing, the school
will vanish, and a crowd of dolphin, albacore, or bonito make their
appearance. Then the sport changes its character. Lines are hastily
unrolled, a living flying-fish is impaled on the hook and trolled
astern, seldom failing to allure an albacore or some other large fish,
varying perhaps from twenty to two hundred pounds weight. On one
occasion, when I had the pleasure of a cruise in one of the boats,
we had very poor sport with the flying-fish, only taking about five
hundred by noon. Suddenly the few that had been feeding quietly
around us fled in all directions, breaking the water with a sound
like a sudden rain-storm, and we were aware of the presence of a huge
albacore. The skipper shouted gleefully: “By king, sah, him de bigges’
albacore in de whol’ worl’.” He certainly was a monster; but there was
little time to admire his proportions. He promptly seized our bait;
and the fun commenced. For over an hour this giant mackerel towed us
where he would; and when for a moment the pace slackened and we touched
the line, he was off again as hard as ever. Right through the fleet he
towed us, and finally yielded to our united efforts in the middle of
Carlisle Bay, amongst the shipping. We could not hoist him on board,
and so had recourse to the expedient of passing a double bight of the
line round his tail and towing him into the harbour. Great was the
excitement on the quay, and willing hands not a few worked the crane
wherewith we lifted him. He scaled four hundred and seventy pounds,
the heaviest albacore on record in Barbados. Peddled around the town,
he realised a much larger sum than a boat-load of flying-fish would
have done; and so the sable skipper was well content with his morning’s
work.



XVIII

UNCONVENTIONAL FISHING


Enthusiastic anglers have, I believe, been heard to declare with
emphasis that they would rather catch no fish at all than return with
a full creel inveigled in an “unsportsmanlike” way. Of course, ideas
of what constitutes sport vary almost with the individual, since like
the rubric--(with red edges, please)--sporting canons are susceptible
of private interpretation. But if the ultimate object of fishing be
the gratification of catching fish, my stupidity baulks at the notion
of an angler, enthusiastic or stolid, preferring to be unsuccessful
rather than to succeed by the exercise of a little personal ingenuity,
whether it be unconventional or canonical. What can be more pathetic,
for instance, than to see a perfectly-equipped sportsman, whose outfit
has made a terrible hole in a £20 note, watching with simulated
indifference outwardly, but black envy clawing his liver, some grimy
urchin with string and stick grassing fish after fish, while he is
unable to get a rise? Perhaps, however, my point of view is unfair,
because one-sided. For while it has many hundreds of times been my
lot to either catch some fish or go without a meal, which certainly
quickened my interest in the sport, I have seldom had the pleasure of
fishing merely for amusement. Although never a professional fisherman,
and therefore a hater of nets as reducing the joy or success to the
level of scavenging, I have from a very early age, and in nearly every
part of the world washed by the sea, taken a hand at fishing from deep
personal motives, and always on unconventional lines.

My first introduction to the stern delights of sea-fishing was in a
Jamaican harbour when I was thirteen years old. Having been shipwrecked
I was for the time by way of being a juvenile beachcomber, but I had
plenty of good-natured darky chums. Four of them took me out one day
in their canoe barracouta-fishing. Now this fish is a sort of sea-pike
which sometimes reaches four feet in length, and for his fierceness
is more dreaded in the West Indies by bathers than the much maligned
shark. His principal food is small fish, although he is not dainty.
In order to imitate as nearly as possible the flight of his usual
prey, it is customary for four darkies to man a canoe, get well out
to sea during the early morning calm, and then paddle furiously for a
few hundred yards at a time, towing a small mackerel at the end of a
stout line. On this occasion I held the line. I thought it glorious
fun; but suddenly I saw a bar of silver leap into the air, followed
instanter by my sudden exit from the canoe. I had a turn of the line
round my hand, a trick of inexperience. There was a good deal of noise
and excitement, during which the dugout capsized and spilled her crew
around, while the big fish did his best to tow the light craft away
from us; but in some mysterious scrambling fashion we all embarked
again. By this time the ’couter was very tired, allowing us to haul
him up alongside and take him aboard quite peaceably. Then hey for the
beach, borrow a truck, and peddle the prize around town at so much a
pound. But they wouldn’t take me any more.

A good deal of promiscuous fishing of an unsatisfactory kind was added
to my youthful experiences before I reached home, some of it only to be
recalled with many pangs. After a long, weary pull in the sweltering,
tropical evenings, to drop upon some ghoulish reef-spur and break hook
after hook in the rugged coral branches until no more remained, and we
must needs return hungry and dispirited--these are not pleasant things
to remember. But the following year I made my first long voyage, and
on the passage out got an experience that makes my finger-tips tingle
to-day. With envious eyes I had watched the mate, as from the end of
the flying jibboom he had vainly tried to cozen some bonito (a sort of
exaggerated mackerel) that were accompanying the ship into the belief
that a shred of white rag with which he was flicking the water was a
flying-fish. Naturally, I burned to show that I could succeed, and no
sooner had he come in to take the sun than I was out along the boom
like a rat to take his place. There was a fresh breeze blowing, and
as the ship heeled and plunged the line blew far away to leeward in
a graceful curve which only permitted the rag to touch the wave-tops
occasionally. I trembled so with excitement that I could not have kept
my perch, but that my legs were jammed in between the jib guys and the
boom. I had not been there more than five minutes when a splendid fish
sprang twenty feet into the air and swallowed my bait on the wing. I
hauled for dear life, scarcely daring to look below where my prize
hung dangling, a weight I could only just manage to pull up. But I
succeeded at last, and grabbed him to my panting breast. There wasn’t
time to get scared at the contract I had on my hands; I just hung on
while his tremendous vibrations benumbed my body so that I could not
even feel that he was actually chafing all the skin off my ribs. At
last, feeling my strength almost gone, I plunged him into the folds
of the flying-jib, which was furled on the boom, and laid on him. In
this way I succeeded in overcoming his reluctance to stay with me,
and eventually I bore him on board in triumph, not even dashed by the
effective ropes-ending I got for soaking the jib in blood from head to
tack. After that memorable capture I was simply crazed with fishing.
Even in calms, when predatory fish such as dolphin, barracouta, bonito,
or albacore hang around listlessly and are considered quite uncatchable
by seamen generally, I have managed to deceive them and obtain that
great desideratum, a fresh mess for all hands. But coming home round
the Cape, when in the strength of the Agulhas current, the wind failed,
and the mate got out the deep-sea lead-line. In orthodox fashion we
passed it forrard and dropped the long plummet into the dark depths,
with two or three stout hooks, baited with lumps of fat pork, fastened
to it. When we hauled it in each hook was burdened with a magnificent
cod, and a scene of wild excitement ensued. All the watch improvised
tackle of some kind--a piece of hambro’ line, a marlinespike for
sinker, and one hook was the usual outfit--and in a couple of hours the
deck was like Billingsgate. All sorts and conditions of fish apparently
lived down there, and all most accommodating in their appetite.

In Manila Bay the natives taught me how to catch a delicious fish like
a more symmetrical John Dory, with a most delicate line of twisted
grass and a tiny hook. The bait was rice, boiled to a paste; and so
successful was I that all hands enjoyed a hearty supper of fish every
evening, being the only crew in the harbour where such a thing was
known. On that passage home, however, I caught a Tartar. I was fishing
off the boom for bonito, when suddenly the school closed up into
a compact body and fled. I thought it strange, but went on playing
my bait. Suddenly out of the cool shade beneath the ship rushed an
albacore, grabbing my bait before I had time to lift it out of his
way. He wasn’t very large for his kind, but my gracious, he was all I
wanted. I actually tried to haul him up at first, but I couldn’t begin
to lift him; so I was fain to play him until we were both exhausted. He
was eventually secured at last by the simple expedient of lowering a
man overside who slipped a bowline round him, by which he was hoisted
on board. He weighed 120 lb., but seemed as strong as a buffalo. Some
years after, when out flying-fishing in Barbados one morning, we hooked
an albacore that towed our boat, a 5-tonner, for over six miles before
he gave in. We towed him alongside into the carenage and had him
hoisted on to the wharf by a crane. He weighed 470 lb. The albacore is
almost, if not quite, identical with the tunny of the Mediterranean and
the tuna of California, and anybody who thirsts for greater sport than
the noblest salmon can give, or even the magnificent tarpon, should try
what the tuna can do for them.

But of all the queer fish I ever caught, one that I came across in
Tonala River, Mexico, was the strangest. It was just inside the bar,
and I had been sailing the boat smartly to and fro, catching a kind of
caranx that loves a fleeting silvery bait. Sport becoming quiet, and
wind falling, I packed about a pound of fish on my largest hook and
let it trail while I smoked the cigarito of laziness. I hoped to get
a good-sized fish in this way before returning on board. Suddenly my
line tautened out, zip, zip--this was no ordinary fish. After about
twenty minutes of thoroughly exhausting work I caught sight of a dirty,
brownish mass away down under water. Redoubling my efforts, up came my
fish--an alligator ten feet long. He looked perfectly devilish, and for
the moment I was really scared. Hooks were scarce, however, so calling
upon the darky with me to stand by with a running bowline, I hauled
away till I got his hideous snout up out of the water, which I doubt
whether I should have done but that he came for me with a rush at the
last. Joe dropped the noose over his upper jaw most neatly, getting
it tightened between his ugly yellow teeth so that he couldn’t bite
it. Just then a breeze sprang up, and making the rope fast to a thwart
we kept away for the ship, the great saurian’s jaws banging against
the boat’s planks and ripping large splinters out of them. We got him
aboard safely, to find “he” was a female, with over a bushel of eggs in
her body and a strange collection of rubbish in her stomach.



XIX

DEVIL-FISH


Among such primitive peoples as still survive, not the least curious
or notable trait which universally obtains is the manner in which all
things uncanny, or which they are unable to comprehend, are by common
consent ascribed to the Devil. Not to _a_ devil as one of a host,
but _the_ Devil _par excellence_, as though they understood him to
be definable only as the master and originator of whatsoever things
are terrifying, incomprehensible, or cruel. Many eminent writers
have copiously enriched our literature by their researches into this
all-prevailing peculiarity, so that the subject has, on the whole, been
well threshed out, and it is merely alluded to _en passant_ as one of
the chief reasons for the epithet which forms the title of this chapter.

Now it will doubtless be readily admitted that sea-folk retain, even
among highly civilised nations, their old-world habits of thought
and expression longer than any other branch of the population. This
can scarcely be wondered at, since to all of us, even the least
imaginative, the eternal mystery of the ocean appeals with thrilling
and ever-fresh effect every time that we come into close personal
relations with it.

But when those whose daily bread depends upon their constant struggle
with the mighty marine forces, who are familiar with so many of its
marvels, and saturated with the awe-inspiring solemnity which is the
chief characteristic of the sea, are in the course of their avocations
brought suddenly in contact with some seldom-seen visitor of horrent
aspect arising from the gloomy unknown depths, with one accord they
speak of the monster as a “devil-fish,” and the name never fails to
adhere.

So that there is, not one species of devil-fish, but several, each
peculiar to some different part of the world, and inspiring its own
special terror in the hearts of mariners of many nations. Of the
Devil-fish that we in this country hear most about, and have indelibly
portrayed for us by Victor Hugo, the octopus, so much has been written
and said that it is not necessary now to do much more than make
passing allusion to the family. But the Cephalopoda embrace so vast
a variety that it seems hardly fair to single out of them all the
comparatively harmless octopus for opprobrium, while leaving severely
unmentioned the gigantic _onychoteuthis_ of the deep sea, to say
nothing of many intermediate cuttle-fish. From the enormous mollusc
just mentioned--which is, not unreasonably, credited by seamen with
being the largest fish in the ocean--to the tiny loligo, upon which
nearly all deep-water fish feed, hideousness is their prevailing
feature, and truly appalling of aspect some of the larger ones are,
while their omnivorous voracity makes them veritable sea-scavengers, to
whom nothing comes amiss, alive or dead. And while having no intention
to underrate the claims of the octopus to his diabolical prænomen
on account of his slimy ugliness and unquenchable ferocity, I feel
constrained to put in a word for that little-known horror of the deep,
the ten-armed cuttle-fish, which, like some fearful creation of a
diseased brain, broods over the dark and silent profundities of ocean,
extending his far-reaching tentacles through an immense area, touching
nothing living to which they do not cling with an embrace that never
relaxes until the victim is safely deposited within the crushing clutch
of the great parrot-like mandibles guarding the entrance to that vast
and never-to-be satisfied stomach. Nothing that the morbid imagination
of man has ever pictured can surpass in awful appearance the reality of
this dire chimæra, which, notwithstanding, has undoubtedly an important
part to play in the mysterious economy of the sea. “He dwelleth in the
thick darkness”; for, not content with the natural gloom of his abode,
he diffuses around him a cloud of sepia, which bewilders and blinds his
victims, rendering them an easy prey to the never-resting tentacles
which writhe through the mirk, ready at a touch to hold whatever is
there, be it small or great.

But the strangest fact connected with this mighty mollusc is, that
while from the earliest dawn of literature numberless allusions more or
less tinged with imagination have been made to it, modern science has
only very recently made up its mind to accept as a fact its existence
at all. So many indisputable proofs have, however, been forthcoming
of late years, both as to the size and structure of the gigantic
cuttle-fish, that it has now taken its place among the verities of
natural history as indisputably as the elephant or the tiger. It
has also been firmly established that the sperm whale or cachalot
(_Physeter macrocephalus_) finds his principal, if not his only, food
in these huge gelatinous masses while ranging the middle depths of the
ocean, and that their appearance on the sea surface is generally due to
this whale’s aggression.

To pass on, however, to a much less known “devil-fish.” In the long
fish gallery at the splendid Natural History Museum at South Kensington
there is a small specimen, some eighteen inches across, of a fish whose
habitat is the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

There it attains enormous proportions, and is, not without reason,
known to all the frequenters of those waters as the “devil-fish.”
When a youngster I was homeward bound from Sant’ Ana with a cargo of
mahogany, and when off Cape Campèche was one calm afternoon leaning
over the taffrail, looking down into the blue profound, on the watch
for fish. A gloomy shade came over the bright water, and up rose a
fearsome monster some eighteen feet across, and in general outline more
like a skate or ray than anything else, all except the head. There,
what appeared to be two curling horns about three feet apart rose one
on each side of the most horrible pair of eyes imaginable. A shark’s
eyes as he turns sideways under your vessel’s counter and looks up
to see if any one is coming are ghastly, green, and cruel; but this
thing’s eyes were all these and much more. I felt that the Book of
Revelation was incomplete without him, and his gaze haunts me yet.
Although quite sick and giddy at the sight of such a bogey, I could not
move until the awful thing, suddenly waving what seemed like mighty
wings, soared up out of the water soundlessly to a height of about six
feet, falling again with a thunderous splash that might have been heard
for miles. I must have fainted with fright, for the next thing I was
conscious of was awakening under the rough doctoring of my shipmates.
Since then I have never seen one leap upward in the daytime. At night,
when there is no wind, the sonorous splash is constantly to be heard,
although why they make that bat-like leap out of their proper element
is not easy to understand. It does not seem possible to believe such
awe-inspiring horrors capable of playful gambolling.

At another time, while mate of a barque loading in the Tonala River,
one of the Mexican mahogany ports, I was fishing one evening from the
vessel’s deck with a very stout line and hook for large fish.

A prowling devil-fish picked up my bait, and feeling the hook, as I
suppose, sprang out of water with it. I am almost ashamed to say that
I made no attempt to secure the thing, which was a comparatively small
specimen, but allowed it to amuse itself, until, to my great relief,
the hook broke, and I recovered the use of my line, my evening’s sport
quite spoiled.

These ugly monsters have as yet no commercial value, although from
their vast extent of flat surface they might be found worthy of
attention for their skins, which should make very excellent shagreen. A
closer acquaintance with them would also most probably divest them of
much of the terror in which they are held at present.

Another widely known and feared devil-fish has its headquarters in the
Northern Pacific, mostly along the American coast, especially affecting
the Gulf of California. This huge creature is a mammal, one of the
great whale family, really a rorqual of medium size and moderate yield
of oil. Like the rest of this much-detested and shunned (by whalers)
branch of the Cetacea, it carries but a tiny fringe of valueless
whalebone, and therefore, as compared with the sperm and “right”
whales, its value is small. Yet at certain seasons of the year the
American whaleships often think it worth their while to spend a month
or so bay-whaling in some quiet inlet unknown to, and uncared for by,
the bustling merchantman.

In these secluded spots the California devil-fish, mussel-digger,
grey-back, and several other aliases not fit for publication, but all
showing how the object of them is esteemed by his neighbours, may
sometimes be taken at a disadvantage, the cows languid just before or
after parturition, and the bulls who escort them too intent upon their
loves to be as wily as is their wont.

But only the _élite_ of the Yankee whalemen, dexterous and daring as
are all the tribe, can hope to get “to windward,” of the diabolically
cunning giants whom they abuse with such fluent and frequent flow of
picturesque profanity. It is a peculiar characteristic of this animal
that it seems ever on the alert, scarcely exposing for one moment its
broad back above the sea-surface when rising to spout, and generally
travelling, unlike all its congeners, not upon, but a few feet below,
the water. For this reason, and in this fishery alone, the whalers arm
themselves with iron-shafted harpoons, in order to strike with greater
force and certainty of direction a whale some distance beneath the
surface. A standing order, too, among them is never by any chance to
injure a calf while the mother lives, since such an act exposes all and
sundry near the spot to imminent and violent death.

Neglect of this most necessary precaution, or more probably accident,
once brought about a calamity that befell a fleet of thirteen American
whaleships which had been engaged in the “bowhead” fishery among the
ice-floes of the Arctic Pacific. In order to waste no time, they
came south when winter set in, and by common consent rendezvoused in
Margharita Bay, Lower California, for a month or two’s “devil-fishing.”

The whales were exceedingly abundant that season, and all the ships
were soon busy with as much blubber as they could manage. The ease with
which the whales were being obtained, however, led to considerable
carelessness and forgetfulness of the fact that the whale never
changes its habits. One bright morning, about three weeks after the
opening of the season, the whole flotilla of fifty-two boats, four
from each ship, had been lowered and were making their way as rapidly
as possible to the outlying parts of the great bay, keeping a bright
look-out for “fish.” Spreading out fan-wise, they were getting more and
more scattered, when about the centre of the fleet some one suddenly
“struck” and got fast to a fish. But hardly had the intimation been
given when something very like panic seized upon the crowd. In a moment
or two the reason was apparent. From some cause, never definitely
known, a harpooner had in striking at a large cow whale transfixed her
calf at her side with his harpoon, killing it immediately. The mother,
having quietly satisfied herself that her offspring was really dead,
turned upon her aggressors like a veritable demon of destruction, and,
while carefully avoiding exposure of her body to attack, simply spread
devastation among the flotilla. Whenever she rose to the surface, it
was but for a second, to emit an expiration like the hiss of a lifting
safety-valve, and almost always to destroy a boat or complete the
destruction of one already hopelessly damaged.

Every blow was dealt with an accuracy and appearance of premeditation
that filled the superstitious Portuguese, who formed a good half of
the crews, with dismay--the more so that many of them could only guess
at the original cause of what was really going on. The speed of the
monster was so great, that her almost simultaneous appearance at points
widely separated made her seem ubiquitous; and as she gave no chance
whatever for a blow, it certainly looked as if all the boats would be
destroyed _seriatim_. Not content with dealing one tremendous blow at a
boat and reducing it at once to a bundle of loose boards, she renewed
her attentions again and again to the wreckage, as if determined that
the destruction should be complete.

Utter demoralisation had seized even the veterans, and escape was the
only thought governing all action. But the distance to shore was great,
and the persistence and vigour of the furious leviathan, so far from
diminishing, seemed to increase as the terrible work went on. At last
two boats did succeed in reaching the beach at a point where it sloped
very gradually. The crews had hardly leaped overboard, to run their
craft up high and dry, when close behind them in the shallows foamed
and rolled their relentless enemy, just too late to reach them. Out
of the large number of well-equipped boats that left the ships that
morning, only these two escaped undamaged, and the loss of the season’s
work was irremediable. Over fifty men were badly injured, and six,
one of whom was the unhappy origin of the whole trouble, were killed
outright. The triumphant avenger of her slain offspring disappeared as
silently as she had carried on her deadly warfare, as far as could be
known unhurt, and with an accumulated hoard of experience that would,
if possible, render her more of a “devil” to any unsuspecting whalemen
who should hereafter have the misfortune to meet with and attack her
than she had proved herself to be already.

Dejected and crippled, the fleet lost no time in getting away from the
spot and fleeing north to San Francisco, there to refit for other and
more profitable fishing grounds.

There are a great many “ower-true” tales told of the prowess of this
wily creature, but the selection that I have made will doubtless
suffice for a fair specimen of what the California “devil-fish” is
capable of when opportunity arises.

The volatile and tuneful negroes of the West India islands have their
own peculiar “devil-fish,” but in this case there is nothing diabolical
in the appearance or vast in the size of the creature. It is, indeed,
a very well-known fish in most tropical waters, and must from its
habits and appearance be closely allied to the hake and pike. Among
seamen generally it is well known as the barracouta, and is especially
plentiful around the New Zealand coast, where a few hours of the
peculiar fishing practised by the Maories will generally reward the
fisherman with a gross or so of fish averaging 10 to 12 lb. each.

It is among the Leeward Islands, however, that the barracouta attains
his largest dimensions, and has inspired the fishermen and boatmen with
such dread of him that, while they hold the universally feared shark in
supreme contempt, the mere rumour of a “devil-fish” anywhere in their
vicinity will bring every nigger within hail scrambling out of the
water in double-quick time.

Whether rightly or wrongly, I have never been able to ascertain by
personal observation, but undoubtedly the fact is that the barracouta
is credited with an infernal propensity for inflicting a nameless
mutilation upon any human being unfortunate enough to get within reach
of him. He is long and narrow, blue-black above, with a silvery-grey
belly, and swift as an arrow. His lower jaw is considerably longer than
the upper, and both are armed with teeth, almost exactly like those
of a dog. From this configuration of the jaws it is unnecessary for
the barracouta to turn on its back, like the shark, when he comes for
you. Silent, straight, swift, and almost invisible in those dark-blue
waters, the first intimation of his presence is often the fatal snap
of those lethal jaws, which leaves the hapless victim beyond hope of
recovery.

Before quitting this portion of the subject a passing reference may
be permitted to a very disheartening occurrence due to the predatory
habits of these fish. At great cost some public-spirited individuals
had stocked the upper reaches of the pretty river Clutha in Otago,
New Zealand, with salmon-fry from ova imported from England. The
incipient salmon flourished until in the course of natural development
they reached the “parr” stage of their career. Then in an evil hour
they journeyed seawards until they reached the estuary of the river.
A school of barracouta had just previously crossed the bar from the
sea, and in their search for living food happened upon the toothsome
innocents from the secure spawning-beds above. Long did the patient
watchers up-country wait, but never more did one of those youthful
salmon return to them. All the money spent was wasted, and all the high
hopes of a plentiful supply of indigenous salmon were frustrated for
years.

There are, of course, many other marine monstrosities to which with
more or less show of reason the satanic epithet has been applied; but
they are very little known or noticed, except within certain narrow
limits. Probably enough has been said to justify simple savages and
almost equally simple-minded seamen in bestowing upon the creatures of
their dread a name which to them embodies all they are able to conceive
of pitiless cruelty, unquenchable ferocity, and unmatchable cunning.



XX

OF TURTLE


By popular consent the rash act of the daring man who first devoured
an oyster has been greatly extolled, but what meed of praise should be
awarded to that dim and distant discoverer who first essayed to break
into and devour the flesh of the armour-clad tortoise or turtle? All
unarmed as he doubtless must have been, except for spear of chipped
flint or charred stick, the mere entry within the _domus_ of the
reptile, even by way of the leathery neck or flank, must have been no
easy feat.

But, once having tasted such good meat, how rapidly the news must have
been spread by our friend! Here was a banquet indeed, ready to hand,
for the acquisition of which none of the ordinary attributes of the
chase were needed. Speed, courage, endurance, cunning, all could be
dispensed with, while even the most unenlightened “salvage-man” would
hardly need the information that it were wise to avoid the front end of
the sluggish creature, with its terrible jaws of keen-edged shell.

Since those far-off days mankind has been faithful in its love for
the genus _Testudo_, whether terrestrial or marine, wherever edible
members of it could be obtained; but when and why the consumption of
turtle-soup became with us a synonym for the highest luxury in the way
of food, and indissolubly associated with the royal hospitality of the
Lord Mayor, is indeed a question to be answered. One may be permitted
to suppose that, during the reign of some more than usually gifted
_cordon bleu_, the grand discovery was made that the peculiar flesh
of this succulent reptile lent itself most amicably and gelatinously
to the wonderful disguise with which it is invested ere it becomes
the dream of the epicure. The pages of ancient Latin writers abound
with descriptions, not only of strange foods, but stranger modes of
preparing them for the table, the mere recital of which to-day is often
sufficient to effectually banish appetite. Among these early recipes
are many for dealing with the flesh of both land and sea tortoises.
According to their light those ancient cooks excelled in curious ways
of dressing turtle, or rather disguising it, for it must be confessed
that turtle-steak _au naturel_ is not of that exquisite flavour to
appeal to the palate like a plain beefsteak or mutton-chop. Good,
wholesome, and tender as it undoubtedly is, it tastes more like veal
with a nuance of fish than anything else in the best kinds; while many
turtles, from feeding upon cuttle-fish, have a decidedly unpleasant,
musky flavour. Few flesh foods pall quicker upon the palate. In most
West Indian coast towns an abundant meal of turtle can be obtained for
the equivalent of sixpence whenever required, but except by those whose
object is to fill up cheaply and quickly, it is little appreciated.

I was once mate of a barque gathering a cargo of mahogany along the
Mexican coast, and while lying at Tonala the supply of fresh beef ran
short. The skipper bought a fine large turtle for a mere trifle from
some fishermen, and rather chuckled at the prospect of getting two
days’ meat for less than the usual price of one. He gave orders to the
worn-out seaman whom, in common with vessels of that class, we carried
as cook, etc., to apportion the joints. At eight bells a procession
of weary-looking men slouched aft, the foremost one bearing a kid of
something. He came to the break of the poop, and as spokesman inquired
for the captain. That gentleman stepped briskly forward, saying, “Well,
what’s up now?” “What d’ye call _that_, sir?” said the man. “_That_,”
said the skipper, giving just a glance at the queer-looking mess in the
kid; “why yer so-and-so idiot, that’s what the Lord Mayor gives about
a guinea a hounce for. Why, only the haristocracy gets a charnce at
’ome to eat the likes o’ that.” “Oh, very well,” said the man; “p’r’aps
you’ll eat it yourself then, sir, since its _so_ ---- good, and give us
what we signed for. We aint crockeydiles to eat shell-fish, shells an’
all.” With that he planted his little tub, with its strange contents,
down on the poop and stalked forward again, followed by his scowling
shipmates. I am bound to admit that there was little room for wonder
that Jack on this occasion preferred _salt horse_ to boiled turtle.

But this is by the way. Of terrestrial Chelones there is an immense
variety distributed over almost the whole land surface of the globe
where the mean annual temperature does not fall below 60°. The flesh of
these reptiles is, with few exceptions, notably that of the American
Terrapin, very lightly esteemed by civilised peoples, and in some
species highly poisonous. A very strange fact concerning land tortoises
is the presence of the largest members of the family upon such widely
separated and inhospitable spots as Aldabra and Agalegas Islands in
the Indian Ocean, and the Galapagos group in the South Pacific. In
these lonely islets--for they are hardly more--enormous specimens of
these strange reptiles crawl sluggishly about, grazing upon the scanty
herbage, secure from all enemies except man, and apparently gifted with
incredible longevity. As far as natural decay is concerned, they would
certainly appear to be unaffected by the flight of time, although one
need not believe unless he wants to the story of the sailor of one upon
whose shell he saw carved the legend, ‘The Ark--Captain Noah; Ararat,
for orders.’ The Galapagans eat them during scarcity of other food, but
do not hanker after them as regular diet. They do, however, prize the
fat oil which some of these reptiles possess in great abundance, and
whenever they catch one and do not need its flesh, they cut a slit in
the leathery skin between the upper and lower shells near the tail and
take a peep within. If the victim be not fat enough for their purpose
they release him, and he shuffles off apparently quite unaffected by
this rough surgery. Indeed, such is the incredible vitality of these
reptiles that they have been known to live for six months after having
their brains entirely removed, and one existed for twenty-three days
after its head had been cut off.

Redi, the well-known Italian surgeon, who made these apparently useless
experiments, states that, upon opening the body of the last-mentioned
tortoise, on the twenty-third day he saw the triple heart beating, and
the blood entering and leaving it. What he hoped to establish by such
cruel doings is not stated by him.

Varieties of land tortoises are exceedingly numerous, and embrace some
very peculiar forms, notably the _Emysaura serpentina_, which is a kind
of compromise between a lizard and a tortoise, lives in and around
Oriental lakes and rivers, and feeds indiscriminately upon small fish,
reptiles, and birds. The _Chelodina Novæ Hollandiæ_ of Australia, with
its long snake-like neck and wide gaping jaws; the _Chelys matamata_,
loving stagnant pools, and adorned about the head and neck with
sprouting fringes like bunches of rootlets, giving it a most uncanny
appearance; and the _Gymnopus_ of African rivers, which feeds upon
young crocodiles, and whose flesh is nevertheless most delicate and
highly prized, and many others, furnish a most interesting study, but
not strictly germane to our subject, which is turtle--the _Thalassians_
or oceanic tortoises, from which alone our supplies are drawn.

Among marine tortoises or turtles there is vastly less variety than
among their congeners of the land. Sir Richard Owen decided that only
five well-defined species are known to exist at the present day,
although the fossil remains of true turtles show that a much greater
range of these varieties existed in prehistoric times. The principal
difference between tortoise and turtle is the shape of the paws,
which in the land varieties are always armed with claws, and have a
strong likeness to the legs of a lizard. In the turtles these clawed
feet become flippers, almost fins, wonderfully adapted for swimming
purposes, but rendering the turtle when on land more helpless and
clumsy in his locomotion than even a seal.

Turtles are true amphibians, although, owing to the extent and
volume of their arbitrary lungs, and perhaps also to their general
sluggishness of habit, they can and do remain under water for a longer
time than any other amphibian, with the exception, perhaps, of the
crocodile. But, like the saurian just mentioned, it is imperative
that they leave the sea periodically for the purpose of laying their
eggs, which they do in loose sand, leaving them to be hatched by the
heat of the sun. It has been authoritatively stated that when the
young turtle first emerges from the egg his shell is not formed, and
that he is white in colour. Perhaps different species may account for
a discrepancy here; but I can only say, that having, for many hours,
along the shores of islets in the Caribbean Sea and around the Gulf
of Mexico, amused myself by digging up turtles’ and crocodiles’ eggs,
breaking them, and sending the lively occupants afloat, I have never
seen either a white or a shell-less one. Of course the shell was not
of the substance one would expect in a full-grown individual, but it
was hard and perfectly formed, while the tiny creature was wonderfully
swift in its movements. Innumerable enemies await the infant turtle,
extending even to his own kind, and but a small percentage of those
hatched are privileged to arrive at maturity. Nevertheless, such is the
fecundity of these reptiles, that their numbers are exceedingly large,
and even where old-established stations for turtle-catching exist, no
diminution of their numbers is ever seen.

Having reached a weight of about twenty-five pounds, they are
thenceforth safe from all enemies except man, and even he gets but
scant opportunity to molest them save when they visit their favourite
beaches for family purposes.

When a lad of thirteen I had the misfortune to be cast away upon one of
the reef-fringed islets in the Bay of Campêche. The vessel became a
total wreck, and we escaped to the islet, finding it bare of everything
but an immense number of boobies and frigate-birds, the beach being
covered with the eggs of the former, and the rocks plentifully
besprinkled with the eggs of the latter. The first night of our stay I
was taking a lonely stroll along the beach--the whole circuit of the
isle could be made under an hour--when I saw a light cloud of sand
rising from the smooth white plain just ahead of me. At first the idea
of an inrush of the sea occurred to me; but going carefully nearer,
I saw an immense black centre to the misty spot, apparently digging
furiously. Hurrying back to camp, I gave the alarm, and three of the
men accompanied me back. Without any difficulty they managed to secure
the creature, which was an enormous turtle weighing not less than 1800
lb. It was rather a tough job turning her over, but once on her broad
back she was helpless, and was speedily towed to camp. Next morning
at daybreak she was butchered, and more than eight hundred eggs, of
which only thirteen were with shells, were taken from her ovary. The
carapace was so large that it made me a good bath. The meat was all
removed and hung up, only the head and tail being left attached to
the shell. Late that afternoon a young Dane, in some foolish freak or
another, must needs go and introduce two of his fingers into the open
mouth of the apparently dead head. Like the action of an iron-shearing
press the jaws closed, taking off the two fingers as clean as possible.
Then another man essayed to cut off the tail, but as soon as the knife
entered the skin the tail curled up and gripped the blade, and it was
nearly an hour before he could withdraw it. So that their vitality must
be little, if any, inferior to that of the land tortoise.

One of the most favoured spots frequented by turtle is, or used to
be, the desolate island of Ascension in the South Atlantic, a barren
volcanic patch belonging to Britain, and, because used exclusively as
a naval depot, entered upon the books of the Admiralty as one of Her
Majesty’s ships. An enormous number of turtle were annually “turned”
there, and preserved in a small lagoon from shipment to shipment. It
was my pleasant privilege to assist at one of these turnings, and I
bear a very vivid recollection of the game. Crouched low behind an
immense boulder one evening about eight o’clock, we could hear a hollow
reverberating murmur of the mighty surf outside, suggesting sleepily
irresistible force. A dazzling wreath of snowy foam, gleaming like
burnished silver, fringed the quiet stretch of glittering sand, which,
gently sloping upward and landward, was bounded by gloomy bastions of
black lava. Beyond that shining semicircle of glowing white lay the
sombre blue-black bosom of the quiet little bay, now heaving gently as
that of a sleeping child. Hither and thither, threading its mysterious
depths, glided spectrally broad tracks of greenish light, vivid, yet
ever brightening and fading, as if of living flame. Presently there
emerged from the retreating smother of spume a creeping something of
no very definite shape, under the glamour of the molten moonlight, but
making an odd shuffling progress inland, and becoming more recognisable
as it rose. Another, and yet another, and still more arrived as the
shining tracks converged shorewards. At last the dark shapes came near
enough for a novice to know them for turtle. Soon the first-comers
reached their limit, and began the work for which they were here. Each
massive reptile, by an indescribable motion of its fore-flippers,
delved into the yielding grit, throwing the spoil behind it and upward
withal until it was enveloped in a misty halo of shining sand. Then
the whole beach was alive with the toiling Chelones and their male
attendants, who shuffled about, emitting curious noises, but whether of
encouragement or affection this deponent sayeth not.

Divers of them came from far--so far that none who have not witnessed
the swift cleaving of their true element by these ungainly monsters
could believe how the wide sweep of those eager flippers devours the
fleeting leagues. In a short time many of the delving turtles had sunk
below the level of the surrounding sand, while some had ceased their
digging and commenced to deposit their eggs. Suddenly we rushed upon
them, and for some minutes the swarming beach was apparently a scene
of wild confusion. Really, the plan of attack was well ordered; and
when the first scurry was over nearly all the visitors were to be seen
wrong side up, waving their flippers deprecatingly. In less than half
an hour the loneliness was again regnant, the victims having been towed
off through a gap in the rocks to a spacious spoilarium in the lagoon
behind, there to await their transit to the goal of most good things,
London town.

While the capture of turtle upon a sandy shore necessarily admits
of but few variations, the pursuit of these reptiles in their
proper element lends itself to many peculiarities. How often does
the ever-hungry sailor, striving wearily to forget his plentiful
lack of tasty eatables while on the look-out of some calm-bound
“wind-jammer,” get a delightful thrill upon seeing the broad shining
back of a sleeping _Spharga_ calmly floating upon the sunlit surface
of the silent sea! Visions of “a fresh mess for all hands” nerve the
watch to desperate efforts in order to quickly free the gig from its
long-disused trammels. Once afloat, there are several ways of securing
the prize. Roughly, the orthodox method is for one hand to “scull” the
boat with one oar over the stern _à la Chinoise_, while one stationed
in the bow may, when near enough, drive a harpoon through the carapace
of the slumberer. Or one may not. And candour compels the statement
that the percentage of successes is not high. If the performer be not
very expert with the weapon--and very few sailors are--the result is
usually a burst of angry jeers from disappointed shipmates, and a few
eddying swirls on the surface whence the awakened turtle has fled in
amazement.

Another way practised most successfully by the amphibious Kanakas of
Polynesia is to slip noiselessly into the water, and, diving beneath
the turtle, grasp the hind flippers with crossed hands. One swift
and dexterous twist places the prize on his back, in which helpless
position he is kept with ease upon the surface until the canoe arrives
and he is transferred to it. Among the coral reefs of the Friendly
Islands turtle-fishing is a highly favoured form of sport, and when the
reptiles are surprised among the tortuous shallow channels between the
reefs or in the almost land-locked lagoons, they rarely escape. Here
it is usual for the fisherman to spring upon the turtle’s back, and,
clutching the fore edge of the shell with both hands, to hang on until
his prize is exhausted and speedily brought to the surface.[1]

But of all the fashions of securing this much-hunted creature, that
followed by the ingenious fisher-folk of the Chinese littoral bears
away the palm. Most voyagers in tropical seas are acquainted with a
peculiar fish, _E. remora_, known generally by the trivial name of
“sucker.” The distinguishing characteristic of this fish is laziness.
Unwilling to exert itself overmuch in the pursuit of food, it has
developed an arrangement on the back of its head exactly like the
corrugated sole of a tennis shoe, and as artificial in appearance
as if made and fitted by the hand of man. When the sucker finds
itself in the vicinity of any large floating body, such as a ship, a
shark, or a piece of flotsam, whose neighbourhood seems to promise an
abundance of food, it attaches itself firmly thereto by means of this
curious contrivance, which permits it to eat, breathe, and perform all
necessary functions while being carried about without any exertion on
its part. It can attach and detach itself instantaneously, and holds so
firmly that a direct backward pull cannot dislodge it without injury
to the fish. The Chinese, who have successfully trained the cormorant
and the otter to fish for them, have taken the remora in hand with the
happiest results. Several good-sized specimens having been caught,
small iron rings are fitted to their tails, to which are attached long,
slender, but very strong lines. Thus equipped, the fishermen set out,
and when a basking turtle is seen, two or three of the suckers are
slipped overboard. Should they turn and stick to the bottom of the
sampan, they are carefully detached by being pushed forward with the
inevitable bamboo, and started on the search again. At last they attach
themselves to the supine turtle. Then the fishermen haul in the lines,
against which gentle suasion the hapless Chelone struggles in vain.
Once on board the lugger, the useful remora is detached, and is at once
ready for use again.

    [1] But the turtle can by no means be kept on the surface until
        it _is_ exhausted. The first act of a hunted turtle is to
        seek the depths.

The same mode of catching turtle is followed by the fishermen of the
East African coast, from Mozambique northward. The coast of Africa has
long been famous for its turtle, and Pliny tells of the Chelonophagi
of the Red Sea, a race of turtle-eaters, who were able to obtain these
creatures of so gigantic a size that they could utilise the carapaces
for roofs to their dwellings and boats for their feeble voyages. Strabo
also alludes to these people; but without accusing either of these
venerable authorities of exaggeration, it is pretty certain that no
such enormous specimens of Chelonia are ever met with in these days.

Tortoise-shell is well known to be furnished by the turtle, the best
by the Hawk’s Bill variety, which supplies the worst flesh, being
exceedingly musky (_Chelone imbricata_). The green turtle (_Chelonée
franche_) is most valuable for food, and attains, with another
well-marked variety (_Spharga Coriacea_), the largest size of all
turtles known. This latter has been sometimes taken on the coast of
Britain, several of large size (700 to 800 lb. weight) having been
recorded as caught in our seas.



OTHER SKETCHES



XXI

‘HOVELLING’[2]


What particular law of etymology has been evoked to produce the queer
word standing at the head of this paper I am unable to imagine. Like
Topsy, I “’spects it growed,” but my own private opinion is that it is
the Kentish coast way of pronouncing the word “hovering,” since the
hovellers are certainly more often occupied in hovering than in doing
anything more satisfactory to themselves.

However strange the word may sound in a landsman’s ears, it is one of
the most familiar to British seamen, especially among our coasters,
although the particular form of bread-winning that it is used to
designate is practically confined to the Kent and Sussex shores of the
English Channel, having its headquarters at Deal. Briefly, a “hoveller”
is a boatman who follows none of the steady orthodox lines of
boatmanship, such as fishing, plying for passengers, etc., but hovers
around the Channel, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, a pilot, a
wrecker, or if a ghost of a chance presents itself, a smuggler.

    [2] Whilst this reprint was in the press the writer received
        an ingenious explanation of the word from Mr. Charles
        Fleet, an old resident on the Sussex coast. He derives it
        from “Hoviler,” a sort of mounted militia raised during
        the Commonwealth, and so named from the “hovils” (leathern
        jackets) they wore.

Naturally, the poor hoveller does not bear the best of characters.
The easy unconventional fit of his calling settles that for him as
conclusively as the cryptic term “general dealer,” so often seen in
police-court reports, does a man’s status ashore, but with far less
reason. It must be admitted that he is not over-scrupulous or prone to
regard too rigidly the laws of _meum_ and _tuum_. The portable property
which occasionally finds its way into his boat is, however, usually
ownerless except for the lien held by the Crown upon all flotsam,
jetsam, and ligan; which rights, all unjust as he in common with most
seafarers consider them to be, he can hardly be blamed for ignoring.

But when the worst that can be alleged against the character of the
hoveller has been said, a very large margin of good remains to his
credit, good of which the general public never hears, or hearing of it,
bestows the praise elsewhere.

They are the finest boatmen in the world. Doubtless this seems a large
claim to make on their behalf, but it is one that will be heartily
endorsed by all who know anything of the condition of the English
Channel in winter, and are at the same time in a position to make
comparisons. And it must also be remembered that the harvest of the
hoveller is gathered when the wintry weather is at its worst, when
the long, hungry snare of the Goodwins is snarling and howling for
more and more of man’s handiwork to fill its for ever unsatisfied
maw, when the whole width of the strait is like a seething cauldron,
and the atmosphere is one weltering whirl of hissing spindrift; while
the hooting syrens, shrieking whistles, and clanging bells from the
benighted and groping crowd of unseen vessels blend their discord
with the tigerish roar of the storm in one bewildering chaos of
indescribable tumult.

Then, when the fishermen have all run for shelter, and even the hardy
tugboats hug some sheltering spit or seaward-stretching point, the
hoveller in his undecked clinker-built lugger, some thirty-five feet
long and ten feet beam, square-sterned and sturdy-looking like himself,
may be seen through the writhing drifts of fog and spray climbing from
steep to steep of the foaming billows like a bat hawking along some
jagged cliff.

She shows just a tiny patch of brown sail, a mere shred, but sufficient
to keep her manageable with her head within five or six points of the
wind and her stub-bow steadily pointed to the onrush of the toppling
seas. Every other wave sends a solid sheet of spray right over her,
hiding her momentarily from view, but the row of squat figures sitting
motionless along the weather gunwale heed it no more than as if they
were graven images. And thus they cruise, hungry and thirsty, their
eyeballs burning with sleeplessness, throughout the weary hours of
night and day, with every sense acutely strained and every moment
balanced upon the very scythe-edge of death. Long practice makes them
keen of sight as the wailing gulls overhead, and small indeed must be
the floating object that escapes their unremitting scrutiny.

Homeward-bound sailing ships from oversea ports are what they
principally lust after. The skippers of these vessels after their long
absence from home usually feel more or less anxious as they near the
narrows. The Trinity pilots in their trim cutters have their cruising
ground definitely fixed for them by authority, extending no further
west than Dungeness. But long before that well-known point, with its
dazzling spear of electric radiance reflected from the gloomy pall of
cloud above, is reached, the homeward-bound skipper’s anxiety becomes
almost unbearable if the weather be thick and he has as yet made no
landfall to verify his position. Then the sudden appearance of a
hoveller emerging from the mirk around, and his cheery hail, “D’ye
want a pilot, sir?” is heavenly in its relief. For these men, although
regarded with no small contempt and disfavour by the aristocracy of
pilotage licensed by the Trinity Brethren, know the Channel as a man
knows the house he has lived in for years, know it at all times,
whether in calm or storm, the blackness of winter midnight, the
brilliance of summer noon, or the horrible uncertainty of enshrouding
fog.

The hoveller can hardly be blamed if he take full advantage of the
foulness of the weather to drive as hard a bargain as he can with the
skipper of a hesitating homeward-bounder for the hire of his invaluable
local knowledge. Full well he knows that when the skies are serene and
the wind is favourable he may tender his services in vain, even at the
lowest price. No master, in these days of fierce competition, dare make
an entry of a hoveller’s fee in his bill of expenses, except under
pressure of bad weather, on pain of being considered unfit for his
post, and finding himself compelled to pay the charge out of his own
scanty salary.

So that fine weather to the hoveller spells empty pocket and hungry
belly. The long, bright days of summer bring to him no joy, though
thoughtless passengers lounging at their ease upon the promenade deck
of some palatial steamship may think his lot a lazy, lotus-eating way
of drowsing through the sunny hours. Neither would they imagine from
his wooden immobility of pose and the unbending appearance of his rig
what fiery energy he is capable of displaying when opportunity arises.

On one occasion, when I was a lad of eighteen, we were homeward bound
from Luzon to London. We sighted Corvo dimly through the driving mist
of a fierce westerly gale, before which we bowled along at the rate of
300 miles a day. For nearly five days we fled thus for home, seeing
nothing except an occasional dim shape of some vessel flitting silently
past. Not a glimpse of the heavenly bodies was vouchsafed us whereby to
fix our position, nor did we haul up once for a cast of the deep-sea
lead. At last by “dead reckoning,” we were well up Channel, but the
steady thrust of the gale never wavered in force or direction. The
mist grew denser, the darkness more profound. By the various sounds of
foghorns and whistles we knew that many vessels surrounded us, and that
it was scarcely less dangerous to heave-to than to run. Presently, by
the narrowest of shaves, we missed running down a light outward-bound
barque, the incident leaving us with yards swinging every way and a
general feeling of uncertainty as to what would happen next. Suddenly
out of the gloom to leeward came the hoarse cry, “Want a pilot, sir?”
It was the sweetest music imaginable. All eyes were strained in the
direction of the voice. In a minute or two the well-known shape of a
hovelling lugger became visible, under a double reefed lug, rushing
towards us. He rounded to by our lee quarter, and in reply to our
skipper’s query, “How much will you take me up to the Ness for?” came
the prompt answer; “Ten pounds.” “Ten devils!” yelled our skipper;
“why, you adjective hovelling pirate, it’s only about ten minutes’
walk.” “Better get out ’n walk it then, cap’n,” said the boatman;
“can’t take you up for no less to-night.” The usual haggling began, but
was cut short by the hoveller, who shouted, “So long, cap’n, time’s
precious,” giving at the same time a pull at his tiller which sent the
boat striding a cable’s length to leeward. “All right,” roared the old
man, “come aboard, and be dam’d t’you,” and at the word the lugger was
back alongside again. Launching his dinghy was out of the question in
such a sea, for at one moment the boat was level with our shearpoles,
the next she seemed groping under our keel. “Heave us a line, cap’n,”
shouted he, and the mate hurled a coil of the lee main-brace at him.
Quick as a wink he had cast a bowline round his waist with the end.
“Haul away aboard,” he cried, and as his boat rose on the crest of a
big sea he sprang at the ship and missed her. But he had hardly time
to disappear in the smother of foam, before he was being dragged up
the side like a bale of rags, and almost instantly tumbled on deck.
Springing to his feet, he dashed the water out of his eyes, and as
calmly as if nothing unusual had happened, said to the man at the
wheel, “Put your hellum up, m’lad, square away the main-yard, haul aft
the mainsheet,” and as if by magic the weather seemed to fine down and
a great peace reigned. “Steady as she goes, m’lad,” said he to the
helmsman, with a peep at the compass; and then turning to the skipper,
in a wheedling voice, “You couldn’t spare my mates a bit o’ grub, I
s’pose, sir, and a plug of terbacker?” “Oh yes,” replied the captain
with alacrity. “Stooard! get a couple o’ pieces of beef out o’ the
harness cask, and some bread in a bag, for the boatmen. I’ll go down
and get them some tobacco.” Already the lugger was closing in on us
again, and by the time the longed-for provisions were at hand, she was
near enough for them to be hove on board. A further plea for a drop of
rum could not be entertained, as we had none, but well pleased with
the result of their visit the rovers sheered off and were swallowed up
in the encircling darkness. Exactly three-quarters of an hour later we
rounded the Ness and hove-to for the pilot, the lugger popping up under
our lee again as if she had been towing astern, and receiving back the
lucky hoveller with his fat fee in his pocket.

Years after, in a much larger ship, of which I was second mate, we
were bound right round the coast to Dundee, and got befogged somewhere
off Beachy Head. As on the previous occasion, the wind was strong, and
blowing right up Channel. A hoveller came alongside and made a bargain
to take us up to Dungeness for ten pounds. By the time he had scrambled
on board, our captain began to wonder whether he might be available to
pilot us right round to Dundee, not feeling very confident in his own
knowledge of the navigation of the East coast. So he put the question
to our visitor, who replied that he himself was not qualified, and
indeed would not be allowed to take us if he were. But he could arrange
to have a North Sea pilot out in Deal Roads awaiting us on our arrival
there. This was too much for our skipper’s power of belief. That
cockle-shell of a lugger able to outstrip his 1400-ton ship, with this
breeze behind her, so much in forty miles! It couldn’t be done. “Never
mind, sir,” said the hoveller, “you make my money thirteen pound for
the whole job, and if you have to wait in the Downs for your pilot, you
needn’t pay me more than ten.” “It’s a go,” answered the captain, fully
satisfied.

Hailing his boat, the Dealman gave his instructions. Crowding on all
sail, away she went, sheering in for the shore, and soon was lost to
sight in the mist. Meanwhile we also set all the sail she could carry,
and made a fairly rapid run to the Downs. Sure enough, there was a
galley punt awaiting us, the men lying on their oars, and the pilot
with his bag lounging in the stern. The skipper said not a word as he
handed our hoveller his full money, but he looked like a man who had
been badly beaten in a contest of wits.

But if one would see the hoveller at his best, it is when some hapless
vessel has met her fate on the Goodwins during a gale. The silent
suck of those never-resting sands makes the time of her remaining
above water very short, without the certainty of her rapid breaking
up under the terrible battering of the mighty seas. Gathering around
the doomed fabric, like jackals round a carcass, the hardy beachmen
perform prodigies of labour. The work which they will do, wrenching out
cargo and fittings, and transferring them to their boats, while the
straining, groaning hull threatens every moment to collapse beneath
their eager feet, and the bitter tempest fills the air with salt
spray, to say nothing of an occasional breaker which buries wreck and
wreckers alike beneath its incalculable mass of foaming water, cannot
be adequately described--it must be seen to be realised. As if mad
with desire, they tear and strain and heave like Titans, apparently
insensible to fatigue. For they know that at any moment their prize may
vanish from beneath them, and with her all their hopes of gain. Weather
has for them no terrors. Let but the cry of “wreck” go up, and though
even the lifeboat be beaten back, the hoveller will get there somehow,
not under any pretence of philanthropy, but in the hope of earning
something, though it may be gratefully recorded that they never shirk
the most terrible risks when there is a hope of saving life.

Such sudden and violent transitions from utter idleness to the most
tremendous exertion as they continually experience do not seem to harm
these toughened amphibia. Plenty of them do of course “go under,” in
more or less distressing circumstances, but though their own tiny
circle laments their loss, their tragic fate makes no more disturbance
than the drop of a pebble outside of it. There are plenty to take
their place. For even in so precarious a calling as hovelling there
are grades. The poor possessors of only a four-oared galley hope to
rise to the dignity of a lugger, so that they may quit scrabbling along
the shores and get out to where, if the dangers are indefinitely
increased, the chances of a good haul now and then are proportionately
greater.

Another phase of their calling is the rescue of vessels who from
various causes are drifting to destruction. Many a craft reaches port
in safety with a couple of Dealmen on board, that but for their timely
help would never have been heard of again. I know of one case where a
large French _chasse-marée_, with a cargo of wine, lost her foremast
off the Varne shoal. In its fall it crippled the skipper and one of
the crew. Another one was frost-bitten, and the remaining two, both
boys, were so paralysed with fright that they were quite useless. So
in the grey of the New Year’s dawn, with a pitiless snowstorm raging
from the N.W., she was drifting helplessly along the edge of the sand.
Two hovellers saw her plight at the same time, and each strained
every nerve to get up to her first, for she was a prize well worth
the winning. At last they drew so near to her that it was anybody’s
race. But the head man of the foremost lugger tore off his oilskins,
sea-boots, and fear-nought jacket, and plunging into the boiling sea
actually battled his way to her side, climbing on board triumphantly,
and so making good his claim. It is satisfactory to be able to add that
the dauntless rascal was completely successful in bringing the _Trois
Frères_ into Dover, and shared with his four mates £120 for salvage
services. Not a bad twenty-four hours’ work, but for nearly two months
before they had earned less than five shillings per man per week, and
they all had wives and families dependent upon them.

Yet with all their hardships, they are free. No man is their master,
for they always sail on shares, varied a little according to each
individual’s monetary stake in the boat. And doubtless the wild life
has a certain charm of its own, which goes far to counterbalance its
severity and danger. “An’ anyhow,” as one of them said to me not long
ago, “ourn’s a bizness the bloomin’ Germans ain’t likely to do us out
of. There ain’t many left like that, is ther?”



XXII

THE LOSS OF THE ‘ST. GEORGE’

AN INCIDENT OF THE ANGLO-GERMAN WAR OF 19--


“Things is lookin’ pretty bad for the British sailor, Bill, don’t ye
think?”

“Well, fur’s I c’n see, they can’t look much wuss, Joe. I know one
thing: ’f I c’d a only got a billet ashore--even a bloomin’ dus’man’s
job--I’d a never even smelt salt water agen. W’y, there ain’t no
Henglish ships now ’ceptin’ fur the flag. But I will say this much; I
never seen it quite so bad’s this afore.”

The speakers were the only two British seamen before the mast on
board the four-masted steel sailing ship _St. George_, of Liverpool,
bound from London to Melbourne with a general cargo of immense value,
and nearly five thousand tons measurement. In the square of the main
hatch was carefully stowed forty tons of blasting and rifle powder
received at the “red buoy,” Gravesend, and earning a very high freight.
The master was a German of Rostock, Friedrich Schwartz by name,
who for the wage of £10 per month was filling this onerous position
to the exclusion of an Englishman, who thought such a post deserved
better pay. The chief officer, unfortunately for him, was a Liverpool
man, with a little money of his own, who could therefore afford to
cut rates as well as the Germans. Every other member of the ship’s
company, except the two worthies above-mentioned and a couple of
_Warspite_ lads, was a “ja-for-yes man” as Jack impartially denominates
Scandinavians and Teutons alike.

When the _St. George_ left the East India Docks, the managing director
(she belonged to a single-ship company whereof none of the shareholders
knew anything of the shipping business) chuckled to himself to think
how cheaply she was manned, and hurried back to Billiter Street to
calculate his commission on the outward passage. The political outlook
was very gloomy. Germany was growing more insolently aggressive every
day, and the omniscient Kaiser smiled grimly as he read the latest
report of the British Registrar-General of Seamen. He was naturally
delighted to see how completely the British nation was handing over
the control of its vast mercantile marine to foreign officers and
seamen, all of whom were trained naval men, and capable of immediately
utilising any sudden opportunity of dealing Britain a deadly blow.

At the time alluded to at the opening of this story, the _St. George_,
under a towering mountain of canvas, was bowling rapidly through the
north-east Trades towards the Line. Needless, perhaps, to say that the
Britons on board were having an uncomfortable time of it. The mate was
made to feel at every turn that he was an interloper. Although his
country’s flag sheltered him, Captain Schwartz’s contempt for England
and all that belonged to her was freely vented in his hearing. And all
conversation on board, as well as most of the orders, being in German,
Mr. Brown and his four compatriots felt that they were indeed aliens
on sufferance. Like the majority of their countrymen, they knew no
language but their own, which in the present instance was as well for
their small remainder of mental peace. The two A.B.s had at least one
advantage over the mate, they could talk to each other, though every
“workup” job was sorted out to them, their treatment being just the
same as the two boys.

So the days dragged wearily on until one morning a streak of smoke
on the northern horizon gradually resolved itself into a splendid
armoured cruiser that overhauled the _St. George_ as if she were at
anchor instead of logging twelve knots easy. With a bird-like swoop the
flyer sheered up under her quarter, showing the white ensign at her
standard. Up went the good old “blood and guts,” of Old England at the
_St. George’s_ peak in reply, and to the incisive sea-queries from the
cruiser’s bridge, Mr. Brown shouted back the information required as to
port of destination, length of passage, etc. Then came ringing across
the startling message, “War is declared between England and Germany.
But you’re all right, I hope. There is little danger to be apprehended
from German warships. Still, be careful, and crack on all you know if
you do see a suspicious-looking craft. Good-bye,” and the majestic
vessel sheered off at top speed for the westward.

“Ha, mein verdammt Englischer schweinhund, dot ju are, hou ju feel
yoost now, hein? Gott bewahr; ju haf komm to ein ent mit yourselluf,
aind id? Ve schou ju somedings now, und tond ju forkedd id.” Thus the
triumphant skipper, accompanying his jeers at the mate with a horrible
grimace at the brilliant flag floating proudly overhead, and an
emphatic expectoration on the white deck. Then, excited beyond measure,
he rushed to the break of the poop and yelled a summons in German for
all hands. Aft they came, tumbling over one another in their eagerness,
and ranged themselves before the saloon doors. On his lofty platform
above their heads the rampant skipper raved, stamped, gesticulated,
and finally burst sonorously into song, “Deutschland, Deutschland,
über alles,” all hands, with the miserable exception of the handful of
English, joining vociferously in his pæan of triumph.

Thenceforward, a further development of scurvy treatment took place.
The mate was no longer allowed access to the chronometer, or permitted
to “take the sun,” or work up the ship’s position. The log-book was
also taken from him, the young third mate given charge of his watch,
and he was made to take his meals alone in his berth. Neither he nor
the two English A.B.s were allowed to come on the poop any more, so
that they were completely in the dark as to the position of the ship
within hundreds of miles, as from never seeing the compass they could
only guess generally how she was steering. Spiritlessly the luckless
islanders wearily worried on from day to day, the butt of all their
exulting shipmates. When the Kaiser’s birthday came round, and the ship
was put _en fête_, they were bidden sarcastically to rejoice over the
change of affairs. But with the hoisting of an immense German flag at
the peak they lost all control of themselves, bursting into a fury of
passionate tears, mingled with curses upon their enemies. They were
immediately set upon by the whole crowd, and after a few minutes of
desperate fighting were overpowered, heavily ironed, and flung into
the forepeak on the coals, bruised from head to heel. Many and bitter
were their regrets as they lay on their easeless couch. Scarcely less
venomous were their curses on the fatuous folly of the rulers who had
suffered such an event as this to become possible than on their brutal
gaolers. For as Joe muttered scornfully, “Tain’t ’sif they hain’t been
told of it. It’s been drummed into their yeers long ’nough, God knows,
’n all they ever sed wuz, ‘Oh, yore ezaggeratin’. The pussentidge uv
furriners in the British mercantile marine ain’t anythin’ like so high
az you say.”

“’Seems ’bout’s high’s we want, anyway,” said Bill dreamily, while the
poor mate ground his teeth but never said a word.

What puzzled them all greatly was the length of time the ship seemed
to be getting into cold weather. From the time the cruiser spoke them,
when they were in about 15 degrees N., was now more than a month, and
with the winds they had carried they should have been running their
easting down in about 40 degrees S. But they were still in tropical
weather. At last the mate broke a long silence by saying: “I believe
he’s making for Walvisch Bay. ’Shouldn’t wonder if there’s some German
warships there or thereabouts. I only hope he _is_ trying to get there,
an’ one of our cruisers sights him. It’s about our only chance.”

Several days passed and still they were kept close prisoners in the
black, stifling hole, starving on a trifle of hard tack and water, and
sinking deeper every day into a very gulf of despair. At last, to the
practised senses of the captives, it was evident that something was
afoot. She had hove to. On deck the Deutschers were in trouble. As the
mate had surmised, they were bound for Walvisch Bay, carrying every rag
they could crowd on her, seeing that every hour they were out of port
now on this unusual course was brimful of danger. The skipper scarcely
ever left the deck, and his eyes were bleared and burning with
constant glaring through his glasses for a possible pursuer.

H.M.S. _Scourge_, 22-knot cruiser, was on her passage to Simon’s Town
with urgent stores for the squadron off that station. Her orders
were--“All possible dispatch,” yet, when the look-out one afternoon
reported a heavily-rigged four-master standing to the eastward in
latitude twenty-three degrees south, her commander felt justified
in altering her course sufficiently to bring him in touch with this
phenomenon. The stranger was making grand headway under all canvas
to a heavy south-east Trade, but the speed of the cruiser was fully
two knots to her one. In about an hour, therefore, from sighting her,
the _Scourge_ ranged sufficiently near to inquire by signal for the
usual information. But the merchantman was so slow with his answers
that before two sets had been hoisted the vessels were within hail
of each other. “Where are you bound to?” roared the commander of the
cruiser. A dramatic pause succeeded, in which all eyes on board both
ships were centred upon the skipper of the _St. George_. At last the
reluctant answer came, “Walvisch Bay.” “The devil you are,” said
the naval captain; “I must have a closer look at you.” A couple of
abrupt orders, and a well-manned cutter, with the first-lieutenant in
charge, was bounding across the few fathoms of sea towards the _St.
George_, with instructions to ascertain the bottom facts of this
mystery. Arriving alongside, the officer sprang on board, and, quickly
mounting the poop, confronted Captain Schwartz, whose face was a
study of conflicting emotions. Already the lieutenant had noticed the
Teutonic appearance of everybody on deck, and the captain’s working
face deepened the suspicions aroused. “I wish to examine your papers,
sir,” said he quietly to the scowling skipper. “Vat for, sir?” was the
almost expected reply. For all answer the lieutenant strode to the
side and blew a small whistle, which brought six of his boat’s crew
bounding on board in an instant. “Now, sir,” he said, turning again to
the skipper, “my time is precious, and my orders precise. Kindly lead
the way into your cabin, and produce your documents, or I must search
for them without you.” The baffled Teuton still hesitating, the naval
officer, with a slight gesture of impatience, beckoned his men aft.
They came on the jump, but one of them stepping forward in advance of
his fellows, saluted, and said, “Beg pardon, sir, but we just heard
some voices forrard a-cryin’ ‘Help!’ and it sounded’s if they wus
cooped up somewheres.” A dark frown settled upon the officer’s face as
he replied, sternly, “Three of you go forrard and search; the others
come below here with me.” But before he stepped into the companion-way
he blew two sharp notes on his whistle, a signal which was immediately
answered by the cruiser sending another cutter alongside with a
fully-armed crew.

In the meantime the search aft had revealed the ship’s papers, which
showed of course that the _St. George_ had cleared from London for
Melbourne. The skipper’s private journal in German was also impounded.
With the documents under his arm the lieutenant returned on deck, just
as the search party forward emerged from the fore-peak bringing their
hapless countrymen to light. Orders were immediately issued to place
all the foreigners under arrest, but the skipper was nowhere to be
seen. A search for him was ordered at once, but the words had hardly
been spoken when, with an awful roar, the whole beautiful fabric was
rent into a myriad fragments; an immense volume of dense smoke rose
sullenly into the clear air, and the sparkling sea was bestrewn with
the mangled remains of friend and foe alike.

The desperate skipper had chosen, rather than give up his ill-gotten
prize, to fire the great store of powder under the main-hatch,
involving himself and his captors in one awful fate. A great wave
raised by the gigantic explosion made even the stately cruiser roll and
stagger as if in a heavy gale, but all her boats were in the water in a
trice making search for any trace of life among the wreckage.

Not one was saved, and with a company of heavy-hearted men she resumed
her passage bearing the terrible news of the loss of the _St. George_.



XXIII

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MERCHANT SERVICE


At intervals, ever since the issue of the last report of the
Registrar-General of Shipping and Seamen, there have been appearing
in the press items of comment upon the significant tables set forth
in that most interesting document. But one feature has been painfully
evident in all of them--the inability to appreciate, from a merchant
seaman’s point of view, the underlying lessons that report contained.

This, though much to be regretted, can scarcely be wondered at when we
remember the limitations, the inarticulateness, of the class referred
to. Here it may be as well to state that in what follows the terms
“ship,” “officer,” and “seaman,” are to be understood as referring
solely to the Mercantile Marine, unless otherwise stated--a necessary
warning, since eight out of every ten landsmen always confound the two
services, mercantile and naval.

First in importance, as well as in interest, to seamen is the question
of personnel. It is much to the credit of the Navy League that it
is wide awake to the dangers besetting this country through the
increasing numbers of foreign seamen manning our ships. But it does not
appear as if even the Navy League fully realises to what extent our
cargo-carriers have been handed over to the foreigner. A very extended
acquaintance with the various trades is absolutely necessary in order
to understand the reason why the percentages shown in the Board of
Trade return do not reveal the true state of affairs. As they stand,
the percentage of foreign able-seamen to British (excluding Lascars)
in foreign-going sailing ships is shown to be as high as 48.6. Taking
steam and sailing ships together, the percentage falls to 35.5, for
reasons which will presently appear. Now, one would naturally expect
(what proves indeed to be the case) that our coasters and fishermen
would be almost entirely British. And we may go a step further, and
declare that these hardy fellows are the fine flower of our seamen,
as stalwart and capable as ever British seamen were. With them may
be classed the fishermen, hovellers, and beachmen generally of our
coasts, who, though not classed as seamen, may fearlessly challenge
comparison with any seafarers in the wide world. Among all these the
foreigner finds little or no room wherein to thrust himself, nor is
there apparently much danger that he ever will. Next to these in order
of immunity from foreign interference come the great steamship lines,
other than those trading to the Far East, whose crews are almost
exclusively composed of Lascars and Chinese, with British officers.
To the former belong such great undertakings as the “Cunard,” the
“Union,” the “Castle,” and the “Pacific” Companies. In these splendid
vessels the Britisher tenaciously holds his own, in whatever part of
the ship you seek him. The food is good, pay is fair, accommodation
is comfortable, and a high state of discipline is maintained.
Consequently, these ships are eagerly sought after by the better class
of seamen, who will be found making voyage after voyage in the same
vessel, or at least in the same line.

But having thus briefly dismissed the almost exclusively British-manned
branches of the Mercantile Marine, we are met by a vastly different
state of affairs at once.


OCEAN TRAMPS

Go to one of the shipping offices when a sailing ship is “signing on,”
and watch the skipper’s contemptuous look as he scrutinises a steamboat
man’s discharge just handed to him. “I want sailors, not navvies,” he
shouts, as he scornfully flings it back. Therefore a “sailor man,”
gives them a wide berth if he can. And then the conditions of life on
board these tanks effectually bar decent Britons out of them. The few
that are found in them generally belong to that unhappy class of men
who get drunk at every opportunity, and must go when their money is
done in whatever presents itself. They would sail in a sieve with the
devil for a skipper. The rule is, however, for these vessels to be
manned by a motley crowd of what Jack calls “dagoes,”--Latins of all
kinds, the scum of the Levant, with a sprinkling of Scandinavians,
but not many. It speaks volumes for the skill and pluck of the
officers unfortunate enough to be responsible for such ships, that so
few casualties occur in comparison with their number; for it is no
uncommon thing for a tramp of a thousand tons or so to be wallowing
along through a pitch-black night, the whole watch on deck consisting
of the officer in charge and three men, no one of whom is able to
understand the other. One is at the wheel, one is on the look-out, and
the other “stands by to never mind.” The kennel below is filthy,--a
parti-coloured halo round the reeking grease-pot that serves for a lamp
eloquently testifying to the condition of the atmosphere. The food is
in keeping with the rest, where provided by the ship; but in a large
number of cases these are “weekly boats,”; that is, the men are paid
by the week and “find” themselves,--an arrangement that lends itself
to some extraordinary developments of mixed messes and semi-starvation
among such a strange medley of races. I knew a weekly boat once that
signed in London for a Mediterranean voyage, but was chartered in
Smyrna to take pilgrims to Jeddah. The fellows cut their purchases very
fine, as it was for the trip, but owing to their stores being stolen
by the starving pilgrims, they were in such a plight when they left
Suez that it was a miracle they did not share the fate of fifty-five
of their passengers, who resigned their pilgrimage on the passage, and
found rest among the sharks. Other things happened, too, more true than
tellable, which would almost serve as an appendix to the _Inferno_.
These vessels are mostly owned by single-ship companies, a dozen or
so of which will be managed by some enterprising broker, who makes a
fortune, although the shareholders rarely see dividends. Under such
conditions of ownership there is no room for wonder that these tramps
are what they are.


MUCH CANVAS AND FEW MEN

Many intelligent people are possessed by the idea that steam is rapidly
driving the sailing-ship from the sea. If they would only take a stroll
round the docks they would alter their views. For certain trades and
some kinds of cargo the steamer, let her be built, found, and manned
as cheaply as the ’cutest single-ship manager can contrive, cannot
possibly compete with the sailing-ship. And of late years it has been
found possible to add enormously to the size of sailing-ships without
increasing the cost of their working to any extent. Four-masted ships
have become plentiful, carrying an area of canvas which would have
seemed incredible to the seamen of fifty years ago, accustomed as
they were to the flying clippers of Britain and America. These vessels
are as handsome as the tramp steamer is hideous, their graceful lines,
taut spars, and spidery rigging all lending themselves to beauty. But
in these, as in the tramps, the foreigner is paramount. The ghastly
farce (to a sailor) of labour-saving appliances has enabled the owners
to reduce the crew lists to such an extent that in the majority of
these ships all hands are barely enough for an efficient watch. The
only change which has been found workable in the management of the
larger sails above the courses is an American invention. It consists
of splitting a sail in half horizontally, and was long applied to the
topsails only, their unwieldy depth having always made them exceedingly
difficult to handle. With the growth in size of ships and sails the
top-gallant-sails have been also halved, and this alteration is now
very general. But the comparative ease with which these sails can be
handled, as compared with what used to be the case, has naturally
tempted officers anxious to make a passage to “hang on,” longer than
they used to, depending upon their ability to get sail in quickly
at the last moment. That was all very well when a crew was carried
sufficient in numbers to do what was required of them. But when eight
such struggling monsters as a 3000-ton ship’s to’gallant-s’ls are have
to be furled at once in a gale of wind by eighteen men (supposing all
hands are called), it is quite another matter. Few experiences are
more awful than those gained by being on a yard with a handful of men
trying to master two or three thousand yards of No. 1 canvas in what
sailors call a “breeze of wind,”--off the Horn, for instance, in a
blinding snowstorm, with the canvas like a plank for stiffness, and
rising far above your head in a solid round of white, into which you
vainly try to force your half-frozen fingers.


THE DUTCHMAN

There is a great temptation to enlarge upon this theme, but it must be
sternly suppressed, my object being solely to show how a scanty crew
list adds to the miseries of the sailor. Not only so, but the food is
so uniformly, unpardonably bad that British seamen will not put up
with it a day longer than they can help. They get out of it the first
opportunity that presents itself, and the Dutchman, as Jack impartially
designates Germans and Scandinavians alike, comes in. In such vessels
as I have been describing he is found in a proportion of at least 85
per cent. And not only as common seamen, but as officers, masters,
mates, and tradesmen. In these ships are to be found the 180 captains,
512 mates, 637 boatswains, 1304 carpenters, 277 sailmakers, and 2321
cooks and stewards of foreign birth admittedly sailing in British
vessels, according to the Registrar-General. A very potent reason
for this is to be found in the peculiar conditions of discipline, or
rather want of discipline, obtaining on board these ships. Bad food,
short-handedness, and miserable quarters make British Jack, never too
amenable to discipline, kick over the traces. When he does, which is
not infrequently, what remedy has his superior officer? Practically
none. Handcuffs are carried, but with an all too scanty crew already
that coercive measure is barred. American methods of “booting” and
“belaying-pin soup” are also out of the question, for Jack knows enough
of the Merchant Shipping Act to make him a dangerous customer to
assault. Personal violence towards a seaman on the high seas renders
an officer liable to lose his certificate, even if he gets a present
advantage in the sudden civility of the person assaulted. Again, the
scanty number of officers carried in proportion to the crew is a
powerful argument against the use of physical force. So dangerous a
weapon ought never to be used at sea unless it is sure to be effectual.
And yet, failing personal violence, there are no means by which an
officer can enforce obedience to his orders. Refusal to obey orders,
often accompanied by the foulest abuse, is one of the commonest of
experiences at sea in British sailing ships, for which gross outrage
the master’s only legal remedy is to note the offence in the official
log, and on the ship’s arrival in port get a magistrate to sanction
fining the offender a portion of his pay varying from two days’ to a
month’s wages.

Between British seamen anxious to leave the sea and captains eager
to ship Dutchmen, the miserable remnant of our countrymen manning
“deep-water” ships steadily dwindles. Those that remain are mostly like
Sterne’s starling, or else they are hopeful youngsters who, having
served their time in some singly-owned hooker, and passed for second
mate, sail before the mast in hope of picking up a berth abroad. They
cannot live at home in idleness wearing away the dock roads looking
for berths which are all filled up by those possessing influence of
some kind with the owners, so they put in their time as A.B.s and live
in hope. This, however, is not all. Not content with supplying our
forecastles, the Dutchmen kindly furnish us with officers as well.
I have been before the mast in a ship, the _Orpheus_ of Greenock,
where the chief mate was a Liverpool man, who, with a Welsh A.B. and
myself, represented the entire British element on board. Her crew
numbered twenty-four all told. Doubtless I shall hear that this was
a marvellously exceptional case, but I beg to differ--it is all too
common.


THE “BOY”

Another curious feature of the manning of our ships is especially
noticed by the Registrar-General--the way in which young British seamen
leave the sea-life at the earliest opportunity. His unemotional remark,
that “as ‘sailors’ do not ordinarily enter the sea-service after they
are twenty-five years of age, this falling off in the number of its
young British sailors affects the source of supply of our future petty
officers and able seamen,” is full of the gravest warning, which has,
however, apparently passed unheeded. Out of the various training
ships[3] there pass every year a very large number of lads into the
mercantile marine, who have received at least an insight into the
conditions of a sailor’s life as it should be. They are taught habits
of obedience, cleanliness, and regularity, and in some cases have
actual acquaintance with the working of small vessels under way. When
they are considered to be fairly competent to do all that is likely
to be required of them, they are taken in hand by an official whose
duty it is to find ships for them. In due time they sign as “boys,”
generally in sailing ships, and away they go to sea. To their utter
amazement they find the life has scarcely anything in common with
that which they have been used to. In the first place, they miss most
painfully the abundance of good plain food. Then they have been used to
cleanliness of the strictest kind, both in body and clothes. Now they
are fortunate if they can obtain the eighth share of a bucket of fresh
water once a week, unless rain falls. Their duties have been regular,
their periods of rest unbroken; now they have as many masters as there
are hands on board, and they never know what to do next. They have
been under a regular system of tuition; now, if they learn anything,
it is because they are determined to do so in spite of difficulties
which are only to be overcome by such indomitable perseverance as one
can hardly expect from a boy. And lastly, they are thrown into the
intimate society of a group of men who, generally speaking, have but
one topic of conversation, one mode of speech--the worst possible. They
are continually being told that nobody but a fool goes to sea, that it
is the life of a convict, with worse food and lodging, and that they
had better sweep a crossing ashore. Consequently they are ever on the
look-out for a way of escape, and the great majority succeed in finding
one before very long.

    [3] This does not apply to cadet ships, such as the _Worcester_
        and _Conway_.


THE NAVAL RESERVE

This brings me to a most important part of the subject, the question of
merchant seamen as a reserve for the Navy. There can be no doubt that
the institution of the Royal Naval Reserve was a grand idea, but there
are grave doubts as to the way in which it is being carried out. As
far as its officers are concerned, its success can hardly be disputed,
though there may be more truth than is palatable in the assertion
that Naval officers look down with much contempt upon the gallant
merchantmen who become R.N.R. lieutenants. Whether that be so or not, I
am sure that Naval officers would be the first to recognise the value
of R.N.R lieutenants if ever their services were needed, and any
lingering feeling of superiority would soon give place to admiration.
But the men, the rank and file, who are each paid a substantial
retaining fee yearly, besides a guinea a week for six weeks’ annual
drill? I speak under correction as trenching upon a matter with which I
have had small acquaintance, but I believe that drill is usually put in
on board of an ancient hulk, with obsolete weapons, and that very few
of the men have any acquaintance whatever with the actual conditions
of service on board a sea-going vessel of war. If I am right in this
contention, then this most valuable body of men are running to waste,
and would be no more fit to take their places on board a man-o’-war
than they would be to start cabinet-making. And if this be so in the
case of Royal Naval Reserve men, what can be said of those outside
that experimental force? Except that he would be hardly likely to get
seasick, the merchant seaman suddenly transferred to (let us say) a
first-class battleship would feel as much out of his element as any
landsman, more so than an engine-fitter or a man accustomed to some of
our big machine-shops. To use the same words, but in a very different
sense, that I used about the tramp-steamer crews, a man-of-warsman
(blue-jacket) is not a sailor at all now. He is a marine artilleryman
with a fine knowledge of boat handling, but a spanner is fitter for
his fist than a marlinspike. He lives in the heart of a bewildering
complication of engineering contrivances, to which the mazy web of
a sailing-ship’s top hamper is as simple as a child’s box of bricks.
He is accustomed to the manipulation of masses of metal so huge as to
excite the awe-stricken wonder of the ordinary citizen who is not an
engineer. And familiarity with packages of death-dealing explosives
renders him as contemptuously indifferent to their potentialities
of destruction as if they were sand or sawdust. And, most important
of all, long and rigid training has made him one of the smartest
men in the world, able to act at the word of command like a pinion
in a machine, at the right moment, in the right way, yet with that
intelligence no machine can ever possess.


THE INTELLIGENT FOREIGNER

Talk about the average merchant seamen filling up gaps in the ranks of
men like these is almost too much for one’s patience on the part of
those whose business it is to know; it is criminal stupidity. Now in
France every merchant seaman must perforce spend a large proportion
of his time in the Navy, so that their reserve is always available.
And that is one reason why France strives so eagerly to foster her
Mercantile Marine even at such crushing cost to her long-suffering
taxpayers. In the event of war with us, however, she would be in a
far different position, because she could exist without a merchant
ship at sea, and all their crews would be ready for service in the
Navy. What should we do? Even supposing that all our merchant seamen
were capable of taking their places on board of men-of-war if called
upon, who would man the fleets of food-carriers? Accepting as rigidly
correct the proportions shown by the official document already quoted,
the percentage of foreign seamen in all foreign-going vessels was two
years ago 35.5, and admittedly increasing rapidly. Would it be wise to
withdraw from the merchant ships the stiffening of British subjects
they now carry and replace them by aliens? I firmly believe that the
danger limit has long been passed in the exclusively cargo-carrying
trades, which, after all, are our very backbone. What this great army
of aliens will do in the event of our going to war with one or two
European Powers is a problem of undeniable gravity. But given a fine
ship with a valuable cargo, with officers and crew nearly all German,
what might they reasonably be expected to do? Failing an answer, I
submit that the temptation to transfer the ship to their own flag
would be very great. And it is a needless risk. Let it be granted
that the alien officer or skipper is a good man, better educated most
likely, a good seaman, and that he is cheap. All these qualities except
the educational one (which is, after all, not so important to our
officers as it is to the foreigner) our officers possess in just as
great measure, while as for the price--well, I have seen half-a-dozen
chief mates tumbling over one another for the chance of shipping in a
1200-ton Baltic tramp steamer at £5 : 10s. a month. They could not be
much cheaper than that, unless they got the same wages as the crew. And
I know of English skippers of sea-going steamers out of London who are
getting £10 a month. Poor men, they are cheap enough!

To sum up as briefly as possible all the foregoing remarks: It seems
clear to me, as it has done to all intelligent seamen that I have
ever met, that very little legislation is needed to make the British
Mercantile Marine popular again among our own countrymen. Legislation
has hitherto done little for the sailor, while it has exasperated
the shipowner, already handicapped as none of his foreign rivals
have ever been. The Mercantile Marine should more nearly approximate
to the Navy in many of its details, which need not entail extra
expense or annoyance to the shipowner. It should be made possible
for a shipmaster to ensure better discipline, but he should be able
to give his men better food and better housing. The Board of Trade
scale of provisions is a hateful abomination; it ought to be blotted
out and a sensible dietary substituted, which need not exceed it in
cost, while it would act like a charm upon seamen, for whom it has an
importance undreamed of by those ashore, who even on the slenderest
incomes can fare every day in a manner luxurious by comparison with
our sailors. More attention should be paid to the men’s quarters.
Here, again, expenses need not be raised; a little attention to detail
in drawing up specifications would make a vast difference. _And
none but a naturalised British subject should be permitted to sign
articles in a British ship._ This plan is pursued with advantage in
American vessels, which, like our own, carry an enormous percentage of
foreigners of all nations. Of undermanning I need say nothing more,
because the question is being dealt with, and will, I earnestly hope,
be settled with as much satisfaction to everybody concerned as the
splendid “Midge” scheme, the only piece of marine legislation that I
can remember that has been completely successful. Unfortunately, under
present conditions it is responsible for the still further depletion
of our Mercantile Marine of British seamen, since numbers of them by
its beneficent operations reach their homes with their hard-earned pay
intact. This enables them to look about for a job ashore where they are
known, whereas under the bad old conditions they would have been in a
few days again “outward bound with a stocking round their necks,” as
Jack tersely sums up the situation of a man who has squandered all his
money, been robbed of, or has sold, all his clothes, and is off to sea
again in the first craft that he can get, going he neither knows nor
cares whither.



XXIV

CANCER CAY


There is a tiny islet on the outskirts of the Solomon Archipelago that
to all such casual wanderers as stray so far presents not a single
feature of interest. Like scores of others in those latitudes, it has
not yet attained to the dignity of a single coco-nut tree, although
many derelict nuts have found a lodgment upon it, and begun to grow,
only to be wiped out of existence at the next spring-tide. Viewed from
a balloon it would look like a silly-season mushroom, but with a fringe
of snowy foam around it marking the protecting barrier to which it owes
its existence, to say nothing of its growth. Yet of all places in the
world which I have been privileged to visit, this barren little mound
of sand clings most tenaciously to my memory, for reasons which will
presently appear.

One of those devastating cyclones that at long intervals sweep across
the Pacific, leaving a long swath of destruction in their wake, had
overtaken the pearling schooner of which I was mate. For twenty-four
hours we fled before it, we knew not whither, not daring to heave-to.
The only compass we possessed had been destroyed by the first sea
that broke on board. Whether it was night or day we had no notion,
except by watch, and even then we were doubtful, so appalling was the
darkness. Hope was beginning to revive that, as the _Papalangi_ had
proved herself so staunch, she might yet “run it out,” unless she
hit something. But the tiny rag rigged forrard to keep her before it
suddenly flew into threads; the curl of the sea caught her under the
counter and spun her up into the wind like a teetotum. The next vast
comber took her broadside-on, rolled her over, and swallowed her up. We
went “down quick into the pit.”

Although always reckoned a powerful swimmer, even among such amphibia
as the Kanakas, I don’t remember making a stroke. But after a
horrible, choking struggle in the black uproar I got my breath again,
finding myself clinging, as a drowning man will, to something big and
seaworthy. It was an ordinary ship’s hencoop that the skipper had
bought cheap from a passenger vessel in Auckland. As good a raft as
one could wish, it bore me on over the mad sea, half dead as I was,
until I felt it rise high as if climbing a cataract and descend amidst
a furious boiling of surf into calm, smooth water. A few minutes later
I touched a sandy beach. Utterly done up, I slept where I lay, at the
water’s edge, though the shrieking hurricane raged overhead as if it
would tear the land up by the roots.

When I awoke it was fine weather, though to leeward the infernal
reek of the departing meteor still disfigured a huge segment of the
sky. I looked around, and my jaw dropped. Often I had wondered what
a poor devil _would_ do who happened to be cast away on such a spot
as this. Apparently I was about to learn. A painful pinch at my bare
foot startled me, and I saw an ugly beast of a crab going for me. He
was nearly a foot across, his blue back covered with long spikes, and
his wicked little eyes seemed to have an expression of diabolical
malignity. I snatched at a handful of his legs and swung him round my
head, dashing him against the side of my coop with such vigour that his
armour flew to flinders around me. I never have liked crab, even when
dressed, but I found the raw flesh of that one tasty enough--it quite
smartened me up. Having eaten heartily, I took a saunter up the smooth
knoll of sand, aimlessly, I suppose, for it was as bare as a plate,
without a stone or a shell. From its highest point, about ten feet
above high-water mark, I looked around, but my horizon was completely
bounded by the ring of breakers aforesaid. I felt like the scorpion
within the fiery circle, and almost as disposed to sting myself to
death had I possessed the proper weapon. As I stood gazing vacantly at
the foaming barrier and solemn enclosing dome of fleckless blue, I was
again surprised by a vicious nip at my foot. There was another huge
crab boldly attacking me--me, a vigorous man, and not a sodden corpse,
as yet. I felt a grue of horror run all down my back, but I grabbed at
the vile thing and hurled it from me half across the island. Then I
became aware of others arriving, converging upon me from all around,
and I was panic-stricken. For one mad moment I thought of plunging
into the sea again; but reason reasserted itself in time, reminding me
that, while I had certain advantages on my side where I was, in the
water I should fall a helpless victim at once, if, as might naturally
be expected, these ghouls were swarming there. Not a weapon of any kind
could I see, neither stick nor stone. My feelings of disgust deepened
into despair. But I got little time for thought. Such a multitude of
the eerie things were about me that I was kept most actively employed
seizing them and flinging them from me. They got bolder, feinting and
dodging around me, but happily without any definite plan of campaign
among them. Once I staggered forward, having trodden unaware upon a
spiky back as I sprung aside, wounding my foot badly. I fell into a
group of at least twenty, crushing some of them, but after a painful
struggle among those needle-like spines regained my feet with several
clinging to my body. A kind of frenzy seized me, and, regardless of
pain, I clutched at them right and left, dashing them to fragments one
against the other, until quite a pile of writhing, dismembered enemies
lay around me, while my hands and arms were streaming from numberless
wounds. Very soon I became exhausted by my violent exertions and the
intense heat, but, to my unfathomable thankfulness, the heap of broken
crabs afforded me a long respite, the sound ones finding congenial
occupation in devouring them. While I watched the busy cannibals
swarming over the yet writhing heap, I became violently ill, for
imagination vividly depicted them rioting in my viscera. Vertigo seized
me, I reeled and fell prone, oblivious to all things for a time.

When sense returned it was night. The broad moon was commencing her
triumphal march among the stars, which glowed in the blue-black concave
like globules of incandescent steel. My body was drenched with dew,
a blessed relief, for my tongue was leathery and my lips were split
with drouth. I tore off my shirt and sucked it eagerly, the moisture
it held, though brackish, mitigating my tortures of thirst. Suddenly I
bethought me of my foes, and looked fearfully around. There was not one
to be seen, nothing near but the heap of clean-picked shells of those
devoured. As the moon rose higher, I saw a cluster of white objects
at a little distance, soon recognisable as boobies. They permitted me
to snatch a couple of them easily, and wringing off their heads I got
such a draught as put new life into me. Hope returned, even quelling
the cruel thought of daylight bringing again those ravening hordes of
crawling crustacea. Yet my position was almost as hopeless as one could
imagine. Unless, as I much doubted, this was a known spot for _bêche de
mer_ or pearl-shell fishers, there was but the remotest chance of my
rescue, while, without anything floatable but my poor little hencoop,
passing that barrier of breakers was impossible. Fortunately I have
always tried to avoid meeting trouble half-way, and with a thankful
feeling of present wants supplied, I actually went to sleep again,
though stiff and sore from head to heel.

At daybreak I awoke again to a repetition of the agonies of the
previous day, which, although I was better fortified to meet them, were
greater than before. The numbers of my hideous assailants were more
than doubled as far I could judge. The whole patch of sand seemed alive
with the voracious vermin. So much so that when I saw the approach of
those horrible hosts my heart sank, my flesh shrank on my bones, and
I clutched at my throat. But I could not strangle myself, though had
I possessed a knife I should certainly have chosen a swift exit from
the unutterable horror of my position, fiercely as I clung to life. To
be devoured piecemeal, retaining every faculty till the last--I could
not bear the thought. There was no time for reflection, however; the
struggle began at once and continued with a pertinacity on the part of
the crabs that promised a speedy end to it for me. How long it lasted
I have no idea--to my tortured mind it was an eternity. At last,
overborne, exhausted, surrounded by mounds of those I had destroyed,
over which fresh legions poured in ever-increasing numbers, earth and
sky whirled around me, and I fell backward. As I went, with many of
the vile things already clinging to me, I heard a yell--a human voice
that revived my dulling senses like a galvanic shock. With one last
flash of vigour I sprang to my feet, seeing as I did so a canoe with
four Kanakas in it, not fifty yards away, in the smooth water between
the beach and the barrier. Bounding like a buck, heedless of the pain
as my wounded feet clashed among the innumerable spiky carapaces of my
enemies, I reached the water, and hurled myself headlong towards that
ark of safety. How I reached it I do not know, nor anything further
until I returned to life again on board the _Warrigal_ of Sydney, as
weak as a babe and feeling a century older.



XXV

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY JONAH


We were gathered together in a compact group under the weather
bulwarks of the old _Rainbow_, South Sea-man, presently cruising on
the Line grounds; officers and harpooners of three ships engaged in
the pleasant occupation of “gamming,” as ship-visiting is termed among
Southern-going whalemen. Song and dance were finished, and with pipes
aglow, stretched at our ease, the time-honoured “cuffer” or yarn was
going its soothing round.

The fourth officer of the _Rainbow_, a taciturn Englishman, whose
speech and manner excited wonder as to how he came in that galley,
was called upon in his turn to contribute. Without hesitation, as if
professional story-telling was his _métier_, he began:

“‘’Ere she white water-r-rs! Ah blo-o-ow!’ came ringing down from
the main crow’s nest of the _Megantic_, South Sea whaler of Martha’s
Vineyard, as she heeled solemnly to the steady trade on the
‘off-shore’ ground one lovely morning.

“‘Where away? Haow fer off?’ roared the skipper, while, slinging his
glasses, he prepared to elevate his sixteen stone painfully to the
giddy height above him.

“‘Two p’ints on the starb’rd baouw, sir, ’baout five mile off. Looks
like sparm whale, sir,’ was the prompt reply.

“‘All right, keep her az she goes, Mr. Slocum, ’n’ clar away boats,’
said the ‘old man,’ as with many a grunt he began his pilgrimage of
pain.

“There was no need to call all hands. The first cry had startled them
into sudden activity. Before its echoes died away, they were on deck,
with no trace of drowsiness among them. Being in a high state of
discipline, each man went straight to his boat, standing ready, at the
word, to lower and be off after the gambolling leviathan ahead. Silence
reigned profound, except for the soothing murmur of the displaced sea
as the lumbering old barky forged slowly ahead, or the soft flap of
a hardly-drawing staysail as she rolled to windward. Seated upon the
upper topsail yard, the ‘old man’ soliloquised grumblingly, ‘What in
the ’tarnal blazes ’s he doin’ of? Gaul bust my gol-dern skin ef ever
_I_ see sech a ninseck ’n _my_ life. I be everlastin’ly frazzled ef
’taint mos’ ’s bad ez snakes in yer boots. Mr. Slocum, jes’ shin up
hyar a minit, won’t ye?’

“As if unable to trust his own senses any longer, he thus called upon
the mate to help him out. More agile than the skipper in his movements,
it was but a few seconds before Mr. Slocum was by his chief’s side,
peering with growing bewilderment through the binoculars at the strange
object ahead. What had at first sight seemed an ordinary full-sized
bull cachalot leisurely playing upon the surface of the sea, had now
resolved itself into an indescribable, ever-shifting mass of matter,
from the dark centre of which writhing arms continually protruded and
retreated. The golden glare lavished along the glittering sea by the
ascending sun added to the mystery surrounding the moving monster or
monsters, for it or they lay right in the centre of that dazzling path.

“‘Wall--whatjer mek ov it, Mr. Slocum?’ queried the skipper
sarcastically.

“Slowly, as if spelling his words, the mate replied, ‘Thutty-nine year
hev I ben a-fishin’, but ef ever I see ennythin’ like _that_ befo’, may
I never pump sparm whale ag’in. Kaint fine no sorter name fer it, sir.’

“‘Lemme see them glasses agen,’ said the ‘old man’ wearily. ‘’Pears
like ’s if she’s a-risin’ it, whatever ’tes, consider’ble sudden;’ and,
readjusting the focus, he glued his eyes to the tubes again for another
long searching look at the uncanny sight. His scrutiny was evidently
more satisfying than at first, for without removing the glasses from
his eyes, he yapped, ‘’Way down frum aloft! Heave to, ’n low’r away,
Mr. Slocum. Guess yew’ll fine a “fish” thar, er tharabout.’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ promptly returned the mate, departing with great
alacrity, issuing orders the while, so that by the time he reached the
deck there was a whirring rattle of patent sheaves, and a succession
of subdued splashes, as boat after boat took the water. In almost as
short a time as it takes to say it, the boats’ masts were stepped, the
big sails bellied out, and away sped the handsome craft, in striking
contrast to the unlovely old hulk that had borne them.

“We were no ‘greenies’; long practice had so familiarised us with the
wiles and ferocity of the cachalot, that we had none of the tremors at
approaching one that so sorely afflict beginners. Nevertheless there
was an air of mystery about the present proceedings which affected all
of us more or less, though no one knew precisely why. Absolute silence
is the invariable rule, as you know, in boats going on a ‘fish,’
because of that exquisite sense of sound possessed by the sperm whale,
which is something more than hearing; so we were slightly startled
to hear our harpooner say in a clear undertone, ‘Dern funny-lookin’
fish that, Mr. Slocum, don’t ye think?’ But for all answer our chief
growled, ‘Stand up, José!’

“Instantly the big fellow sprang to his feet in attitude to strike,
balancing his weapon, a heroic figure sharply outlined against the
clear blue.

“Good Lord! what was that? A horrible medley of blue-black and
livid white, an inextricable tangle of writhing, clutching, tearing,
serpent-like arms, that lashed the sea into a curious dusky foam,
evil-smelling and greasy. Out of its midst rose an immense globular
mass, bearing two eyes larger than barrel-heads, dead black, yet with a
Satanic expression that confused one’s heart-beats.

“‘Giv’t to him! giv’t to him!’ roared the mate, and instantly the iron
flew into the midst of the wallowing entanglement, followed immediately
by another from José’s eager, nervous arms. Willing hands clutched
the flapping sail to roll it up, but a shriek of agony paralysed them
all. A long livid thing rose on the off side of the boat, and twining
itself around the wretched harpooner’s tall figure, tore him from our
midst, his heartbroken death-yell curdling our blood. Quick as thought,
another of those awful arms came gliding over us, this time encircling
the boat amidships. Though tapering to the slenderest of points, it was
of the circumference of a man’s body at its thickest, and armed with
saucer-like mouths all along its inferior surface. One of these clung
to my bare breast as the slimy horror tightened round us, a ring of
great curved claws which protruded from it tearing at my flesh as if to
strip it from the bones. But we had hardly realised what was happening,
when she was going over, parbuckled as you might turn a hand-bowl. In a
moment all was darkness and struggle for breath amidst a very maelström
of slime and stench, in the depths of which I felt myself freed from
that frightful grip. It seemed like hours before, with a bound, I
reached the surface again, clutching at something hard and floating
as I rose. In spite of the excruciating agony of my wounds, and the
rushing of the air into my collapsed lungs, there was a sense of relief
beyond expression, as of resurrection from the dead.

“Although counted a good swimmer even among such amphibia as our crew,
I lay there supine, stretched at length upon the sea--a still, white
figure grasping numbly at the fragment of bottom-board. Suddenly I
became aware of a whirling in the water again, but I was in a sort of
stupor of the physical faculties, though mentally alert enough.

“Then up reared above my head an object I recognised with a long wail
of terror; the tremendous lower jaw of the sperm whale, bristling with
its double row of gleaming teeth. Before I could gasp a prayer, or
even think what was happening, I was gliding down the vast grey cavern
of his throat, with but one thought left--‘the descent into Hell is
easy.’ Down, down I went into utter darkness, among a squirming, fetid
heap of snaky coils, that enveloped me, and seemed to gnaw and tear
at my shuddering body as if devouring me at second hand. Then came an
explosion--a dull, rending report that sent an earthquake shock through
me and my unutterable surroundings. Immediately following this there
was a convulsive upheaval, in which all the contents of that awful
place took a rising motion, growing faster and faster, until, with a
roaring rush, came the dear daylight again.

“What ensued then for some time I do not know. A sensation of
heavenly peace and calm possessed me, when, as if released from some
unimaginable nightmare, I found myself floating placidly as a Medusa
upon a calm sea. There I felt content to lie, without effort, conscious
only of life--life so sweet that I wondered dreamily whether I was
still in the body, or had passed into that blissful state imagined by
speculative psychologists as awaiting man after death. Gradually my
mind became clearer, my limbs felt willing to obey the impulse of my
brain. I began to swim, feebly at first, almost automatically, but with
increasing vigour as the significance of my position became clearer to
me.

“I had swum but a short distance when the blessed sound of my
shipmates’ voices greeted my ears, but from my lowly position I was
unable to see them, until one of them gripped me by the arms, dragging
me into the boat among them.

“Then I learned without surprise that I was the only survivor of
my boat’s crew. Every one of my fellows had disappeared before the
horror-stricken gaze of the men in the other boats, who, being but
a short distance astern of us, had witnessed the whole tragedy. It
appeared that we had attacked a cachalot in the act of devouring one
of the gigantic cuttle-fish, or ‘squid,’ upon which these cetaceans
feed, and of which it is most probable no mortal eye has yet beheld
a full-sized specimen. For they inhabit the middle depths of oceans,
never coming to the surface voluntarily.

“This monster’s arms, or tentacles, enlaced the whole colossal body
of the whale, so that they must have been fully 60 feet or 70 feet
in length. At their junction with the head they were about 5 feet in
girth, as a huge fragment lying at the bottom of the boat conclusively
proved. At the time we so rashly attacked the whale the mighty mollusc
must have been in his death-throes, for immediately after our boat’s
disappearance the whale ‘sounded.’ When, a minute or two later, he rose
again to the surface, the other boats’ crews saw him busily turning
over and over, as if collecting the scattered fragments of his late
victim. At that time they had not noticed me among the various flotsam,
but it must have been then that I vanished down the capacious gullet
of the voracious cetacean. Fortunately for me they were furiously bent
upon attacking the whale, and so in some degree avenging their slain
shipmates.

“The second mate had loaded his bomb-gun with an extra heavy charge,
and at the same moment that the harpooner darted his weapon the bomb
was discharged also. It penetrated the cachalot’s lungs, inflicting a
mortal wound by its explosion therein, the noise of which was the shock
that I felt while in that horrible tomb. As is usual, in his dying
agony the whale ejected the whole contents of his stomach, by means
of which cataclysm I was expelled therefrom and restored to the upper
world once more. But had it not been for long and severe practice in
diving, taken while pearl-fishing in Polynesia, enabling me to compete
successfully with Kanakas, who almost live in the water, and even to
outdo them at times, I must have been suffocated. The only time I was
ever before so distressed for breath was in Levuka, when mate of a
schooner. Our anchor fouled a rock in eight fathoms of water, and we
could by no means persuade any of our natives to attempt its release.
Rather than lose the fair chance of sailing that day I tried the
dangerous task, succeeding after a desperate struggle, but regaining
the surface with blood streaming from mouth, nose, and ears.

“I lay back in the stern-sheets of the boat feeling cruelly exhausted,
the pain of my ghastly wound becoming continually more severe. But,
even pre-occupied as I was, I could hardly fail to notice a want of
cordiality towards me among my shipmates. An uncomfortable silence
prevailed, depressing and unusual. It was not due to the natural
solemnity following upon the sudden loss of five of our number, cut off
in the prime of their health and strength, for, until I had told the
wonderful story of my going down into Sheol, their demeanour had been
very different. I looked appealingly and wonderingly from one to the
other, but could not meet any eye. They were all furtively averted with
intent to avoid my gaze.

“To my relief we reached the ship speedily. I was assisted on board
gently enough, and led aft to where the skipper was roaming restlessly
athwart the quarter-deck, like a caged animal. I was allowed to
sit down while he examined me keenly as to the occurrences of the
day. The gloom deepened on his face as I recounted all that I could
remember of the fate of my unfortunate shipmates, until, my tale being
told, he began, in curt, half-angry fashion, to question me about my
antecedents. Not liking his manner, besides feeling faint and ill, I
gave him but little information on that head.

“Then he burst out into petulant disconnected sentences, in bitter
regrets for the lost men, blame of everybody generally, and at last, as
if his predominant thought could no longer be restrained, shouted, ‘I
wish ter God A’mighty I’d never seen y’r face aboard my ship. Man an’
boy I b’en spoutin’ fer over forty year, an’ never see, no, ner hearn
tell ov, sech a hell-fire turn out. Yew’r a Jonah, thet’s wut yew air,
an’ the sooner we get shet ov ye the better it’ll be fer all han’s, an’
the more likely we sh’l be to hev _some_ luck.’

“This was such a crusher that I did not attempt to reply, nor, owing
to my condition, did I quite realise the full brutality and injustice
of the man as I might otherwise have done. I crept forward to my bunk,
to find myself shunned by all my shipmates as if I was a leper, which
treatment, as I had hitherto been a prime favourite, was very hard
to bear. But in the face of ignorant superstition like this I was
powerless. So I held my peace and sat solitary, my recovery being much
hindered by the miserable state of my mind. The rest of the passage to
Valparaiso was a time of such misery as I never experienced before or
since, and I wonder that they did not land a hopeless lunatic.

“However, I fought against _that_ successfully, determined to live if
I was allowed to, and at last, to my intense relief, I shook off the
dust of my feet against that detestable ship and her barbarous crew,
thankful that their cruelty had stopped short of heaving me overboard
as a sacrifice to the _manes_ of my lost shipmates.”

There was a silence of some minutes’ duration after he had finished his
yarn, then from one and the other came scraps of personalia confirming
the general outlines of his experiences as to the existence of those
nightmares of the sea of incredible size, as attested by the _ejecta_
of every dying cachalot. All gave it as their firm belief that it must
have been a sperm whale that swallowed Jonah in the long ago, but it
was the general opinion that as a rule a man was perfectly safe in the
water from a sperm whale except under such circumstances as had been
detailed, and that our friend had been the victim of a mistake on the
part of the hungry leviathan.



XXVI

THE TRAGICAL TALE OF THE BOOMERANG PIG


He was born under a baleful star. I know, because I was there at the
time. But at the outset of this veracious history, to prevent probable
misunderstanding, allow me to assert that what follows in all its
details is literally and absolutely true. Naturally deficient in
imagination, I would not attempt to embellish so curious a narrative
as this, which, were I gifted beyond all literary romancists, I should
only mar by adding fiction thereunto.

Well then, for the _locus in quo_, a lumbering old Yankee-built ship of
some 2000 tons burden, bound from Liverpool to Bombay with coal, and
at the inauspicious opening of my subject’s erratic career wallowing
in the storm-torn sea off the Cape of Good Hope. His mother was a
middle-aged lady pig, with a bitter grievance against mankind in
general, and her present owners in particular. Brought on board during
the vessel’s stay in Madras the previous year, she had never forgotten
or ceased to lament her native jungle, nor had the long course of
gentle treatment and good food modified by a single vengeful gasp her
virulent hatred of all and sundry. Insult was added to injury when, in
Liverpool, she was mated with an alien spouse, the chubby pink-flushed
whiteness of whose skin made no greater contrast to her inky hue than
did the calm placidity of his temper to her furious, unappeasable, and
continual rage. Many tokens of her regard were scored deeply along his
fat sides; indeed, but for the manifest impossibility of getting a
fair bite at him, it is only reasonable to suppose that she would have
devoured him alive.

Now it befell upon a certain evening, when a bitter north-east gale was
brewing under the lowering leaden sky, and the weird whistling of the
coming tempest made melancholy music through the complaining shrouds,
that an interesting event in her history drew near its fulfilment. In
anticipation of this occurrence, our carpenter had rigged up a rude
sort of fold under the top-gallant forecastle, and within its narrow
limits she was ranging tiger-like, champing her foam-flecked jaws, and
occasionally tobogganing from side to side in various unhappy attitudes
as the ship tumbled every way in the bewildered sea. When the watch to
which I (a small urchin of fourteen) belonged came on deck at midnight
I was immediately told off by my inveterate foe, the second mate, to
attend to the requirements of the “lady in the straw.” Inverted commas
are necessary, because the “straw” did not exist, nor any substitute
for it; nothing but the bare deck polished to a glossy slipperiness by
the incessant friction of the sliding sow. There was a fresh hand at
the bellows before we had been on deck many minutes, and all the watch
were soon perched aloft, struggling short-handedly with the acreage of
thundering canvas, while the ship plunged so violently that I could
only remain under the forecastle by clinging, bat-like, to the side of
the pen that confined the miserable mother-elect. During that vigil of
terror and darkness (for I had only one of those ancient teapot-shaped
lamps, that yield more smoking stench than light) eleven wretched
parti-coloured morsels of pork came into being, the advent of each
one exacerbating the feelings of the already frantic parent to such
a degree that she became a veritable fury, and to my terrified eyes
seemed to dilate with potentialities of destruction. Out of the whole
family I succeeded, at the imminent risk of my own life, in saving two
from the jaws of their maniacal mother, and one of those sagaciously
succumbed before eight bells. I received small thanks for my pains, and
narrowly escaped a colting at my tyrant’s hands, who saw his visions of
abundant sucking-pig rudely dispelled by what he was pleased to call my
“dam’ pig-headed foolishness.”

It boots not now to tell of the wealth of ingenuity I lavished
upon that ill-starred piglet, to whom I stood perforce _in loco
parentis_--how I must needs lasso the snorting, shrieking mother, and,
having entangled her legs fore and aft, drag her to the side of the pen
and lash her securely down, while I held my _protégé_ to one streaming
teat after another. Enough that the care of that solitary remnant of a
family embittered my days and rendered my nights sleepless interregnums
of weariness. Unto all things their appointed end, saith the sage, and
so at last I was freed from this porcine incubus by my charge having
grown able and wily enough to dodge his unnatural parent, and snatch
his sustenance from her in a variety of ingenious ways. But still he
might not trust himself to sleep near her, and so he discovered a nest
beneath the heel of the bowsprit, whereby her insatiable desire for his
destruction was completely frustrated, since she could by no possible
artifice get at him. After a while it was noticed that Sûsti (as for
some hidden reason he had come to be called) invariably wore at the end
of his tail a crimson ornament, which, upon closer examination, was
found to be where something amused itself, or themselves, by nibbling
during the night. The carpenter, who is always called upon to repair
everything on board ship except ropes and sails, turned to and bound up
the lessening terminal with a piece of tarred canvas, and plentifully
besmeared the outside of the bandage with tar also. And this he did
many days, because tar, and dressing, and a little more of Sûsti had
always disappeared in the morning. So the outrage continued, and the
tail became more and more abbreviated until it was entirely _non est_,
and the midnight marauders had actually excavated a socket in the
_corpus delicti_ nearly half an inch deep.

By this time we had reached Bombay, and were busy, with the aid of a
swarming host of coolies, in getting rid of our grimy cargo. But some
one found time to suggest that a place of safety for Sûsti should
be found during the night, fearing that, unless something was done
soon, we should seek him one morning and find only a disembodied
squeal. Consequently Sûsti was captured every evening, and, protesting
discordantly, was confined in a coal-basket, which was carefully
enclosed in the after hatch house. The plan succeeded admirably, so far
that the diminution in our stock of pork ceased. But one morning, when
the after hold was empty, the hatch house was lifted off as usual and
placed by the side of the gaping hatchway, its door open, and Sûsti
lying, forgotten, in his basket. All hands went to breakfast, while the
coolies below, as was their wont, stopped work, and, squatting in the
after-hold, held a conversazione. In the middle of our meal there was a
hideous uproar, and an eruption of the heathen from all the hatchways,
greenish-grey with fright, and swarming madly in every possible
direction--overboard, aloft, anywhere. When at last we were able to
elicit from the demented crowd the reason for their panic, we learned
that as they were all toiling strenuously to prepare the coal for a
renewal of our operations, down into their midst came flying a demon of
Jehannum in the guise of a gigantic pig, with vast bat-like wings, and
eyes of the bigness of a man’s fists glaring like red-hot coals. What
wonder that they had fled, Hindoo and Mussulman alike, at the sight of
their abomination in such an avatar of dread hurtling down upon their
shaven crowns. The story sent us all seeking below, little dreaming
that the luckless Sûsti was to blame. Presently we found him lying by
the side of the keelson, badly hurt, but cheerful as ever. And with
that indomitable pluck that had endeared him to us all, he not only
survived, but made a complete recovery within a week.

Now, however, his rotund body had taken a curve, by reason of which
he always appeared to be in the act of reaching around to look for
the tail that had been. This peculiar bent of his figure had the
strangest results whenever he took exercise. Wherever his goal might
be, and in spite of his most energetic efforts to reach it, he only
succeeded in describing what I am obliged to call a lateral parabola,
along which he would eventually arrive at some unforeseen spot near
his starting-point. Nor were the co-efficients of his curves at
all regular. Sometimes, owing to the energetic efforts he made to
counteract this inevitable curvilinear bias, a series of maxima and
minima were produced which, when traced upon the deck, afforded some
very interesting problems in the parallelograms of forces.

But I regret to record that the principal result of his errata was a
decided increase in the local consumption of Scotch whisky. For our
jovial skipper became so inordinately vain of his boomerang pig that
he issued invitations to his fellow-captains in the harbour, in quite
a reckless fashion, to come and see what an unprecedented curio he had
gotten. They came multitudinously, came to scoff, but remained to grow
purple with laughter and lose all their loose change in bets upon the
probable points of arrival made by Sûsti in his gyratory gallops after
sweet biscuits. And they returned to their several ships in a charming
variety of unconventional attitudes, vocal but not harmonious, at
irregular intervals during the night. Meanwhile Sûsti, pampered beyond
even swinish dreams of avarice, waxed fat and almost uncontrollable.
_Joie de vivre_ filled him from end to end--from snout to socket.
It seized him suddenly at all sorts of times, causing him to squeal
hysterically, waggle his incipient hams momentarily, and then launch
himself into space along the line of some marvellously complicated
curve terminating in the most unexpected places.

As long as Europeans were about him he was safe, except for an
occasional belabouring when he chanced to upset some luckless
passer-by. But we were ordered round the coast to Cocanada in ballast,
and, to expedite our loading there, took a number of coolies with us.
On the day of our arrival, and shortly after anchoring, all hands
were seated peacefully at dinner on the forecastle head. Below, on
the shady side of the forward house, the “bundaree” had prepared the
coolies’ meal, an immense flat dish of rice piled into a cone, with a
number of tiny wells of curry round the rim, and a larger reservoir of
the same fiery compound at the apex in a sort of crater. Around this
the placid Hindoos crouched on their hams in orthodox fashion, and each
right hand had just begun to manipulate a bolus of curry-moistened
rice for conveyance to the expectant mouths, when with a meteoric
rush Sûsti came round the corner of the house in a grand ellipse, and
landed in the centre of the rice-pan. This was too much for even those
mild coolies. With yells and imprecations they sprang for handspikes,
belaying-pins, etc., and rushed upon the unclean beast, perfectly mad
with rage. Our big retriever, who hated all black men impartially, and
was therefore rigidly limited to the poop as a rule, saw the melée,
and, judging doubtless that it was high time for his interference,
came flying from his eminence, all shining teeth and savage snarl,
into the centre of the struggling mass. For a brief moment nothing
could be clearly distinguished; then suddenly there was a break up and
a stampede. Every coolie sprang overboard like the demon-possessed
swine of Gadara, leaving Neptune sadly sniffing at the lifeless body of
Sûsti, which lay embedded in a heap of the befouled and scattered rice.



XXVII

A DAY ON THE SOLANDER WHALING-GROUND


A bright sunny morning; the gentle north-easterly breeze just keeping
the sails full as the lumbering whaling-barque _Splendid_ dips jerkily
to the old southerly swell. Astern, the blue hills around Preservation
Inlet lie shimmering in the soft spring sunlight, and on the port beam
the mighty pillar of the Solander Rock, lying off the south-western
extremity of New Zealand, is sharply outlined against the steel-blue
sky. Far beyond that stern sentinel, the converging shores of Foveaux
Strait are just discernible in dim outline through a low haze. Ahead,
the jagged and formidable rocks of Stewart Island, bathed in a mellow
golden glow, give no hint of their terrible appearance what time the
Storm-fiend of the south-west cries havoc and urges on his chariot of
war.

The keen-eyed Kanaka in the fore crow’s nest shades his eyes with his
hand, peering earnestly out on the weather bow at something which has
attracted his attention. A tiny plume of vapour rises from the blue
hollows about ten miles away, but so faint and indefinable that it may
be only a breaking wavelet’s crest caught by the cross wind. Again that
little bushy jet breaks the monotony of the sea; but this time there
is no mistaking it. Emerging diagonally from the water, not high and
thin, but low and spreading, it is an infallible indication to those
piercing eyes of the presence of a sperm-whale. The watcher utters
a long, low musical cry, “Blo-o-o-o-w,” which penetrates the gloomy
recesses of fo’ksle and cuddy, where the slumberers immediately engage
in fierce conflict with whales of a size never seen by waking eyes. The
officer and white seamen at the main now take up the cry, and in a few
seconds all hands are swiftly yet silently preparing to leave the ship.
She is put about, making a course which shortly brings her a mile or
two to windward of the slowly-moving cachalot. Now it is evident that
no solitary whale is in sight, but a great school, gambolling in the
bright spray. One occasionally, in pure exuberance of its tremendous
vitality, springs twenty feet into the clear air, and falls, a hundred
tons of massive flesh, with earthquake-like commotion, back into the
sea.

Having got the weather-gage, the boats are lowered; sail is immediately
set, and, like swift huge-winged birds, they swoop down upon the prey.
Driving right upon the back of the nearest monster, two harpoons are
plunged into his body up to the “hitches.” The sheet is at once hauled
aft, and the boat flies up into the wind; while the terrified cetacean
vainly tries, by tremendous writhing and plunging, to rid himself of
the barbed weapon. The mast is unshipped, and snugly stowed away; oars
are handled, and preparation made to deliver the _coup de grâce_. But
finding his efforts futile, the whale has sounded, and his reappearance
must be awaited. Two boats’ lines are taken out before the slackening
comes, and he slowly rises again. Faster and faster the line comes
in; the blue depths turn a creamy white, and it is “Stern all,” for
dear life. Up he comes, with jaws gaping twenty feet wide, gleaming
teeth and livid, cavernous throat glittering in the brilliant light.
But the boat’s crew are seasoned hands, to whom this dread sight is
familiar, and orders are quietly obeyed, the boat backing, circling and
darting ahead like a sentient thing under their united efforts. So the
infuriated mammal is baffled and dodged, while thrust after thrust of
the long lances are got home, and streamlets of blood trickling over
the edges of his spout-hole give warning that the end is near. A few
wild circlings at tremendous speed, jaws clashing and blood foaming
in torrents from the spiracle, one mighty leap into the air, and the
ocean monarch is dead. He lies just awash, gently undulated by the
long, low swell, one pectoral fin slowly waving like some great stray
leaf of _Fucus gigantea_. A hole is cut through the fluke and the line
secured to it. The ship, which has been working to windward during the
conflict, runs down and receives the line; and in a short time the
great inert mass is hauled alongside and secured by the fluke chain.

The other two boats have succeeded in killing a large fish also, but
are at least four miles off. They may as well try to move the Solander
itself as tow their unwieldy prize to the ship. The shapeless bulk
of the cachalot makes it a difficult tow at all times, but, with a
rising wind and sea, utterly impossible to whale-boats. The barometer
is falling; great masses of purple-edged cumuli are piling high on
the southern horizon, and no weather prophet is needed to foretell
the imminent approach of a heavy gale. The captain looks wistfully
to windward at Preservation Inlet, only twenty-five miles off, and
thinks, with fierce discontent, of the prize, worth eight or nine
hundred pounds, which lies but four or five miles away, and must be
abandoned solely for want of steam-power. And that is not all. Around,
far as the eye can reach, the bushy spouts are rising. Hundreds of
gigantic cetaceans are disporting, apparently not at all “gallied” by
the conflict which has been going on. Some are near enough to the fast
boat to be touched by hand. “Potentialities of wealth beyond the dreams
of avarice” are here; but acquisition is impossible for want of steam.
The vessel, bound to that immense body, can only crawl tortoise-like
before the wind--lucky, indeed, to have a harbour ahead where the
whale may be cut in, even though it be forty miles away. Without that
refuge available, she could not hope to keep the sea and hold her prize
through the wild weather, now so near. So, with a heavy heart, the
captain orders the fast boat to abandon her whale and return with all
possible speed. The breeze is freshening fast, and all sail is made for
Port William. So slow is the progress, that it is past midnight before
that snug shelter is reached, although for the last four hours the old
ship is terribly tried and strained by the press of sail carried to
such a gale.

In four days the work of getting the oil is finished, and three or four
Maoris ashore have made a tun and a half of good clear oil from the
abandoned carcass. This, added to the ship’s quantity, makes twelve
and a half tuns of oil and spermaceti mingled from the one fish. None
smaller has been noticed out of the hundreds seen on the same day. It
is eighteen days from the time of anchoring before the harbour can
again be quitted, owing to adverse winds and gales. Who can estimate
the number of opportunities lost in that time? On the second day after
reaching the grounds, another school is seen with the same result--one
fish, and another fortnight’s enforced idleness.

This is no imaginary sketch, but a faithful record of actual facts,
which, with slight variations, has been repeated many times within
the writer’s experience. On one occasion there were four of us on the
ground in company--three Americans, and one colonial. Each secured a
whale before dusk. We kept away at once for Port William, fearing the
shifting of the wind, which would bring us on a ragged, lee shore. The
Americans, being strangers to the coast, hauled off to the westward.
Five days afterwards, as we were cleaning ship after trying out,
those three ships came creeping in to the harbour through the eastern
end of Foveaux Strait, all sadly damaged, and of course whaleless.
They had been battered by the furious gale all that time, and barely
escaped destruction on the Snares. Two of them left the grounds a
few days after, having had their fill of the Solander. Thus, it is
obvious that nothing but steam is needed to make this most prolific of
whaling-grounds a veritable treasure-field. Cutting in and trying out
at sea could be entirely dispensed with. The magnificent land-locked
harbour of Preservation Inlet, to say nothing of others easily
available, affords complete facilities for a shore station. The water
is in many cases forty or fifty fathoms deep alongside the rocks, while
sheltered nooks abound, “where never wind blows loudly.”

Working by the share, no finer or more skilful whalemen exist than the
half-breed Maoris who people Stewart Island, and they would joyfully
welcome such a grand opportunity of making their pile.

Long before the Antarctic Expedition from Dundee left our shores, the
merits of this grand field for whaling operations were discussed at
length by the writer in the columns of a Dundee paper, and strongly
advocated; but those responsible for the management of that venture
were evidently so wedded to Greenland methods that the advice was
unheeded. Perhaps the unprofitable issue of the enterprise as far as
whales were concerned may dispose the adventurers to take advice, and
try sperm-whaling in the temperate zone, in place of right-whaling in
the far south. Should they do so, there is every reason to hope and
believe that the palmy days of the sperm-whale fishery may be renewed.
Dundee firms of to-day may then, like Messrs. Enderby of London in
1820–30, gladly welcome home ship after ship, full to the hatches with
the valuable spoil of the Southern Seas.


    NOTE.--Since the above was written it has been the writer’s
    melancholy duty to chronicle the final disappearance of the
    British Whale Fishery.



XXVIII

SEA-ELEPHANTS AT HOME


Judging by the popularity of the seals at the Zoological Gardens, these
wonderful amphibia have a firm hold upon the affections of ordinary
people. It probably occurs to but few as they gaze delightedly upon
the unapproachable grace of the seals in their favourite element, how
brutal and debasing is the pursuit of them for commercial purposes.
This is a theme that has exercised the powers of many able writers,
but has probably never been set forth in such awful realism as Mr.
Burn-Murdoch has presented us with in his book, _From Edinburgh to
the Antarctic_. For the seal is such a gentle, kindly creature, so
perfectly harmless, except perhaps during the courting season, when the
males fight fiercely, but never _à l’outrance_. The seal’s one mistake
in life is that he has not exerted the intelligence that he undoubtedly
possesses in the direction of clothing himself with some substitute,
worthless to man, for the inimitable covering which is so ardently
craved by shivering man and womankind.

There are, however, some seals that, from their bulk and ferocious
appearance, actually invite attack from those ardent sportsmen who
only long for sight of game worthy of hunting. The sea-elephant
(_Macrorhinus proboscideus_), upon first acquaintance, seems, as our
transatlantic friends concisely express it, “to fill the bill,” in
these respects. In size he is little inferior to the huge quadruped
after which he has been named, although, owing to the absence of
legs, he will not look so bulky as the elephant. The possession of a
rudimentary trunk of a foot or so in length has probably had little
to do with the trivial appellation given to this great Phoca, his
enormous size as compared with the ordinary seal being warrant enough
for the name. Since the sea-elephant’s hide is almost hairless, only
the massive coating of blubber he carries can excite the cupidity of
the hunter, and then only in the absence of anything that may be easier
obtained.

During the course of a whaling voyage “down South” it was the writer’s
misfortune to visit the Auckland Islands in search of sea-elephants,
owing to the unaccountable absence of whales from the vicinity for
an extraordinarily long time. No one of the ship’s company had ever
seen one of the creatures before, although most were well acquainted
with ordinary seal-hunting. When, therefore, it was decided to visit
the lonely, storm-tormented isles usually frequented by them there
was an utter absence of enthusiasm. Indeed, many openly expressed a
strong desire to be well out of the business. But when once a course
has been decided upon at sea it needs stronger measures and greater
unanimity among the crew than is often possessed to alter it, and
consequently, after a truly miserable time of contention with the
inhospitality of the Southern Ocean, we found ourselves anchored in a
fairly well-sheltered bay at the Aucklands. The time of our visit was
the antipodean spring, a season which, in those latitudes, is rigorous
beyond belief. Gales of wind, accompanied by hard snowflakes and hail,
raged almost incessantly, enwrapping the entire land surface in a bleak
haze of spray from the sea, mingled with the congealed moisture from
above. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the object of the expedition
had to be pursued without delay, parties were landed, armed with
clubs of iron-wood, short but massive, and long, keen knives. General
instructions were given as to procedure, based upon insufficient
data, as the recipients well knew, and therefore not at all reliable.
Everybody understood in a hazy sort of way that a seal’s vulnerable
point was his nose: a tap on that was as paralysing as a bullet through
the heart. Of course. And the subsequent proceedings were merely a
matter of practice and stamina. _Very_ good--oh, very good indeed!
Thus equipped the explorers went blundering over boulders, wading
through morasses, over fallen tree-trunks and glassy ice-slopes, until
suddenly through the mist loomed up a massy shape. Possibly it was
exaggerated by the haze, but it looked truly terrific when it was seen
to be alive. It was surprising how little any one coveted the honour
of being first to attack the big seal in front of them. But for very
shame’s sake there could be no halting on the sealers’ part.

An appalling roar, quite in keeping with his appearance, burst from the
monster, at which a most sympathetic thrill ran through the attacking
party, accompanied by an earnest desire to be somewhere else. Again
that indefinite desire to stand well in each other’s opinion came to
their rescue, impelling the foremost man to fling his fears to the
winds and rush in upon the formidable beast crouching before him. A
badly-aimed blow at the animal’s snout made no more impression than a
snow-flake, but the unwieldy creature, thoroughly alarmed, dropped from
his semi-rampant altitude, almost burying his daring assailant beneath
him as he did so. Then, like some legless hippopotamus, he waddled
seawards, rolling from side to side in a manner so utterly ludicrous
that fear was totally quenched in an uproarious burst of laughter.
Recovering from that revulsionary paroxysm, all hands rushed upon the
retreating mass, each eager to be the first to attack what we now saw
to be a thoroughly demoralised foe.

Out of the many harmless blows aimed at the great seal’s head one
struck the root of his proboscis, and like some vast bladder
suddenly deflated he sank to the ground. Into the subsequent details
it is not edifying to enter, their crude brutality being only
excusable on the ground of nervous ignorance. But as foolhardiness
succeeded timorousness, so did tragedy wait upon comedy. Out of the
mist-enwrapped morass to shoreward of us came in elephantine haste a
perfect host of the huge creatures we were seeking. And, as if they
could not see us or were so terror-stricken that nothing could hinder
them in their extraordinary career seawards, they came floundering,
bellowing right amongst our little party. For one short minute it
seemed as if we should be overwhelmed, crushed under this mountainous
charge of massive flesh. Then there was “sauve qui peut.” In various
directions we fled from the path of the advancing hosts, but hung upon
their flanks, getting a straggler now and then. The chase grew frantic,
“thorough bog, thorough briar,” over rocks and through streams; panting
with fierce desire to slay, and forgetful of all else. What a crowd of
savages we were!

At the last moment, on the very edge of the beach, one of our number,
anxious to get just another victim, missed his blow, and stumbled
right upon the huge beast. Putting out his arms to save himself,
he thrust one of them right into the mouth of the gaping behemoth.
An ear-splitting yell of agony followed, bringing every man to his
assistance on the gallop. At first it was difficult to see what
had happened, the great bulk of the seal as it swayed from side to
side effectually hiding the puny form of the suffering enemy by its
side. He, poor wretch, was in evil case; for the sea-elephant has
the alarming habit of crushing solid pebbles of basalt or granite
as large as oranges between his jaws in much the same fashion as a
healthy youngster does lollypops. Probably this strange exercise of the
gigantic jaw power he possesses is rendered necessary for digestive
purposes, since no seal masticates its food.

Poor Sandy, who in such headlong fashion had thrust his arm into that
awful mill, now found to his bitter cost what use might be made of
the generally harmless stonebreakers. After the first blood-curdling
scream we had heard there was an utter silence as far as our shipmate
was concerned, only the soft floundering of the immense mass of
sliding flesh and the snorting breath being audible. The mate was
the first to realise what had happened, and with a howl of anger he
leaped forward, bringing down his club with all his might just as the
creature stooped low for another launching movement seaward. The blow
fell just at the junction of the proboscis with the skull, and with
a shudder which convulsed the whole mass of his body the huge animal
collapsed, burying our unhappy shipmate beneath him. With one impulse
we all sprang upon the heap of flesh, tearing with desperate energy to
roll it from off the body, but it really seemed at first impossible
to move it. Slipping, sliding, gasping for breath, we all pushed and
strove--wasting, I doubt not, more than half our strength for want of
preconcerted action. Oh, joy; we moved him at last, and there lay Sandy
to all appearance a corpse.

Without any further delay we placed him in the boat, hoping that he
was still alive, but by no means sure, and with all possible speed he
was taken on board. This sudden calamity seemed to paralyse the rest
of us for the time, and we all stood about watching the departing
boat, as if we could not make up our minds to resume operations. But
suddenly a dull, thunderous roar startled us from our lethargy, and
looking landwards through the driving sleet we saw the shapeless
forms of another immense herd of the ungainly monsters floundering
toward us. Manifestly we were in an unhealthy predicament, and without
waiting for orders we fled in all directions but towards the advancing
herd. Through swampy patches of green, over frozen rocks, torn by
thorny shrubs, and incessantly dodging the blind onset of groups of
the wallowing monsters, we scrambled unreasoningly until--panting,
breathless, and demoralized--we halted from sheer inability to go
farther. When we had recovered it was some time before we got together
again, and when we did we were a sorry crowd, as unfit as could well be
imagined for the tremendous labour that awaited us of skinning the huge
carcasses that lay dotted about the foreshore. However, we commenced
the task, and by nightfall had completed the flenching. A gun from
the ship recalled us on board almost too weary to launch the boats,
and plastered thickly with mud, blood, and grease. When we arrived on
board we were too exhausted to eat, hardly able to feel any interest in
the news that Sandy was alive and doing as well as could be expected.
But one conviction was burnt deep into the perceptions of all--that
the hardest whaling ever done was a pleasant pastime compared with
sea-elephant hunting at the Aucklands.



XXIX

AN INTERVIEW


Difficulties, which, could I have foreseen then, would have appeared
insurmountable, attended the interview hereinafter recorded. First
of all, His Majesty King Cachalot the MMCC was not in the best of
humours--which was hardly to be wondered at, since, with all the
ability we could muster, five boats’ crews of us from the spouter
_Finback_ had been harassing him since daylight, eager to add his
fourteen-ton overcoat to our greasy cargo. It was a blazing day on the
Line, Pacific side, with hardly a ripple on the water, so that what
advantage there was weighed on our side. Yet so wary and skilful had
his Majesty proved, that one by one the boats had retired hurt from
the field, while the object of their attentions was as fresh as paint,
and, as he afterwards expressed it, “going very strong.” Nevertheless
the scrum had been warm in a double sense, and his Majesty bore many
palpable evidences of our efforts all over his huge black body.

Being in command of the only surviving boat, sole representative of
our available force, and with a reputation yet to win, I must confess
to a little lack of care, a nervous desire to distinguish myself; but I
still think it was hard to have my boat knocked into a litter of barrel
staves by the unanticipated somersault of my expected prize just as I
reckoned upon delivering a _coup de lance_ in final settlement of our
little account.

After the surprise of our meeting had somewhat subsided, I found
myself reclining in a richly carved and upholstered chair in my genial
host’s splendidly furnished reception room, puffing with appreciative
enjoyment at one of his unapproachable Rothschilds--’beg pardon I’m
sure--I mean that I found myself clinging with no uncertain clutch to
a capsized line-tub, into which I succeeded in getting after a series
of involuntary evolutions, after having managed to swallow the majority
of a barrel of salt water. While settling myself in my ark like a faded
Moses, our late antagonist drew near and watched me closely. As soon as
I appeared to be _compos mentis_, he thus addressed me:

“What you settin’ there fur a-gappin’ at _me_ ’sif y’didn’t know who I
wuz.”

“I humbly beg your Majesty’s pardon; I meant no offence, I assure you.
But I perceive you are an American citizen.”

“Perseev’ nothin’, y’abbrevyated galoot,” growled he. “Hain’t enny
persepshun ’baout ye, ’r y’ewd see I’m waitin’ ter be interviewed,
same’s all th’ other sellebritiz.”

Now, although I _do_ believe that the journalist is _nascitur, non
fit_, my nascent journalism if existent was decidedly latent, and at
present I was indubitably unfit for anything but a rescue or two. But
here was a unique chance of becoming famous, and though modest and
retiring to the last degree, I rose to the occasion. A few fragmentary
recollections marshalled themselves, and I asked insinuatingly:

“How old is your Majesty?”

“One thousan’ four hunderd seasons,” he replied promptly.

As soon as I recovered my breath, I answered politely, “Indeed! Your
Majesty wears well. I should hardly have thought it. Are your Majesty’s
parents living?”

“How’d I know,” he grumbled, peeping fiercely at me out of the corner
of his starboard eye. “Don’t go much on parients ermong our peepul.
Next please!”

“Where did your venerability do us the honour to be born, if the
question be allowable?” I queried timidly.

“Here,” he roared, with a resounding crash of his enormous tail on the
surface; “where’d ye think I’d be born but at sea?”

Deficient in locality evidently, I thought, being a bit of a
phrenologist myself, though it would have required a theodolite to
survey the bumps upon _his_ capacious cranium. But as he showed signs
of irritability, I added quickly, “Are you married, your Majesty, or
how?”

“Well; I should cackle,” he said--“married, hay! Why one of your (an
awful reverberation suggested a powerful adjective) slush-tubs hez jest
broke up one uv the purtiest little harems I ever collected, twelve
ravishin’ beauties sech ez any monark’d be proud of. Well thar, hurry
up; I’m jest reminded ov an ole schoolmate uv mine ’s got mose ’s good
erwun. He’s usin’ roun’ the Bonins ’baout now, ’n’ I mus’ git over
thar ’n’ b’reave him. Royal rights, y’know,” and his Majesty shed a
ponderous wink.

“What does your Majesty do for a living?” I ventured to inquire.

“Eat!” he roared. “Harpoons en bomb-guns, what dz ennybody du fr a
livin’? _I_ never heerd sech a barnacle-headed grampus ’n all my
fishin’.” With that he lifted up his tremendous caput out of water and
exposed his Blackwall tunnel of a mouth, as who should remark, “Not
much room for other occupation in a whale’s life when a gulf like this
needs attention.”

I suppose I looked a bit preoccupied, for he hastily added, “But I
never eat sech insecks ez you be.”

“What, never?” I ventured to murmur.

“No, never,” he replied; “at least, that is,”--but seeing his
hesitation, I said I fancied I’d heard a story about a passenger by
the name of Jonah down on the Syrian coast a while back. “Oh, well
y’know,” he muttered apologetically, “’f course accidents will happen,
’s the shark said to his brother when he took him in, but I don’t
reckon thar wuz anythin’ to mek a noise erbout. ’Tany-rate the can’date
left considerable sudden. Yew needn’t be ’fraid ennyhow.”

But I was unprepared with any more questions at the moment, the
outlook, or inlook rather, being so disconcerting. So I said, “Would
your Majesty object to outlining a few of your wonderful experiences
for the benefit of landsmen generally. Any information you may choose
to give will be regarded as strictly confidential, of course.”

“Oh, sartinly,” he replied with an alarming area of smile. “Mos’ ov ’em
hev ben with your dod-gasted tribe. Why yew’re tarnally prowlin’ erbout
tryin’ ter get ter wind’ard ov peac’ble fokes I kaint surmise. Still,
up till now I’ve ben equal ter holdin’ me own,--keepin’ me eend up,
ez yew may say. To-day f’rinstance, hey?” I winced under the sarcasm.
“But I mind onst daown on the Noo Seelan’ coas’ towin’ five boat-load
ov Mowries frum the Solander ’way down eenamost ter the Cambells. They
wuz a plucky crowd, f’r they helt on ter me through a blizzard ov hail
an’ snow lasting twyst az long as I kin stay soundin’. When it gin
over they wuz all fruz stiffer’n a lance-pole. My, but gettin’ cleer
ov em wuz a pull. I hed to soun’ at top-gait ’sif I wuz boun’ f’r two
thousan’ fathoms, ’n’ suthin’ hed ter give. I wuz pretty fat in those
days, so their all-fired irons drew. They galled me like sixty, but I
was free.

“Then a left-handed-on-both-feet crowd eout ov a French right-whaler
tackled me offn the Cape. Mighty big mistake _they_ struck--thought I
wuz pore ole say-nothin’-ter-nobody Mr. Cetus, they did. ’N’, when I
milled roun’ ’n’ cum f’r ’em eend on ’ith er twenty foot smile on me
hed! airthqueeks ’n’ volcanose! y’ sh’d jest er seen ’em flew. Didn’
wait to say howdy, jest cut line ’n’ vamoosed like ’sif ole Jemmy
Smallback wuz after ’em. I wuz thet mad, I’d liketer hev busted up
their ole hooker ’n’ all, but thet thar _Essex_ affair gin me sech er
swell’d hed I ’lowed it warn’t bad reck’nin’ ter let her go et that.

“Say, djever see er big squid, big’s me?” he queried sharply.

“Yes, your Majesty, I did once. Only once. B-b-b-ay of B-b-bengal,” for
I was almost moribund.

“Ah, you _hev_ seen suthin’ then. F’r yew insecks wut live on top don’t
offen git a chance ter see them critters ’less we bring ’em up f’r the
sun ter see haow gaul-darned ugly they air. Wall, one like yew say yew
seen tangled erp my fav’rit’ wife off Futuna one afternoon. Me an’ my
harem wuz feedin’ at ’bout a thousan’ fathom, an’ Polly jest sidled up
ter ole Jellybelly ’n’ got hole ov a mouthful ov him. He, bein’ kinder
s’prised, gripped her all over ter onst; ’n’, stranger,” he added
impressively, “I’ll be weather-bound ef he didn’t frap her hole head up
so’s she couldn’t bite er breathe. We’d ben down ’bout long ernough
too, but I sailed right in ’n’ bit his great carkiss in half az well az
I c’d see f’r his ink-cloud. Hows’ever I wuz too late, f’r he’d locked
his tangle ov arms roun’ an’ roun’ her hed, ’n’ though his body wuz all
chawed erp they couldn’ come adrift. So she drowned, ’n we all hed ter
make tracks upstairs quicker ’n winkin’ er we sh’d a ben drowned tu. As
’twuz we wuz fair beat out when we arrove up top.

“Did I ever have enny fights with me own people? Well I--but there,
how’d yew know, poor thing. Millyuns ov ’em. Look at me,” and he swept
proudly past exhibiting his grooved and ribbed flanks bearing indelible
traces of many a furious battle, some of the foot-wide scars being
twenty feet long.

“Enny more informashun I c’n supply yew with at short notice? bekuz
this session’ll hev ter adjurn _siny die_ in about tew minnits. I’m
gittin’ mos’ amazin’ peckish.”

Happy thought, “What do you live on mostly, your Majesty?”

“Squid. Fust ’n las’ ’n’ between meals gen’ly. They aint nothin’ better
tew eat in the hull worl’ ’z far’s I know. We dew ’casionally git a
bellyful ov fish ov sorts by layin’ quiet when the shoals air swarmin’.
They run down a feller’s gullet in hunderds ’n never know whar they’re
goin. But they’re cussid indigestible----”

I was alone. There was nothing in sight, but my interviewee was gone.
So stiff and sore was I that I could hardly turn my head to see if
help was coming. There was no help in sight that I could discover, but
presently a boat came along from the ship and picked me up--none too
soon. Gloomily we returned on board to moralise mournfully over our
ill-luck and the perfidy of sperm whales generally.



XXX

UP A WATERSPOUT


Of course no one is under any obligation to believe this most reliable
relation. At the same time I may be allowed to remind the sceptical
that in the present case their credibility is subjected to no such
strain as half the respectable advertisements of the day place upon
it. However, I won’t press the point; here is the story, _fay ce que
vouldras_.

Doubtless you have all heard of waterspouts, many of you have seen them
in full spin, and not a few, amateurs of meteorology, have got their
pet theories as to the genesis, evolution, and dissolution of these
mysterious meteors. With just a touch of perhaps pardonable vanity I
may say that, for an important section of society, my theory holds
the field--is, in fact, unassailable. But I refrain from exposing it
publicly at present, principally because such exposition involves a
large use of the higher mathematics, in which I am, to be candid,
somewhat shaky; and secondly, because the editor would see me farther
before he would let me do it. But an ounce of experience is worth a
ton of theory, even such gilt-edged theory as mine--at least most of us
work on the lines of this well-worn proverb. So my experience, which is
herein set forth, must necessarily be considered as the most valuable
contribution to our knowledge of waterspoutery or trombe-oonery that
has ever yet appeared. I might claim more for it than this, but modesty
was ever a failing of mine.

On 23rd August last, then, I was leaning over the taffrail of an
ancient barque, of which I was “only” mate, homeward bound from Iquique
to Falmouth for orders. We had reached the horse latitudes, those
detestable regions embracing the debatable area between the limits of
the north-east and south-east trade winds. Here you may have such an
exhibition of what the skies are capable of in the matter of rain as
nowhere else in the world. For days together the weather will consist
of squalls--not much wind in them as a rule--from all points of the
compass, but rain--well, one might almost as well be living beneath an
ocean of which the bottom is given to falling out occasionally. And
as all this tremendous rainfall comes from the sea, the replenishment
of the supply upstairs keeps the pumping machinery going constantly.
It is no uncommon sight to see forty or fifty waterspouts in various
stages of their career at one time. On this particular afternoon there
was quite a forest of them about, but as yet none of them had come
within less than two or three miles of the ship. It was my watch
below, and the air being stifling down in the murky little cabin, I
was enjoying a pipe and a little cool breeze that had been blowing
for about twenty minutes in the right direction. The old hooker was
wriggling along about two or three knots--sufficiently fast to induce
me to try whether some members of a sociable school of dolphins that
were playing about us could be gulled into biting at a bit of white rag
I was trailing, which concealed a formidable hook. The “old man” was
below, seated at the cabin table, wrestling with his day’s reckoning
not over-successfully, for his grumbling expletives were now and then
audible through the wide-open skylight, the man at the wheel gazing
skyward with a comical expression of innocence whenever he met my
eye after an extra heavy blast from below. The antics of the fish
beneath me so fully occupied my attention that the near approach of a
waterspout along the starboard beam did not attract my notice. In any
case, the weather was no affair of mine, the bo’sun being in charge,
though, as usual in these undermanned vessels, up to his elbows in
tar, away forward somewhere. But suddenly the gloom became so heavy
and the chill in the air so evident, that I looked up wondering whence
the squall had arrived at such short notice. At that moment a big
dolphin who had been tantalising me for a long time seized my hook. I
had only two or three fathoms of line out, and being balanced upon
the taffrail, the jerk was sufficiently forceful to make me turn a
back somersault overboard. The last thing I saw was the helmsman’s
face blank with utter amazement at my sudden exit. I struck the
water end-on, going pretty deep, but on returning to the surface was
horrified to find myself the centre of a whirling, seething commotion,
as if some unseen giant was stirring the sea with a mighty spoon. The
gyrations I was compelled to perform made me quite giddy and sick,
although my head kept so well above water that I was in no danger of
drowning. Faster and faster yet I was whirled around, while a dense fog
seemed to rise all round, shutting out everything from view behind an
impenetrable white curtain.

I have often noticed that if you tuck a chicken’s head under its
wing and give it a gentle circular motion it will “stay put,” in any
position you like for an indefinite length of time, although the
brightness of its eyes and its regular respiration shows that it is
“all there.” Thus it was with me. I was certainly all there, but
the spinning business had reduced me to a hypnotised or mesmerised
condition, in which I was incapable of independent volition, while
keenly conscious of all that was going on. I became aware of an upward
movement, a sort of spiral ascension, as if I was attached to one of
the threads of a gigantic vertical screw that was being withdrawn by a
steady left-handed revolution. Also, it was very wet, though not with
a solid wetness as of the sea--more like one of the usual tremendous
showers we had lately been having, and in no sense was I conscious of
floating. I began to get somewhat used to the spiral movement, the
sensation being almost pleasant, since the nausea that troubled me
was gone, but I wondered vaguely whither I was bound. It was getting
very cold, and a muffled persistent roar, as of some infuriated bull
uttering his grievances through a vast speaking-trumpet, worried me
greatly, for I could imagine no reason for such a sound. However, in my
passive condition I could only endure whatever came along, this being
no time for protest or struggle.

Suddenly I felt myself emerge as if from a pipe up into an immense
reservoir of the heaviest mist I ever felt. At that instant a terrible
sensation of instability took possession of me, very like that one
experiences in wandering over deep new-fallen snow, concealing Heaven
knows what crevasses beneath, only more so. My heart worked like a
pulsometer, and every nerve in my quivering corpus said as plain as
print, “You’ll come an awful cropper directly.” And it was even so.
All my lost power of independent movement came back to me at once,
and frantically clutching at the fog wreaths around me I began to
fall. Most of us know that ugly old dream where the bed plays see-saw
over some unfathomable abyss, higher at every swing, till suddenly we
wake snatching at the bed-clothes and bathed in sweat. In my case,
unfortunately, the fall came too. It seemed to occupy hours. While I
came hurtling from the heavens I remembered with satisfaction that the
wife would get her half-pay right up to the end of the voyage, and I
fervently hoped she had kept my insurance premiums paid up. Then the
great solemn sea sprang up to meet me. There was a Number One splash,
a rush of salt water in my ears, and the blessed daylight once more.
Right close to me was the ship, all hands gaping over the side at me
as if I was a spook and never a one offering to heave me a line. The
manner of my reappearance seemed to have knocked them all silly. All
except the old man, that is. He stooped deliberately, picked up the
coil of the main topsail brace, and hove it at me. It fell all about
me in a tangle, but I managed to get hold of the standing part, which
I froze to tight, while the skipper hauled me alongside. Feeling numb
and stupid, I yet managed to haul myself on board, and with all the
chaps gaping at me with protruding eyes, staggered up on to the poop.
The skipper met me with a scowl, saying grimly, “Looky here, Mr. Brown,
the next time you quit this ship, with my leave or without, you’ll stay
there.” I felt hurt, but disinclined to talk back, so I went below to
change my dunnage and enter up my log-book.


_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.



Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling variations were made consistent
when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise
they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.

Page 189: “was bowling rapidly” was printed that way.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Idylls of the Sea - and Other Marine Sketches" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.