Tom Finch's Monkey Part 3

None of your making work for him when there was nothing to do; but when the hands were wanted, why he did expect them to look alive, and have no skulking--small blame to him, say I, for one!

"We had run down below the parallel of Cape Horn, pretty considerable I should think, when we at last had to ask the old brig to bear up eastwards to lie her proper course; and then you should have seen the tricks she played--confound her! Why, we had to treat her as gingerly as if she were a yacht rounding a mark-boat to make her bear up a point or go to the wind; although I'll give her the credit of saying, if she were cranky--and she was that, and no mistake--she made no leeway, which was a blessing at all events.

"It was some days after we had altered our course to East South East, with as much more easterly as we could get out of her--and that wasn't much, try all we could, with as much fore and aft sail as we could get on her--when the weather began to change, and the wind, which had been steadily blowing from the north-east, chopped round a bit more ahead, the sea getting up, and a stray squall coming now and again, which made us more alert tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the sails, and taking in and letting out canvas as occasion arose. It was no use, however, trying to drive the brig to the eastward any longer with this wind s.h.i.+fting about, humour her as we might; so the skipper altered her course again more to the south, although we were then as far down as we ought to have gone.

"'The darling,' says he to the first officer when he gave the order to lay her head South South East, 'she's a little playful with the heavy cargo we've got on board, and wants to keep warm as long as she can!

Let her run a hundred miles or so more south, and then we'll fetch up to the Horn, and be able to spin along like winking, just as the beautiful creature wants!'

"Well! it did make us mad to hear the old man talk like this about the clumsy old tub; but of course we couldn't help ourselves, so we only grinned, and said to each other,--'Catch us coming again in the _Cranky Jane_ when once we're safe ash.o.r.e!'

"Would you believe it? The blessed brig, although the new course she was on brought the wind aft instead of on her beam, she was that spiteful over it, that, as it was blowing much stronger than it had been, it took two of us to keep her head from deviating from her proper track, and we had hard work to prevent her from breaking off more than she did.

"The wind came on towards the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and by nightfall--you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in those lat.i.tudes--we had to shorten sail so much that the _Cranky Jane_ was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with reefed top-sails and jib and main-sail besides the stay-sails.

"The weather got wilder and wilder as time went on, the heavens quite dark overhead, except an occasional glint of a star which didn't know whether he ought to show or not; but still, although we were pretty far below the equator, the night was warm and even sultry, so that we expected a hurricane, or cyclone, or something of that sort, for it was quite unnatural to feel as if in the tropics when fifty degrees south!

"The cap'en, I know, thought it would blow by and by, for before he turned in he caused even the reefed top-sails and stay-sails to be taken in, and left her snug for the night, with only a close-reefed main-sail and the jib on her.

"'Keep a good look-out, Mr Stanchion,' says he to the chief officer, as he went down the companion-ladder to his cabin, 'and call me if there's the slightest change.'

"'Ay, ay, sir,' says Mr Stanchion; and so the skipper goes below with a cheerful good-night, in spite of the weather looking dirty and squalls being handy before morning.

"Now, as luck would have it--as some folks say, although others put it down to something more than luck--Mr Stanchion wasn't like one of those jolly, devil-may-care, slap-dash sort of officers, that your regular sh.e.l.l-backs like best. He was a silent, quiet, reflective man, who looked and spoke as if b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth; and yet he thought deeper and further than your dash-and-go gentlemen, who act on the spur of the moment without cogitating.

"As soon as the skipper had turned in, he did a thing which perhaps not one officer in a hundred would have done in his place, considering we were on the open ocean out of the track of pa.s.sing vessels, and that it wasn't much darker than it is on most nights when there's no moon, and the sky is cloudy.

"What do you think it was? Why, he put a man on the look-out on the forecastle, just as if we were going up channel, or in a crowded sea- way! The skipper had meant him to look-out himself, but another wouldn't be amiss, he said.

"Providentially, too, the very man whom he accidentally selected was the very best person he could have placed as look-out, if he had picked the whole crew over from the captain downward; although the mate did not know this when he sang out to him to go on the forecastle.

"This was Pat O'Brien--'Paddy,' as all the hands called him--an Irishman, of course, as you would judge from his name, who had been in one of the Arctic expeditions, which we were speaking of just now. He went out with Sir Leopold McClintock I think; but all I know is, that he once was up a whole winter in the Polar Sea, and there had got laid on his back with scurvy, besides having his toes frost-bitten, as he frequently told us when yarning amongst the crew of an evening.

"Generally speaking, he was a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow, and one might have wondered that Mr Stanchion called him from out the watch that had just came on deck; but, as I said before, the mate could not possibly have made a better selection, as it turned out afterwards.

"Pat O'Brien was a comic chap, full of fun, and always making jokes; so that as soon as he opened his mouth almost to say anything the other fellows would laugh, for they knew that some lark was coming.

"'Be jabers,' says Pat, as he goes forward in obedience to the chief officer's order, 'it's a nice pleasant look-out I'll have all by meeself! while you're coilin' the ropes here, I'll be thinkin' of my colleen there!' and he went out on the foc'sl.

"By and by we could hear him muttering to himself. 'Wurrah, wurrah!

Holy mother, can't you let me be aisy!' he sang out presently aloud as if he was suffering from something, or in pain.

"'Look-out, ahoy!' hails Mr Stanchion from aft; 'what's the matter ahead--what are you making all that row about?'

"'Sure an' it's my poor feet, save yer honour, that are hurting of me, they feels the frost terrible!'

"The first mate naturally thought Master Paddy was trying to play off one of his capers on him--for it wouldn't be the first time he tried the game on; so this answer got up his temper, making him shout back an answer to the Irishman that would tell him he wasn't going to catch him napping.

"'Nonsense, man,' he calls out--'frost? Why, you are dreaming! The thermometer is up to over sixty degrees, and it's warm enough almost for the tropics.'

"The hands, of course, thought too that Pat was only joking in his usual way and endeavouring to make fun of Mr Stanchion; and they waited to hear what would come next from the Irishman, knowing that he was not easily shut up when once he had made up his mind for anything. However, they soon could tell from the tone of voice in which Pat spoke again that he wasn't joking this time, or else he was acting very well in carrying out his joke on the mate; for as we were laughing about his 'poor feet,' which was a slang term in those days, Paddy calls out again in reply to the mate:--

"'Faix,' says he, 'it's ne'er a lie I'm telling, yer honour. Be jabers!

my feet feel as if they were in the ice now, and frost-bitten all over!'

"Another officer in Mr Stanchion's place would, as likely as not, have consigned poor Pat to a warmer locality in order to warm his limbs there; but Mr Stanchion, as I've said, was a man of a different stamp, and a reflective one, too; and the words of the Irishman made him think of something he had read once of a frost-bitten limb having been discovered by a well-known meteorologist to be an unfailing weather- token of the approach of cold. Instead, therefore, of angrily telling Pat to hold his tongue and look-out as he ought, Mr Stanchion went forward and joined him; we on deck, of course, being on the look-out at once.

"Presently, we could see the chief officer and the Irishman on the forecastle, peering out together over the s.h.i.+p's bows as if looking for something.

"'I'm certain, sir,' I heard Pat say earnestly, 'we're near ice whenever my feet feels the cold, yer honour; and there, be jabers, there's the ice-blink, as they calls it in the Arctic seas, and we're amongst the icebergs, as sure as you live!'

"At the same moment, the atmosphere lightened up with a whitish blue light--somewhat like pale moons.h.i.+ne--and Mr Stanchion shouted out at the top of his voice, louder than we ever dreamt he could speak--'Hard a-starboard! Down with the helm for your life!'

"Bill, the boatswain, and I, who were together at the wheel, jammed down the spokes with all our strength; but the blessed brig wouldn't come up to the wind as we wanted her. She wouldn't, although we both almost hung on the wheel and wrenched it off the deck. 'Hard up with the helm, men, do you hear?' again sings out the chief officer, rus.h.i.+ng aft as he spoke. 'Hard up, men! all our lives are at stake!'

"And the brig wouldn't come up, try all we could. Bill and I could have screamed with rage; but in another minute we were laughing with joy.

"The light got clear; and there, to our horror, just where we wanted the dear old brig to go--and she wouldn't go, like a sensible creature, although we cursed her for not obeying the helm--was an enormous iceberg rising out of the depths of the ocean, and towering above the masts of the poor _Jane_, which I feel loth to call 'cranky' any longer--as high almost as the eyes could see, like the cliffs at Dover, only a hundred yards higher, without exaggeration! If the brig had come up to the wind, as Mr Stanchion sang out for us to make her, why, two minutes after, she would have struck full into the iceberg, and running, as she was, good fourteen knots and more under her jib and main-sail, her bows would have stoved in, and we'd all have been in Davy Jones's locker before we could have said Jack Robinson!

"As it was, we weren't out of danger by any means. There were icebergs to the right of us; icebergs astern of us, by which we had pa.s.sed probably when Pat first complained of feeling the cold; icebergs ahead of us, through which we would have gingerly to make our way, for we had no option with the gale that was blowing but to keep the same course we were on, as to lie to amidst all that ice would be more dangerous even than moving on; and the big, enormous berg we had just escaped was on our left, or port side properly speaking--looking, for all the world, like a curving range of cliffs on some rock-bound coast, as it spread out more than five or six miles in length. It was certainly the biggest iceberg I ever saw in my life, beating to nothing all that I afterwards noticed in the Arctic seas when I went north in the _Polaris_; and perhaps that is the reason why all the ice mounds I saw there became so dwarfed by comparison that they looked quite insignificant.

"Pat kept on the forecastle, looking out and directing the course of the vessel, as the cap'en, who had just come on deck, roused by the noise, thought the Irishman's experience in the Arctic seas would make him more useful even than himself in coursing the s.h.i.+p.

"The skipper was right as usual; and Pat had soon a chance of showing that his choice had not been misplaced.

"'Kape her away! kape her away!' Pat shouted out in a minute or two after the cap'en had come on deck 'The top of the berg is loosenin', yer honour; and sure it's falling on us it will be in a brace of shakes!

Kape her away, or, be jabers, it's lost we'll be for sartin!'

"The old brig, although she wouldn't come up to the wind when we wanted her, and thus saved our lives by disobeying orders, now answered her helm promptly without any demur, and dashed away from the ma.s.s of ice before the gale at, I should be ashamed to say what speed.

"Bless the old _Cranky Jane_! How could we ever have reviled her and despised her? She seemed almost as if she had human intelligence and a kind of foresight.

"We only just weathered the berg when the summit toppled over with a crash, missing the after-part of the brig by a very few yards, and churning up the sea far around with a sort of creamy surf, that dashed over our decks, and swept us fore and aft.

"It was a marvellous escape, and only second to that we had just before had in avoiding running on to the same gigantic ma.s.s of floating ice, which had probably come up from the Antarctic regions for the summer season--at least, that was Pat O'Brien's explanation for our meeting with it there.

"All that night and next morning we were pa.s.sing through bergs of every size, big and little, although none were so large as the one which had been so risky to us--bergs that in their splendid architecture and magnificence, with fantastic peaks and fine pinnacles, that glittered in the rising sun with all the colours of the rainbow, flas.h.i.+ng out rays and lights of violet and purple, topaz blue and emerald green, blush rose and pink and red, mingled with shades of crimson and gleams of gold, with a frosting over all of silver and bright white light--Those who haven't seen an iceberg at sea at sunrise have no idea of the depth and breadth of beauty in nature, though I, one who has served his time before the mast, says so. But, avast with such flummery and wordage!"

"Good gracious me!" I exclaimed, aghast at the old gentleman turning round so completely from the statement he had made when we first entered into conversation. "I thought you said just now that all icebergs were a dull white without any other colour, save a streak of blue sometimes running through them like a vein; and yet, here you are painting them in all the varied tints of the rainbow!"

He was not a bit put out, however, by this accusation of inconsistency.

"This was how they looked at sunrise, which, like a brilliant sunset, as you know, makes a very great difference in the appearance of objects, causing even the most common things to look brilliant, and dignifying the common so as to make it look sublime! But, with your permission,"

added the old gentleman courteously, "I will finish my story of the brig's escape.

"After we pa.s.sed all the ice, the wind came round, as the captain said it would, right favourable for our course; and the _Cranky Jane_ behaved like a good one. We made all our easting on one tack, and pa.s.sed the Cape still a good distance to the south, but in as good a lat.i.tude as we could have pa.s.sed it in for the weather we had, which was first-rate.

"And when we began to mount northwards again, towards the little island which we all prize so much, although it is but a little spot on the map of Europe, why, the wind changed too, still almost due aft as the dear old _Cranky Jane_ liked, much to the delight and joy of everybody on board, especially the skipper, who exclaimed, as he rubbed his hands together in joy, and walked up and down the p.o.o.p,--'Bless the darling, she's a walker! And I wouldn't swop her for the best clipper in the China trade!'

"We had a good land-fall all right, entering the Channel shortly after sighting the Lizard, making the quickest pa.s.sage ever known for a sailing brig from Fiji; and, in spite of all the dear old craft's shortcomings and temper and weather-helm, myself and the rest of the crew, including of course Pat O'Brien and his 'poor feet,' were willing, even after all the perils we had pa.s.sed through, and the dangers we had escaped, every mother's son of us, with Captain Jiggins' permission, and the chief officer's favour, to sign articles, and s.h.i.+p for another voyage in the old _Cranky Jane_; and, what is more, we did too, sticking to the brig till she went to pieces off Cape Lewis to the south of New Zealand in her last voyage out. That's all!"