In the Misty Seas: A Story of the Sealers of Behring Strait

Presently, however, he was sensible of a horrible qualm under his belt, and looked at his hands with a little groan – one of them was bleeding from the rasp of the ropes, and the other swollen and more painful than if it had been beaten. He stood still for another second or two endeavouring to convince himself that there was nothing unusual going on inside him, and then staggered dizzily to the leeward rail. He found Niven there already, and for the next few minutes two very unhappy lads gazed down at the foam that whirled and roared beneath them as the Aldebaranswept out from the narrow seas before the brave north-wester.

CHAPTER IV

A LESSON IN SEAMANSHIP

It was a fine Sunday, and the Aldebaran rolling southwards lazily over a dazzling sea when Niven and Appleby lay on the warm deck with their shoulders against the house listening to Lawson who sat in the doorway reading. Pleasant draughts flickered about them as the warm wind flowed under the great arch of the mainsail's foot, and above it the sunlit canvas climbed, tier on tier, to the little royals swaying slowly athwart the blue. The barque was sliding forward on an even keel, but now and then she lifted her weather side with a gentle roll, and a brighter glare was flung up by the shining brine. Behind them the blue smoke of the galley whirled in little puffs, and glancing aft Appleby was almost dazzled by a flash from the twinkling brass boss of the wheel. Then when the poop went down he could see the figure of the helmsman forced up against the iridescent blueness of the sea.

Appleby wore a thin singlet and slippers, duck trousers and a jacket of the same material that had once been white and was a nice grey now. Niven's things were cleaner, but one rent trouser leg had been inartistically sewn up with seaming twine, and neither of them looked very like the somewhat fastidious youngsters who had once found fault with their rations in Sandycombe School. Their faces were bronzed from their foreheads to their throats, their hands were ingrained as a navvy's, and almost as hard, and they could by this time have eaten anything there was nourishment in.

"There's no use reading that stuff to us. We can't take it in," said Niven.

Lawson grinned at Appleby. "A little thick in the head?" he said.

"No," said Niven. "My head's as good as those most people have, anyway. I was top of the list almost every term when I was at school."

Lawson's smile grew broader. "That's a bad sign," he said. "Now I never knew how much I didn't know until I came to sea, and you don't seem to have got that far yet. You see, there's a good deal you want to forget."

"Well," said Niven, "forgetting's generally easy. What would you teach a fellow who wanted to go to sea?"

Lawson rubbed his head. "How to get fat on bread and water would come in useful for one thing," he said. "Then it would be handy to know just when to say nothing when you're kicked, and when it would be better to put your foot down and answer with your fist. You see, if you do either of them at the wrong time you're apt to be sorry."

"Appleby knows that already," said Niven, whose eyes twinkled as he glanced at his friend.

Appleby made a grimace, and Lawson laughed.

"Then it's a good deal more than you do, though I expect the mate will teach you the first of it," he said.

"Now, when Cally put soft-soap in your singlet and sewed your trousers up you should have laughed fit to split yourself, as Appleby did. Cally tarred his hair for him, and there's some in yet, but any one would have fancied that he liked it."

Niven wriggled a little. "Oh, shut up! That's not what we want to know," he said.

"No?" said Lawson. "Then we'll get on to the healthful art and practice of seamanship. Am I to commence at the end, or half-way through? The beginning will not be much use to you."

"I'll climb down," said Niven. "Made an ass of myself, as usual. Now, do you want me to lick your boots for you? Begin at the beginning, and make it simple."

Lawson chuckled. "You'll get on while you're in that frame of mind, my son," he said. "Well, now, there are, generally speaking, two kinds of sailing ships – first the fore-and-afters, examples, cutter, ketch, and schooner, with their canvas on one side only of the mast. They're to be described as tricky, especially when you jibe them going free, but when you jam them on the wind they'll beat anything."

"Jam them on the wind?" said Appleby.

Lawson nodded. "Close-hauled sailing. That's what I'm coming to," he said. "In the meanwhile there's the other kind, the one the Britisher holds to, while the Yankee who knows how to run cheap ships smiles, the square-riggers, examples, the ship and brig. Their sails are bent to yards which cross the masts, and, as you have found out, you've got to go aloft in all weathers to handle them, which is not one of their advantages. Then we come to the modifications or crosses between them, the barque, two masts square-rigged, fore-and-aft on mizzen, of which the Aldebaran is a tolerably poor example, topsail schooner, brigantine, which has yards on her foremast and fore-and-aft main, and barquentine with foremast square-rigged and two mainmasts carrying fore-and-aft canvas, though they call the last of them the mizzen. The other kind I didn't mention is the one that makes the money, and sails with a screw. Got that into you?"

"Oh, yes," said Niven, yawning. "Can't you get on? I knew it all years ago."

Lawson grinned. "Of course!" he said. "Well, I'll leave the mate to talk to you."

He went into the deckhouse, and returned with a sheet of paper and a little, beautifully-constructed model of a full-rigged ship. "I made it last trip to work out questions for my examination with," he said, but the deprecation in his bronzed face betrayed his pride, and Appleby, who saw how tenderly he handled the model, understood. "Now we come to the one and universal practice of sailing. I make this ring on the paper, and you can consider it the compass, or, and it's the same thing, one-half the globe. Here I draw two lines across it crossing each other, and we'll mark the ends of them North, South, East, and West. That divides the circle into four quarters, and the corners where the lines intersect are right angles, each containing ninety degrees, or eight points of the compass which has thirty-two in all."

He laid the paper on the deck, and when he had turned it so that the first line run from North to South, placed the model at the upper end of it, and twisted the yards and sails, which moved, square across the hull. "The wind's blowing from Greenland to the South pole, and she's going before it," he said. "Anything would sail that way – it's called running – even a haystack, and you trim the vessel's sails whether she's fore-and-aft or square-rigged at right angles to a line drawn down the middle of her hull. Well, we've reached the south end of the line – we'll say it's the south pole, and want to get back north again, but the wind is right against us now."

He picked up the model, and twisted the yards again so that they slanted sharply across the hull, making a small angle with its middle line. "Now she's braced sharp up, or close hauled – every sheet's hauled in – on the wind, and we'll start her heading north-east on the port tack. That is, the wind's on the port side of her, though we could have started on the opposite one heading north-west, if we had liked. Run that line along, and you'll find it makes an angle of four points of the compass, or forty-five degrees, with the wind, which makes it evident that by and by you come to the edge of the first quarter of the circle at east. Then, if we put the ship round with the wind on her opposite side, and sail at the same angle as far again, we come back to north, where the wind is blowing from, and when you grasp that you've got the principle of the whole thing. With the wind behind you all sails flowing, when you're working up against it, everything's flattened in, but you have to remember that all vessels don't sail equally close to the wind, and while a racing cutter will lie very close indeed, a shallow full-bowed hooker must have it almost on her side to keep her going. That's why I took four points as a handy example, because two tacks of forty-five degrees would bring us back again."

"But why doesn't the wind shove her away sideways when she's close-hauled?" asked Appleby.

Lawson nodded approval. "That shows you're following, it does," he said. "Still it don't amount to very much if the vessel's deep, because all of her that's in the water offers resistance to it. They all slide off a little, and that's the leeway."

"Well," said Niven, "when the wind's so to speak almost against her, what makes her go ahead at all?"

Lawson grinned. "What makes a kite go up against the wind? You see the sails of a close-hauled ship make about the same angle to it as a kite does. They didn't teach you that at school?"

"I think they did," said Appleby. "There's something very like it in the parallelogram of forces."

"The biscuit's yours," said Lawson. "Get that into you, and you know all the whys of sailing."

He yawned and bent over his book, repeating snatches of curious ditties about green to green and red to red, and steamers crossing, but Appleby remembered what he had heard, which was fortunate, because it was the only instruction that anybody ever gave him on board the Aldebaran. Then the cook banged on something in his galley, and Niven, who got up and stretched himself, went along to bring in the tea. He came back with a big steaming can and grinned at Appleby.

"They'll be getting very different tucker at home," he said. "Still, it will be beastly cold and wet up there just now."

His merriment was evidently a trifle forced, and another lad who lay poring over a book in a corner raised his head.

"Oh, shut up!" he said. "We've heard all that before, and you don't do it very well. If I could get back into the shop the governor found me I'd like to catch myself going to sea. Oh, great handspikes! Just listen to the brute."

A storm of venomous language came forward from the poop, and through the drowsy flap of canvas and stillness of the dazzling ocean there rang the strident voice of the mate. Lawson slowly shook his head.

"She was scarcely steering, and Biddulph has let her fall off," he said. "They've stood a good deal forward, but that mate of ours is pushing them too far."

Then there was silence that seemed deepened by the light flap and rustle of sailcloth and gurgle of shining brine, but the peace of the day had gone, and the shadow which crept into the four young faces was that which has darkened so many lives at sea. They had all been used to discipline, and did not resent it, while it had been made evident to two of them of late that on board a sailing ship toil that is brutal as well as perilous is often a necessity. They would also have undertaken it more or less cheerfully, but there had been added to it a ruthless tyranny, and Appleby's little sigh seemed to ask the question that downtrodden men have asked from the beginning – why such things must be? And, for he was young, he could not find an answer.

A little breeze sprang up after sunset, and the ship was sliding faster through a sea that blazed about her with lights of green and gold when Appleby hung about the deck, held still and silent by something in the harmonies of the night. There was no moon, but there was also no cloud in the sky, and the great stars the mast-heads swayed across hung set far back one behind the other in the blue, while the spires of canvas towered black and sharp under their cold light. Not a cloth rustled, but there came down from the gossamer tracery of rigging a little musical humming that suggested the chanting of an invisible choir.

Forward a black figure was visible on the forecastle. Here and there another showed along the dusky line of bulwarks, and now and then Appleby could see the dark shape of the mate standing high upon the poop. This, however, was not often, because he preferred to keep the great shadowy mainsail between himself and it. Night and sea were still and peaceful, and that sinister figure alone jarred upon their serenity.

Suddenly the harsh voice he feared broke the silence, and Appleby instinctively set his lips when he saw his comrade cross the deck. It was noticeable that Niven went at a trot, and if he had been told that one side of the poop is usually sacred to the officer of the watch knowing that haste was advisable he forgot. A moment or two later he stood panting at the head of the ladder, which rose about six feet from the deck, and the mate strode towards him with arm drawn back. Possibly something had ruffled his temper, which was at the best a bad one, that night.

"There are two ladders to this poop, and this will teach you which is yours," he said.

Then before Niven could speak the arm shot out, and the breathless lad reeled backwards with head swimming and a tingling face. The blow had possibly not been a very cruel one, but the Aldebaran swung her stern up just then, and the opening in the rails was close behind him. He went out through it backwards, caught his foot on the rung of the ladder, and pitching over came down with a sickening thud on deck. Appleby, who had seen it all, ran aft and knelt down beside him.

"Chriss, are you hurt?" he gasped.

There was no answer, and hearing a rattle on the ladder the lad looked up, and saw the mate standing close by. He had his hands in his pockets, but there was an unpleasant look in his face.

"Shamming. Take him forward," he said, and stooped as though about to shake the lad who still lay motionless.

He, however, straightened himself as Appleby rose up, and stood before him, quivering, with hand clenched and a blaze in his eyes.

"Get back! You have done enough," he said, and if Niven could have heard it he would scarcely have recognized his comrade's voice.

"Hello!" the mate said sharply. "Were you talking to me?"