I have eaten a good many Christmas dinners in strange places, and have gone without the great feast of our nation in yet stranger. I have lost my Christmas dinner in a wholly unexpected manner, and have achieved that meal by a not less unexpected stroke of good fortune. At noon on Christmas Day, just thirty years ago, the outlook for our Christmas dinner consisted of a scrap of raw rusty pork and a ship-biscuit sodden in sea-water; and the prospect of even that poor fare was precarious, in face of the momentary danger of a watery grave. Four hours later I was the guest at a board groaning with the good cheer appropriate to the “festive season.”

Just of age, I had been spending the summer of 1859 in travelling through Canada, and in the late autumn found myself in Quebec, intending to be back in England in time for the Christmastide with my relatives at home. One evening I took stock of my financial resources, and found I had only a very small sum to the fore—barely enough to clear me in Quebec and pay my fare to England either as steerage passenger in a steamer or as cabin passenger in a sailing-vessel. I had made the passage out very pleasantly in an emigrant sailing-ship. It had been a summer voyage, and I did not reflect that on the Atlantic summer does not last the year round. My pride rather revolted at a steerage passage, and I determined on the cabin of a sailing-ship. I know now, but I did not know then, that the sailing-ship trading between the United Kingdom and Quebec is of the genus “timber-drogher,” species ancient tub, good for no other trade, and good for this only, because, no matter how leaky the timber-laden ship may be, owing to the buoyancy of her cargo she cannot sink, and (unless the working of her cargo break her up) the worst fate that can befall her is that she becomes water-logged.

Of course there are bad timber ships and worse timber ships, but I had left myself no selection. I had dallied on in the pleasantness of Quebec until the close of navigation was imminent, and Hobson’s choice offered in the shape of the last lingering drogher. Her brokers advertised a cabin passage at a low fare; I engaged it without taking the trouble to look at the ship, and on the morning named for sailing went on board. My arrival occasioned the profoundest surprise. The skipper had received no intimation to expect a cabin passenger, and there were no appliances aboard for his accommodation. I took possession of an empty bunk, into which by way of mattress I threw the horsehair cushion of the cabin locker. My bedclothes consisted of my travelling rug and a rough old boat-cloak I had brought from England.

We were on salt tack from the second day out, and I could not have believed that there was a ship that sailed so badly found as was this battered, rotten, dilapidated Emma Morrison—that was the jade’s name. I should have been more savage at the egregious swindle, but that I was too sorry to leave Quebec to have thought to spare for material concerns. By and by that sentiment became less poignant, and was soon supplanted by utter disgust at my surroundings. The skipper of the Emma Morrison was a sullen gloomy dog—a fellow of that breed which has all the evil attributes of the Scot and the Irishman, and none of the virtues of either. He hardly made a pretext of being civil to me. He helped readily but gloomily to drink the few bottles of Canadian whisky I had brought aboard, and, when that supply was finished, produced a single flask of the most atrocious gin that ever was concocted in the vilest illicit still of the Lower Town of Quebec, and swore it constituted his entire alcoholic supply for the voyage.

Even in fine weather the loathsome old tub leaked like a sieve: she had about half a foot of freeboard, and the water came through her gaping top-sides and uncaulked deck, so that the cabin and my berth were alike a chronic swamp. The junk we ate was green with decay and mould; the ship-biscuits were peripatetic because of the weevils that inhabited them; the butter was rancid with a rancidness indescribable; and the pea-soup was swarthy with the filth of vermin. With a fair wind—and as far as the Traverse we carried a fair wind—the rotten old hooker—rotten from truck to keel, for her sole suit of canvas was as rotten as the ragged remains of her copper-sheathing—had a maximum speed of five knots per hour. As she rolled lumberingly through the short seas of the Upper Gulf, the green water topped her low bulwarks, and, swashing down on to the deck, lifted heavily the great undressed pine-trunks which, lashed to stanchions, formed her deck load. As those rose they strained the deck till they all but tore it from the beams, and as they dropped when the water receded they fell with a crash that all but stove in deck and beams together. With all her defects and abominations, there was one redeeming feature in the Emma Morrison. Her mate—she had but one—was a stanch, frank, stalwart seaman; the boatswain was a tough old man-o’-war’s man; and the crew—scant in numbers, for she was atrociously undermanned—were as fine a set of fellows as ever set foot in ratline. How they obeyed the ill-conditioned skipper; how they endured the foul discomfort of the fo’k’sle and the wretched rations; how, hour after hour and day after day, they dragged loyally at the Sisyphean toil of the pumps; how they bore freezing cold, exposure, sleeplessness, and general misery I shall never forget. Off Anticosta we had our first gale. It was a good honest blow, that a staunch craft would have welcomed; but the rotten old Emma Morrison could not look it in the face. It left her sails in ribbons, her top-hamper anyhow, her hold full of water, in which her ill-stowed cargo of timber swashed about with gruesome thuds on her ribs and knees. When the gale blew itself out we were out somewhere on the western edge of the banks of Newfoundland, and dead helpless. All hands went to the pumps save the captain, the mate, and a couple of old seamen, who betook themselves assiduously to sail-mending. My work was at the wheel. With the foresail on her, the only whole sail extant, she had just steerage way; and I stood, twelve hours a day, day after day, at the old jade’s wheel. It was bitter work, for by this time it was the middle of December, and the spray froze where it lighted.

Before the sails were half repaired we encountered another spell of heavy weather, which reduced us to tatters again, and the ship was drifting about as wind and wave listed. Her masts and spars were a confused mass of wreckage. A green sea had swept the flush deck, carrying off galley (with the unfortunate cook inside) and long-boat, leaving standing only the wretched pigeon-hole of a topgallant fo’k’sle and the stumpy little companion-house abaft the mizzen. The bulwarks were shattered piecemeal; the tree-trunks constituting the deck load had worked their grapplings loose, and rose and fell with the wash of the cross seas. Two of the best men had been washed under the massive trunks, which had settled down on them and crushed the life out of them. Two more poor fellows had suffered broken limbs, and were lying helpless on the fo’k’sle exposed to the seas that continually broke over the bows. The ship was full of water, and pumping was useless. She lay like a log on the heaving face of the winter sea; helpless, yet safe from the fate of foundering unless the timber cargo working inside her should burst her open. The only dry spot aft was the top of the little companion-house, which belonged to the skipper and myself; the crew had the raised deck of the topgallant fo’k’sle and the upper bunks in its interior. One of these constituted our larder; its contents, some pieces of salt pork and beef, dragged out of the harness cask, and a bag of sodden biscuit rescued from the lazarette ere the water rose into the ’tween-decks. A water-cask had been trundled into the fo’k’sle before the great wave swept the deck. About five feet of water stood in the cabin, under which lay my portmanteau, and every belonging save the rough sea-worn suit I stood upright in. Altogether it was not easy to imagine a grimmer present or a darker future. And it was Christmas morning!

About 11 A.M. the remnant of the crew that were alive and could move came splashing along the main deck aft to the companion-house to propose launching the one boat left and abandoning the ship. The mate was in the maintop, where he had lashed himself and gone to sleep. The skipper had waded down into the cabin, as he said, to fish up from his desk the ship’s papers. I followed him to tell him of the errand of the crew. Wading across the cabin I could see into his state-room. There sat the fellow on his submerged bunk, up to the waist in water, with a black bottle raised to the ruffianly lips of him. He had lied when he denied having any store of spirits, and had been swigging on the sly, while his men had been toiling and suffering day and night in misery without a drop of the spirit that would have revived their sinking energies.

Enraged beyond the power of self-restraint by the caitiff’s selfishness, I gripped him by the throat with one hand as I wrenched the bottle from him with the other. He fell a-snivelling maudlin tears. I swore I’d drown him if he did not deliver up for the common good what of his spirit-supply remained. He fished up three bottles from out the blankets in the inundated bunk. That ran to just a glass apiece for all hands except him, leaving another glass apiece for “next time.” While he yet snivelled, the mainbrace was promptly spliced on deck.

The mate and myself persuaded the crew to hold by the ship yet a little longer. By the morrow the sea might have gone down, or we might sight a ship; the Emma Morrison promised to hold together, after her fashion, a bit longer, and she was, after all, preferable to a frail boat in heavy weather. About one o’clock the mate, who had gone back to his uncomfortable but dry dormitory in the maintop, suddenly shouted “Sail ho!” The poor fellows came tumbling out of the fo’k’sle with eager eyes; a bit too diffident of fortune to cheer just yet, but with the bright light of hope in their faces. Yes; there she was, presently visible from the fo’k’sle, and the abominable old Emma Morrison right in her fairway. And now with a hearty cheer we finished to the last drop the skipper’s grog. Our flag of distress had been flying for days, but the chaos aloft was more eloquent than any upside-down Union Jack. With what majesty came the succouring ship, borne by the strong wind of favour, the white seas dashing from her gallant stem, her great wet sides rising higher and higher as she neared us! Up alongside she ranged, scarce a pistol-shot distant, a full-rigged clipper: “One of the flying Yankees,” said the mate, with, as it seemed, a touch of envy in his voice. “Get ready smart; going to send for you right away!” came her commander’s cheery shout across the sullen water. As she came up into the wind and lay to, she showed us her dandy stern, and sure enough on it in gold letters was the legend, “Moses Taylor, of New York.” Her boat put off; her second mate jumped aboard us with a friendly peremptory “Hurry up!” in five minutes more we had quitted the Emma Morrison for ever, her skipper skulking off her hang-dog fashion, yet the last man. We had agreed, for the good name of the old country among foreigners, to keep counsel regarding the selfish sneak, but he never held up his head more during the time he and I were in the same ship.

A ship like a picture, a deck trim and clean as a new pin, a hearty skipper with a nasal twang, his comely wife, his winsome daughter, and a smart, full-powered crew welcomed us forlorn and dilapidated derelicts on board the Moses Taylor. Circumstances prevented us from dressing for the Christmas dinner to which we—skipper, mate, and passenger—were presently bidden; but there were modified comfort and restored self-respect in the long unaccustomed wash in fresh water; and the hosts were more gracious than if we had been dressed more comme il faut. To this day I remember that first slice of roast turkey, that first slice of plum-pudding. But closer in my memory remain the cheery accents of the genial American skipper, the glow of kindness in the sonsy face of his wife, and the smile of mixed fun and compassion in the bright eyes of their pretty daughter. And there hung a spray of mistletoe in the cabin doorway of the Moses Taylor.