CHAPTER XXX HEADED NORTH

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"Well, for one I am damn glad we are through with it," said Brenden during a discussion of Cape Horn weather that went on forward as we cleared out the damp fo'c'sle that wonderful Sunday following the gales. "This makes five times around for me and I hope to God the last."

"How far to Pilladelpia?" chirped up Kahemuku, his face again approaching its natural brown, though lean and worn beyond all resemblance of his Honolulu poi-fed chubbiness.

"Ha! The Kanaka is coming to life!" kidded Australia. "Well, me brown brother and fellow shipmate, if I do call you that, even though you are not white, Pillerdelpia is a long way off yet. The walking is bad and if I was you I would stay aboard a while longer. In fact you will have to ride all the way with nothing to do but work, me hearty, work."

All hands were feeling good. Black Joe hung around the galley all Sunday helping Chow and for supper that night he was rewarded by a large sea pie, one of the bright-red confections made of the mysterious "pie fruit." A chemist might analyze it as a composition of apple peelings, glucose, acetic acid and aniline dye. My, but how good it did taste! The human system demands its poison. Folks ashore prefer theirs in the most expensive form, while we poor sailors on the ship Fuller, on that memorable voyage in the year of the great war with Spain, took our weevils, which are no worse than Roquefort, only larger, and relished them. We ate many cockroaches browned in the cracker hash and dandy funk, and drank their extract in the tea and coffee, beverages, so called, for want of other names. As for the sea pie, it acted as a corrective to the gingerbread. When Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name?" he had certainly never experienced such a voyage as ours.

Following our dose of weather we entered upon a spell of work that carried us well up to the latitude of Cape Frio. The gear had to be overhauled in all of its details; whips of braces shifted end for end, new chafing mats and battens seized on to the stays taking the place of those worn through, and the slack standing rigging set up.

Our own gear, the clothing of the crew, was sadly in need of attention and every dog watch found the fo'c'sle busy with thread and needle. Frenchy was our top notch sailor man at sewing. He could ply a needle with the best housewife that ever swapped a bit of scandal at a sewing bee. He did not use a thimble, but handled a long coarse needle, pushing it through with the calloused end of his thumb, a simple and effective method for those gifted with the necessary toughness of cuticle. I had always wanted a pair of real seagoing canvas pants such as Robinson Crusoe must have worn, before he skinned the historic goat, pants wide in the legs, and fashioned of well weathered stuff, soft and comfortable. My good shipmate constructed them for me. They were not beautiful, but being what was left of an old skysail, a veteran of many voyages, a romantic piece of canvas that had swept the starry paths on many a balmy night, dew-bleached and mellow, they meant much to me. These pants were very homelike, and I never was able to wear them out.

In patching and sewing we managed to do wonders with old rags that at first seemed beyond all hope of redemption. Also, owing to the near approach of the payday, we begrudged the slop chest any further inroads upon the accumulated wealth that was to belong to us; the sailor's pot of gold, sitting so brightly, way beyond to the north, where our dream rainbow ended in cynical old New York.

About this time Peter came in for a lot of joshing by the men of his watch. He had an old long-tailed oilskin coat given him by Chips. Such a garment is never worn by sailor-men who have to go aloft, it being the sole prerogative of officers and idlers who never venture above the sheer pole. However, with Second Mate Tom on deck, many strange things happened in the starboard watch, and Peter, the stiff tails of his long coat sticking out in the wind, would go up the rigging as unconcerned as if it was the recognized and proper thing for a sailor-man to wear.

It happened that during a rain squall at the latter part of his watch on deck, he was sent up to furl the main skysail, and we tumbled out just in time to see him going up the weather rigging with his long yellow tail sticking out above his legs for all the world like a huge pale cockroach. At the same time First Mate Zerk stood aghast at the unusual spectacle.

"Come down out of that! Hey you! Lay down!" Peter heard and obeyed. "Lay aft!" "Yes, sir!" "Hey, Chips!" "Aye, aye, sir!" from Chips. "Bring a knife aft. Cut the tail off of this. Now!" Chips had trimmed a good two feet off of Peter. "That looks fine. Now take off another foot, we want to have this fine fellow in style."

When Chips got through, after a lot of sarcastic criticism by the mate, and laughter by all hands mustered in the waist, Peter looked like a well trimmed bird. His jacket was so short that the drip from its end went into the top of his trousers. He made a move to pick up the discarded tail, no doubt thinking it would do to sew on as an extension. "No, you don't!" shouted the mate. "Throw that overboard, Chips! Now, go forward, watch below. No, you don't," to Peter; "you lay aloft and furl that sail, my fine fellow, and show us what a starboard watch hand can do."

Poor Peter lay up in a dismal manner and after a lot of shouting from the deck, he came down and went below with a good half hour of his watch gone, all on account of the offending garment, showing that even at sea the correct thing in dress is essential; at least it was so in those strict old days.

Officers in the old ships were very precise as a rule in matters of this kind. A number of years after the coat incident, I was serving under Captain Geo. D. Morrison, one of the old-time sailing-ship masters. We were on the bridge of a fine steamer. Eight bells had just been made and a quartermaster, an important little man, came up out of the fo'c'sle where he had his quarters, and as he walked aft along the forward well deck he drew a huge silver watch out of his pocket as though to verify the correctness of the bells on the bridge.

"Great Scott!" exclaimed the skipper. "What in thunder are we coming to with sailors carrying watches? I suppose they will carry walking sticks next. But, sir," turning to me, "not on my ship! Send that man down to the chart room!"

When Erricson, the quartermaster, arrived on the bridge, I sent him down to the skipper. The old man closed the chart room door, he was a very religious man, and after a short session, the quartermaster came out looking much scared. When we got to San Francisco, he was paid off, and Captain Morrison handed me an envelope to give to the man; this contained a heavy turnip-like object that no doubt was the offensive watch.

As soon as warm weather struck us, the last remnant of our potato bin went bad, and some of them were thrown overboard. This ended a duty that had helped to pass away many an hour for the farmers of the watch when they were sent forward to pick the sprouts off of the spuds and discard those that were too bad. Chow always picked out the bad ones anyway, and for the most part we subsisted on concoctions of half-rotten potatoes. Someone, Old Smith, I believe, said that raw potatoes were good for the scurvy. We all tried eating them. Scouse and the Kanakas were the only ones who could stomach the raw tubers. They always picked out the best sound potatoes and seemed to relish them; at any rate they robbed the cabin table of a good many messes of selected spuds.

When the old potato bin was knocked down, we had a general clean up under the fo'c'sle head, a scrubbing and overhauling of the bo'sun's lockers, the paint locker, and the oil stores. The short half deck forming the fo'c'sle head was not high enough for a man to stand upright under it, the lockers being arranged along the sides up into the bow. In the very nose, next to the hawse pipes, were the toilets of the ship, that is, those for the crew. These were very wet and uncomfortable in heavy weather. They were kept scrupulously clean, however. Large oil tanks were provided above these, fitted with small copper tubes leading into the sea alongside of the forefoot of the ship. Small cocks provided for the release of oil in heavy weather.

The bo'sun's locker contained everything necessary for carrying on the marling-spike work of the ship; fids, serving mallets, iron spikes, and the like. The tar pots were strung along a beam in the top of the locker and the shelves at the sides held the deck stores of small stuff, marline, spun yarn, rope yarn, houseline, hambroline, roundline, ratline stuff, etc. Several new coils of various sizes of rope, untarred hemp and manila were always carried in the bo'sun's locker against an emergency. Another compartment of the locker held the deck tackles, the "handy billys" and all emergency gear. This locker also carried the straps, rope circles used in attaching tackles to spars and rigging. Of such straps we had hundreds, always in apple-pie order. Small "salvagees" for clapping a fall onto a stay, large three-inch rope straps for hooking the rolling tackles onto the mast doublings. The compartment for blocks was also kept in fine shape, so we could lay our hands on things in the darkest night. Great snatch blocks for carrying a tack or sheet to the main or fo'c'sle head capstan, or for taking the fore or main tops'l halyards to the same; secret blocks for bunt jiggers, a small round block about the size of a soup plate, with the sheave completely covered, the whip, for it is a single block, reeving through small holes in the edge of the shell to prevent the canvas fouling between the rope and the sheave as is possible in an ordinary block. Clump blocks, small and "clumpy" like a roly-poly baker's loaf. These are very strong blocks and are used at the ends of the staysail and jib sheets for the reeving of the whips. These sheets, as sailors know, are always in two branches and the clump block makes it easy to haul the weather sheet, block and whip over the stay without catching, as the lee sheet is hauled aft. There are others called sister blocks, double and treble blocks, fiddle blocks, great jeer blocks for sending up and down heavy spars, stepping masts, etc. Many of the blocks aboard ship take their names from the particular use to which they may be put, such as quarter blocks, brace blocks, hanging blocks, clewline blocks.

When we were cleaned up forward, and ready for the last long spell of fine weather, with its round of marling-spike work, chipping, painting, tarring and holystoning, we were treated to a few hours of excitement that was different from the usual thing of that kind aboard the Fuller, as we had a chance to enjoy the show like spectators at the rail, and not, as on most occasions, when we saw the circus in the same way that the performers see it, namely, dangling from the flying trapeze near the top of the tent.

It was on a wet Friday morning; we were scrubbing deck paintwork when the "wheel" sang out, "Steamer ahoy!"

This was unusual, and all hands were astonished at the closeness of a cloud of smoke that was tearing toward us from somewhere to windward. Captain Nichols came out on deck and got the long telescope to bear. He pronounced her a cruiser.

She was coming for us fast; suddenly she altered her course fully four points and came in under our stern. She was a dirty white, streaked with rust, a fair-sized armored cruiser, two funnels with a military mast between them.

"Break out the ensign, Mr. Zerk. Might as well show her who we are." Indeed, the cruiser was reading our name and hailing-port on the broad transom in letters of shining gold.

"She's a Spaniard, one of them has a mast between two funnels," someone said. I remembered this, having in mind the pictures of the Spanish ships in West Indian waters, published in the magazines while we were in Honolulu.

"All out for Barcelona!" shouted the mate. The ensign went up, and we dipped. The cruiser ran up the Argentine colors, answered our salute and resumed her course.

"Hey, you loafers, get back on that paint work; this ain't no Spanish prison!"

Of course we all grinned at the great humor of the joke, and began to rub with our brick dust rags; the starboard watch went below at once, for it was unhealthy to be seen standing around on deck during a watch below. We all knew that the afternoon below would soon be gone and hoped to stall off the day of doom as long as possible.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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