“Clang-Clang Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang!” Four double tolls sounded on the bell aft betokened the sea-time of eight bells in the second dog-watch, or 8 p.m. shore time. Donald was half dozing in his bunk and listening aimlessly to the hardened Thompson holding forth to Jenkins. “Mark my words ... a ruddy workhouse. No takin’ yer ease on this lime-juicer ... nigger-drivin’, back-breakin’ starvation Scotch tank ... rotten dead cargo.... She’ll be a truck to steer ... and a swine to tack. All day to-day ... sweating ... calashee watch....” He growled away pessimistically while Donald nodded with eyes closed. Moore was in his bunk asleep. He, like Donald, was tired and sore, but bore it in sulky silence.

“Lay aft all handts!” bawled Mr. Hinkel on the main-deck. Jenkins gave Donald a rude shake and brought him to wakefulness with a yell. “Muster out on deck, nipper! Picking the watches, I guess!”

Donald scrambled out into the darkness. The barque was running with her yards square and the trucks swayed slightly across the stars. A light was blinking abeam, and the following wavelets plashed and hissed against the vessel’s sides. The men were coming from for’ard and collected in knots under the poop-break. “Come up on the poop, men!” cried the mate, leaning over the rail.

Up on the poop the wind blew cold and Donald shivered. The mate stood by the lighted binnacle with the ship’s articles in his hands.

“Sing aout naow while I call school!” he said, and he read:

“Jones!”

“Here, sir!” came from one of the crew.

“Stand to one side after you answer your names!” ordered the officer.

“Barclay!” The black chantey-man answered and joined Jones, and the mate mustered representatives of four continents as he drawled, “Valdez!”—“Si, senor!”

“Hansen!”—“Yaw, sir!”

“McLean!”—“Aye, mister!”

“Yedon—what th’ hell is this? Yedon—”

A man answered, “Yedonowskivitch, sir!”

“’Struth,” growled the officer, “yer blasted name is as long as a flyin’ jib’alliard! Yed is your name from now on!” The Russian grunted and joined the men who had been checked off.

Englishman, Irishman, Scotchman, Welshman, Japanese, Swede, Dane, German, Norwegian, Russian, Canadian, American, West Indian, Spaniard and South African represented the Kelvinhaugh’s laborers, and as Donald viewed them, he wondered how it was possible for such a cosmopolitan and ill-favored gang to be gathered together. Dressed in various garbs, scarcely one looked to be a sailor, but the keen-eyed mates knew that clothes and general appearance do not mark the man who is rated “Able Bodied” and who can “hand, reef and steer.” When the watch picking began, the first man Mr. Nickerson picked was the cropped head McLean, whose face still carried the marks of the clawing he had received on the Glasgow dock, yet Donald would have sworn that this fellow was a steamship fireman or a ship-yard laborer. But they were a small, weak-looking crowd after all, and when the boy scanned the little group and allowed his eyes to wander over the barque’s great hull and the mighty fabric towering aloft—ponderous and unwieldy in the gloom—he realized something of Thompson’s forebodings and compared the little company of ill-assorted humans, who were to work the ship to her destination, to a squad of pigmies doomed to undertake the tasks of giants.

Much to his dismay, Donald found himself listed with the “starbowlines,” under the broad-faced Mr. Hinkel. Thompson was picked for the mate’s watch and would rank as “acting third mate,” and Chubby Jenkins was along with him. For a watch-mate, Donald had the surly Moore, and he felt that the luck was against him every way.

“Alright, men,” said Mr. Nickerson when the watch picking was over. “Starboard watch keeps the deck until midnight. Relieve the wheel and look-out, and go below the port watch!”

Though dreadfully tired and aching in every bone and muscle, Donald had to remain on deck until mid-night, and Mr. Hinkel, with brutal directness, gave him a lecture on his watch-keeping duties. “You keep oop here und avake and don’t you let me catch you skulkin’. You keep der binnacle lamps trimmed und vatch der time und strike der bells und you keep handy so dot I can see you on der lee side der poop!” And with a few curseful remarks about being pestered with useless, lazy boys, he turned and began pacing to windward. For four long hours, Donald trudged with leaden feet on a monotonous round—binnacle to cabin gangway (to squint at the clock) and gangway to poop bell. Feeling “played out,” he heaved a sigh of relief when midnight came around and he belled the news with a feeling of anticipatory pleasure in the hours of restful sleep to come.

Utterly exhausted with a “calashee” (all hands working) watch of eighteen hours—the most of which was hard labor—Donald kicked off his boots and rolled into his bunk “all standing” and slept like a dead man until Jenkins yelled “Eight bells! Turn out!” at 3.45 a.m. Moore, who had dodged the second mate during the first watch and had stolen a snooze then, turned out, dressed and went on deck without giving his watch-mate another shake. When the starbowlines mustered aft, Donald was missing, and only reported after Thompson had roused him out of a heavy slumber.

The tyrannous Mr. Hinkel had something to say when McKenzie came up on the poop ten minutes after the bell had tolled. “Vy der hell dond’t you turn oudt ven you are called?” he snarled. “By Gott, I’ll make you spry!” He turned and sung out to the bos’n. “Gedt a pot of slush und let dis lazy defil grease down der yigger-top-masdt!” Donald went to the lee side of the poop, nervous and apprehensive at the nature of the punishment to be meted to him for lack of punctuality in turning out on his second watch in the ship.

The bos’n, a kindly Dane, who had sailed so long in English ships as to have sunk his nationality, brought the tin slush-pot upon the poop and called to the wondering Donald. “Here, son,” he said quietly so that the second mate could not hear. “Dam’ shame sendin’ a raw nipper like you aloft on a job like this for bein’ a minute or two late. In decent ships the new boys ain’t allowed above the tops until they’ve bin a month at sea. Howsomever, son,“—rigging a bos’n’s chair to the halliards as he talked—“don’t git narvous. I’ll tend th’ halliard an’ lower ye down as ye sing out. Put the lanyard o’ this slush-pot aroun’ yer neck an’ grease th’ mast wit’ yer hands. Tie this bit o’ line aroun’ th’ topm’st when ye get above th’ eyes o’ the riggin’ so’s ye won’t swing out when she rolls. Don’t be scared, son, you’ll be alright.”

“I’m not scared, bos’n,” answered Donald, taking his seat in the chair, with the foul smelling pot of grease around his neck. Up to the block of the halliard he went—clutching the mast, as the bos’n hoisted him up, to keep from swinging, pendulum-wise, with the roll of the barque. It was dark, but clear, and the stars shone bright in the cold morning air. Far away to port a light blinked somewhere on the Galloway coast, and from his lofty perch, he could see the wake made by the ship’s passage fading into the murk astern. The rolling of the vessel was more pronounced up aloft, and before he commenced “slushing-down,” he took a turn of the line around the mast as the bos’n had advised, but even then, he swayed ominously and the grease smelt indescribably foul.

Dipping his sore hands into the mess, he massaged the smooth pole with the grease as the bos’n lowered him down. It was very cold up aloft and the rolling and the foul smell of the slush was making him dizzy with nausea. Within a few minutes, he was deathly sick and hung to the spar, white-faced and with the perspiration breaking out on him. Try as he might to regain control of himself, Donald had to succumb to the dreadful mal-de-mer, and with a feeble “Look-out, below!” he made his first contribution to Neptune.

A volley of German curses from the poop apprised him of the fact that the second mate had received evidence of his indisposition—Mr. Hinkel having, unfortunately, strode to loo’ard just when Donald was ejecting the “longshore swash out of his stomach.” The realization of what had happened frightened all the sea-sickness out of him, and he resumed his task, fearful of the consequences when he reached the deck. Coming down the mast, he wondered, as he had often wondered of late, what fascination there was in a sea-life that sent lads to sea.

On deck again after the job was done, the bos’n met him with a grin. “Ye put it all over th’ secon’ greaser,” he said. “He’s for’ard cleaning himself off.” Donald felt too nervous to smile. Mr. Hinkel would have something to say to him when he came aft.

While he was talking to the bos’n, Captain Muirhead slipped quietly around the chart-house and stood before them. “Whaur’s the second officer?” he said in a quiet, but ominous tone.

“Th’ lad here, sir, was up aloft slushin’ down an’ took sick an’ Mister Hinkel got it, sir,” answered Martin somewhat eagerly. “He’s gone for’ard to get somethin’ to clean hisself off with, sir!”

The Old Man muttered unintelligibly under his breath, stared over the port rail at something ahead, and then gave a quiet-spoken order to the man at the wheel. The helm was shifted, and when the second mate came aft, the skipper called him. Pointing into the gloom for’ard, he said: “Do you see that ship ahead?” Hinkel followed the direction of the Old Man’s hand. “Yaw, sir!” he answered. A new phase of the silent Captain Muirhead’s character was revealed to Donald in the violent outburst which came from his lips. “Then what th’ hell dae ye mean by leavin’ th’ poop afore we’re clear o’ th’ Firth,” he thundered in a strident voice so utterly different from his usual quiet-spokeness. “What’s yer look-out doin’? Asleep, I suppose? Damn yer bloody eyes, we’d ha’ been intae that fella if Ah hadna jist spied her! Your place is here, mister, especially while we’re in th’ midst o’ Channel traffic. Ye’ll no dare tae leave this poop in your watch onless Ah’m here, or th’ mate, or unless it’s necessary fur th’ safety o’ th’ shup! Awa’ forrit an’ see if yer look-out’s awake!”

Hinkel made no reply but slouched down the poop ladder, and a moment after his guttural cursing could be heard as he dressed down the sleepy watchman on the fo’c’sle-head. “Hinkel will not love you for this night, son,” remarked the bos’n. “He’s an ugly swine, so keep out of his way.”

Donald discreetly kept to loo’ard when Hinkel came aft again. The captain paced the poop for a spell and then went below. Donald heard the second mate growl something to the man at the wheel, and a moment afterwards turned to find the hulking German in the gloom alongside of him. Hinkel grasped him by the arm in a grip that made him wince. “Jou verdammt schweinehunde!” he snarled through gritted teeth and shaking the boy violently. “Mein Gott! Ich like fur kick jou in der vasser—jou cursed rat! Jou look oudt! I’ll sveat jou fur dis!” In his rage he was almost unintelligible and he concluded by heaving Donald violently away from him.

During the rest of the watch the boy attended most assiduously to his duties, as he knew he had made an enemy who would only need a slight excuse to wreak vengeance on him, but in a way that would be upheld by the British Merchant Shipping laws and the officials administering it.

With a fair wind and fine weather, the Kelvinhaugh cleared the St. George’s Channel and swung away S.W. across the broad expanse of the North Atlantic for the equator and on the deepwaterman’s track which would bring her in the vicinity of the land again at Cape San Roque on the Brazilian coast. It was fine weather for the ship, but it wasn’t fine weather for Donald. Captain Muirhead ignored him absolutely, at least by speech, though he watched him at work often with furtive glances. The Old Man was not much of a conversationalist, but he did talk to the other apprentices, and his ignoring of young McKenzie was commented on in the half-deck. Thompson summed it up, rather brutally, but Donald knew that he meant it in a kindly spirit. “Nipper,” he said, “your uncle has no love for you or the Old Man would be falling all over you. Your stingy Scotch relative looks upon you as a charity brat—it don’t need but half an eye to see that, for he sent you to sea parish-rigged, with an outfit as mean as what ye’d get from a boarding-house master in Jerusalem. He shoved you off here as the cheapest thing he could do—an apprentice without a premium paid down—and he’ll see that you work for your keep and clothes. The skipper knows it, and that square-headed Hinkel knows it, for he’d never dare treat any of us other fellows the way he treats you. Your best friend aft here is that hard-case Blue-nose mate.... And, say, kid, just you make that skulker Moore do his share. He’s sojerin’ around in here smoking and loafing while you’re on deck. Why doesn’t Hinkel get after him, I’d like to know? You just bring Moore to his bearings, kid, and jab him one on the jaw if he gets lippy!” Donald thanked the senior apprentice with tears in his eyes. Ever since he had come aboard this ship, it had required all his nerve and courage to keep from breaking down at the petty tyrannies and persecutions of the second mate. The captain must be abetting his officer, or why didn’t he interfere in cases where, as Donald knew, he, as an apprentice, was not supposed to be ordered to perform. Tasks, which in most ships were done by older hands, were delegated to McKenzie, and he carried them out cheerfully, thinking that he was going through the rigorous course prescribed for those who would become “compleat and perfect seamen.”

Mr. Nickerson seemed indeed to be his best friend among the after guard. Though not in the mate’s watch, yet that officer did not take long to size Donald up as a lad having the right spirit in him for a sailor. He was willing and jumped to obey a command. He was intelligent and mastered the intricacies of the big barque’s rigging and gear in less time than most green hands would have taken to determine bow from stern and starboard from port. In the dog-watches and on Sundays, the mate took Donald in hand and taught him how to steer, and by the time the Kelvinhaugh had picked up the north-east trade winds in the latitude of the Canaries, he was able to take a wheel in fine weather and steer “by the wind” or by compass.

The Nova Scotian’s lessons were forceful and not readily forgotten. “I jest show a boy once,” he used to say, “an’ then I expect him to go ahead an’ do it himself. When I have to show a thing twice I ram it home with a rope’s end!” Jenkins and Moore—the latter especially—had cause to fear the mate’s teachings, but Donald stood high in his favor through his intelligent grasp of things and the will to master a problem. To the other apprentices and in the eyes of the hands for’ard, Nickerson was a “ruddy Yankee bucko,” and it must be admitted, the epithet was justified, for he was a “taut” hand and made no bones about using his fist or boot to accentuate “nippiness.”

By the time the barque caught the “trades,” and in spite of the miserable food supplied, young McKenzie had toughened up wonderfully. The continual “horsing” to which he was being subjected by his watch officer seemed to be the very elixir necessary to building up his apparently frail constitution. His muscles and sinews hardened and developed; his eyes were clear and bright, and the sallowness of his face became replaced by a healthy tan. The soft hands became hard and horny-palmed, while his movements were quick and active under the spur of the mate’s teachings and the second mate’s spite. If the sea killed some boys, it was making a man of Donald, and he recalled the old Glasgow specialist’s advice to his mother, “He’ll be as tough as a louse an’ as hard tae kill!”

While he had benefitted physically through a sea-life, his boyish ideals of the romance and adventure of seafaring had been ruthlessly shattered. His treatment on the Kelvinhaugh had practically killed all the thrilling fancies and dreams of his home days. He was beginning to realize his father’s words, “It’s a dog’s life at the best of times!” and even the blue-skied “trades,” with the barque bowling along through the azure ocean under clouds of brand-new canvas, white as snow, failed to awake in him the same enthusiasm as the ideal about which he had dreamed. True! they were glorious days—for a passenger or the officers, maybe—but for Donald, hard-worked and living on wretched provender and environed by men whose imaginations were dead, the “trade” latitudes were but periods in a voyage, just as summer and winter were seasonal phases in a calendar year. Had he gone to sea under better auspices, his enjoyment of the sea and its glories would have been different.

There was one lesson he did learn and which he ever afterwards retained as a permanent part of his character, and that was dependence upon himself and the submergence of sensitiveness and meek toleration of injustices from equals. The rough talk of the half-deck and the cutting jibes of his shipmates no longer wounded his sensibilities. While he retained his inbred gentleness, yet he case-hardened it with an armor of indifference not to be easily penetrated. Physically, he resented being imposed upon by others not entitled to command obedience, and gained his first step in that resolution in a “show down” with his apprentice watch-mate, Moore.

The surly youth had never forgiven McKenzie for the bunk episode when the ship was at Greenock. He also attempted, by reason of the fact that he had served four days of his time at sea in the lost Dunottar, to claim seniority over Donald and to delegate to the latter the job of “Peggy” for the half-deck. Donald was willing to do his share of fetching the food from the galley and in cleaning out the apprentice’s quarters, but he began to resent doing all of it. Moore considered that Donald’s willingness to do mess-boy work for the crowd was a tacit acknowledgment of his seniority and freedom from such menial tasks, but he over-stepped the bounds one dog-watch when he insolently ordered McKenzie to sweep up the floor of the boys’ quarters, after he had littered it with shavings from a model which he was whittling. Donald had swept the half-deck out earlier in the day, and calmly told Moore that “as you’ve made the mess, it is up to you to clean it up!” Thompson was in his bunk reading, but hearing the words between the two, he knocked off to watch events.

“D’ye hear me, nipper!” growled Moore threateningly. “I told you to clane this litter up. Git now or I’ll be after makin’ ye!”

Donald stood up, determined and very cool. “Moore!” he said calmly, “I’ve made up my mind that I’m a better man than you, so put up your hands, for I’m going to knock the tar out of you!” And he went for the other like a shot out of a gun.

Moore was bigger and heavier than Donald, but he was one of the kind who “sojered” in a heave or a haul and only exerted his strength when he had to. When Donald was toiling under Hinkel’s eye, Moore was “sun-fishing” somewhere. Hinkel was too busy horsing McKenzie to care a continental what Moore was doing, and it was thought by some of the hands that the second mate had received a substantial monetary consideration from the Irish lad to allow him a “jack-easy” time. Moore’s people were wealthy brewers in Liverpool, and he went to sea with plenty of money. However, Mr. Hinkel’s attentions to Donald proved Moore’s undoing. As a physical developer of soft muscles, the second mate had been a success as far as Donald was concerned, and within five minutes, the younger lad had Moore backed up against the bulk-head and was “knocking the tar” out of him with fists as hard and as bony as though shod with knuckle-dusters. Thompson was sitting up in his bunk betting plugs of tobacco on the outcome of the “mill” with Jenkins and the bos’n, who were watching from the door. The sail-maker and carpenter were craning through the ports, thoroughly enjoying the “scrap” and murmuring, “Good fur the wee fella! He’s a richt nippy yin wi’ his dukes!”

Moore, badly mauled, hauled down his flag, and Donald broke away from him. With a new gleam in his eyes—both puffed from some of Moore’s shots—he said, “From now on, Moore, you’ll go half and half in any work that’s to be done in here, and you’ll begin now and do a week’s “Peggy” for what I’ve been doing since we up-hook’d, or I’ll turn to and plug you some more!”

Thompson laughed. “That’s talking, nipper,” he said, “ride him down! You gave that Irish puddler just what he was bearing up for!” And Donald felt that he had gone a step up on the ladder of the spirit that makes the man.