They jumped out on deck into a wind that nearly took their breath away, and it was as black as the inside of a tar-pot, save where the sheen of the foam to loo’ard illuminated the darkness. Spray and sleet slashed through the air, and the wind was as keen as the edge of a knife—a squall that shrieked in the tautened weather rigging, and which was playing a devil’s tattoo with the clewed-up canvas aloft, and orders were being volleyed from the bridge which ran clean from the poop to the fo’c’sle head. “Haul up yer cro’jack! Haul up yer mains’l! Aloft an’ stow!”

The combers were crashing over the weather rail in solid cascades, and the scupper-ports were not large enough to carry it off. As the big logy barque did not rise to the seas, the lee side of the main-deck was awash to the height of the to’gallant rail, and in this bitter, swirling brine the crew, manning the furling gear, tugged on the swollen ropes—slipping, washed along and sliding on the sloping decks—in water up to their waists, while the mate, leaning over the bridge rail, cursed and flayed them to herculean exertions with bitter jibes and frightful threats.

The four apprentices and an ordinary seaman went up to the mizzen-t’gallan’s’l, the yard of which had been braced to spill the sail already clewed up, and with Thompson at the bunt, singing out, they dug their fingers into the hard, wet canvas in an effort to catch hold and pick it up. “Now, my sons!” bawled the senior apprentice. “All together! Sock it to her! Dig your claws into the creases an’ hook her up! What th’ hell’s a bit of canvas anyway to five husky men!” But picking up the sail in other blows and picking it up in a Cape Horn snifter is a horse of another color. Twice they had it almost on the yard, and twice the squall slatted it away from them. Donald’s fingers were bleeding at the nails and his hands were numb with the cold, while the ordinary seaman with him on the weather yard-arm was cursing and whining with the chill and the strenuous labor. “Pick it up, damn you, pick it up!” shouted Thompson. “Now, boys, all together!” They dug in, hauled the canvas up bit by bit, and had almost got it on the yard and ready to pass the gaskets, when Moore gasped, “Aw, t’ hell with it!” and let his portion of sail go. The wind ballooned the loosened fold and whipped the canvas out of the others’ straining fingers. Thompson gave a growl of rage and instantly clawed his way along the foot-rope and jack-stay to where Moore hung inside of Jenkins at the lee yard-arm. “You miserable skulking hound!” he yelled, kicking Moore savagely with his rubber-booted foot. “I’ve a—(kick)—dashed good—(kick)—mind to—(kick)—boot you into the—(kick)—ruddy drink! You dare let go again while a kid like McKenzie, half your weight, holds on!”

Whimpering and crying like a baby, Moore bent over the yard while Jenkins at the lee yard-arm encouraged him by further threats, and the five began their muzzling work again. “Now then, my sons, up with her!” yelled Thompson. Beating at the stiff canvas with numb and bleeding fingers, they fought like devils for hold while the sleet slashed at their faces and the cold caused their oilskins to become as rigid as though cut from tin. A hundred feet above the ship, they struggled desperately on precarious, swaying foot-ropes, leaning over the jerking yard and using both hands and trusting to finger-hold to prevent being blown or hurled off. It was strenuous work—work which called for tenacity of purpose and the exercise of every ounce of strength, and when, after taking a yard arm at a time, they finally got the sail rolled up and secured by the turns of the gaskets, they scrambled into the cross-trees, breathless and utterly exhausted. Bitter work for boys, truly! But they would be called to more desperate tasks ere the Kelvinhaugh made to the west’ard of the Horn!

They scrambled down on deck to be greeted by Mr. Nickerson. “Where’n Tophet hev you lazy young hounds bin to? Stowin’ th’ mizzen-t’gallan’s’l, eh? Why, curse yez, I’ve a mind t’ set it again an’ give ye some sail drill!” Scant praise for strenuous accomplishments! As Donald came aft again—dodging the seas which were, ever and anon, tumbling over the rail—he felt miserably wet and cold under his oil-skins and jumped into the half-deck to examine himself. In spite of the marline which he had tied around his wrists and over his boots, and the “soul-and-body” lashing around his waist, his cheap oilskins allowed the water to soak through the shoddy fabric, and as wet-resisters, they were worthless. Having no others to wear, he had, perforce, to put up with the discomfort and pray for fine weather.

During the middle watch the wind stiffened and the Kelvinhaugh was making heavy weather of the going. The captain was on the poop watching the ship, and as Donald passed to loo’ard of him to make it four bells, he had evidence that the Old Man had been having a nip. The mate, a long, rangy statue in an oilskin coat, sou’westered and sea-booted, lounged in his favorite corner sucking away at a dry clay pipe and watching the straining leach of the mizzen upper-tops’l. It was snowing by now and the flakes could be seen driving athwart the ship in the light of the skylights and the binnacle. The skipper turned from the rail over which he had been leaning, and called the mate to him. Donald, pacing to loo’ard, heard snatches of the conversation down the wind. “That fella Hinkel,” the Old Man was saying. “No worth his saut as a second mate. He canna be trusted ... canna dae his wark. When this blow cam’ on her he was snoozin’ somewheres ... doesna ken a squall when he sees th’ signs ... nae guid!”

The mate’s nasal voice advised, “Hoof th’ square-head scum forrad!” “Aye! Ah’m thinkin’ so.... Ye might take him in hond, mister, an’ shunt him oot. Ah’ll make the entry in th’ log ... incompetent an’ derelict in duty ... that’s th’ ticket. Tell him at eight bells ... an’ we’ll pit Martin in his place ... auld hand and a smert man.... Thompson’s too young.” Donald could see the tall figure of the mate straighten up and a saturnine laugh came from his direction. “I’ll shunt him, sir!” he said.

When Donald called the watch prior to eight bells, he told Thompson the news he had overheard. “Breaking the second mate, is he?” ejaculated Thompson, gleefully tugging his boots on again over wet stockings. “Jerusalem! I wouldn’t miss the fun for a farm. I’m going to hang around for a bit afore turning in.” They slipped out in the wake of Moore and Jenkins and just reached the poop-break in time to hear a furious altercation on the deck above. The second mate was shouting, “Send me forrad? Send me forrad? Ju candt do id! I my work know id!” “Ye’re a damned bluff from A to Zee!” came Mr. Nickerson’s nasal bawl. “Ye’re a boy-bully—a ruddy, no-account squarehead from Heligoland or Hamburg! You’re a common A.B. from this minute, Dutchy, an’ ef ye don’t move along off this poop an’ forrad where ye belong I’ll help ye with th’ toe of my boot! Shift naow! Look nippy!”

There was a sound of oaths and blows in the darkness—a stamp of sea-booted feet—a guttural curse—and a bulky form came hurtling down the poop ladder. It was Hinkel, and the boys could see his face—ferocious in the light from a port-hole. He had been thrown clear down on the main-deck from the poop, and before he could pick himself up, Nickerson came flying down on the hand-rails with his sea-booted feet clear of the steps. In his dive down the ladder, he landed on the ex-second mate’s prone body, and commenced booting him in a manner supposed to have passed away with the Western Ocean packet-ships.

“You sojer! You no-sailor, you! You slab-sided gaffer o’ Fielding’s gang! I’ll work yer old iron up, my son!”—and he kicked Hinkel into the lee scuppers, where the fellow wallowed in the water attempting to rise to his feet. “I got yer number, you German sauerkraut! I had it the night you jammed McKenzie into th’ hen-coop! It’s an old trick o’ yours, ain’t it? Well, here’s something—(kick-kick)—for poor little McFee—(kick-kick)—an’ yer hen-coop dodge on the Orkney Isles!” He knocked off, panting, while Hinkel scrambled to his feet and looked sullenly at the avenging Nickerson.

The men had gathered aft, wondering spectators of the scene, and the mate swung around and addressed them. “This joker here is dis-rated an’ sent forrad. He’s an A.B. from naow out! He’s th’ squarehead what served two years in San Quentin penitentiary in ’Frisco for killing a boy named McFee on the ship Orkney Isles! Naow, ye know th’ hound, an’ ye’ll know haow t’ treat him!” Then to Hinkel, “Forrad, you scum, or I’ll help ye! Th’ stoo’ard’ll shoot yer duds aout in th’ morning!” And Hinkel, with all the fight kicked out of him, slunk away from the mate’s vicinity and disappeared into the darkness.

In the half-deck, after they had pulled off their wet clothes, Thompson and Donald discussed this momentous incident. “And who was McFee?” enquired the latter. Thompson wrung out a soaked shirt and hung it up. “From what I have heard, he was a young first-voyager on a Glasgow ship called the Orkney Isles. He wasn’t a bright kid—I think he was soft in the nut a bit—but he was a ’prentice on that hooker bound from London to ’Frisco ‘bout three years or so ago. It appears that her second mate—(this Hinkel, I suppose, though he wasn’t called Hinkel then. His name was Hemelfeldt, I think)—got adown on the kid and almost bullied the life out of him. Off the Horn, the youngster refused to do something, and this swine jammed him into the hen-coop and kept him there the whole of a bitter, freezing watch. The boy had no coat or oilskins on, and he was almost frozen to death. He took ill, but this bucko hauled him out of his bunk and made him work around in the wet and the cold at various work-up jobs, and the little beggar took pneumonia and died. When the ship got to ’Frisco, the other ’prentices and some of the men complained to the authorities, and Hinkel or Hemelfeldt was arrested, convicted and sentenced to two years in a California prison. The way he ill-used that kid was the talk of the Coast at that time. That’s the yarn as I know it, and I tell you, son, I wouldn’t care to be in Hinkel’s shoes from now on. Between the mate and the hands for’ard, his life will be merry hell from ‘naow aout’—as Nickerson says!”

Now commenced a period which Donald and all the hands never wished to experience again. The savagery of the Horn latitudes in winter-time buffeted them in all its bitter hellishness, and the heavily laden barque was smashed and banged about in a manner which beggars description. Gale succeeded gale, with all their concomitants of bitter cold, driving sleet and snow, and tremendous seas. Twice they sighted the lonely light on Cape St. John, and twice they were driven back to flounder in the big combers and rips of Burdwood Bank, hove-to under scanty canvas. During the lulls in the gales they would get sail on her and attempt to make their westing, but the trailing log would only record a few miles in the desired direction before a blast of wind and snow would call for strenuous clipping of the Kelvinhaugh’s wings. “Clew up! Haul down! Let go! All hands! Aloft and furl!” became dreaded and commonplace commands. On certain tantalizing occasions the wind came away fair for a slant and the crew would have a breathing spell, praying and hoping that they would get around “this time,” but a fresh gale would strike in from another quarter and the weary watch below would be roused from slumber by the raucous hail of “All hands wear ship!” And wearing ship was the easiest way to tack her, and an operation which the Kelvinhaugh made a dirty job of. As the helm was put up in the smooths, the barque would expose her long, deep broadside to the mountainous combers, and she seldom wore ’round without shipping it green the whole length of her. In paying off, and in coming to the wind on the other tack, the big four-master swung around so slow that she courted destruction, and several times, the crew, huddled together on the comparative safety of the poop, never expected to see her emerge from boarding combers which would bury her completely from fo’c’sle-head to poop-break.

Added to the cruelty of the weather were the long, dark hours of the high latitudes in mid-winter, and what little daylight there existed was as gloomy as night with lowering, leaden skies and the black squalls slashing out of the west. It was here, in the “stand-by” latitudes, in fifty-five south, that Donald McKenzie had all the romantic ideals of sea-faring knocked out of him. It was here where he learned that he had come to sea to be disillusioned and that romance existed mainly in the printed page, the picture and the imagination of boys and poets. The man who writes and sings best of the sea is the man who has been but little acquainted with the hardship and monotonous drudgery of a sailor’s life. Young McKenzie came to sea to realize the romance he dreamed of. He had run from fifty-five north to fifty-five south and retrospection failed to bring out any phase of his life on the Kelvinhaugh as being anything other than desperately hard work, relieved by spells of tiring monotony. He slept and ate in a steel tank with white painted walls pierced by starboard and port doors and two port-holes, and furnished with a deal table and two plank seats. Four bunks, two uppers and two lowers, completed the furnishings of this combined bedroom, dining room and parlor. True, there was a small bogey stove, but this was more of an ornament than an article of utility. There was no fuel supplied to keep it alight, and only on rare occasions (when the boys stole some coal from the donkey-boiler room, or when some chips and shakings could be secured) was a fire ever kindled in it. In this cubby-hole, jammed up with four sea-chests, suitcases, sea-boots on the floor and oilskins and clothing on the walls, the four lads, “gentlemen rope-haulers,” lived during their hours of relief from duty. The unsheathed steel walls and overhead beams dripped moisture, which made rusty streaks from the rivet-heads, or dropped on the upper bunks or to the floor—there to add their quota of damp discomfort to the salt water which squirted through the jambs of the door every time she shipped a “green” one.

Chiseled into one of the overhead beams ran the legend—“Certified to accommodate four seamen.” Thompson, with the aid of an indelible ink pencil had altered this to a more fitting rendition—“Certified to suffocate four seamen,” and in the stormy latitude of fifty-five south, with doors and ports tight shut, and bedding, blankets and clothing sopping wet and exuding their own peculiar aroma, mixed with those of the parrafin-oil lamp, tobacco reek, food, boot-grease and damp oilskins, the amended version was nearer the truth.

McKenzie’s companions, also, were “hard-bitten,” or had become so through the environment. Clad in filthy garments, and unwashed through lack of fresh water and opportunity, they wolfed their wretched food, cursed and blasphemed and bullied one another in a manner that would have shocked their parents. There was little consideration given them by their superiors and they, in turn, had but little consideration for each other, though all, except Moore, would do what they could for a ship-mate in sharing clothing and tobacco. It was a rough comradeship, but a true one, nevertheless, and while such weaknesses as sympathy or sentiment were tabooed, yet each would stand by each in a pinch or time of peril.

For a boy brought up as Donald had been, he had shaped up remarkably well. He had been bullied and knocked about a great deal more than any of the other apprentices on the Kelvinhaugh, but hardship seemed to have toughened him and he stood the physical grind as well as the best—sure evidence of untainted blood and wiry stock of Highland forebears. Mentally, he had received the greatest gruelling, but, in addition to quick wit and keen intelligence, he had the rare faculty of adaptability, and without losing his finer feelings or allowing them to become demoralized, he fitted himself to his environment, but kept a leash on his talk and actions which may be summed up in Thompson’s characterization of him—“a dashed clean, plucky little nipper who always plays the game!”

Clean, plucky, and “playing the game”—a delicately nurtured lad—a mother’s boy—but bred from good stock and holding to his ideals with true Scotch tenacity—was Donald McKenzie. The romantic aspect of a sea life had faded away, but there still remained the thought that he, a lad of sixteen had done things, could do things, that strong, grown men ashore would hesitate and refuse to tackle. The bitter grind of seafaring tempered his boyishness and taught him self-reliance and courage; the rigor of the discipline had taught him to obey without question, and when a man can obey, he is fitting himself for command. He had gone through the first degree; had been initiated into the great fraternity of seafarers, and he knew seafaring for what it was—shorn of its false romance—a gruelling grind which called for men of courage, men who were willing to cut themselves adrift from the comforts and allurements of the land, and who became as a race apart. With romance shattered, he was willing to stick to the end, to go through the mill until he reached the goal where he could take something from the sea which had exacted so much from him. It had ruthlessly claimed his father and seared the soul of his mother, but he, an apprentice seaman, was learning its ways, its varying moods, and as a seaman, he was acquiring the sea-cunning and strategy to use it for his will. That was his new ideal. He would take something from the sea which had already exacted so much from him!