O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas

Chapter Nine

 
“The dismal wreck to view
Struck horror to the crew.”
 

Old Song.

The earlier history of a human being’s life is engraved upon his mind as with a pen of steel. After one comes to what are termed years of discretion, the soul is not so impressionable, and events must be of more than usual interest to be very long remembered. The story, then, of a chequered life cannot be told with even a hopeful attempt at minuteness, unless a log has been kept day after day and year after year; and my opinion is, that although diaries are often most religiously commenced, especially about New Year’s time, they are seldom if ever kept up very long.

My own adventures, and the scenes I passed through in the first stages of my existence, were not, as the reader already knows, of a kind to be very easily forgotten, even had my mind never been very impressionable. It was easy enough, therefore, to record them in some kind of chronological form.

The few adventures I and my friend Ben Roberts tell in the pages that follow, and our sketches of life, are given as they occur to our memory; often brought back to our minds by the incidents of our present everyday life.

But I do not think that even if Ben and I live as long as Old Parr, we shall either tire of spinning our yarns, or fall short of subject matter.

Let me say a word or two about the place I live in now, and where Ben so often pays me a visit.

We call it Rowan Tree Villa.

It stands mid-way up a well-wooded hill, about two and a half miles from a dreamy, drowsy old village, in one of the dreamiest, drowsiest nooks of bonnie, tree-clad Berkshire.

The top of the hill is covered by tall-stemmed pine trees, and from this eminence you can see, stretching far away below, all the undulating country, the fertile valley of the Thames, and the river itself winding for many and many a mile through it – a silver thread amidst the green.

From the top of this hill, too, if you take the trouble to climb it, you can have a bird’s-eye view of Rowan Tree Villa.

There it is, a pretty, many-gabled cottage, with a comfortable-looking kitchen garden and orchard behind it, and a long, wide lawn in front. Now this lawn has one peculiarity. From the gate on each side up to the terrace in front of the house sweeps a broad carriage drive, bounded on both its sides, first by a belt of green grass, carefully trimmed and dotted here and there with patches of flowers, and secondly by two rows of rowan trees (the mountain ash), trained on wires, and forming the prettiest bit of hedge-work you could easily imagine.

If you were Scotch, and looked at that hedge even for a moment, the words, and maybe the air as well, of the Baroness Nairne’s beautiful song would rise in your mind —

 
“Thy leaves were aye the first in spring,
    Thy flowers the summer’s pride;
There was nae sic a bonnie tree
    In a’ the country side.
And fair wert thou in summer time,
    Wi’ a’ thy clusters white,
And rich and gay thy autumn dress
    Of berries red and bright.
                Oh, rowan tree!”
 

Well, it is June to-day – an afternoon in June; a day to make one feel life in every limb – a day when but to exist is a luxury. The roses are bending their heads in the sweet sunshine, for there is not a cloud in Heaven’s blue. The butterflies are chasing each other among the flowers on the lawn, where we recline among the daisies, and the big velvety bees go droning and humming from clover blossom to clover blossom.

“Strange, is it not, my dear Ben,” I said, “that on such a day as this, and in the midst of sunshine, I should bethink me of some night-scenes at sea and on land?

“I remember well my first experience of a storm by night in the Northern Ocean. We were going to the Arctic regions, cruising in a sturdy and, on the whole, not badly fitted, nor badly found ship.

“The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and spread their wings to the breeze; the crew had given their farewell cheer, and the rough old pilot, having seen us safely out of Brassy Sound, had shaken the captain roughly by the hand, and wishing us ‘God-speed and safely home,’ had disappeared in his boat round a point.

“We were once more on the deep and dark blue ocean. Then the night began to fall, and soon the only sound heard was the tramp, tramp on deck, or the steady wash of the water, as our vessel ever and anon dipped her bows or waist in the waves.

“The captain had given his last orders on deck, and came below to our little saloon, the only occupants of which were myself and the ship’s cat.

“Poor Pussy was endeavouring, rather ineffectually, to steady herself on the sofa, and looked very much from home, while I myself was trebly engaged: namely, in placing such articles as were constantly tumbling down into a safer and steadier position, in keeping the fire brightly burning, and in reading a nautical book.

“There was a shade of uneasiness on the captain’s face as he looked at the barometer; and when he entered his state-room, and presently after emerged dressed in oilskins and a sou’-wester hat, I felt as sure we were going to have a dirty night as though he had rigged himself out in sackcloth and ashes.

“He sat down, and, calling for some coffee, invited me to join in a social cup.

“‘Is there plenty of sea-room?’ I inquired.

“‘Very little sea-room,’ he replied; ‘but she must take her chance.’

“Then we relapsed into silence.

“About an hour or two after this it became a difficult matter to sit on a chair at all, so much did the vessel pitch and roll.

“The captain had gone on deck, and as I had neither the need nor the desire to follow him, I threw myself on the sofa, at the risk even of offending my good friend and companion, Pussy.

“The storm was now raging with terrible fury.

“Two watches were called to shorten sail, and the din and noise of voices could be distinctly heard rising high over the dashing of the waves, and the whistling of the wind among the rigging and shrouds. Every timber was stretched, every plank seemed to creak and wail in agony; yet the good ship bore it well.

“Tired of the sofa I turned into bed, hoping to have a few hours of sleep; but was very soon obliged to turn out again, having been awakened from a pleasant dream of green fields, pine-clad hills, and a broad, quiet river, where ferns and water-lilies grew, by the crashing of crockery in the steward’s pantry. It sounded as if bottles, dishes, plates, and cups were all in a heap in the middle of the floor breaking each other to infinitesimal pieces. And that is precisely what they were doing.

“Things in the saloon were fast verging into a state of chaos, and appeared to be making very merry in my absence. The fender and fire-irons presided over the musical department.

“The captain’s big chair was dancing very emphatically, but rather clumsily, with the coal-scuttle as a partner; the table was bowing to the sofa, but the sofa begged to be excused from getting up. The only reasonable-looking article of furniture in the room was a chair, which was merely staggering around with my coat on, while the cat had gone to sleep in my sou’-wester; and while endeavouring to restore quiet and order, I was thrown below the table like a pair of old boots, where, for the want of ability to do anything better, I was fain to remain.

“‘Clear away the wreck!’ I could now hear the captain’s voice bawling, for our fore-mast had gone by the board.

“His voice was not the only one I heard. On passing the man at the wheel, I heard the captain ask, ‘What! are you getting afraid, man?’ And the brave British voice that so firmly replied ‘Not at all, sir!’ explained better than printed volumes could have done the secret of all our naval greatness; for to hearts like his, and hands like his, in many a dark and stormy night, Britannia entrusts her honour, and bravely is it kept and guarded.

“Musing on this fact, I fell soundly to sleep beneath the table, and when I awoke the storm had ceased.

“There are few situations in which a healthy man can be placed that are more full of discomfort than that of being at sea in a small ship during a storm. I do not refer to a mere ‘capful of wind;’ I mean a great-gun gale. There is, literally speaking, no rest for the sole of the foot. Tossed about in all directions, in vain do you seek to exchange your chair for the sofa. Probably you are sent rolling off on to the deck, and thankful you ought to be if the cushions are the only things that follow you. Flesh-sore and weary, perhaps you seek for solace in a cup of tea: thankful you may be again if the steward succeeds in pouring it into your cup, instead of spilling it down your neck. Then, if you so far forget the rules of the sea as to place it for a moment on the table without a hand to guard it, you are instantly treated to a gratuitous shower-bath.

“Still the ocean has its pleasures and its charms as well as the land. My mind, even now, carries me back and away to a scene very different from that which I have just been describing.

“I am sitting in my little cabin. It is a summer’s evening, and all is peace within and around my barque. Yonder is my bed, and the little port close by my snow-white pillow is open, and through it steals the soft, cool breeze of evening, and wantonly lifts and flutters the little blue silken hangers. Not far off I can catch glimpses of the wooded hills and flowery valleys of a sunny land. And night after night the light wind that blows from it is laden with the sweet breath of its flowers; and between there lies the ocean, asleep and quiet and still, and beautiful with the tints of reflected clouds.

“Often in the cool night that succeeds a day of heat have I lain awake for hours, fanned by the breath of the sea, gazing on the watery world beneath and beyond me, and the silvery moon and tiny stars, that make one think of home, till sleep stole gently down on a moonbeam, and wafted me off to dreamland.

“But in witnessing even the war of the elements at sea, a sailor often finds a strange, wild pleasure. Enveloped in the thundercloud you mount with every wave to meet the lightning’s flash, or descend, like an arrow, into the gulf below – down, down, down, till the sun, lurid and red, is hidden at last from view by the wall of black waters around you.

“Or fancy the picture, which no artist could depict, of a ship far away in ocean’s midst by night in a thunderstorm. Dimly through the murky night behold that tumbling sea, lighted only by its own foam and the occasional flash from the storm-cloud. See that dark spot on the sea; it is a ship, and living souls are there – human beings, each with his own world of cares and loves and thoughts that are even now far away, all in that little spot. Whish! now by the pale lightning’s flash you can see it all. The black ship, with her bare poles, her slippery, shining deck and wet cordage, hanging by the bows to the crest of that great inky wave. What a little thing she looks, and what a mighty ocean all around her; and see how pale appear the faces of the crew that ‘cling to slippery shrouds,’ lest the next wave bear them into eternity.

“Whoever has been to prayers at sea during a storm has had a solemn experience he will never forget.”

“Perhaps there is no more impressive ocean-scene ever beheld by the sailor,” said Captain Ben Roberts, “than the phosphorescent seas witnessed at times in the tropics.” But though far more common in these regions than in the temperate zones, this extraordinary luminosity of the water is sometimes observed around our own coasts.

“I shall always remember,” he continues, “the first time I witnessed the phenomenon, though I’ve often seen it since.

“What a happy day we had had, to be sure! We were a party of five – I but a schoolboy, my comrades little more. It was the first time I had been to that most bewitching of western islands called Skye. We had started off one morning early on a ramble. We simply meant to go somewhere – anywhere, so long as we did not come back again for a night or two. Not that we were not happy enough in the old-fashioned manse of K – . But we wanted change, we wanted adventure if we could find any, and if we did not, then probably we should be able to make some. There was, at all events, the wild mountain peak of Quiraing to be climbed, with its strange top – the extinct crater of a burning mountain. Ah! but long before we came anywhere near it, there was a deal to be done.

“We had started from the beautiful little bay of Nigg, keeping a northerly course over a broad Highland upland.

“It was the month of June; the heather was not purple yet, but it was long and rank and green, and it was inhabited by many a curious wild bird, whose nests we hunted for, but did not rob; we saw some snakes, too, and one of us killed a very long one, and we all thought that boy a very hero, though I know now it was no more dangerous or deadly than a tallow candle.

“But the best fun we got was when we took to horse-catching. There was not much harm in this after all. There were dozens of ponies roaming wild over the green moor, and if they allowed themselves to be caught and ridden for miles through the heather, why, it did not hurt them; they soon danced back again.

“We laughed, and screamed, and whooped, loud enough to scare even the curlews, and that is saying a good deal. I’m not sure, indeed, that we didn’t scare the eagles from their eeries; at all events we thought we did. Then we began to ascend Quiraing, a stiff climb and somewhat hazardous; and light-hearted though we were, I believe we were all impressed with the grandeur of the view we caught from between the needle-like rocks that form one side.

“We went down to the plains below more quickly than we came up.

“Presently we came to a little Highland village close to the sea, and there, to our joy, we found that a large fishing-boat was going round the northernmost and east part of the island to Portree, the capital. For a trifle we managed to take a passage. We had lots of bread and cheese in our wallets, and we had some money in our pockets, good sticks, and stout young hearts; so that we should not be badly off even although we should have to trudge on foot back again to the old manse. Which, by the way, we had to.

“Our voyage was a far longer one in time than we had expected it would be, because the wind fell. But the beauty of the scenery, the hills, the strange-shaped mountains, the rocks and cliffs, with waterfalls tumbling sheer over them and falling into the sea; the sea itself, so calm and blue, and the distant mainland, enshrouded in the purple mist of distance, repaid us for all, and made the day seem like one long, happy dream.

“But daylight faded at last, and just as the gloaming star peeped out there came down upon our boat a very large shoal of porpoises, which the boatman gravely assured us at first was the great sea-serpent. These creatures were in chase of herrings, but they were so reckless in their rush and so headlong, that we were fain to scream to frighten them off, and even to arm ourselves with stones from the ballast, and throw at those that came too near.

“Night fell at last, and we were still at sea, and the stars came out above us. But if there were stars above us there were stars beneath us too; nay, not only beneath us, but everywhere about and around us. The sea was alive with phosphorescent animalculae; the wake of the boat was a broad belt of light behind us, every ripple sparkled and shone, and the water that dripped from the oars looked like molten silver.”

“Ah!” said I, “that was one of your first experiences of the open sea, wasn’t it, Ben?”

“I was only a boy, Nie,” replied my friend. “I’ve had many a sleep in the cradle of the deep since then.”

“I was reading this morning,” I said, “of that terrible shipwreck in the Atlantic. It puts me in mind of the loss of the London. I was in the Bay of Biscay in that very gale, Ben; our vessel unmanageable, wallowing in the trough of the seas, the waves making a clean breach over us; and, Ben, at the very darkest hour of midnight, we saw, by the lightning’s gleam, a great ship stagger past us. We were so close that we could have pitched a coil of rope on board. There were no men on her decks; her masts were carried away, and her bulwarks gone, and it was evident she was foundering fast. There were more ships lost, Ben, that night in the Bay of Biscay than ever we shall know of —

 
“‘Till the sea gives up its dead.’”
 

Chapter Ten

 
“Throned in his palace of cerulean ice,
Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court.”
 

Thomson’s “Seasons.”

“I don’t think,” said I, as Captain Ben Roberts and I sat at breakfast one day in a homely old hotel in Bala, North Wales, “I don’t think, Ben, my boy, I ever ate anything more delicious in the way of fish than these same lovely mountain trout.”

“Well, you see,” replied my friend, “we caught them ourselves, to begin with; then the people here know exactly how to cook them. But, Nie, lad, have you forgotten the delicious fries of flying-fish you used to have in the dear old Niobe?”

“Almost, Ben; almost.”

“Well, I can tell you that you did use to enjoy them, all the same.”

“Ay, and I’ve enjoyed them since many and many is the time in the tropics, and especially in the Indian Ocean.”

“So have I,” said Ben Roberts. “Funny way they used to have of catching them, though, in the old Sans Pareil. Of course you know they will always fly to a light if held over the ship’s side?”

“Yes.”

“Well, but the orders were not to have lights kicking about the deck at night, either naked or in a lantern; so some of our fellows – not that I at all approve of what they did – utilised a wild cat the doctor kept in a cage. When they came on deck to keep the middle watch – we were on a voyage from Seychelles to the Straits of Malacca – they would swing him, cage and all, over the stern. His eyes would be gleaming like bottled wildfire. ’Twasn’t long, I can tell you, before the flying-fish sprang up at the cage. Old Tom put out his claws and hooked some of them in; but lots flew on board, and they were being fried five minutes afterwards.”

“I quite believe you, Roberts,” I said; “though some would call that a traveller’s tale. But just look at that lovely pair of Persian cats in the corner there, Ben; it seems almost impossible to believe they can belong to the same family as the wild cat you’ve been speaking about.”

“Yes, Nie, civilisation is a wonderful thing when it can extend even to the lower animals. You were once a savage yourself too, Nie. Think of that.”

“I shan’t think about it,” I replied. “None of your sauce, my worthy friend. What were you doing at Seychelles, and what were you doing with a wild cat on board?”

“We had queerer things than wild cats on board, Nie; the fact is, we were what they call cruising on special service. We had a fine time of it, I can tell you. We seemed to go everywhere, and do nothing in particular. At the time we had that wild cat on board, Nie, we had already been three years in commission, and had sailed about and over almost every ocean and sea in the world.”

“What a lot of fun and adventure you must have had, Ben! Wish I had been with you.”

“You were in the Rocky Mountains then, I believe?”

“Yes, and in Australia, and the Cape. You see, I had a turn after gold and diamonds wherever I thought I could find them. But help yourself and me to some more of those glorious trout, and spin your yarn.”

“Let us get away out of doors first, Nie. On this lovely summer’s day we should be on the lake.”

So we were, reader, one hour afterwards; but the sun was too bright; there were neither clouds nor wind, and the fish wouldn’t bite; so we pulled on shore, drew up our boat, and seated ourselves at the shady side of a great rock on a charming bit of greensward, and there we stayed for hours, Ben lazily talking and smoking, I listening in a dreamy kind of way, but enjoying my friend’s yarn all the same.

“Yes,” said Ben, “we were on special service. One day we would be dredging the bottom of the sea, the next day taking soundings. One day we would be shivering under polar skies, the next roasting under a tropical sun.”

“Come, come, be easy, Ben; be easy,” I cried, half-rising from the grass. “If you were under polar skies one day, how, in the name of mystery, could you be in the tropics next, Captain Roberts? I shall imagine you are going to draw the long bow, as the Yankees call it.”

“Well, well, Nie; the fact is, we passed so pleasant an existence in the Sans Pareil, that time really glided away as if we had been in dreamland all the while. We sailed away to the far north in the early spring of the year. We didn’t go after either seals or whales; but we did have the sport for all that. Our captain was one of those real gentlemen that you do find now and then commanding ships in the Royal Navy. Easy-going and complacent, but a stickler for duty and service for all that. There wasn’t a man or officer in the ship who wouldn’t have risked his life at any moment to please him – ay, or laid it down in duty’s cause. Indeed, the men would any day do more for Captain Mann’s nod and smile, than they would do for any one else’s shouted word of command.

“We dredged our way up north to Greenland. It was a stormy spring. We often had to lie-to for a whole week together; but we were a jolly crew, and well-officered, and we had on board two civilians – Professor kind of chaps I think they were – and they were the life and soul of the whole ship. Whenever we could we took soundings, and hauled up mud and shingle and stuff from the bottom of the dark ocean, even when it was a mile deep and more. But when that mud was washed away, and the living specimens spread out and arranged on bits of jet-black paper, what wonders we did see, to be sure! Our Scotch doctor called them ‘ferlies’: he called everything wonderful a ‘ferlie.’ But these particular ferlies, Nie, took the shape of tiny wee shells of all the colours in the rainbow, and funny wee fishes, some not bigger than a pin-point. But, oh! the beauty, the more than loveliness of them! The roughest old son of a gun on board of us held up his hands in admiration when he saw them. We cruised all round Spitzbergen, and all down the edge of the eastern pack ice. We shot bears and foxes innumerable; walruses, narwhals, seals, and even whales fell to our guns; while the number of strange birds we bagged and set up would have filled a museum.

“Some of those walruses gave us fun, though. I remember once we fell amidst ice positively crowded with them. They seemed but little inclined to budge, either. Again and again we fought our way through them; but the number seemed to increase rather than diminish, till at last our fellows – we were two boats’ crews – were thoroughly exhausted, and fain to take to the boats. Was the battle ended then? I thought it was only just beginning, when I saw around us the water alive with fierce tusked heads evidently bent on avenging the slaughter of their comrades.

“Our good surgeon was as fond of sport as anyone ever I met, but he confessed that day he had quite enough of it. At one time the peril we were in was very great indeed. Several times the brutes had all but fastened their terrible tusks on the gunwale of our boat. Had they succeeded, we should have been capsized, and entirely at their mercy.

“The surgeon, with his great bone-crushing gun, loaded and fired as fast as ever fingers could; but still they kept coming.

“‘Ferlies’ll never cease,’ cried the worthy medico, blowing the brains clean out of one who had almost swamped the boat from the stern. Meanwhile it fared but badly with the other boat. The men were fighting with clubs and axes, their ammunition being entirely spent. One poor fellow was pierced through the arm by the tusk of a walrus and fairly dragged into the water, where he sank before he could be rescued.

“The ship herself bore down to our assistance at last, and such a rain of bullets was poured upon the devoted heads of those walruses that they were fain to dive below. The noise of this battle was something terrible; the shrieks of the cow walruses, and the grunting, groaning, and bellowing of the bulls, defy all attempts at description.

“What do you think,” continued Captain Roberts, “I have here in my pocket-book? Look; a sketch of a strangely fantastic little iceberg the doctor made half an hour after the battle. He was a strange man – partly sportsman, partly naturalist, poet, painter, all combined.”

“Is he dead?”

“No, not he; I’ll warrant he is busy sketching somewhere in the interior of Africa at this very moment. But I loved Greenland so, Nie, that old as I am I wouldn’t mind going back again. The beauty of some of the aurora scenes, and the moonlight scenes, can never be imagined by your stay-at-home folk. We went into winter quarters. Well, yes, it was a bit dreary at times; but what with fun and jollity, and games of every kind on board, and sledging parties and bear and fox hunts on shore on the ice around us, the time really didn’t seem so very long after all.”

“What say you to lunch, Ben, my boy?” I remarked.

“The very thing,” replied my friend; “but first and foremost, just shake that ferocious-looking stag-beetle off your shoulder; he’ll have you by the ear before you know where you are.”

“Ugh!” I cried, knocking the beast a yard away. The creature turned and shook his horrid mandibles threateningly at me, for a stag-beetle never runs away. Although admiring his pluck, I could not stand his impudence, so I flicked him away, and he fell into the lake.

“Ah! Nie,” Captain Roberts said, “if the wild beasts of the African jungle were only half as courageous and fierce as that beetle, not so many of our gay sportsmen would go after them. Only fancy that creature as big as an elephant!

“Well, Nie, in that cruise of ours, we had no sooner got back to England and been surveyed than off we were down south, across the Bay of Biscay. No storms then; we could have crossed it in the dinghy boat. Visited Madeira. You know, Nie, how grand the scenery is in that beautiful island.”

“And how delicious the turtle!” I said.

“True, O king!” said Ben; “the bigwigs in London think they know what turtle tastes like, but they’re mistaken; there is as much difference between the flavour of a turtle newly caught, and one that has been starved to death as your London turtles are, as there is between a bit of cork and a well-boiled cauliflower.”

“Bravo! Ben, you speak the truth.”

“Then we visited romantic Saint Helena. It used to be called ‘a rock in the middle of the ocean.’ How different now! A more fertile and luxuriant place there isn’t in all the wide, wide world. We called at Ascension next; well, that is a rock if you like, not a green thing except at the top o’ the hill (it has since been cultivated). But the birds’ eggs, Nie, and the turtle. It makes me hungry to think of them even now.

“We had whole months of sport at the Cape and in South Africa, and all up the coast as far as Zambesi. We visited Madagascar; more sport there, and a bit of honest fighting; then on to the Comoro islands – more romantic scenery, and more fighting; then to Zanzibar. Captured prizes, took soundings, dredged, and went on again. On, to Seychelles, then to Java, Sumatra, Penang, then back to India, and thence to Africa, the Red Sea, Mocha; why, it would be easier far to mention the places we did not visit. But the best of it was that we stayed for months at every new place where we cast anchor.”

“Visited Ceylon, I dare say?”

“Yes, hid, and had some rare sport elephant-shooting. I tell you what, Nie, there was some clanger attached to that sort of thing in those days, but now it is little better than shooting cows, unless you get away into the little-known regions of equatorial Africa; there you still find the elephant has his foot – and a big one it is – upon his native soil. But I remember once – I and my man Friday – being charged by two gigantic tuskers, and the whole herd rushing wildly down to their assistance. It was a supreme moment, Nie. I thought my time was come; I would have given anything and everything I possessed to get up into the top of the palm-tree close beside me.

“‘Now, Friday,’ I cried, ‘be steady if you value your own life and mine.’

“I fired, and my tusker dropped. But the terrible noise and trumpeting must have shaken Friday’s nerves a bit. He was usually a good shot, but on this occasion he missed. I loaded at once again, and as the great brute came down on us, let him have it point-blank. He reeled, but still came on. I felt rooted to the spot. My life in a moment more, I thought, would be crushed out of me. Ah! but there must have been a mist of blood before the tusker’s eyes; it was a tree he charged; his tusk snapped like a pipe-stalk, and the great elephant at once fell dead.”

“It was a narrow escape.”

“Well, it was, but for the matter of that, Nie, who knows but that our lives may be ever in danger, no matter where we are. A hundred times a day, perhaps, we are upheld by the kind hands of an unseen Providence, ‘our eyes are kept from tears, and our feet from falling.’

“Should we be grateful when our lives are spared? I think so, Nie, lad; only the reckless, and the braggart, and too often the coward, boast of the dangers they have come through, just as if their own strength alone had saved them.”