The Pirate of the Mediterranean. W.h.g. Kingston
to allow it to turn easily in his hands, and the mate, taking the little triangular bit of wood, called the log-ship, adjusted the peg, and drew off, with a peculiar jerk of his left hand, several coils of the stray-line, which he held for a moment over the quarter of the vessel, till he saw that his chief was ready with the glass, and he then hove it over into the water. The first part of the line is called the stray-line, and its object is to allow the log-ship to settle properly in the water, as well as to take it clear of the eddy. As soon as this part had run out, a cloth mark ran through the mate’s fingers. “Turn,” he exclaimed. “Turn,” repeated the master, and turned the glass. The marks rapidly passed through the mate’s hand, as he jerked the line of the reel, always keeping it at a stretch.
“Stop,” sung out Bowse, as the sand had run out of the upper end of the glass.
“Done,” said the mate, and stopped the line.
He had not to count the knots run off, for his experienced eye was able to tell the number by the mark on the line. It must be understood that this line is divided into a certain number of equal parts, each of which bears the same proportion to a mile, which thirty seconds do to an hour, and therefore, as the log-ship remains stationary in the water, according to the number of these proportions dragged through, while the sand is running, so is shown how many miles or knots the vessel is going through the water.
“Six and a quarter,” exclaimed the mate. “That’s what I call good going for a ship with a full cargo, in a breeze like this.”
“That’s what we call heaving the log, Miss Garden,” said the master, who had been explaining the use of the log, though in not quite so succinct a way as I have attempted to do. “You’ll be able to turn the glass another time, I’m sure.”
The glass runs, in reality, only for twenty-eight seconds, as two are considered to be employed in turning it.
Ada, who enjoyed an advantage over the reader, by having the operation performed before her eyes, answered that she clearly understood it, and would always, in future, hold the glass.
“By this calculation, you see, miss, as it is just two hours since we passed Fort Saint Elmo, we have run exactly twelve knots and a half off the reel; though we didn’t go through the water so fast at first, as we are now doing. However, by the look of the land, I calculate we are not much less than that off it. You see we call miles – knots, miss, on account of the knots which are marked on the line. When we can just see the last of some conspicuous point, we shall take its bearing by compass and its distance, and then I shall commence pricking the ship’s course off on the chart, and that is what we call taking our departure. Now you see there’s many people on shore would fancy that when we left the port we took our departure; but the ties which bind a seaman to the shore, and to those we leave behind, are not so quickly parted as they may think, you see, miss.” And the honest master, chuckling at one of the first attempts at wit and gallantry of which he had ever been guilty, thought the next instant he blushed at his own audacity.
“It’s surprising, miss, what funny mistakes them who never leave the land make about seafaring concerns; but then, what can you expect of them? they know no better,” he added, in a tone showing the deep commiseration he felt for the ignorance of landsmen. “To say that they don’t know the stem from the stern, isn’t to say anything. They know nothing about a ship, how she’s built, how she sails, or what she’s like. The last voyage I made I had a passenger on board who was a cleverish sort of gentleman, too, and for talking politics he’d go on for an hour; yet he wanted to know why I couldn’t bring the ship to an anchor right out in the Bay of Biscay; and one night, when it was blowing a stiffish gale, with a heavy sea running, he roused me out of my sleep to ask me to send a better hand to the helm; one who knew how to keep the craft steady, or else to run into some harbour till the morning. He never could get it out of his head that he was not in the Thames. Now, miss, I see that you are not one of those sort of people, and that you will soon know all about a ship, though you may not just yet be able to act the captain. To-morrow I’ll show you how to shoot the sun, as we tell greenhorns we are doing, when we take an observation with the quadrant. It’s a very pretty instrument, and you will be pleased to know how to use it.”
“I shall like very much to learn all you can teach me, Captain Bowse,” answered Ada, making a great effort to rouse herself from the feeling of sadness which oppressed her. “I wonder how mariners managed to traverse, as they did, the most distant seas, before these instruments were invented.”
“They used to trust more to the sun and stars, and to their lead reckoning, than they do now, I suppose, miss,” answered the master. “Even now, there’s many a man in charge of a vessel who never takes more than a meridional observation, if even that; and having found his latitude, runs down the longitude by dead reckoning. Some even go about to many distant parts entirely by rule of guess, and it is extraordinary how often they hit their point. Now and then, to be sure, they find themselves two or three hundred miles out of their course, and sometimes they get the ship cast away. I have, too, met vessels out in the Atlantic which had entirely lost their reckoning, and had not the slightest notion where they were. Once, I remember, when I belonged to the Harkaway frigate, coming home from the Brazils, we sighted a Spanish man-of-war corvette. When we got up to her we hove to, and an officer came on board who could speak a little English; and you would scarcely believe it, but the first thing he did was to ask us for the latitude and longitude; and he confessed that the only instruments they had on board were out of repair, and, for what I know, the only man who knew how to use them was ill. Our captain then sent an officer on board the corvette, and a pretty condition she was in for a man-of-war. They had a governor of some place as a passenger, and his wife and family, and two or three other ladies and their families; and there they were all lying about the decks in a state of despair, thinking they were never to see land again. They had been a whole month tossing about in every direction, and not knowing how to find the way home. The decks were as dirty as if they had not been holystoned or swept all that time; not a sail was properly set, not a rope flemished down. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I could not have believed such a thing possible. Our appearance raised their spirits a little, and they began putting themselves to rights as soon as they had made sail on their course. They kept company with us till we got into the latitude of Cadiz, for their craft sailed very well, for all that they did not know how to handle her, and I believe that they managed to get into port in safety at last.”
“I am surprised at what you tell me,” observed Miss Garden, “I should have thought the Spaniards could not have so totally forgotten their ancient naval renown as to allow such dreadful ignorance to exist.”
“The men are active, intelligent fellows enough, and the officers in the merchant service are, from what I have seen, very good seamen; but since the war, their navy has been much neglected, and men were made officers who did not know the stem from the stern of the ship, just because they happened to be some poor dependent of one of their nobles, or the son of a valet out of place. Things are mending a little now with them, I hear.”
“I wonder any but such beggarly fellows as you speak of can be induced to go into the navy at all,” said the colonel, who had been listening to the master’s story, and was far from pleased at the interest Ada took in what he said. “For my part, I would as soon be a shoe-black; but you seem determined to give my niece a dose of the sea.”
“Oh, yes, sir!” answered Bowse, perfectly indifferent to the colonel’s ill-temper; “I hope we shall make the young lady a first-rate sailor before long.”
“I hope you will do no such thing, Mr Bowse; she thinks a great deal too much about it already,” returned the colonel, taking another turn aft.
“Indeed I do not, uncle,” replied Ada, as he came back, in a half-playful tone, calculated to disarm his anger. “You must acknowledge that the scene before us is very beautiful and enjoyable. Look at that blue and joyous sea, how the waves leap and curl as if in sport, their crests just fringed with sparkling bubbles of snow-white foam, which, in the freshness of their new-born existence, seem inclined to take wing into the air – then, what can be more bright and clear than the expanse of sky above us, or more pure than the breeze which wafts us along. Look, too, at the blue, misty hills of our dear Malta, just rising from the water. What mere mole-hills