In the Misty Seas: A Story of the Sealers of Behring Strait. Bindloss Harold
seaman good-humouredly, "you'll find out these things by and by. Now we were working down channel close-hauled with the wind south-east over our port bow, but it has dropped away with the rain. The mate doesn't wait to see if another one will catch us with topsails aback, because he smells it coming, and it will be screaming behind us out of the north-west presently."
As he spoke one of the topsails swelled out, flapped and banged, then other great oblongs of canvas ceased their rustling too, and a flash of brilliant green swept athwart the sea. A patch of brass blinked in the sudden brightness, the rigging commenced to hum, and the Aldebaran moved, while once more the hoarse voice rose from the poop.
"Topgallants," it said, and then after a string of words Niven could not catch, "Main royal."
Instantly there was a bustle. Men went up the shrouds, swung high on the yards, letting little coils of rope run down, and a third big tier of sailcloth swelled out on either mast. Chain rattled, running wire screamed, the Aldebaran ceased rolling, and Appleby could see the sea smitten into white smoke rush past while he endeavoured to shake the kinks out of very hard and swollen rope. In the meanwhile the voice rose from the poop again, and when he had time to look about him two great pyramids of sail with a third of different shape behind covered the Aldebaranfrom the last feet of her mastheads to her spray-swept rail.
Then Appleby drew in his breath with a little gasp of wonder and delight. The towering tiers of canvas that gleamed a silvery grey now were rushing as fast as the clouds that followed them across blue lakes of sky. The great iron hull had become an animate thing, for there was life in every swift upward lurch and easy swing, and when he saw the foam that roared away in ample folds about the bows unite again astern and swirl straight back athwart the flashing green towards the horizon he realized for a few moments all the exhilaration of swift motion.
Presently, however, he was sensible of a horrible qualm under his belt, and looked at his hands with a little groan – one of them was bleeding from the rasp of the ropes, and the other swollen and more painful than if it had been beaten. He stood still for another second or two endeavouring to convince himself that there was nothing unusual going on inside him, and then staggered dizzily to the leeward rail. He found Niven there already, and for the next few minutes two very unhappy lads gazed down at the foam that whirled and roared beneath them as the Aldebaranswept out from the narrow seas before the brave north-wester.
CHAPTER IV
A LESSON IN SEAMANSHIP
It was a fine Sunday, and the Aldebaran rolling southwards lazily over a dazzling sea when Niven and Appleby lay on the warm deck with their shoulders against the house listening to Lawson who sat in the doorway reading. Pleasant draughts flickered about them as the warm wind flowed under the great arch of the mainsail's foot, and above it the sunlit canvas climbed, tier on tier, to the little royals swaying slowly athwart the blue. The barque was sliding forward on an even keel, but now and then she lifted her weather side with a gentle roll, and a brighter glare was flung up by the shining brine. Behind them the blue smoke of the galley whirled in little puffs, and glancing aft Appleby was almost dazzled by a flash from the twinkling brass boss of the wheel. Then when the poop went down he could see the figure of the helmsman forced up against the iridescent blueness of the sea.
Appleby wore a thin singlet and slippers, duck trousers and a jacket of the same material that had once been white and was a nice grey now. Niven's things were cleaner, but one rent trouser leg had been inartistically sewn up with seaming twine, and neither of them looked very like the somewhat fastidious youngsters who had once found fault with their rations in Sandycombe School. Their faces were bronzed from their foreheads to their throats, their hands were ingrained as a navvy's, and almost as hard, and they could by this time have eaten anything there was nourishment in.
"There's no use reading that stuff to us. We can't take it in," said Niven.
Lawson grinned at Appleby. "A little thick in the head?" he said.
"No," said Niven. "My head's as good as those most people have, anyway. I was top of the list almost every term when I was at school."
Lawson's smile grew broader. "That's a bad sign," he said. "Now I never knew how much I didn't know until I came to sea, and you don't seem to have got that far yet. You see, there's a good deal you want to forget."
"Well," said Niven, "forgetting's generally easy. What would you teach a fellow who wanted to go to sea?"
Lawson rubbed his head. "How to get fat on bread and water would come in useful for one thing," he said. "Then it would be handy to know just when to say nothing when you're kicked, and when it would be better to put your foot down and answer with your fist. You see, if you do either of them at the wrong time you're apt to be sorry."
"Appleby knows that already," said Niven, whose eyes twinkled as he glanced at his friend.
Appleby made a grimace, and Lawson laughed.
"Then it's a good deal more than you do, though I expect the mate will teach you the first of it," he said.
"Now, when Cally put soft-soap in your singlet and sewed your trousers up you should have laughed fit to split yourself, as Appleby did. Cally tarred his hair for him, and there's some in yet, but any one would have fancied that he liked it."
Niven wriggled a little. "Oh, shut up! That's not what we want to know," he said.
"No?" said Lawson. "Then we'll get on to the healthful art and practice of seamanship. Am I to commence at the end, or half-way through? The beginning will not be much use to you."
"I'll climb down," said Niven. "Made an ass of myself, as usual. Now, do you want me to lick your boots for you? Begin at the beginning, and make it simple."
Lawson chuckled. "You'll get on while you're in that frame of mind, my son," he said. "Well, now, there are, generally speaking, two kinds of sailing ships – first the fore-and-afters, examples, cutter, ketch, and schooner, with their canvas on one side only of the mast. They're to be described as tricky, especially when you jibe them going free, but when you jam them on the wind they'll beat anything."
"Jam them on the wind?" said Appleby.
Lawson nodded. "Close-hauled sailing. That's what I'm coming to," he said. "In the meanwhile there's the other kind, the one the Britisher holds to, while the Yankee who knows how to run cheap ships smiles, the square-riggers, examples, the ship and brig. Their sails are bent to yards which cross the masts, and, as you have found out, you've got to go aloft in all weathers to handle them, which is not one of their advantages. Then we come to the modifications or crosses between them, the barque, two masts square-rigged, fore-and-aft on mizzen, of which the Aldebaran is a tolerably poor example, topsail schooner, brigantine, which has yards on her foremast and fore-and-aft main, and barquentine with foremast square-rigged and two mainmasts carrying fore-and-aft canvas, though they call the last of them the mizzen. The other kind I didn't mention is the one that makes the money, and sails with a screw. Got that into you?"
"Oh, yes," said Niven, yawning. "Can't you get on? I knew it all years ago."
Lawson grinned. "Of course!" he said. "Well, I'll leave the mate to talk to you."
He went into the deckhouse, and returned with a sheet of paper and a little, beautifully-constructed model of a full-rigged ship. "I made it last trip to work out questions for my examination with," he said, but the deprecation in his bronzed face betrayed his pride, and Appleby, who saw how tenderly he handled the model, understood. "Now we come to the one and universal practice of sailing. I make this ring on the paper, and you can consider it the compass, or, and it's the same thing, one-half the globe. Here I draw two lines across it crossing each other, and we'll mark the ends of them North, South, East, and West. That divides the circle into four quarters, and the corners where the lines intersect are right angles, each containing ninety degrees, or eight points of the compass which has thirty-two in all."
He laid the paper on the deck, and when he had turned it so that the first line run from North to South, placed the model at the upper end of it, and twisted the yards and sails, which moved, square across the hull. "The wind's blowing from Greenland to the South pole, and she's going before it," he said. "Anything would sail that way –