The Wind-Jammers. T. Jenkins Hains
see?”
“H’m-m, yes, I see,” growled the skipper; “but why didn’t you mention it before, if you knew it all this time, instead of waiting until we got way in here? Why didn’t you tell Mr. Gantline?” His voice rising with his anger. “Why didn’t you tell Mr. Gantline this when you knew he’d never seen a log like this before? What do you suppose you are here for, anyhow?” he fairly roared. “Go forward, sir; I won’t have such a man for a mate on my ship.”
“Mr. Gantline,” he said, after Joe had gone, “get the lead-line and make a few casts, sir, by yourself—by yourself, sir—and then come and tell me how much water we’ve got under us.”
The mate, without any unnecessary disturbance, got out the lead, and, as it was calm and the vessel had no motion, he had no difficulty in making a deep-sea sounding. He was also materially aided by the startling effect of the lead, when he hove it over the side with fifty fathoms of coiled line to follow it. To his great amazement the line suddenly ceased running out after the five-fathom mark had passed over, and it became necessary to heave the remaining forty-five fathoms of coiled line after it, in order not to transmit this startling fact to any one that might be looking on. Then, with a great deal of exertion, he laboriously hauled the forty-five fathoms in again, and then called to Joe to haul in and coil down the rest, and then put the lead away. After this he went quickly aft to the skipper and whispered something in his ear that sounded to the man at the wheel like “Shoal—Barnegat.” The man at the wheel might have been mistaken, and it is only fair to presume that he was, but in a very short time the ship was headed due east again.
As night came on, a slight breeze came through the fog and the ship gathered headway. The captain, who had been walking fore and aft on the quarter in his shirt-sleeves, mopping great beads of perspiration from his forehead, now seemed to be aware of the chilliness of the air and forthwith went below.
The ship made a very quick voyage around Cape Horn, and a year later, when she returned, Mr. Ropesend met Captain Green in his office the morning he arrived.
“How did you like the patent log, captain?” said Mr. Ropesend.
“Mr. Ropesend,” said the captain, in a deep voice that made Gaff look up and recognize his old friend—“Mr. Ropesend, I don’t believe in these new-fangled logs what’s regulated by timber noggins, no more’n I do in these worthless third mates that’s only good for teaching school.”
OFF THE HORN: A TALE OF THE SOUTHERN OCEAN
THE average man knows as little of the region where the backbone of the American continent disappears beneath the ocean as he does of the heart of Africa. The mighty chain of mountains that raise their peaks miles above the surrounding country at the equator sink gradually until only a single cone-shaped hump—the last vertebra—raises itself above the sea in latitude 55° 50’ south. This is the desolate and uninhabited end of the southern continent, commonly known as Cape Horn, and no man gets any nearer to it than he can help. Past it flows the deep ocean stream known as the Pacific Antarctic Drift, and over it whirl fierce hurricanes in almost uninterrupted succession.
To the southward and westward rise the jagged rocks of the Ramirez, but these do not break in any manner the force of the high, rolling sea which sweeps down from the Pacific. There is but little life on any of these tussock-covered peaks, and they offer no shelter, save to the white albatross and the wingless penguin.
It is past this dreaded cape, in a region of almost continual storm and with a rapidly shifting needle, the navigator of the sailing vessel has to drive his way. The Straits of Magellan offer no passage to the handler of square canvas, and the furious, whirling current of the Le Maire is usually avoided, as when navigated it only saves a few miles of westing. The floating ice is always a dreaded menace, for with the spume-drift flying before a freezing gale and surrounded by the gloom of the high latitude in winter, it is difficult to distinguish an object fifty fathoms ahead of a ship’s cut-water.
Rough, hard men were the “wind-jammers” as they were called, who earned a right to live by driving overloaded ships around this cape, from 50° south latitude on one side to 50° south latitude on the other. With the yards “jammed” hard on the backstays, they would take advantage of every slant in the wind, until at last it would swing fair, and then away they would go, running off for the other side of the world with every rag the vessel would stand tugging away at clew and earring, sending her along ten or twelve knots an hour towards the latitude of the trade-wind.
Men of iron nerve, used to suffering and hardship, they were, for they had to stand by for a call to shorten sail at any hour of the day or night. Their food consisted of salt-junk and hardtack, with roasted wheat boiled for coffee, and a taste of sugar to sweeten it. Beans and salt pork were the only other articles to vary the monotonous and unhealthful diet. As for lime-juice, it existed only in the imagination of the shipping commissioner who signed-on the men.
The Silver Sea was manned and officered by a set of men who had been longer in the trade around the Cape than any others of the deep-water fleet. She crossed the 50th parallel on the morning of June 20, and not being certain of her exact longitude, Captain Enoch Moss headed her a trifle to the eastwards to clear Staten Land. The second day afterwards land was looked for, the first to be seen in eighty days out of New York.
Enoch Moss was said to be a hard man among hard men. His second mate was a man named Garnett, a fellow who had been so smashed, shot, and stove up, in the innumerable fracases in which he had taken part, that to an unnautical eye he appeared an almost helpless old man. His twisted bow-legs, set wide apart, gave him a peculiar lurching motion when he walked, and suggested the idea that he was continually trying to right himself into equilibrium upon the moving world beneath his feet.
A large, red-headed Irishman, with a freckled, hairless face, named O’Toole, was the first officer on board. It was his watch on deck, and he stood, quadrant in hand, calling off time sights to the skipper, who sat below checking up his reckoning.
Garnett sat on the main-hatch and smoked, waiting and resting, for he seldom turned in during his day watches below. A man sat in the maintop, and, as O’Toole took his last sight, hailed the deck.
“Land ho!” he bawled. “Little for’ard o’ the beam!” And he pointed to the ragged peaks of Staten Land showing dimly through the haze to the westward. It was very close reckoning after all, and O’Toole was well pleased as he bawled the news down the companion-way to the skipper. Then he turned to Garnett, who had come on the poop.
“’Tis a pity, Garnett, yer eddication was so misplaced ye don’t know a hog-yoke from a dead-eye, fer ye miss all the cream av navigation.”
Garnett removed his cap and mopped the dent in the top of his bald cranium.
“You an’ your hog-yoke be hanged. If I used up as much canvas as you the company would be in debt to the sail-makers. I mayn’t be able to take sights like you, but blast me if I would lift a face like yourn to heaven. No, stave me if I wouldn’t be afraid of giving offence. I mayn’t have much of a show hereafter, but I wouldn’t like to lose the little I have.”
“Git out, ye owld pirit! And say, Garnett, ye know this is the first land sighted, so ye better get your man ready to go ashore. The owld man swore he’d put him ashore on the first rock sighted, for sez he, ‘I don’t want no more cutting fracases aboard this ship.’”
The man referred to was a tall, dark-haired Spaniard, who had already indulged in four fights on board in which his sheath-knife had played a prominent part. Having been put in double irons he had worked himself loose, so the captain, not wishing to be short-handed with wounded men off the Cape, had decided to hold court in the after cabin before marooning the man, as he had sworn to do when the ruffian had broken loose and again attacked a former opponent. The news of sighting the land brought him on deck while the mates were talking, and he made known his course in