Morley Roberts

“ His heart was bitter, but the thought that Her Majesty's cruiser Amphion had discredited the Simoom vigia was balm to his inmost soul, as he turned to go below.
"Keep a bright look-out," he growled, and he left Green to consider the matter of vigias in general, and the Simoom vigia in particular.
For these vigias, the terror of seamen, are like malicious spirits. Some man has seen them, or has imagined them, and for ever after they bear sway in the minds of those who sail upon the great deep. ”

“ You're hogs, and I'm your driver. I'm boss, and captain, and governor, and congress, and the senate, and the president, and don't any of you forget it! If I hadn't been brought up religious I'd go a step farther still. Let me hear a growl out of you, and I'll make you wish you were in hell. Do your duty, and I'll make this ship paradise. It shall be as sweet to you as a full roost of chickens to a buck nigger on a dark night. I'm a good man, I am, and I know it. You'll know it, too. I'll see to that. Now then, Mr. Bragg, start them to. D'ye see that damned Dutchman? ”

“ The Governor of the State, though an angel to one side and a devil to the other, had been "let up on" at last, and the reporters for the daily papers had to invent "stories" to keep themselves going. That only kept their hand in. It was a blessing to them without any disguise when the rivalry between young Jack Hunt and Sibley Gawthrop for the hand and the money and the affections of Edith Atherton became public property. It was most of all a blessing to Gardiner, the smartest new man on the San Francisco Chronicle, who knew both of the boys well. ”

“ Gamgee practically slept on deck in snatches till he slept almost as he stood under the weather-cloth in the mizzen rigging. He prayed for moderate weather, for a sight of the sun. But though the gale was less, it still blew hard, and the sky was black and the racing scud low, and the sun was not seen by day or a star by night. On the third day Gamgee staggered as he walked.
"If the old man can't come on deck soon I'll have to cave in," he thought. He shook his fist at the ship. "I wish I'd never seen her. She's a man-killer." ”

“ But every now and again in this dim world the men of science were alarmed and entertained by sudden battles in blasphemy between Captain Prowse, or the well-informed Mr. Watts, and the crew of a Bank fisherman. For fog blankets sound in the oddest, most erratic way, and the throb of a screw cannot always be heard even in the calmest foggy weather. Such swearing matches between the Nemagosenda and a smack were, when apparently good for three minutes or so, sometimes sliced right in two by the sudden dropping down of what the meteorologist called an "anacoustic" wall of fog. ”

“ Jones, Mr. Ladd, you hear that I hope they won't be able to say as much for themselves this day three months."
And the crew laughed, as in duty bound. But Hunt and Gawthrop did not laugh.
"D'ye think there's any truth in what those two men said?" asked Captain Singleton of his mate.
"Likely enough, sir," replied Ladd. "Aren't we out of San Francisco?"
"I certainly don't seem to remember their faces," said the skipper, "but they'll have to do. Make what you can of them. If it's any ways true, it's no good telling them we think so." ”

“ And Sir Richard Dunn laughed. As he began to feel his feet, and find that he was as good a man in new surroundings as in the old ones, he recovered his courage and his command of himself.
"After all, this will be the deuce of a joke when it's over," he thought, "and I don't see why I shouldn't get a discharge out of her as mate. Talk about advertisement!"
He knew how much it meant.
"Look here, Knight," he said aloud, "I am an admiral. I can't prove it, but my ship was the Triumphant. I don't want to force it down your throat, but if you'd say you believe it, I should be obliged to you." ”

“ And Simcox went below.
"To be a sailor is to be a natural born fool," said Lampert, addressing the bitter and unkindly elements at large, "and to be on board a ship with such a windy gassing crowd, from the old man down to the cook, is very trying. It's very trying."
The wind took off a little later, but the weather was still thickish.
"It's like lookin' through a haystack," grunted Lampert, "but there, bar an island or so there's nothing to speak of in our way. And if the skipper will crack on, and it a week since we saw the sun, it's the owners' look out, not mine." ”

“ Any accident of imagination may create them; alcohol bears them on its tide: they are the rats and ghosts and terrible creeping things of the delirium of the sea that is born of rum. A heavy heeled spar as it floats becomes a pinnacle of rock; the boat that bears dead men in it is for ever after to be avoided. ”

“ Civility at midnight is often too dear to be bought from any one but an inferior; and Wilson and Green knew each other very well.
The Palembang was running with the wind on the port quarter, and for a quiet life the old lady was under shortened canvas. She went at it like an old dame in wind and snow; a reefed foresail represented picked-up petticoats; the stowed royals and topgallant-sails suggested that a hat with feathers had been replaced by a handkerchief. For the monsoon was blowing stiff that July night seven degrees to the north of the Line, and threatened to blow stiffer yet. ”

“ On the passage out to the Cape they saw nothing of the Palembang. But there she was heard of as having being seen somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Agulhas Bank, having a real good time in that native home of the god of the winds, where fifty per cent. of all the breezes that do blow are gales that dance in and out and about like a cooper round a cask.
But the Simoom had luck, and slipped through as if Æolus never spotted her. And old Banks chortled happily, and sang an extra hymn on Sunday, compensating the men (otherwise disposed to growl at the innovation) with an extra lot of grog. ”

“ The day passed without any incident of vital importance. It is true they sighted the smoke of a steamer hull down on the southern horizon, but they saw nothing else across the waste of heaving water. Every now and again the captain woke up and made a few remarks on the nature of authority, and what he proposed doing to those who did not "knuckle under." But the night fell without any signs of mutiny on the part of the scientific crew.
In the very early dawn the astronomer, who had slept in uneasy snatches, woke up for the tenth time and changed his position. ”

“ They break the heart of all who have to do with them: in them blood is suddenly spilt: in them strong men waste and die.
Such a ship was the Pandora, and, as she lay off Sandridge, at anchor in Hobson's Bay, there was not a sailorman in Australia who would have shipped in her from choice.
"I've heerd the skipper of one ship I was in talk about the nature of vessels," said Jack Marchmont, as he sat with his mate on the end of the pier, "and he allowed that ships was like men, launched with nat'ral dispositions. ”

“ The skipper walked aft on the slippery deck, and climbed upon the poop by way of the rail, for some of the loose lumber had dislodged and smashed the poop ladder. When he found his foot upon his native heath, he was once more Captain Joseph Prowse in all his glory; and turning about, he addressed his crew.
"Simpkins," he said, "you are chief officer, second officer and bo'son, and don't you forget it. As for you others, I'll have you know that you're the crew. Just drop any kind of heightened notion that you are passengers, and we'll get along easy; but if you don't, look out for squalls. ”

“ And this is where the man from Abo came home, as one may say.
Mr. Johnson, then British Consul at Bordeaux, was a fine man with a clear skin, a merry eye, a knowledge of the world, and a hard fist. As a young man he had been amateur champion of the middle-weights in England, and though he was now a heavy-weight, he was almost as quick as he had been at twenty-two. He had a sense of fair play which was almost disgusting to masters of merchantmen, and a sense of humour which sometimes got him into trouble with the Foreign Office. ”

“ For how could any "story" fail to pay dividends when two of the swagger "Anglo-Franco-Californians," the most beautiful girl on the coast, and Shanghai Smith, the most scoundrelly boarding-house keeper on the Pacific, played leading parts in the drama? And when one reflects that San Francisco, the Pacific itself and the Atlantic, and the Sailors' Home in Well Street, London, came into the newspaper play quite naturally, it seems obvious there was meat for any reporter's teeth. ”

“ Gardiner, who was doing the dramatic criticism for the Chronicle that night, saw Gawthrop and Hunt in Miss Atherton's box at the Opera House. They appeared to be on very good terms, and were both in an excellent humour. For all that he had planned, George Gardiner was in no great good temper when he imagined that Edith showed more favour to Sibley than to his rival.
"He's not a bad sort, but he's not the sort to marry a girl like that," said Gardiner; "if she only knew the life he has led, she'd give him the mitten right off. ”

“ And still Blaker bellowed scripture down the wind. He was still bellowing, though what he bellowed wasn't scripture, when Simpson and Wiggins took him down below after five minutes of a row in which the deposed captain showed something of his ancient form as the terror of the Western Ocean. As they went, the admiral, now promoted to being captain of a Cape Horner, picked up the battered speaking trumpet and wiped some blood from his face, which had been in collision.
"Up aloft with you and make those topsails fast," he roared. "Look alive, men, look alive!" ”

“ They called him 'Jonah.'
"It's a black look out with such a skipper," said some, and though the evil history of the Pandora ran far back beyond Rayner's time, they attributed her present ill-luck to him.
The mind of the seaman is a limited mind. He is a child, a creature of arrested development. The infinite sameness of the sea, its dull and at times appalling lack of interest, do not move him to growth. The romance of it is for those who know it not, or for those who pass beyond the borders of its great roads of travel. For the merchant seaman the ocean is a method of toil ”

“ Those who follow the sea have a great respect for knowledge, but they despise men in soft hats and spectacles. And it cannot be denied that scientific men are as a rule too simple and gentle to look as if they could take care of themselves. According to Jack, that is the first duty of man, though he premises naturally that even the toughest courage and the greatest skill may come to grief about women.
"A thunderin' measly lot," said Simpkins A.B. to his particular mate, when the scientific passengers came on board; "why, they've all soft 'ats but one! ”

“ But all the same, they loved him dearly, and when he came alongside five days later, not all their sense of discipline prevented their breaking into a storm of cheers that rang out across the bay and was almost heard at Oakland. Hard as Dicky Dunn was, he went to his cabin rather in a hurry. For once in his life he could hardly trust himself to speak. But he received the congratulations of the captain and officers, including young Selwyn, who had been with him when he had been kidnapped, with the greatest calm. ”

“ Simpkins, who now looked on the geologist as captain of the mutineers, touched his hat to him, and begged leave to speak.
"Well," said the geologist, "what is it?"
"Ain't some of you gents good at instruments?" asked Simpkins. "For if you are, and if you could get hold of a sextant, it would be doin' things regular if you was to take a sight of the sun."
The ethnologist turned to the astronomer.
"How humanity yearns for a certain regularity!" he said; "it would really comfort Simpkins if you would squint at the sun through a gaspipe." ”

“ In the United States there is very little respect for a man who can't take care of himself, but some Europeans have silly notions. It's not uncommon even to find a consul who doesn't understand that sailors are no good unless they are in a state of mutiny or near it. There is no end to the foolishness of some consuls, as Captain Noyes often complained with natural bitterness. So when, after he had cursed Hans twice for his steering, he jammed the brass end of his telescope right between the man's eyes and cut him badly, he was quite sorry for it. ”

“ But though he was careful, he went cheerfully, and could not help laughing.
"Great Scott, to think of Sibley Gawthrop as an able seaman on board the Harvester or the Wanderer! But won't it do him good? These young Californians are a rotten crowd."
He came at last to Smith's house, and stepped upon the verandah floor boldly.
"Why, it's Mr. Gardiner of the Chronicle, so it is," said Billy, who was Smith's runner, and, next to his boss and a few politicians, the hardest case in California. "Is it Mr. Smith you want to see, sir?" ”

“ Derelicts lie in wait for them: they are chased through every sea by cyclones and tornadoes. In them the luck of lucky men is finally of no avail: seamen fall from aloft in calms; the gear gives without notice; stores rot in spite of care. ”

“ She shipped seas over both rails; the racing waves astern came and slapped their crests at the man at the wheel; she scooped up the sea forward every stagger she made. She had been running under the reefed foresail and the fore and main topsails close reefed. Now they shook the reefs out. Gamgee was alert and alive, but his nerves half-betrayed him. He jumped from the poop to the main-deck, and back again. He wanted to be mate and second mate and skipper too. ”

“ As the runner had been up most of the night before enticing sailormen off a Liverpool ship just to keep his hand in, he was as fast asleep as a bear on Christmas Day, and he was mighty sulky when Smith shook him out of sleep by the simple process of yanking his pillow from under his head.
"Ain't a man to get no sleep that works for you?" he demanded. "What's up now?"
"Hell is up, and fizzling," replied Smith. "I've had word from Peter Cartwright that you'll be arrested in the mornin' if you don't skin out. It's the admiral. ”

“ But Smith was only trying to keep up his own courage. Not once, but many times since he had got even with the man who had given him a thrashing, he had regretted his method of revenge.
"I'd best have bashed him and left him laying on the Front," said Smith, "and here's Tom and Bill know the whole racket. I've half a mind to have them put out of the way. In such a place as this, who can a man trust? Bah, it sickens me, it does. It fair sickens me." ”