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THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SEA PEOPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 J. D. JERROLD KELLEY 
 
 LIEUT. -COMMANDER U.S.N. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "OUR NAVY" "A DESPERATE CHANCE* 
 "THE QUESTION OF SHIPS" ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1897 
 
Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
TO 
 
 MY LITTLE DAUGHTERS 
 JACQUELYN, MURIEL 
 
 AND 
 
 NATHALIE 
 
 334246 
 
NOTE 
 
 THE " Superstitions of the Sailor " first appeared in the Cen- 
 tury, the " Ship's Company " in Scribner's Magazine. Through 
 the courtesy of their publishers I am enabled to reprint here 
 the text of those sketches. A few details given in " The Spirit 
 of Libogen" were taken from a pamphlet wherein the wreck 
 
 of the Rainier was described. 
 
 J. D. J. K. 
 
 U. S. Battleship Texas, 
 
 North Atlantic Squadron, 
 October, 1896. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 3 
 
 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 35 
 
 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 59 
 
 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 101 
 
 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 119 
 
 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 149 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 187 
 
 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 207 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SUNDAY-MORNING MUSTER Frontispiece 
 
 COALING A STEAMER Facing p. 4 
 
 AN OCEAN RACER OFF FOR EUROPE " 6 
 
 THE BELATED PASSENGER " 8 
 
 THE FIRST BREAKFAST AT SEA " IO 
 
 LOOKOUT IN THE FORETOP " 12 
 
 PROMENADE DECK " 14 
 
 STEERAGE BUNKS " l6 
 
 THE GRAND SALOON " l8 
 
 STOKE-HOLE " 2O 
 
 IN A FOG AND CLOSE ABOARD " 22 
 
 TAKING AN OBSERVATION " 24 
 
 DINNER " 26 
 
 ROUGH WEATHER " 28 
 
 PILOT BOARDING A STEAMER " 30 
 
 THE OWNER AND HIS FRIEND " 36 
 
 CORINTHIAN CREW HAULING AFT THE MAIN SHEET . " 38 
 
 RECEPTION ON THE FLAG-SHIP " 40 
 
 A LITTLE FISHING " 42 
 
 SEVEN BELLS COCKTAILS " 44 
 
 NAIADS " 46 
 
 VISITING " 48 
 
 INTERVIEWING THE COOK " 50 
 
 DINNER IN THE CABIN " $2 
 
 SEEING THE RACE " 54 
 
 THE NIGHT-CAP " 56 
 
 SANDY HOOK LIGHT-SHIP " 60 
 
 SANDY HOOK LIGHT-SHIP BY NIGHT. ...... " 62 
 
 CLEANING BRASSES " 64 
 
 EIGHT BELLS COLORS . " 68 
 
X ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE LIFE-BOAT DRILL Facing p. 70 
 
 ARTILLERY BATTALION " 74 
 
 MAN OVERBOARD " 80 
 
 GOING ALOFT " 84 
 
 FURLING THE TOP-SAIL " 90 
 
 AN EARLY BATH " 94 
 
 BOAT DRILL " 96 
 
 WATER-LOGGED " 106 
 
 CROSSING THE LINE INITIATING A DEEP-WATER 
 
 SAILOR " 112 
 
 FLOGGING JUDAS " 114 
 
 LIFE ON A LINER CRICKET " I2O 
 
 LIFE ON A LINER GAME OF BULL " 134 
 
 BREAKING A RECORD " 154 
 
 AN OCEAN STEAMER'S GREAT WAVE 168 
 
 THROWING LETTERS TO THE PILOT " 178 
 
 "'i CAN'T BEAR TO LEAVE NANNY BEHIND'" ... " 212 
 
 '"I'D AS SOON EAT MY BROTHER'" " 2l8 
 
 DENNIS O' KERRY " 22O 
 
 TAILPIECE Page 222 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 WHEN the breeze is piping free and the tide is running 
 strong none but a master-seaman may be trusted to haul 
 out of the Liverpool Docks a great Atlantic liner. Should 
 it be a leeward ebb, with the Mersey spinning under a 
 flurry of squalls and snarling in angry eddies, a quick eye 
 must mate a clear wit to make the trick a deft one. The 
 manoeuvre is always a delight to the mariner, let bo's'ns, 
 hopelessly spliced to such traditions as topsails reefed in 
 stays, bawl what they may about the dead days of seaman- 
 ship. For here are unfolded the mysteries of the art, and 
 here are exercised all the higher qualities of the sailor, and 
 just as much, believe me, as in the old times when the gray 
 piers and oozy quays were crowded to cheer our famous 
 clippers warping in and out to the music of barbaric 
 " chanties." 
 
 Beach-combers, shore-huggers mere Abraham's men 
 will tell you the poetry is gone out of it all, and will, with 
 much damning of their eyes, and shifting of their quids, 
 and hitching of their tarry trousers, try to persuade you 
 that steam has ruined the genuine sailors of story and of 
 song. But this is mere transpontine nonsense, for above 
 and beyond everything he who commands a ship, smoker 
 
4 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 or sailer, as it may chance, must first of all be a seaman. 
 The demands of modern sea life have increased the re- 
 sponsibilities of the mariner, and in like measure the pro- 
 fessional attainments required are deeper, broader, and 
 higher than ever before. 
 
 What the task of hauling out is you may best judge 
 by noting the bulk to be moved, for you can never measure 
 properly the enormous dimensions of these great steamers 
 until you see them looming in their true proportions above 
 the walls, and undwarfed, as they are in the open, by the 
 frame of sea and sky. The bulwarks tower like the walls 
 of a fortress; the enormous decks sweep with a sheer 
 knowing no broken curve ; the wheel-house lifts its win- 
 dows above the life-boats, swarming sternward like a school 
 of pilot-fish ; still higher the bridges, often double-tiered, 
 span and grip the sturdy stanchions ; and dominating all, 
 the elliptical funnels rake jauntily, and the yardless spars 
 taper till they fine away at their shining trucks into grace- 
 ful coach-whips. 
 
 Shipshape and Bristol fashion, point -device in paint 
 and polish, the massive hull glides over the quiet waters 
 of the basin ; you catch the sheen of gleaming brasses, 
 of glistening air -ports, of glazed white, and lacquered 
 black. Obedient as a broken colt to the touch of the 
 helm, quick in response as a high-bred dog in a leash to 
 the guiding hawsers, she moves calmly fit exemplar of 
 strength rightly tempered by even will towards the sharp 
 turn where the gateway opens to the river. Winches 
 chatter noisily ; windlasses clink, clink musically ; cap- 
 stans rattle with slacking cables ; jets of steam dart vicious- 
 ly ; ripples stream sternward to the bubbles of the foamless 
 wake ; the tremulous minor, more a wail than a song, of the 
 docking gangs working the warps, answer the cheery " Yo 
 heave-ohs " of the people on shipboard ; and the quick, 
 
COALING A STEAM KK 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 5 
 
 sharp orders from the bridge are echoed by high-pitched 
 answers from the mates, watching with wary eyes every- 
 where. One screw turns clumsily ahead, the other circles 
 astern, and then the ship swings easily, rounding the jagged 
 corner in the hedge of stone with a gentleness leaving feet 
 to spare. The bow and stern enter fairly, straight as a 
 mason's level, the open gateway ; a strain is taken on the 
 line leading from the quarter to the pier end ; a moment 
 of rest, of expectation, succeeded by one of doubt, fol- 
 lows, and then the hail rings out blithely from the after- 
 whaleback, "All clear, sir!" 
 
 The handle of the annunciator connected with the 
 engine-room is jammed to "hard astern;" "ding! ding!" 
 rings the signal from below ; the water gushes in a tur- 
 bulent torrent from the outboard deliveries, the engines 
 throb fiercely, backing with all their strength, and as the 
 lines are rendered, slacked, eased, let go, the steamer clears 
 the pier end with a rush, shoots far into midstream, and 
 thus begins, wrong end foremost, her voyage westward. In 
 the optimism of the moment the chief officer and the 
 bo's'n grow garrulous upon the recondite subject of anchor 
 gear ; the junior officers feel they quite deserve the good 
 luck which makes them the hustling, bustling mates of a 
 crack racer; and maritime Jack, still a little groggy and 
 very much unwashed, blesses the stars that have let begin 
 another " v'yage with an 'arf crown left of his hadvance," 
 and the prospects of " some bloomin' American tobaccy " 
 as soon as he is clear of the tideway. 
 
 " Not a bad job, sir," said the pilot, as the anchor takes 
 the bottom and the ship straightens astern from her cable ; 
 " seemed ticklish a bit for a minute when they 'eld onto 
 the spring so long, sir ; but 'ere we are, bung up and bilge 
 free, and with the looks of a good run, barrin' the fog 
 per'aps, for the morrer." 
 
6 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 The captain answers smilingly, for these two are old 
 friends, and, what is more, the hauling out has been a joint 
 enterprise, though the senior gets the credit, as he should. 
 After a careful survey of the anchorage and a word with 
 the chief officer, the captain enters his cabin and buckles 
 down to the routine work, and there is always plenty of 
 that awaiting him. He glows pleasurably over the handy, 
 seamenlike-way they have left the dock, for nautical critics 
 are plenty and keen, and if he had not taken up his berth 
 in the river so cleverly, the ill news would have grown 
 apace, till, with unfair variations, it reached the ears of their 
 high nobilities the directors. 
 
 Clear-headed, brainy, driving men are these master- 
 mariners, and bearing patiently a responsibility that needs 
 an iron will and a courage faltering at nothing. There is 
 no royal road to their station, nor can willing hands make 
 them what they must be. They cannot crawl through 
 cabin windows, nor, for that matter, come flying in a pier- 
 head jump through the gangway with one leg forward and 
 the other aft. They have to fight their way over the bows, 
 and struggle out of the ruck and smother in the fo'c's'le, 
 by sturdy buffeting and hard knocks, by the persistent 
 edging of stout shoulders backed by strong hearts and 
 steady brains. If it is in them they will make their way 
 in the end surely, and may set the course and stump to 
 windward as they please, while others haul the weather- 
 ear-rings and drink their grog protestingly. No ; master- 
 mariners are made, not born, and, unlike many of their 
 brothers in the government service, have to rise by energy, 
 pluck, merit why enumerate them ? by a hundred qual- 
 ities the world is better for owning. 
 
 Old Pepys knew how this sea-kissing goes, and tells us 
 of his favors in this wise : " That," he writes, " which puts 
 me in a good humor both at noon and night, is the fan^y 
 

THE SHIP'S COMPANY 7 
 
 that I am this day (March 13, 1669) made a captain of one 
 of the King's ships, Mr. Wren having sent me the Duke of 
 York's commission to be captain of the Jerzy, . . . which 
 doth give me the occasion of much mirth and may be of 
 some use to me." Think of that, you venturesome die- 
 hards, who linger all your lives at the lower sheerpole, a 
 post-captain by the scratch of a pen, and, above all men, 
 given to a lubberly scrivener and an Admiralty clerk at 
 that! 
 
 All these elder merchant-masters are sailor-men, some so 
 deep and dyed in it that if you scratch them they ooze tar, 
 and this briny saturation has been invariably acquired 
 under sail. After they have had their ships and made 
 many a voyage, deep-water and home, round both Capes, 
 east and west, wherever winds may blow and freight, the 
 mother of wages, may linger, they shift into steam, but al- 
 ways in a subordinate place. Should they stick by one 
 employ they are sent from ship to ship, working their way 
 upward until they become chief officers of the choicest 
 vessels in the line. Here they must wait for dead men's 
 shoes, or resignation, or forced retirement ; but when the 
 chance comes they are given the command of the smaller 
 and less important steamers upon some subsidiary route. 
 Then they enter a new line of promotion, and weary are the 
 years of waiting, and bitter sometimes the disappointment, 
 before they reach the high -water mark of their service. 
 And with this hardly earned promotion do not come, as 
 in other professions, ease, comfort, and proper recompense 
 for duty well done, but heavier responsibilities, harder 
 work, and greater self-sacrifice ; what is worse, and this to 
 the shame of the great steamship corporations, these gal- 
 lant men, even at their prime, receive the most inadequate 
 pecuniary recognition for the burden imposed, for the men- 
 tal and physical qualities exercised, for the experience 
 
8 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 brought to bear; indeed, in no other trade or profession 
 is equal ability so badly paid. 
 
 The junior officers belong to all sorts and conditions of 
 men. Most of them have had to fight their way, though 
 some have parents who could well afford to pay a hand- 
 some premium for their sea education in the training-ships 
 stationed off the principal ports. Here they are given a 
 strict man-of-war tuition, though the routine of studies 
 and drills is, of course, modified to suit the results ex- 
 pected. After their apprenticeship is served they go to 
 sea, usually in sailing ships ; and when later they choose 
 steam, they join as fourth or fifth officers, and enter upon 
 a career where their future is a hard but an assured one. 
 In the large employs they are encouraged to enter the 
 Naval Reserve, and are given time for their drills and 
 opportunities to qualify for the higher certificates of the 
 merchant service ; and so much are these privileges es- 
 teemed that you often find on the best steamers of the 
 transatlantic liners one- half of the officers holding mas- 
 ters' certificates and junior commissions in the auxiliary 
 government service. Under the new regulations some of 
 these officers have, beside the guard-ship drill, taken a 
 regular tour of duty as lieutenants and sub-lieutenants on 
 board sea-going men-of-war, and so far this has proved a 
 capital plan for both services. The nationality of the 
 officers is British, naturally, though English and Irish pre- 
 dominate, the Scotch, somehow, taking more kindly to 
 the engineering part of the business, and the Welshmen 
 staying at home. 
 
 There is a well-founded belief that the deck people are 
 not sailormen ; nor, indeed, are they in the majority of 
 ships that is, not sailors in the true meaning of the word ; 
 but, on the other hand, neither are they the mere swabbers 
 of decks, scrubbers of paint-work, handlers of the forward 
 
THE BELATED PASSENGER 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 9 
 
 and after ends of trunks, or reefers of hat-boxes and travel- 
 ling-rugs their critics would have us believe. They belong 
 to a special class, not a very high one from the maritime 
 point of view, and are reasonably well fitted for the work 
 expected. This you may see at fire quarters, for example, 
 a drill which, in these times, is always held before the pas- 
 sengers come on board. As the alarm is sounded by the 
 rapid ringing of the ship's bell, and the commands are 
 hoarsely shouted along the decks, you may notice, as the 
 men rush to their stations, the absence of the alertness, 
 neatness, forehandedness which characterize the man-of- 
 war's men ; but they are sturdy and strong and willing, 
 and the echoes of the orders, " Fire forward ! Main deck. 
 Quick's your play," have scarcely ceased before 'a dozen 
 hose are coupled and run out, bucket and fire-extinguisher 
 lines are formed, axemen and smotherers are gathered, and 
 hand and steam pumps started with an energy promising 
 a world of water. Grimy greasers and stokers rush from 
 below; stewards hop about as none but a steward can ; and 
 butchers, bakers, and electric -light -makers rally in their 
 appointed places, eager for work, but in the motley of Fal- 
 staff's draft. The captain, watch in hand, receives the re- 
 ports that all the departments have assembled, and that 
 abundant streams have been in operation (overboard, of 
 course, but in the neighborhood of the fire) in blank min- 
 utes let us say three, as a fair average from the time the 
 alarm was first given. Do you wonder if he smiles and 
 says to his chief officer, "Very creditable, sir; very well 
 done. You may secure, sir"? Very well done it is, and 
 when you remember this is the first drill and many of the 
 hands are new, you may feel reasonably assured, should 
 any ordinary fire break out, that it is all Lombard Street 
 to a Tahiti orange it will be subdued most promptly. 
 The pumps stop, the hose are uncoupled, under-run, and 
 
io THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 reeled, and, everything being secured, the ship returns to 
 its normal condition. But not to rest, for there is no rest 
 fore and aft when a voyage is begun. Cargo and stores 
 have to be hoisted out of the lighters, holds have to be 
 stowed, gear secured. All day long the cargo winches 
 rattle, and the tackles rise and fall complainingly. Along- 
 side a double bank of lighters cling, and through cargo- 
 ports and over the rails the freight pours ceaselessly. The 
 twilight deepens with stars ; ashore the roar and traffic of 
 the busy town are hushed ; the river-banks are deserted. 
 But under the dazzling arc -lights on shipboard, and far 
 into the night, toiling men and swaying bales and boxes 
 cast fantastic shadows on the breezy water and about the 
 decks and in the cavernous holds gaping unsatisfied for 
 the fruits of trade and barter. 
 
THE FIRST BREAKFAST AT SEA 
 
II 
 
 THE next day the passengers come on board, and the 
 company's servants in the tenders and lighters gleefully 
 escape, after banging about and muddling the baggage so 
 mercilessly that state-room trunks yawn bruisedly in the 
 holds, and huge chests, bursting with useless trophies of 
 travel, lumber up your narrow quarters below this, to the 
 despair and tears of forlorn women who pursue the hapless 
 purser with unrelenting fury when they learn that nothing 
 can be unearthed until after the ship has left Queenstown, 
 and that until then they must hopelessly shift for them- 
 selves. Steam is spluttering and flickering in little curls 
 at the escape-pipes, the officers every button of their best 
 coats on duty are at their stations, the pilot is looking 
 wiser than ever pilot could be, and on the bridge with the 
 impatient captain lingers a representative of the company. 
 By-and-by, after the final instructions are given, this per- 
 sonage departs, and as he goes over the side the captain 
 waves his hand in salute and gives a quiet order to the 
 chief officer. 
 
 The wheel is shifted, the capstan reels noisily, and link 
 by link the chain comes home. At last, after a vicious 
 tug or two on the cable, the ground is broken, and, 
 smothered and sputtering with cleansing water from the 
 hose, the anchor, ring and stock, appears above the foam- 
 streams rippling at the bow. When the catfall is hooked 
 the ship's head swings around with graceful sheer, the 
 engines slightly increase their speed, the wake straightens 
 
12 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 its curves, the ensign dips in answer to salutes, and a long 
 blast from the whistle sonorously claims the right of chan- 
 nel. Slowly, carefully, the gallant ship threads her way 
 among the fleet of inward and outward bound shipping; 
 the shores darken with moist shadows and gleam in broad 
 bands of fading sundrift ; the lights of Birkenhead and 
 Liverpool glisten, blaze, twinkle, fade ; the breeze blows 
 with spice of salt and briny coolness ; the stars blink from 
 silvery steel into points of golden fire ; and in the west, 
 where the splendor and warmth deepen seaward, the roll- 
 ing mists, as yet resplendent in borrowed radiance, close, 
 broodingly, as a pall. Sails burn in the heart of the sunset, 
 and long trails of smoke show where other ships have 
 sunk below the verge. Finally the bar is crossed, the 
 lanterns on board the Northwest Light-ship flame in the 
 star-gemmed dusk, and with a swinging grip of the wheel 
 the ship is headed, at half-speed, just as night is falling, 
 to clear the lights of Holyhead. 
 
 Upon the bridge the pilot and the officer of the watch 
 peer " ahead and astern, look to windward and to lee ;" 
 the ship slips and slides, now to port and now to starboard, 
 dodging the fleet intershooting this marvellous waterway 
 with a wealth of craft no other waters know ; and the look- 
 outs glue their eyes to their quadrants of observation, re- 
 porting lights and sails till the confusion would be in- 
 extricable, save to these steady nerves finding the path- 
 way safely. Down the coast the vessel runs in the 
 darkness, fearing naught while the stars shine and the 
 horizon circles clean cut above the foam-capped waters. 
 But as the night grows the air loses its briskness, a 
 light haze shrouds the sea, and the Channel fog rolls, 
 ghost -like, landward. Soon only the upper stars glim- 
 mer, the moisture drips from the rigging, the iron rails 
 and deck-houses are damp and clammy, and the lights 
 
LOOKOUT IN THE FORETOP 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 13 
 
 are aureoled with a dull cloud of gray and yellowish 
 mist. 
 
 The captain takes his place upon the bridge, the en- 
 gines are eased until, to the worried landsman's ears, their 
 labored throbbing seems a devil's tattoo answering the 
 grumbling and rumbling of the fog - whistle. Below, 
 brawny, silent men stand at the levers, ready at an instant 
 to stop and back, or go ahead, just as the emergency may 
 direct. Outside the pilot-house the quartermaster strains 
 his ears and peers nervously into the gloom, yet alert to 
 pass any command given to the junior officer and to his 
 messmate at the wheel. Signals from fog-whistles drift 
 into them from other groping ships, and, at times, spectral 
 hulls and ghostly sails loom close aboard, creeping out of 
 the curtained night or slipping landward or seaward in 
 search of hidden port or roadway. At regular intervals 
 the lead is cast and the depth of water read from the scale 
 by the unhooded glare of a lantern, and on the chart 
 the positions given by the sounding are pricked, to guard 
 against the tricks of treacherous currents. 
 
 And so the cheerless night drifts sadly into a wan 
 morning, and the ship creeps warily down Channel, the 
 weary vigil taxing the brains and bodies of those who 
 must seek no rest because of the lives intrusted to their 
 care. 
 
Ill 
 
 AFTER the pilot has been discharged and the mails re- 
 ceived at Queenstown, and the ship has taken her de- 
 parture from the Roche Point Light-ship, everybody set- 
 tles into the routine of life at sea. From the beginning 
 watches have been kept rigorously, and the interior dis- 
 cipline and rules are so well-jointed that the ship seems to 
 run herself. You hear no jarring of the cogs, feel no 
 rough edges in the mosaic, though the government is, as 
 it must always be, the hand of steel in the glove of velvet. 
 The care of the ship is unremitting, even in details which 
 if set down here would seem trivial and finicky, and every 
 hour of the day has duties which are performed heartily 
 and thoroughly to the foot of the letter by the officers. 
 The number of these may vary on each line, even in 
 different ships of the same employ, but in the largest 
 steamers there are, besides the captain, three seniors and 
 two juniors. The three seniors keep the watches, and 
 each during his tour of duty has, as the captain's repre- 
 sentative, the direct charge of the ship. The two juniors 
 stand watch and watch that is, four hours on duty and 
 four hours off with a swing at the dog-watches, and carry 
 on, under the direction of the senior officers, the routine 
 of the ship. Normally the officer of the watch takes his 
 station on the forward bridge, and the junior officer sticks 
 by the wheel-house, where, after collecting the data, he 
 writes the log-slate hourly, and sees that the quarter- 
 master steers the given course to a nicety. The first night 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 15 
 
 at sea the starboard watch (the captain's in marine law) 
 has the eight hours out that is, from 8 P.M. to midnight 
 and from 4 to 8 A.M.; and on the home voyage the mate's 
 watch (the port) enjoys the same sweet privilege, thus 
 sanctifying the ancient saw, which insists, under penalties 
 dire, that the captain must take her out and the mate 
 must take her home again. 
 
 The officers vary in their methods of keeping watch, 
 new ships having new rules, as Simple Simon is supposed 
 to have said when he was hustled aft to stow the jib. 
 But to my mind, those favored in the larger steamers 
 of the White Star Company are the best. Here the chief 
 officer stands the watches from six to eight and from 
 twelve to two o'clock, night and day respectively ; the 
 second officer keeps the watches from eight to ten and 
 two to four o'clock ; and the third officer those from 
 ten to twelve and from four to six o'clock. This watch- 
 keeping seems easy enough, even interesting and exciting, 
 at least so I have heard not only from the casual gentle- 
 man who worries about critically in fine weather, but from 
 that uneasy minded shuttler who skips across the Western 
 Ocean half a dozen times a year for no reason any sane 
 man has yet discovered. But, dearly beloved idlers, do 
 not deceive yourselves, getting out of bed and walking on a 
 roof is anything but gay, even in fine weather. In stormy 
 seasons it is such wretched work that then be mine rather 
 to woo my bucolics, my farms and gardens, my forest 
 glades. 
 
 Leaving out of question the responsibility, try and 
 measure the physical misery when gales are howling, and 
 spray is flying, and icy seas are shooting over the weather 
 bulwarks, and the ship is slamming along, wallowing in 
 the hollows or wriggling on zenith-seeking billows. It 
 may be at night, when you cannot see a ship's -length 
 
16 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 ahead, and around you, threatening disaster and death, 
 are a dozen vessels ; it may be when the ice is moving and 
 the towering bergs lie in your pathway. Then those 
 dreadful middle watches, when, after a hard tour of duty, 
 you are roused out of a comfortable bed, and jumped, 
 half-awakened, into the chill and misery of the gale-blown 
 night with every nerve and muscle strained to the break- 
 ing-point. No, it is, believe me, the hardest kind of hard 
 work, and it so saps the body, and warps the temper, and 
 makes the best old before their day, that no self-respecting 
 mother will let her daughter marry a man who knows an 
 oar from a fence-rail, if he has learned their differences 
 watch-keeping. 
 
 The fourth and fifth officers being young and hardy, 
 and presumably with much to learn and suffer for suffer- 
 ing somehow is considered an essential in sea training 
 are not supposed to need adequate rest nor sleep, and if 
 that is not wearing on shipboard, go find me a ballad- 
 monger to weave a rhyme for their comfort. The crew 
 stand watch and watch ; but as they can always steal a 
 comforting nap, and have no responsibility, they know 
 little of the mental wear and tear. The bo's'n and his 
 mate look out for the pulling and hauling, and for the 
 dreary singing which the " chanty " man weds to them. 
 Their tempers are always on edge, and it is their part to 
 buffet and bluster. These are the gentlemen you usually 
 hear, in season and out, bellowing about decks a highly 
 garnished sea argot which no one attempts to translate or 
 deems of serious meaning. Occasionally, too, you may 
 detect them to leeward of the houses, skylarking 
 gloomily, in moments of forced gayety, with skulkers and 
 sea-lawyers, " fetching them," as they describe the pastime, 
 " a belt under the jaw," or airily promising to " knock " 
 their " blooming 'e'ds off." These, of course, are the 
 
STEERAGE BUNKS 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 17 
 
 vagaries of delegated authority, and should not lessen 
 your regard for them, as they are generally good sailor- 
 men after the heavy insular fashion. You must remember, 
 also, they enjoy a prescriptive privilege of being most noisy, 
 of wearing tremendous boots and very shabby clothes, 
 and of trilling, like sea-larks, upon little silvery whistles, 
 which are known indiscriminately as " pipes " or " calls." 
 
 In each watch there are three quartermasters, generally 
 fine specimens of the British tar, a joy to the eye and a 
 comfort to the soul, notably in bad weather, when they 
 cheer you with a smile that soothes as the words they 
 may not utter ; for by a maritime fiction they are always 
 supposed to be at the wheel, and you must not, under fear 
 of keel - hauling, talk to them. How patronizing and 
 sympathetic they look, what a lot they seem to know, what 
 beautiful guernseys they wear, and with what ease they 
 guide the mighty vessel. Before the introduction of steam 
 steering-gear two men were always required at the wheel, 
 and in bad weather there were four, and sometimes six, 
 with frequent reliefs ; and yet, with all this beef, many a 
 poor fellow has been maimed for life by being tossed over 
 the wheel-barrel or jammed by the spokes when the ship 
 swung off with sudden lurch or broached to before the 
 fury of the gale. To-day it requires hardly the strength 
 of a boy to " restrain the rudder's ardent thrill," even 
 in the heaviest blows, for the wheel in evidence is merely 
 the purchasing end of a mechanical system that opens 
 and shuts the valve governing the steam admitted to 
 the steering cylinders. But be it lever or not, the sailor 
 grasps it still with the old familiar pose, swaying it, " for 
 the good ship's woe and the good ship's weal," with 
 curved arm and gripping fingers as he pores over his 
 compass and keeps its lubber's point, in fair weather or in 
 foul, plumb on a course marked to a degree of the circle. 
 
i& THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 He stands a two-hours trick, and then changes places with 
 his relief, whose station has been outside the wheel-house 
 door. The third quartermaster keeps his watch under the 
 after-whaleback, ready to throw into action the hand 
 steering-wheel when the signal is given, and as this 
 happens seldom, his watch is apt to be a dreary one. The 
 pump-wells are sounded regularly by a carpenter, so that 
 possible leaks are sure of rapid detection ; and hourly 
 every light and every corner of the ship is inspected by 
 one of the two masters-at-arms, who constitute the police 
 force of the ship. They have under their special care the 
 steerages, and a part of their duty is as their phrase 
 goes " to chase " the steerage female passengers off the 
 upper deck at dusk, and to see that they remain in their 
 own apartment until sunrise. 
 
 First-class ships muster from twelve to fifteen men 
 in each watch, and all of these are shipped as seamen. Of 
 course the majority are such only in name, though there 
 is always a definite number of sailors among them. In- 
 deed, to fly the blue flag at least ten of the crew, in addi- 
 tion to the captain, must be enrolled in the Naval Reserve, 
 and to be an A B there one must hand, reef, and steer 
 deftly. These are the people who in port stand by the 
 ship that is, those who take, as required by law, their dis- 
 charges in Liverpool on the return voyage and continue 
 to work on board at fixed wages per day while the ship 
 refits and loads. All hands, from the skipper to the 
 scullion's mate, must ship at the beginning of each run 
 must "sign articles," as it is called, before a Board of 
 Trade shipping-master. As the law has always regarded 
 Jack as " particularly in need of its protection, because he 
 is particularly exposed to the wiles of sharpers," great 
 stress is laid in these articles upon his treatment, and 
 therefore they exhibit in detail the character of the voy- 
 
THE GRAND SALOON 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY ig 
 
 age, the wages, the quantity and quality of the food, and 
 a dozen other particulars which evidence the safeguards 
 thrown about these " wards of the Admiralty " by a quasi- 
 paternal government. Jack knows all this, and be sure he 
 stands up most boldly and assertively, at times with a 
 great deal of unnecessary swagger and bounce, for all the 
 articles "his articles" allow him. 
 
 The boatswain selects the ship's company, and the sea- 
 birds flutter on board usually a few hours before the vessel 
 hauls into the stream. They fly light, these Western 
 Ocean sailors, and their kits are such as beggars would 
 laugh at even in Ratcliffe Highway. Generally they are 
 in debt to the Sailors' Home they pay seventeen bob a 
 week for their grub and lodging and many of them just 
 touch their advance money, as a guarantee of receipt, and 
 then see most of it disappear, for goods fairly furnished, 
 into the superintendent's monk-bag. But they are phi- 
 losophers in their sad way, and are apt, if they find them- 
 selves safely on board with a couple of shillings in their 
 'baccy pouches, with a pan, an extra shirt, a pannikin, a 
 box of matches, and a bar of soap, to feel that the anchor 
 cannot be tripped too soon, as they are equipped for an 
 adventure anywhere, even to the " Hinjies, heast or west," 
 as their doleful ditty announces. 
 
 Under way or at anchor they do not have many idle 
 moments. In the middle watches the decks are scrubbed 
 with sand and brooms and brushes, for the old, heroic 
 days of holy-stones are over, and a hundred pounds of 
 effort are no longer expended for an ounce of result. It 
 might interest the passengers especially those who look 
 upon a sailor as so much unthinking brawn to hear the 
 archaic vocabulary and the emphatic dialects in which 
 many of them are sworn at by these same mariners. In- 
 deed, passengers are a careless, slovenly, and untidy lot, 
 
20 THE SHIP'S -COMPANY 
 
 and there is scarcely a sin in the maritime decalogue of 
 cleanliness they do not commit unthinkingly. The par- 
 ticularly offensive ones are soon singled out and labelled 
 with briny offensive names ; and though they know it not, 
 the forecastle is at times lurid with the blood-curdling 
 anathemas launched upon them. In the morning watch 
 the paint-work is scrubbed, and a deft cleaner is Jackie ; 
 and finally, when the weather permits, the brass-work 
 bane of every true sailor is polished till it blinks like the 
 rising sun in the tropics. This scrubbing and burnishing 
 and cleansing runs in appointed grooves through every de- 
 partment, and in no perfunctory way, for each day the 
 ship is inspected thoroughly, and upon the result depends 
 the reputation and the advancement of the subordinates. 
 
 Very formal indeed is the inspection, when, at eleven 
 o'clock in the forenoon, the captain, accompanied by the 
 doctor, begins his royal progress. At the borders of each 
 province he is received by its governor, who conducts him 
 through its highways and its by-ways, through its lanes 
 and shaded groves. The purser and the chief steward are 
 answerable for all concerning the passengers, and scrupu- 
 lous and minute is the examination given to the saloons, 
 store-rooms, pantries, kitchens, bakeries, closets, bath- 
 rooms, and to such cabins and state-rooms as may be 
 visited. Then follow the steerages and the " glory hole " 
 this last a den sacred to the discomfort of the peren- 
 nially nimble, of the tip-extracting, uncannily cheerful, 
 and sorely tried stewards. The chief officer is responsible 
 for the boatswain's locker, the forecastles, the upper 
 decks, the boats, the whalebacks in short, above and be- 
 low, wherever dirt might breed disease, no nook nor cor- 
 ner is omitted, not even that seething cauldron where the 
 lungs of the ship breathe steam and her ponderous muscles 
 drive the mighty screws. 
 
STOKE-HOLE 
 
IV 
 
 THE engine-rooms and stoke-holes of a great steamer 
 are forbidden ground, are lands taboo, save to those special- 
 ly asked to visit them. Here no interruptions may enter, 
 for speed is the price of ceaseless vigilance, and horse- 
 power spells fame and dividends. When you come to 
 measure the region fairly, it broadens into a wonder-land ; 
 it shapes itself into a twilight island of mysteries, into a 
 laboratory where grimy alchemists practise black magic 
 and white. At first all seems confusion, but when the 
 brain has co-ordinated certain factors, harmony is wooed 
 from discord and order emerges from chaos. It is in the 
 beginning all noise and tangled motion, and shining steel 
 and oily smells ; then succeeds a vague sense of bars 
 moving up and down, and down and up, with pitiless 
 regularity ; of jiggering levers, keeping time rhythmically 
 to any stray patter you may fit to their chanting ; and, at 
 last, the interdependence of rod grasping rod, of shooting 
 straight lines seizing curved arms, of links limping back- 
 ward and wriggling forward upon queer pivots, dawns 
 upon you, and in the end you marvel at the nicety with 
 which level, weight, and fulcrum work, opening and closing 
 hidden mechanisms, and functioning with an exactness 
 that dignifies the fraction of a second into an appreciable 
 quantity. Cranks whirl and whirl and whirl incessantly, 
 holding in moveless grip the long shafting turning the 
 churning screws ; pumps pulsate and throb with muffled 
 beat; gauge-arms vibrate jerkingly about narrow arcs, 
 
22 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 setting their standards of performance ; and everywhere, 
 if your ear be trained to this mechanical music, to this 
 symphony in steam and steel, you see the officers and 
 greasers conducting harmoniously the smoothly moving 
 parts, as soothed with oil and caressed with waste they 
 work without jar or friction, and despite the gales tossing 
 the ship like a jolly-boat on the angry ocean. It is a 
 magic domain, and one may well wonder at the genius 
 which, piling precedent upon precedent, chains these 
 forces and makes them labor, even on an unstable plat- 
 form, as their masters will. 
 
 In the stoke-hole, however, one leaves behind the formal 
 and mathematical, and sees the picturesque with all its 
 dirt unvarnished, with all its din and clangor unsubdued. 
 Under the splintering silver of the electric lamps cones of 
 light illuminate great spaces garishly and leave others in 
 unbroken masses of shadow. Through bulkhead doors 
 the red and gold of the furnaces checker the reeking floor, 
 and the tremulous roar of the caged fires dominates the 
 sibilant sputter of the steam. Figures nearly naked, 
 gritty and black with coal, and pasty with ashes, and 
 soaked with sweat, come and go in the blazing light and 
 in the half-gloom, and seem like nightmares from fantastic 
 tales of demonology. 
 
 When the furnace doors are opened, thirsty tongues of 
 fire gush out, blue spirals of gas spin and reel over the 
 bubbling mass of fuel, and great sheets of flame suck half- 
 burned carbon over the quivering fire wall into the flues. 
 With averted heads and smoking bodies the stokers shoot 
 their slice-bars through the melting hillocks, and twist and 
 turn them until they undulate like serpents. The iron 
 tools blister their hands, the roaring furnaces sear their 
 bodies ; their chests heave like those of spent swimmers, 
 their eyes tingle in parched sockets but work they must, 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 23 
 
 there is no escape, no holiday in this maddening limbo. 
 Steam must be kept up, or perhaps a cruel record must be 
 lowered. Facing the furnaces, the hollow upscooping of 
 the stoker's shovel echoes stridently on the iron floor, and 
 these speed-makers pile coal on coal until the fire fairly 
 riots, and, half-blinded, they stagger backward for a cooling 
 respite. But it is only a moment at the best, for their 
 taskmasters watch and drive them, and the tale of furnaces 
 must do its stint. The noise and uproar are deafening ; 
 coal - trimmers trundle their barrows unceasingly from 
 bunker to stoke-hole, or, if the ship's motion be too great 
 for the wheels, carry it in baskets, and during the four 
 long hours there is no rest for those who labor here. 
 
 In the largest ships the engineer force numbers one 
 hundred and seventy men, and in vessels with double 
 engines these are divided into two crews with a double 
 allowance of officers for duty. One engineer keeps a 
 watch in each fire-room, and two are stationed on each 
 engine - room platform. Watches depend upon the 
 weather, but, as a rule, the force, officers and men, serves 
 four out of every twelve hours. Should, however, the 
 weather be foggy or the navigation hazardous, the service 
 may be more onerous ; for then officers stand at the 
 throttles with peremptory orders to do no other work. In 
 relieving each other great care is taken ; those going on 
 the platforms feeling the warmth of the bearings, examin- 
 ing the condition of the pins and shafting, testing the 
 valves, locating the position of the throttles, counting the 
 revolutions, and by every technical trial satisfying them- 
 selves before assuming charge that all is right. In the 
 stoke-hole the same precautions are taken, the sufficiency 
 and saturation of the water, the temperature of the feed, 
 injection, and discharge, and the steam - pressure being 
 verified independently by both officers. 
 
24 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 The pay of the chief engineer is said to be about 
 per month, in addition to a commission upon the saving 
 1 nade in a fixed allowance of coal for a given horse-power 
 and an assumed speed. As some ships are economical, 
 this at times reaches a handsome bonus. And it is well 
 this pay should be large, for many of these officers have 
 given their best days to one employ and deserve much of 
 it in every way. It is said that some of the old chiefs are 
 the greatest travellers in the world, so far as miles covered 
 may count. Here, for example, is one who has made in one 
 line 132 round trips, or traversed 841,000 shore miles a 
 distance four times that between the earth and the moon ; 
 and still higher is the record of another, who completed 
 before his retirement 154 round trips, or made in distance 
 over one million of statute miles. 
 
 The messes of the crew are divided into three classes : 
 First, that of the seamen, quartermaster, carpenter, etc. ; 
 secondly, that of lamp-trimmers and servants and miscel- 
 laneous people ; and thirdly, that of the stokers, greasers, 
 and trimmers. The seamen sleep and mess in the fore- 
 castle, the stewards in the glory hole, and the engineer 
 force in the port forecastle, or, on board the new ships, in 
 an apartment just forward of the stoke-hole. In all these 
 quarters the mess-tables trice up to the under side of the 
 upper deck, and the bunks are two or three tiers deep. 
 As a rule, the men provide their own bedding and table- 
 gear, the company agreeing to give good food in plenty, 
 but nothing more. This seems shabby, even if in these 
 degenerate days we need not hope to find a ship's husband 
 like Sir Francis Drake, who not only " procured a complete 
 set of silver for the table, and furnished the cook-room 
 with many vessels of the same metal, but engaged several 
 musicians to accompany them." I am afraid the only 
 music you will hear in these dreary quarters is the shout 
 

 TAKING AN OBSERVATION 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 25 
 
 when the " snipes," as my lieges the stokers call the coal- 
 trimmers, rush in at eight in the evening with the high 
 feast known as the black pan. This olla podrida consists of 
 the remains of the saloon dinner, and is always saved for 
 the watch by the cooks and bakers in payment for the 
 coal hoisted for the kitchens and galleys. It is a grew- 
 some feast, as one may well imagine, but it is the supreme 
 luxury in the sea life of the stoker and his pals, and is 
 enjoyed point, blade, and hilt. 
 
 Thrown together as the people are for a run only, you 
 find little of the messmate kinship which is so strong in 
 longer voyages among seafaring men. Should any one of 
 them become unfit for work through sickness (and very ill 
 he must be when the doctor excuses him from duty), his 
 mates, the one he should have relieved and the other who 
 would have relieved him, each stand two hours of his 
 watch. But as the attendant abuse is great, and the 
 curses are loud and deep and bitterly personal, no one, 
 save a very hard case, will leave his work as long as he can 
 stand up to it. As for kindness and usefulness, or any 
 other saving grace, they are unknown ; are, in the grim 
 pessimism of this iron trade, never expected. It is a hard, 
 hard life, measured by decent standards, and, messieurs, 
 when you stray below, and, as tradition demands, they 
 "chalk you" ring you about with the mystic circle 
 which means drink -money be sure the ransom is not 
 niggard, be certain that with it you lend them from your 
 brighter world the sunshine of a cheery greeting, the tonic 
 of a friendly smile. 
 
 For, God help them ! they need it always. 
 
THE inspection is finished a little after seven bells, and 
 one by one the officers straggle on deck with their sex- 
 tants. Should it be a fine day, with moderate weather, 
 the noon observation for latitude is a simple one and is 
 always sought ; though, in the open, these people running 
 in regular lanes can place great dependence on their 
 engine revolutions, their well-tried compasses, and, if the 
 speed is not excessive, upon their taffrail logs. When the 
 sun crosses the meridian twelve o'clock is reported, and 
 " eight bells are made " by the captain, for no lesser 
 personage dare trifle with the astronomical proprieties 
 hedging about this occult ceremony. The ship's time, 
 however, remains unaltered, until the clocks are corrected 
 at midnight from calculations based upon the chronom- 
 eter ticking stolidly in the chart-room. In the sweep of 
 modern progress, the sacred rite of heaving the log is no 
 longer celebrated. The speed is now too great for that 
 rough-and-ready hit-or-miss at distance run ; and with 
 its disuse, worse luck, a fund of old-time pleasant raillery 
 has been eclipsed. " How fast are you going, my man ?" 
 was an invariable question of the inevitable, curious pas- 
 senger to the Jackie walking away with the dripping 
 log-line. " Fourteen and a Dutchman, sir," would be his 
 answer, or, if again pressed, " Thirteen and a marine," 
 he would reply gravely, to the joy of his grinning ship- 
 mates and to the mystification of the questioner. But 
 now no longer does the reel turn swift, no longer does the 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 2^ 
 
 sand run dry, no more the chip dances on the waves or 
 tugging line strain brawny muscles. To-day the speed is 
 read off from a little cylinder which twists its dials on the 
 weather rail. 
 
 The observations are worked out independently by the 
 chief and second officers, and the former submits his 
 results to the captain. Of course these calculations cannot 
 have the exactness of astronomical work ashore, and 
 luckily on the high sea this is not needed. On the 
 contrary, over-precision often multiplies the error, and it 
 is good navigation if you can say with assurance that the 
 ship is anywhere within an enclosing circle five miles in 
 diameter. Of course it is widely different when a vessel 
 is running in for the land or coasting, for then the 
 soundings, the cross -bearings of well-known marks, and 
 the contour lines enable the position to be marked with 
 very great accuracy. 
 
 The noon position of the ship is next to dinner the 
 great event of the day, and many are the pools and bets 
 made on the figures of the run ; not only as to the 
 distance, but as to the probable time of arrival. For if 
 the voyage be now half over, the novelty of sea life is at 
 low ebb, and the passengers, save a few irrepressible spir- 
 its, have lapsed into a gentle melancholy induced by the 
 monotony of water, water, water everywhere. They are 
 tired of the sea, of the ship, of the cooking, of each other, 
 in short, of everything, and are anxious only to arrive. 
 They have divided and subdivided, and differentiated 
 into cliques, and have nursed dislikes, usually founded 
 on feminine fancies, until these have become mortal an- 
 tipathies. In a perfunctory way they follow a routine 
 which finally drags a lengthening chain. They get up and 
 pitchfork on their clothes, and eat, lounge about, doze, 
 muffled to the eyes, in lashed steamer-chairs, read languid- 
 
28 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 ly, gossip gleefully, and eat, and eat, and eat, and then, 
 wearied to bitter boredom, go to bed again. The men 
 drink more than is good for them indeed, some of them 
 have an eager and a nipping air all day long ; and as for 
 smoking, why, those who can are blowing moist and soggy 
 weeds and fondling explosive pipes from morn till dewy 
 eve. The noisy ones and what nuisances they are with 
 their aggressively robust health and unfailing cheerfulness 
 play all manner of stupid sea games, horse - billiards, 
 quoits, and shuffle-board, and sometimes venture upon 
 such silly practical joking that you wish a sea would wash 
 them overboard. 
 
 No one sees much of the ship's officers, except perhaps 
 the ubiquitous purser and the amiable doctor, and how 
 these two, harried and beset as they are by a hundred 
 cares, by the little miseries of other people, can present an 
 unfailing front of courtesy, can go smilingly and cheerily 
 about their duties, is one of the sea mysteries yet 
 unsolved. Blow high or low, and in fair weather or foul, 
 they are ever the same, bright, beaming, optimistic, en- 
 couraging " fresh as a garden rose, soothing as an upland 
 wind " and knowing the strain put upon you by silly men 
 and fretful women, gentlemen, I salute you, chapeau bas ! 
 
 In the beginning there was a struggle for seats at the 
 captain's table, and heartburnings are not unknown to 
 those who sit a little lower at the feast. But these are 
 not the wise or wary ones, not the tough and devilish sly 
 travellers who know their bread will be best buttered by 
 rallying around the purser or forming in hollow squares 
 about the shrine where the doctor sits enthroned. The 
 captain's duties permit him to go below rarely save at 
 dinner-time, and as for the other officers, they live and 
 mess alone, and are as cloistered, so far as the passengers 
 count, as the preaching friars of Saint Dominic. 
 
ROUGH WEATHER 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 29 
 
 Once in every voyage boat drill is held, and sadly 
 insufficient for the people on board is this same boat 
 equipment. But the drill is usually a passably fair one, 
 and, given time, adequate perhaps for any demands made 
 upon the ship by outside distress. And let it be added 
 that never yet, when the word has been given, have those 
 gallant men who walk their watches so quietly and so un- 
 complainingly, been known to fail if succor were needed 
 by helpless mariners. It may be that death stares them in 
 the face, that their mission may be another tragedy, but 
 they never question. Honor to them and to all the 
 unrecorded heroes, the uncrowned martyrs of that western 
 passage. Who may number them ? who tell their gallant 
 deeds ? True descendants are they of those " who first 
 went out across the unknown seas, fighting, discovering, 
 colonizing, and graving out channels through which the 
 commerce and enterprise of England have flowed out 
 over all the world." 
 
 You may count, as a rule, upon disagreeable weather in 
 the Western Ocean, and this tries the temper of people 
 who might be saints ashore ; and, say what you will, even 
 under the most promising environments, women are out of 
 place on shipboard. However, if the days are reasonably 
 pleasant as the voyage shortens, the monotony becomes 
 so much a habit as to be no longer a burden. The little 
 animosities which seemed eternal disappear, and friend- 
 ships are made, and toward the end all but the hardened 
 cases, the mental dyspeptics, or those to whom sea-sickness 
 is a serious matter, really enjoy the voyage. 
 
 The tonic of the sea air courses like an elixir in the 
 blood ; young women begin to take notice, and you hear 
 rippling laughter, and see, in place of gloom, the sunshine 
 of happy smiles. This is usually the season when the 
 concert is given, and the uneasy spirits of the ship exploit 
 
30 THE SHIP'S COMPANY 
 
 the talent they have discovered. Usually there are a 
 dozen mild rows over this performance, and invariably a 
 great dispute as to the distribution of the money. This is 
 apt to divide the ship temporarily into two warring camps, 
 but in the end the ship's officers have their way, and the 
 American dollars jingle musically in English contribution 
 boxes. More or less jollity is always afloat in the smoking- 
 room, for here eddy the flotsam and jetsam of the ship. 
 Here, too, the speculative gentlemen, their friends and 
 lambs, usually play cards from early forenoon till the lights 
 are turned out. There is not much growling among these 
 industrious workmen, though at times when Jack pots go 
 one way, and the kitty or widow is large enough to make 
 the losers boisterously assertive, you may hear sharp words 
 over the reckoning. As for those who enjoy a quiet 
 rubber, they must find another retreat ; the smoking-room 
 is ruled by the gods of clamor. 
 
 And so the last days are apt to rush along pleasantly 
 enough ; the solitude cheered by passing vessels and the 
 lazy routine of the ship enlivened by congenial compan- 
 ionships newly found. The edge of the Grand Banks is 
 skirted happily without injury to the daring fishermen ; 
 the Georges are rounded, and then, oh, happy hour for 
 many homesick hearts ! the cry " Sail ho !" rings out with 
 a newer meaning, and a graceful pilot-boat wings toward 
 them like the fabled sea-bird. How they greet the bluff 
 pilot, coming as he does to their seeming helplessness out 
 of the known and the enduring. The speculative pas- 
 sengers find an especial interest in the incident, for no 
 pools are more favored than those made on the number of 
 the boat, no bets more frequent than whether the figures 
 are odd or even. After the assurance that the " pilot is 
 really on board " over-sanguine and inexperienced females 
 madly rush below and pack their trunks and get ready for 
 
PILOT BOARDING A STEAMER 
 
THE SHIP'S COMPANY 31 
 
 an immediate shore-flitting, afraid, perhaps, they will be 
 late ; but there is many and many a tossing mile yet to 
 steam ere the services of the adventurous pilot will be 
 needed. 
 
 Still, a new delight possesses everybody, and it grows 
 as the hours fly, until at last, it may be at night, perhaps, 
 some one bursts breathlessly into the crowded smoking- 
 room or bar, and cries exultingly: "There she is, Fire 
 Island Light, right over the starboard bow !" Joyous faces 
 gather near the crowded bulwarks, and eager eyes hail 
 with gladness the shining petals of that rose of flame 
 which blossoms unfailingly above the shoaling waters; 
 for the voyage is nearly over, and the morrow means to 
 some the marvels of an unknown land, to others, luckiest 
 and happiest of all, home and dear ones. 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 To get the marrow out of yachting requires leisure, 
 patience, and money. In boats there is a wide liberty of 
 choice, and type and rig are always a question of inten- 
 tion. An ideal cruiser may be built, and, so far as the 
 inexact science of naval architecture permits, a capital 
 racer be designed, but the best qualities of both can never 
 be combined, because of the compromises required by ex- 
 treme development in any single direction. 
 
 Then, too, the environment of the yachtsman limits his 
 liberty as much, perhaps, as his theory of the sport. He 
 may elect to cruise or to race ; to take his outing within 
 our peaceful waters or off stormier coasts. He may be 
 bitten by the tarantula of matches, be possessed of the 
 fury of mug-hunting. There are owners, generally elder 
 brethren of the guild, who distil their sailing elixir from 
 sedate potterings coastwise. These are eager only for fine 
 weather, night anchorages, and capable stewards. These 
 are content to skim blue waters peacefully, and to gain 
 occasional cups or sweepstakes in amiable contests with 
 similar easy-going ships. Others struggle till they bleed 
 by the seven veins for prizes and squadron trophies ; and 
 when the cruise is done, and the mugs have escaped them, 
 
36 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 they diminish their rigs from clew to earing, and for the 
 fag-end of the season seek consolation in waters eastward. 
 
 But whatever you may do, be sure that the best possi- 
 bilities of yachting are found mainly in such boats of a 
 good size as have not had their safety and comfort sacri- 
 ficed to speed. For all-around pleasure the usual small 
 boat is no better than a harness cask ; but if the yachts- 
 man has had a sea training, or has been long enough on 
 the water to accept its moods, its wiles, and tricks with 
 philosophy, he can get out of small, deep boats a world of 
 profitable enjoyment. For these unite comfort, safety, 
 and speed in a high degree, and when properly handled 
 return a very great deal for the money expended. 
 
 If, however, the yachtsman pins his faith to a type 
 which is more nearly American in essential ideas, he will 
 find that a well-found boat costs much to build, more to 
 keep going, and, when no longer wanted, sells for a song. 
 The leisure of the man really fond of the water and em- 
 barked for pleasure ought to be unvexed, abundant; a hol- 
 iday free from discordant interruptions, independent of 
 wind and tide, careless of calm and current drifting him 
 miles to leeward of his port. His patience must smile 
 life's little miseries afloat into the limbo of indifference ; 
 must be such as blinks at impositions with the blindness 
 of angels. And the money ! Ah ! the coin of the realm. 
 Put money in your purse, sweet sirs ; put money in your 
 purse when you go a-yachting. It cannot be little nor 
 doled grudgingly ; it may be like the purse of Fortunatus, 
 and flow as freely as the waters of the salt sea. 
 
 A horse may or may not eat his head off in a year, but, 
 like the torch-bearing Arab and his brothers, a yacht can 
 bolt itself from truck to keelson, from knight -head to 
 stern-post, in a season. Time happily was when regattas 
 and cruises were shared by men able to spend every sum- 
 
THE OWNER AND HIS FRIEND 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 37 
 
 mer a far-reaching thousand dollars or two, but those 
 were the days of wampum and civic crudeness, and such 
 chances linger no more in the nests of yachting years. 
 
 There are men of idleness, wise and wary in experience, 
 with treasuries not so deep as a well nor so wide as a 
 church door, who sail the year around, or, in their hardest 
 luck, for many days in every season. But these are the 
 masters, the illuminati; theirs is genius, and this a gift 
 coming by the light of nature, and with its magic sealed 
 save to the adept. 
 
 I wonder how they do it so well, so gracefully ! 
 
 Others, mainly of the cat-boat and jib-and-mainsail class, 
 who have neither time nor coin to spare, steal afloat on 
 rare holidays, whitening our bays and rivers with shining 
 sails. Plate and pewter trophies of victory burden their 
 sideboards ; they enter and capsize in every regatta from 
 the Capes of Delaware to Portland Bay ; and no Admiral 
 of the Blue dares on occasion to be half so nautical in 
 garb and lingo as these are normally. But, scoff as they 
 may, theirs are not the joys, theirs are the kicks and not 
 the ha'pence of the sport. 
 
 Their fun, riotous in sunshine and soldiers' breezes, is 
 grewsome when dreary and dripping days send their little 
 crafts shivering shoreward with hatches clapped to tightly. 
 They know the conveniences of a howling cowboy ; they 
 endure trials under which St. Simon of the Pillar suc- 
 cumbed. The sunshine must be hoarded till its sweet- 
 ness is extracted to the latest sip ; their calendars are 
 white or black as waters are smooth or rough. If their 
 pleasure be taken in a single -hander they are unhappy, 
 for, at the best, it is dull work sailing alone ; and if they 
 are gregarious, what could be more dispiriting than cruis- 
 ing with a free company, knowing no leader, living in 
 quarters as crowded and bilgy as a slaver's hold, and at 
 
38 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 the bitter end bickering like buccaneers over the shot and 
 reckoning ? 
 
 From the beginning yachting has been a diversion of 
 those known favorably by bankers, and " favored with the 
 friendship of the nobility and gentry." Of course, like 
 other amusements, it has grown more expensive year by 
 year, and more is the pity of it. In England it has 
 always found favor with the very rich, from the days 
 when Phineas Pett, master designer, filched the idea from 
 Holland, and built, in 1604, for Henry, Prince of Wales, 
 the first recorded pleasure craft. Pepys and Evelyn tell 
 how royalty encouraged it. " By water to Woolwich," 
 writes the former, " and saw the yacht lately built with 
 the help of Commissioner Pett. . . . Set out from Green- 
 wich with the little Dutch Bezan to try for the mastery, 
 and before they got to Woolwich the Dutch beat them 
 half a mile ; and I hear this afternoon on coming home, it 
 got before three miles, which all our people are glad of." 
 This Bezan was the Mary, a yacht given to King Charles 
 by the Dutch East India Company. Evelyn describes 
 the first Corinthian race, a match for ^100, between the 
 King and his brother, the sailor, Duke of York. The 
 course was from Greenwich to Gravesend, and the King 
 " lost it going, but saved stakes returning, sometimes 
 steering himself, his Majesty being aboard with divers 
 noble persons and lords." Mark this the noble com- 
 pany. That has not changed at any rate. Like the 
 King, an owner never lacks for divers persons, lords or 
 commoners. Even in our days no one need be lone- 
 some on a yacht. 
 
 And this is fortunate ; otherwise what a world of en- 
 gaging qualities would moulder for lack of fruitful garden- 
 ing, for dearth of sunshine, dew, and air! A hundred 
 varied but excellent motives, called into activity by this 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 39 
 
 giving and taking of hospitality, expand the owner's 
 heart, crowd his quarters, and encourage into lively 
 growth the accomplishments of his guests. What an 
 audience for the story-teller ! What a fallow field for the 
 chestnut planter, for the banjo picker, for the singer who 
 is high proof against night air, fogs, encores, and commis- 
 sariat ! 
 
 What a lucky dog is the friend of an owner ! How or- 
 namental or uselessly useful he can be ! And luckiest of 
 all, the favored one, ready with quips and quaint fancies, 
 who hears the gentleman paying the rent say, with effusion : 
 " There, old man, there is your card clinched over the best 
 state-room door! Whenever you sail with me, out goes 
 the occupant, whoever he may be and we'll all have a 
 drink on it now. Steward, bring glasses !" Ah ! benign 
 indeed is the star of such a being, and I do not know but 
 I had better begin again, and say that the choicest possi- 
 bilities of yachting are given only to those who can bring 
 to it leisure, patience, and some other fellow's boat and 
 money. 
 
II 
 
 THE yachting season opens up on Decoration Day, and 
 the regattas run well into June. Mindless of the uncertain 
 winds and balmy skies of this month, the clubs urge their 
 cracks into a spin, or quite as often leave them to drift 
 around an inside course. The events are always interest- 
 ing at the start, and have a sentimental value because each 
 year introduces the rosebud craft, if I may borrow this 
 poetic adjective from the choniclers of society small-beer. 
 Enthusiastic friends of both sexes crowd the club steamers 
 to the guards, and should the race be finished between 
 luncheon and dinner, applaud the victors with joy as 
 boundless and with hearts as free as the blue sea so care- 
 fully avoided. 
 
 After this dress parade is over, nothing official bothers 
 the yachtsman, and he may steam or sail or lie at anchor, 
 as his fancy wills. But as soon as late July and early Au- 
 gust shut down the throttle of trade, and give ease for 
 repairs and oiling the machinery of money-spinning, the 
 clubs are summoned to a rendezvous for the annual cruise. 
 This meeting is always appointed for some central harbor, 
 the clubs about New York usually selecting one of the 
 pleasant roadsteads indenting the Long Island or Con- 
 necticut shores. 
 
 When the day comes, the yachts already assembled await 
 eagerly the arrival of the Commodore, for custom demands 
 that he should find his squadron gathered. Just before 
 sunset, rarely later, the black hull with the blue flag at the 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 41 
 
 main rounds the ledge buoy at the river's mouth, and 
 steams sturdily for the anchorage. Off the light-house she 
 is slowed, later stopped, then backed ; and just as stern- 
 board is making the engines wheeze into silence, the 
 anchor with sullen plunge drops bodily, shank and ring, 
 from the cathead, and the water about the forefoot whitens 
 into spray and foam. Slowly she slips astern in spite of 
 the rattling and clinking of her straightening chain ; and 
 at last brings up with a jerk that tautens the cable viciously 
 from shackle to hawse-pipe. The lower booms swing out 
 to the cheery piping of a bo's'n's whistle, and are squared, 
 lift and guy, with a nicety dividing west and sou'west sides; 
 a jet of smoke darts from the starboard gun-port, a re- 
 sounding echo grumbles hillward, and as the Commodore 
 makes his finest bow from the bridge, the world may know 
 the tryst has been kept, and the mating of flag and pen- 
 nant has been saluted decorously. 
 
 Then the expected, the inevitable, follows. It is a sul- 
 phurous, brain-cracking pandemonium. 
 
 Yachts, big and little, steamers, schooners, sloops, and 
 cutters bang to starboard and to port ; bang ahead, to 
 windward and to lee, and with a welcoming fusillade that 
 drives all the joy out of life, all the peace from sea and 
 shore. Smoke, choking fumes, the misery of villanous 
 saltpetre, of heart-breaking clamor, are everywhere. Pow- 
 der clouds, flame-slitted, roll upon the water, and soar till 
 a silvery eclipse shuts out the hulls and spars, and even 
 " the topmost truck, where flew the burgee with the field 
 of blue," as the fo'c's'le poet tunefully sings. The green 
 shores, the river, the beaconed ledges and buoyed reefs, 
 the light-house on the spit, the summer homes, the dull, 
 dead seaport, all slip helplessly into the Powder Fog, and 
 for a time are lost on a Grand Bank of its making. 
 
 After the Commodore returns the salute with his port 
 
42 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 gun, the vapor blows down the wind, and the hulls mainly 
 black and white, with always a touch of gold and the sheen 
 of bright work somewhere emerge from the gray after- 
 haze. The ensigns flap into distinctness of color, the tra- 
 cery of gear and spars is silhouetted against the greenery 
 ashore, and the squadron drifts against the blue above, and 
 floats double swan and shadow in the blue below. 
 
 You may count this gentleman's park of masts intershot 
 with steamers' funnels until your eyes and fingers can no 
 longer reckon, and you will not enumerate the half of it. 
 You will, perhaps, be lost in profitable reverie when you 
 come to measure what these hundred and odd boats rep- 
 resent, for they are the files of a small battalion in the 
 army of workers that have conquered the material. They 
 mean fruitful energy, luck nearly always, often victory 
 over tremendous odds. Here are ripened the luxuries 
 which we all think we deserve as well as our neighbor, and 
 could enjoy so much better. Here is the outward evidence 
 of ease and freedom, of plenty in a world where most of us 
 have to fight so hard for other things than cakes and ale 
 and ginger hot i' the mouth too. 
 
 It is the luxury of life open to the admeasurement of 
 all, and with the merit that, though it may be hedged in, 
 it cannot be debased by money. Amateurs must always 
 control it ; it will ever be the one sport into which profes- 
 sionalism has not been injected as the main interest and 
 purpose. And this is because it comes from the sea. 
 With all its exclusiveness to touch, it is the least selfish of 
 amusements. No jealous framing hides the picture ; no 
 surly keeper guards the wicket. It lies before you freely 
 and openly as if ordered for your pleasure ; it can be seen 
 without asking. For long distances up and down the 
 reaches of the river the spars can be traced, and near the 
 centre, off the landing, the flag-ship shepherds her flock. 
 
A LITTLE FISHING 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 43 
 
 From the upper harbor to the ugly turn at the reef near 
 the haven's mouth the squadron rides to the tide in no 
 order save such as prudence demands ; and in the flooding 
 sunlight you can mark its outer limits, the Soundward van, 
 guarded by the shining hull of a famous steamer. 
 
 Clear of the channelway the royal masts of a sloop of 
 war tower above the loftiest of the pleasure craft, and 
 just before sunset her bugles sound the call for retreat. 
 The yachtsmen stand by ensigns and stay lanterns, and 
 as the clear notes ring musically, flags sink slowly and 
 white lights glimmer like glowworms against the rosy 
 skies. The breeze cools the sun-warm, sweet-scented 
 air ; the shadows deepen in the greenery of the land ; and 
 the tide, shooting arrowwise from cable and cut-water, rip- 
 ples aft with a song to the streaming wake. There is a 
 promise of festivity in the twilight ; smoke curls from fore- 
 castle stove and galley funnel ; echoes of quickening hos- 
 pitality ebb and flow from neighboring boats ; visits are 
 made and invitations are shouted over the water ; until, at 
 last, the poetry of the enfolding dusk quiets the merri- 
 ment of the visiting yachtsmen. 
 
 But the silence is broken by a cheering hail from below : 
 
 " On deck there ! you sailor-men ! alleged and other- 
 wise ! How would a cocktail, only one, only a little one 
 how would it go, just now ?" 
 
 How would it go? The chorus is unanimous. 
 
 In smooth water on shipboard you are always hungry, if 
 not thirsty, for every condition sharpens the edge of ex- 
 pectant appetite. Under the awning, or from deck or 
 cockpit, you see cabins shining in the wide circle of shaded 
 lamps, and tables gleaming with glass and silver. Nimble 
 stewards back and fill from galley to pantry, and tack and 
 wear from starboard to port, and from port to sherry, or 
 to something else ; and with ears attuned to liquid harmo- 
 
44 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 nies, you hear from mysterious recesses the " cloop " of 
 corks yielding their treasures with expiring song. 
 
 It is a brave, a bustling hour, for lamps are trimmed 
 and boards are spread ; and as the after-glow leaves the 
 river and the skies are a glory of stars, the fleet is mantled 
 in silence, and agleam with lights streaming from deck- 
 house windows and open-air ports. If you are wise, you 
 are merry with the promise of the moment, and, rejoicing 
 in these signs and portents of the feast, resolve to go 
 ashore no more. 
 
Ill 
 
 ONE of the questions asked most frequently, usually out 
 of pure idleness, is, " What does all this cost ?" The an- 
 swer is necessarily indirect and vague. In the beginning 
 of things a yacht is always an expression of its owner's in- 
 dividuality, a witness to his opportunities. Between any 
 two boats, even those equipped and sailed under similar 
 possibilities, sharper contrasts exist than within the same 
 owners' homes ashore. The element of cost must always, 
 therefore, be an individual question ; and the problem can 
 be solved only by an appeal in each instance to the one 
 person who is in possession of the facts. An outsider may 
 hit or miss all around it, hitting perhaps rather closely in 
 the widely divergent cases of boats sailed either with an 
 absurd bung-and-spigot lavishness or with a farcical mean- 
 ness. The first cost of a craft, the number of her crew ; 
 their wages, rations, and uniforms ; the probable repairs, 
 insurance, interest, and annual depreciation ; the length of 
 the season all these factors may be treated intelligently. 
 But who can weigh the personal elements, the tempera- 
 ment of the owner, his scale of living, the extent of his 
 hospitality, the honesty of his servants, the watchfulness 
 exercised, the work to be done for racing costs more than 
 cruising? 
 
 Here at anchor, for example, are two steamers, one a 
 family ship, the other the crusier for a bachelor; both be- 
 long to the very highest class, A I, first rate, well found, 
 and fit for service in any navigable waters of the world. 
 
46 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 The annual expenditures are very great, but the returns 
 in comfort and amusement must justify them, for both 
 boats are nearly always in commission. 
 
 The former has on deck three steel houses, teak- 
 sheathed and mahogany-lined ; in the forward one is a 
 smoking-room, furnished with divans and tables, and so 
 framed with plate-glass windows as to give an uninter- 
 rupted view ahead and on each beam. Abaft this are a 
 chart-room and cabin kitchen, between which a vestibule 
 and carved oak stairway lead below to the saloon and 
 owner's quarters. The saloon is thirty-one feet wide and 
 eighteen long; its floor is a mosaic of hard -woods, and 
 the sides and ceiling are wainscoted and panelled with 
 polished native woods, and finished in an enamel of white 
 and gold. A carved mantel and fireplace face the en- 
 trance ; overhead is a domed skylight ; and in every avail- 
 able spot rugs, tapestries, pictures, cabinets, lamps, the 
 hundred and one accessories of the most opulent homes, 
 accentuate the warmth of color. Forward of this are 
 eight state-rooms, built of cherry and walnut picked out 
 in white and gold, and furnished with rugs and tapestries. 
 Each has a hand -carved bed, dressing-table, chiffonnier, 
 and wardrobe. In the floor a porcelain bath is let so 
 deftly that the trap can scarcely be seen even when the 
 rug is removed. In a corner a Scotch-marble basin is 
 supplied with hot, cold, and salt water. Electric bells 
 and incandescent lamps are at command, and through a 
 wide-rimmed, polished air port a cheering measure of sea 
 and sky is secured. A nursery nineteen feet long, eleven 
 in width, completes the owner's special quarters. In this 
 well-ventilated anomaly on shipboard a child's berth is 
 built four feet from the floor. Beneath this, sliding 
 snugly out-board in the daytime, is a nurse's bed ; this 
 can be extended to such a distance at night that should 
 
NAIADS 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 47 
 
 the child be thrown out in bad weather by a lurch or 
 roll, it will land safely on the mattress below or upon its 
 attendant, who is presumably a cheerfully elastic person. 
 
 A scuttle in the pantry gives access to the store-rooms, 
 wet and dry, to the ice locker, and to the apparatus for 
 making artificial ice. A separate stairway connects the 
 pantry with the kitchen above, which may thus be called 
 " hygienic," as it is in every sense on the roof. These 
 quarters, with the linen closets, clothes lockers, toilet- 
 rooms, and a glass armory, occupy the space in the 
 centre of the ship between the first water-tight compart- 
 ment, where the crew live in downy ease, and the forward 
 bulkhead of the boiler-room, where the coal-heavers and 
 firemen smoke surreptitiously the soothing but penetrat- 
 ing black 'baccy. A passageway, recessed and uphol- 
 stered at one point to give a view of the machinery, leads 
 aft to a library fitted and furnished as luxuriously as the 
 saloon. Abaft this are seven state-rooms for guests, no 
 whit less perfectly appointed than those of the family, 
 and with a separate companion-way. In the after-house 
 on deck is a ladies' saloon and a fair-weather state-room 
 for the owner, and from it a stairway leads to the library. 
 This vessel cruises at home and abroad, and carries a 
 crew of fifty. Her cost was three hundred thousand 
 dollars, and the annual expenditure amounts to one hun- 
 dred thousand. 
 
 In the second steamer, the smoking-room is of oak, the 
 wainscoting and ceiling are built of artistically panelled 
 mahogany, and the furniture is upholstered in olive-green 
 plush. Heavy plate-glass windows give a view half-way 
 around the horizon, and if any one knows a better place 
 to smoke a cigar at anchor or under way, let him stand 
 and deliver. Abaft this is the chart-room, flanked by a 
 carved stairway leading below. In the saloon, brass 
 
48 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 chandeliers, decorated in the Persian style, hang clear 
 of a skylight colored in harmony with the general treat- 
 ment. The mantel, panelled in carved old English oak, 
 is supported by dolphins, and the nickel grate is fitted 
 in a recess tiled with blue and silver. The bevelled-glass 
 doors of the bookcases flame with prismatic colors; the 
 wainscoting is sheathed with mahogany and cherry, and 
 the walls are of dark-blue lincrusta, figured into squares, 
 and ornamented and intertwined by golden thistles. The 
 ceiling is tinted ocean blue, with all manner of odd marine 
 animals " swimming about in this immovable sea with 
 trailing golden wakes," as the reporter from whom I borrow 
 the description joyfully records. Every nook and corner 
 is crowded with the artistic fruits of taste, travel, and 
 money. A carved cherry bedstead, chiffonier, wardrobe, 
 and wash-stand form the permanent furniture of the 
 owner's room ; its walls are covered with flowered chintz, 
 and the door is panelled and fitted with mirrors. In the 
 ladies' saloon forward the wainscoting is moulded into 
 squares, and the sides are draped with cretonne ; bevelled 
 mirrors are let into the doors and cabinets ; and there are 
 crystal chandeliers in bronze framings, and brass side lamps 
 fitted for use with oil or electricity. The floor is laid in 
 highly polished hard-woods, and in an angle stands an 
 upright piano, framed and carved in harmony with the 
 other furniture of the room. The crew have comfortable 
 quarters forward, number over fifty, and are given employ- 
 ment the year round. 
 
 These slight sketches of the living quarters faintly 
 outline the luxury of such vessels, and though the larger 
 ships offer better possibilities, yet in all yachts it is found 
 to a definite degree. No very vivid imagination is re- 
 quired to picture what the living up to this particular 
 blue china must cost, though it can be described in a 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 49 
 
 general way only, and from the data open to everybody. 
 One authority in a position to know states that for a 
 season of five months a steam-launch forty to fifty feet 
 in length imposes an outlay of $2500; a steamer from 
 seventy-five to a hundred feet in length will cost about 
 $10,000, and one slightly larger, with flush decks, not less 
 than $i 1,000. In the big steamers, with crews varying 
 from thirty to fifty men, the monthly expenditure varies 
 from $6000 to $12,000 ; and in two yachts of this kind 
 described by another writer, who gave the details, the 
 annual cost was figured at $150,000 each; and in an iso- 
 lated instance where a steamer made the voyage around 
 the world the expense for the five months' cruise was^ 
 said to have been something over $50,000. Leaving 
 these extreme cases, and taking as a fair basis steamers 
 belonging to the class which includes vessels measuring 
 from seventy-five to one hundred feet, we get the follow- 
 ing fixed charges : monthly wages, fireman, cook, steward,; 
 three deck hands, engineer, and pilot, $380 ; coal, $200 ; , / 
 repairs, deck stores, engine-room supplies, uniforms, $540 } V 
 and mess, $380; commissioning and laying up, $2500; 
 total for five months, $10,000. If to this be added what 
 it costs for the cabin outfit, without the delusion that 
 you are saving so much on your shore expenses for in 
 the long-run you never do it will be seen that it costs 
 a pretty penny for the sport. 
 
 There is not a very great difference, save for coal, in 
 the running expenses of a steamer and a sailing craft. 
 Indeed, on similar displacements, the larger schooners 
 often cost more to keep up. So far as the smaller 
 schooners and sloops go, it is an axiom that you always 
 spend more than you have allowed. One owner of a 
 sloop, whose experience is not exceptional, confesses that 
 when he had built his ship for $10,000 he hoped to get 
 4 
 
So THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 her into the water for $5000 more, but by the time sails 
 were bent and he was ready to cruise, his total expendi- 
 tures had reached $16,500. His first season cost him 
 $8000 more ; but from his own accounts it is easy to see 
 the cabin was run carelessly, and too lavishly for com- 
 fort. In the next year he had his yacht hauled out by 
 the ship-builder for an examination, and though the sail- 
 ing-master had taken good care of her, his bill for a spike 
 here and a graving piece there was nearly $1000. A new 
 mainsail and other sail-making jobs cost another $1000, 
 and before he got the rigger out of the boat there was 
 a hand-spike and serving - mallet account of $200. Al- 
 together he found his running expenses for the second 
 season, in a boat under sixty feet on the water-line, aver- 
 aged $50 per day, and it must be added that he was not a 
 Johnny Raw. 
 
INTERVIEWING THE COOK 
 
IV 
 
 BUT be the expense what it may, black care is thrown 
 to the cats, and no death's-head jibbers and grins at any 
 feast to-night. The worries of the day are whistled down 
 the wind, and all hands are too busy with the play of 
 knife and fork, with the music of clinking cup to heed 
 the reckoning. These dinners always have a zest of their 
 ,own, a flavor of the unusual, due to the novelty of the 
 scene, the appetite, and the unconfined joy of the loose 
 sailor togs, for it is heresy to doff these save when dining 
 with the Commodore, or when it is tacitly understood to 
 be required on board a few of the larger boats. The 
 proverb that racing men never dress for dinner is found 
 so profitable by the cruisers as to make the custom 
 practically general. 
 
 When you go on deck for the coffee and cigars and 
 the chasse, which, as Voltaire said of Admiral Byng's 
 shooting, is to encourage the others, lights are twinkling 
 everywhere. As soon as the darkness has fully shrouded 
 the water, the sky is suddenly aflare with a signal rocket, 
 and in a moment Roman candles and port -fires flame 
 and whiz from decks and rigging, and Chinese lanterns 
 festoon gear and hulls. An electric arch spans the flag- 
 ship from stem to stern-post, the night is ablaze, and 
 here and there through the bright coloring of swinging 
 lanterns the sharp scintillations of arc and incandescent 
 lamps punctuate the illuminated page with points of 
 silvery white. A thousand reflections shimmer in the 
 
52 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 water, and from the shores, as the wind serves, the music 
 of a band drifts over the tide-way. " No use ship-keep- 
 ing," cries the captain, cheerily. " I must report on board 
 the flag-ship, but take the boat and strike the beach the 
 rest of you." 
 
 The beams of a search-light make a broad cone about 
 the gangway as the captains go alongside in their trim gigs. 
 Here each is received with the etiquette due his uniform, 
 and after the meeting is called to order the details of 
 the races are discussed, and the programme of the cruise 
 is defined and accepted. One can readily see that the 
 majority of the owners are men of affairs, generally in the 
 prime of manhood, with a few youngsters here and there, 
 and others, too, ruddy and strong in the youth of old age. 
 A few belong to our leisure class some who cruise the 
 year round, and others who go in for it, as the phrase is, 
 during the summer months. Here also are yachtsmen 
 not many, but enough to swear by who have won their 
 license of the seas by runs across the Atlantic in snow 
 and ice and killing chill, when the devil was chasing Tom 
 Coxe up one hatchway and down another, and angry 
 gales were hurling green seas high above the futtocks of 
 the fore. 
 
 When the meeting is ended, the Commodore enter- 
 tains the captains until midnight, though some of the 
 owners leave early to join their guests viewing the illumi- 
 nation from the shore. In the old days a ball was always 
 given at the hotel on the night of the rendezvous, but 
 as men dance so little and under such protest in these 
 degenerate times, all that has been changed. The ve- 
 randas and lawns are crowded, and each one of the host 
 of beautiful women is willing to admit that never before 
 could there have been such a squadron, such an illumi- 
 nation, such yachtsmen. After the lights have died out, 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 53 
 
 and the chaperons have hoisted a final signal for their 
 fair convoys to slip their moorings and make sail for 
 home, gigs are manned, and with echoing strokes pulled 
 regretfully to the anchorage. The general noises of the 
 squadron have softened into a murmur, and the lights 
 have lessened in cabin and forecastle. The stars, wheeling 
 bright and clear, seem, on these nights, to shine in myriads 
 never known before ; and behind the trees a waning moon 
 is dipping. At times the quietness is broken tunefully 
 by mandolin and banjo, and mellowed by distances you 
 hear the refrain of a jolly sea song; and as you pass 
 under the sterns of neighboring boats cheery greetings float 
 to you out of the shadows and from behind the friendly 
 blaze of cigars. The night is too beautiful for sleeping, 
 and you lounge on deck for a while smoking a soothing 
 weed. But after a time, when you have slipped into 
 pyjamas and drained a nightcap to clear the fog and bring 
 good weather, a gentle drowsiness steals upon you, and 
 ere eight bells ring out with silvery notes you are sleep- 
 ing the dreamless sleep of childhood in a cradle rocked by 
 wind and wave. 
 
BRIGHT and early the next morning you are awakened 
 by the working of the pump, the dashing of water, and the 
 swishing of brooms overhead; through the air ports steal 
 the cool, fresh breeze and the light of skies shifting from 
 gray and silver to blue and gold. Tumbling out, you go 
 on deck, have a look at wind and weather and at the hands 
 washing down, and then, hauling on bathing-trunks, fling 
 yourself overboard in that perfect plunge which makes a 
 new man of you. 
 
 As the start is to be an early one, everybody is astir ; 
 and by the time coffee is finished and you are on deck 
 again, many of the eager ones are making sail and short- 
 ening cables, and others have already taken up a com- 
 manding position near the starting-point. After a while 
 the flag-ship and an accompanying boat drop anchor at 
 either end of an imaginary line, and then, aided by a val- 
 orous banging of guns and a brave display of signal flags, 
 all the yachts cross over the border in due order and pre- 
 cedence, and hot- footed for a competition where only a few 
 laggards are dragging a penalty allowance behind. 
 
 A rare sight this, when the morning is fair and breezy. 
 Ahead, stretching in great wings and irregularly, now a 
 cloud of listing, gleaming canvases, here a group strug- 
 gling as if hand-to-hand in a battle to death, and there, 
 with open water on both sides, the sloops and cutters rush 
 for the distant verge. Next, like fairy argosies the great 
 sloops built to defend the cup dart over the welcoming 
 
THE SQUADRON CRUISE 55 
 
 waves, nothing fairer, nothing truer to eye nor keener to 
 breeze anywhere in any sea. Then sweep the stately 
 schooners, standing up to their work like mitred bishops, 
 every thread of canvas drawing to tense stretch, the 
 weather -shrouds taut as harp strings, the wind singing 
 cheerily through the gear, and the blue water whitening 
 into wedding blossoms at the bow, and carolling far astern 
 in a flowery maze of bubbling foam. 
 
 The land slips by, the smooth waters of the Sound 
 merge into Atlantic billows, the skies are blue and steel. 
 The sun shines warmly, climbs high, and just as you can 
 see it over the fore-yard of a big steamer, seven bells 
 (who will be the poet of that chime?) ring warningly, 
 and, with due ceremony, the sacrifice ordained is made, 
 the libation is poured. 
 
 What the origin of this sacred custom, no one knows ; 
 but it is ordered and provided for in the sea law of all na- 
 tions, and is to be denied under the direst punishment. 
 
 The fleetest rush to the van, the dull and careless drop 
 astern ; but no matter, for to clipper ahead and drogher 
 behind the scene unfolds each moment a beautiful pano- 
 rama, gives anew that most perfect of pictures, " a ship 
 sailing upon the water." When you come on deck from 
 luncheon, schooners, sloops, and cutters are intermingled ; 
 but if your luck has been good you are at least in the thick 
 and middle of the fight, and can note the eagerness, the 
 intelligence, the watchfulness, exercised in the race for 
 supremacy. By-and-by gray rocks, seamed with yellow 
 and green, glint in the sunshine ; a light-ship rolls in the 
 vexed eddies off the reef ; the flag-ship sweeps to the fore- 
 front at her best speed, and soon a gun rings out as the 
 leader dashes over the line amid the cheers of the hun- 
 dreds gathered to greet her. 
 
 Within a day or two the great cup races are sailed, and, 
 
56 THE SQUADRON CRUISE 
 
 so that all may see them, the Commodore invites the 
 yachtsmen not competing, and their guests, to go over the 
 outside course. When the last event has been decided, a 
 night reception is given by the flag-ship to the squadron, 
 and here at its full flood surges the social life of the cruise. 
 It is everything that such an affair is on shore, multiplied 
 and intensified by the inherent possibilities of the scene. 
 And what a picture of pleasure it makes ! The brilliant 
 costumes ; the beautiful illuminations ; the music ; the 
 view afloat, where hundreds of lanterns are swinging in the 
 roadstead ; and the vistas ashore, where the lights circle 
 the beaches and climb hillward ; the cool breezes, salt with 
 the savor of thousands of ocean miles bearing them to the 
 harbor's gates; the plashing of tides; the murmur of 
 happy voices well, after all, nothing brings us nearer fairy- 
 land than a ship, a summer night, a gentle breeze, and the 
 ripples of distant music. 
 
 Somewhat diminished in number, the squadron goes 
 eastward, stopping at one or two hospitable ports, where 
 balls ashore and receptions on board break the monotony 
 of sailing. Then it returns westward, and after the gigs, 
 dingies, and launches have competed for the traditional 
 prizes of the clubs, the captains assemble for the last time 
 on the flag-ship, the vote of thanks to the Commodore is 
 passed, and, with another fusillade, the Squadron Cruise is 
 ended. 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 IN a breezy chapter of that delightful volume now 
 almost forgotten, where Kenny Meadows drew and other 
 English Worthies described the Heads of the People, a 
 sailor of the old school laments the decadence of the 
 midshipman. The mast-head, we are told, knew him no 
 more, and his place had been taken by that machine-made 
 product the young gentleman. Fortunately this dismal 
 prophet deserves honor in no country, for is not his growl, 
 more ancient than Benbow's day, the barnacled protest 
 of the Ancient Mariner against the jocund Reefer at 
 the wedding feast, the burden of that litany wherein the 
 elders tell how, since their prime, " the service has gone 
 post-haste to the devil " ? 
 
 It is of course a far cry from the rattling blades of 
 Nelson's battles to the youngsters who trifle airily with 
 the highest mathematics of our own ; but if there be 
 anything in modern progress, the seamen of this year of 
 grace must be, for the demands made upon them, quite 
 as good, let us say, as those who sailed with Jervis and 
 his fleet and humbled the proud Don. No better sea- 
 officers ever lived than those of the last century, none 
 achieved more glory, none left a greater heritage ; but they 
 were the results of conditions, the effective though rough- 
 ly tempered instruments for necessities which to a large 
 
60 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 degree have lost their importance. They were survivals 
 rather of a physical than of an intellectual environment, 
 so that recalling a training where kicks were many and 
 ha'pence few, one must be willing to concede the point of 
 view from which they judged the young officers of their 
 time. Sent to sea at a tender age, the midshipman of 
 the last century began his career often in the shock of 
 battle, always under circumstances rigorous enough to test 
 the endurance even of the sturdiest man. His school had 
 no royal tide to learning, and whether he crawled pain- 
 fully through the hawse-pipes or skipped lightly to the 
 quarter-deck by the smoother channels of cabins windows, 
 his education was acquired not in consequence but in 
 spite of his opportunities. Beyond the art of bowlines 
 and the science of carronades, knowledge had to be picked 
 up haphazardly, mainly by unguided observation, some- 
 what by asking dangerous questions of seniors whose tem- 
 pers were tried with the asperities of sea-life, and whose 
 training had convinced them that hard knocks were the 
 only educational fillips for young sea-boys. 
 
 Sometimes a bowing acquaintance was scraped with 
 the simpler mathematics, through the courtesy of officers 
 able to devote odd half-hours of rare leisure to such bear- 
 leading; but this fragmentary instruction was so much 
 hampered by a hundred interruptions as to make all its 
 resultant good depend upon individual intelligence and 
 effort. Occasionally a few midshipmen were enabled to 
 attend navigation schools previous to joining or while on 
 leave, and there were instances when the steerage or gun- 
 room mess was landed on the beach for spasmodic instruc- 
 tion. " During the remainder of the winter," writes Far- 
 ragut (he was then twelve years old, and attached to the 
 squadron assembled in 1811 off Newport), " the midship- 
 men were sent to school to a Mr. Adams." Later, 
 
-- 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 6l 
 
 when he had returned from his cruise on board the Essex, 
 he adds, " I was put to school to a queer old individual 
 named Neif, who had no books, but taught orally. The 
 scholars took notes, and were afterward examined on these 
 lectures. In the afternoon it was customary to go for 
 long walks, accompanied by our instructor. On these 
 occasions Mr. Neif would make collections of minerals 
 and plants, and talk to us about mineralogy and botany. 
 We were taught to swim and climb, and were drilled like 
 soldiers." There is a nautical education for you min- 
 eralogy and botany ! and yet this pupil of pedagogue 
 Neif became one of the greatest sea-officers the world has 
 known. 
 
 On board cruising ships chaplains were enjoined by 
 regulations and tradition to instruct the midshipmen " dil- 
 igently and faithfully in those sciences appertaining to 
 their department "; but as these reverend gentlemen were 
 not expected to know navigation, seamanship, gunnery, 
 nor foreign languages, the system was hardly broad enough 
 to satisfy an eager craving for professional knowledge. 
 Even at a later date, when school-masters were appointed 
 to the line-of-battle ships, the favored youngsters of these 
 bristling seventy-fours fared no better, for a monthly pay 
 of twenty-five dollars naturally tempted only inferior in- 
 structors, who were willing to live with their pupils in steer- 
 ages or gun-rooms that is to say, in quarters which at the 
 best were ungirdled by influences apt to lure scholars or 
 teacher into the primrose paths of learning. I know this 
 is heresy to the boyish reader of sea-tales ; for to the lad 
 who has shared the joys, the sweet sorrows, of Jack Easy, 
 Tom Cringle, or the Green Hand, or indeed of any one of 
 the heroes set in the zenith of that galaxy spanning the 
 skies of nautical romance, the steerage or gun-room was 
 ever heaven ; the scene of happiness unalloyed, the home 
 
62 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 of darling reefers who own the hearts they won long 
 years ago, the abode of briny mirth, of tarry jollity, the 
 stage where, under the dreamiest of lime -lights, Cruik- 
 shanks's merriest hearts of oak trolled in rousing cho- 
 rus the sweetest songs Charles Dibdin piped. O, orbis 
 pictis ! Oh, deluded youth ! The junior officers then 
 lived, and to a lamentable degree now live, in murky, 
 dingy, overcrowded, and unwholesome dens, where sun- 
 light entered burglariously and quiet was unknown. To 
 study within their riotous precincts was as easy as to woo 
 the coy nightingale in a foundery rattling at white heat, 
 and to live there required the philosophy of Gil Bias 
 when the robbers bound hand and foot and threw in their 
 rate-hole our adventurous nephew of Gil Perez. 
 
 Of course these hardships were not provided for nor 
 emphasized by statutes, and there certainly must have 
 been laws and privileges for post-captains, and privileges 
 and laws for midshipmen ; but where these last began or 
 ended, when codified, or to whom lay an appeal, no one 
 knew. The duties of the youngster, defined neither by 
 regulation nor tradition, really ebbed and flowed at the 
 sweet will of the captain, as this was filtered through the 
 whims of the first lieutenant and skimmed through the 
 tempers of the watch officers. The midshipmen were at 
 every one's most selfish beck and call, in everybody's 
 watch, in nobody's mess, and though punished for two 
 things only, these were for nothing and for everything. 
 They were treated as pugilists preparing for a fight, and 
 were subjected to a rule -of -thumb regimen, which in 
 hardening the body as often indurated the mind. They 
 were ordered to work and not to think, and yet at times 
 the authority, the responsibility given them presupposed 
 the experience of an intelligent and a highly trained man- 
 hood. In his twelfth year Farragut was sent as prize- 
 
SANDY HOOK LIGHT-SHIP BY NIGHT 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 63 
 
 master of a recaptured merchant ship, with orders to make 
 the best of his way from Guayaquil to Valparaiso a long 
 stretch this, dead to windward ! and had hardly parted 
 company with the Essex before he was called upon to nip 
 a mutiny in a promising bud. And he did it most val- 
 orously, pistol in hand. At thirteen he took such a con- 
 spicuous part in one of the most gallant sea-fights of our 
 annals that Captain Porter wrote home in his despatches : 
 " Midshipman Farragut deserved the promotion for which 
 he was too young to be recommended." It was after 
 this a grateful country permitted him, at Porter's expense, 
 to attend the school where mineralogy and botany were, 
 and Shakespeare and the musical glasses might have been, 
 a part of his naval schooling. 
 
 Unfortunately the training of our first midshipmen 
 did not in peace prepare for war, nor for the conditions 
 peace itself might impose. Their lives were spent at either 
 swing of the pendulum, and as the Jeremiah whose lament 
 introduces this article has declared, their existences were 
 divided into three periods. First, the younker, the Johnny 
 Raw, the first caught, generally an amiable youth with the 
 taste of bread-and-butter still in his mouth, and his sense 
 of perspective dazed at being dubbed Mister. At mess 
 his ration was the fattest fag-end of pork and the leanest 
 and most mahogany-grained cubes of salt beef ; under cer- 
 tain guarantees he was allowed to survey the butter and 
 smell the cheese, though as an indemnity his supply of 
 weavily hard biscuit was unlimited. The older messmates 
 showed their paternal care for his health by confiscating 
 his allowance of spirits, and by cheerfully assigning him 
 the privilege his main duty in port of going ashore 
 with the captain's steward for milk, and of performing 
 market boat-work generally. At sea, when off watch, the 
 golden hours were passed under the vivifying beams of a 
 
64 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 purser's dip, and in an atmosphere redolent of bean soup, 
 rum, tar, and tobacco, and his leisure was employed in 
 working out the day's run, or in writing up the log-books 
 of those bully rooks his more experienced shipmates. On 
 watch he called the cooks in the morning, saw the decks 
 properly swept, tumbled aloft when sails were handled, and 
 tramped for four hours, off and on, to leeward, or in the 
 gangways, squeaking out the orders given by the lieuten- 
 ant in a voice like that of a parrot witlessly maundering 
 through a cracked reed. If opportunity served he slept 
 his night-watch stealthily pillowed on a signal flag and 
 blanketed with a greasy tarpaulin, this bed being spread 
 under the lee of a quarter-deck gun. At unholy intervals 
 he was pulled out by the leg from this sea-nest and sent 
 below to mix and bring up for the deck officer a glass of 
 grog, strong enough to float a marline-spike. He was most 
 wantonly badgered and hoaxed everywhere and by every 
 one, but in the end, before the roses faded in his cheeks 
 and his crisp locks uncurled in the salted air, he became a 
 shrewd lad, slow to quarrel, though when driven to it by 
 excess of persecution ready to fight valorously. 
 
 Indeed, he made his way by fighting. 
 
 In the second stage, after a year or more of these 
 civilizing influences, he became wary if not wise, learned 
 to swear in five languages, by the clock and archaically, 
 fought for his grog like a fish-wife, and doubled on the 
 tub whenever the master's mate of the spirit-room for- 
 bade not in his cups friend nor foe and this was often. 
 He knew the names and uses of all the running- gear, 
 could splice, make a selvagee, and tell how the rigging 
 went over the mast-head ; he learned to muster a watch 
 when half asleep, and at a pinch could swing a light lead 
 overhand as far as the lee cathead. After he had grown 
 a little older, especially if he had seen a fight or two, or 
 
CLEANING BRASSES 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 65 
 
 been out on a duel, he was respectful to his superiors, 
 attentive to his duties, thoughtful of the blue -jackets, 
 and finical as to the length of his flowing kerchief, to 
 the cockbilling of his shiny hat, to the tautness and bell- 
 mouthing of his trousers, and to the brightness of the 
 anchor-embossed buttons, which shone with the glory of 
 Orion on the dark blueness of his round jacket. He 
 roared no longer as 'twere a nightingale, nor gently as a 
 sucking dove; his voice was larded with holes, though 
 its interrupted hoarseness came not from singing or hal- 
 looing of anthems ; and, proud boast of all, his ripening 
 chin knew the barber's shear. 
 
 During the third stage, notably, if big in muscle, beamy 
 of shoulder, and two-handed with fists, he became cock 
 of the gunroom walk, Sir Oracle, King Shark of the 
 pilot-fish school. He borrowed more than he loaned, 
 patronized and catered for the mess, took toll of grog 
 from his vassals, drank his stingo to the lees though this 
 virtuously and discreetly, for, like Master Slender in the 
 play, he caroused only with the sober-minded and in ex- 
 emplary society. There was observance in his eye, ac- 
 tivity in his heels, humility in the hinges of his knees. 
 From his seniors he took everything in good part ; dinner 
 with the captain joyously ; reproof from watch officers 
 humbly ; lunars with the master assiduously ; and conceit 
 out of his juniors boastfully. " Though he knoweth," 
 concludes the nautical entomologist who has pinned this 
 extinct specimen in his cabinet, " that he be now in the 
 chrysalis state, he anticipateth with an overstrained faith 
 the time when he will burst forth, the butterfly lieutenant 
 with the golden wing on his right shoulder, and he prideth 
 himself accordingly. Thus there be three states of this 
 officer, yet is he one and indivisibly a midshipman." 
 5 
 
II 
 
 LIVING amid such influences and hardships, it is not 
 easy to understand how the officers who entered the 
 service at the end of the last century and the beginning 
 of this learned so admirably the duties they had subse- 
 quently to perform as commanders of ships and squad- 
 rons. Treated by the government with shameful neglect, 
 and denied adequate training, they earned through native 
 wit and sheer energy the respect of foreign officers more 
 happily nurtured. Intrusted with the fortunes of their 
 own country, and consecrated to the illustration of free- 
 dom's universal truths, they commanded the admiration 
 and respect of the most civilized nations by personal 
 qualities and by professional accomplishments which, 
 though self-acquired, luckily included an intimate knowl- 
 edge of international law. By bravery in battle, skill in 
 naval tactics, modesty in victory, intrepidity in defeat, 
 wisdom in council, tact in diplomacy, and, best of all, 
 courage in asserting the higher obligations of morals and 
 of natural laws, they made piracy in the Barbaiy States 
 and the denial of the seaman's rights upon the high seas 
 equally, and for all time, odious. 
 
 Called by their duties to seas of activity where the 
 just proportions and relativities of all countries could be 
 measured, they were among the first to prophesy the 
 possibilities of the new republic ; their wider horizons 
 dissipated the mists of prejudice, and in the pure white 
 light they recognized this nation's geographical impor- 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 67 
 
 tance, and foretold its coming influence as the World's 
 Great Middle Kingdom. They knew the perils that 
 would beset it, they emphasized its necessities of offence 
 and defence, and, conscious of the cruel difficulties which 
 had encumbered their own careers, they begged Congress 
 to make the navy, by a personnel properly selected and 
 trained, equal to any demands. In season and out, 
 through good fortune and ill, they persisted in this 
 fight. It was a long, a wearisome struggle for recogni- 
 tion and justice, but these old officers and their succes- 
 sors never faltered, and in the end succeeded so well that 
 the Naval Academy, organized in 1845 by George Ban- 
 croft, then Secretary of the Navy, is their monument and 
 witness. 
 
 Honor to both to the officers who fought fifty years 
 for its establishment, and to the historian who realized 
 their ambition. 
 
 
Ill 
 
 THE students of this national college are called offi- 
 cially " naval cadets on probation," the traditional title of 
 midshipman having been changed first to cadet midship- 
 man, and subsequently so the engineer pupils might be in- 
 cluded to that now employed. Their number is limited 
 by law to one cadet for each Congressional district, one 
 for each territory, and to eleven others ten at large and 
 one from the District of Columbia appointed by the 
 President. As the age of admission now falls between 
 the limits of fifteen and twenty, and the course extends 
 six years, it follows, unfortunately, that in certain districts 
 appointments may not be open more than once in that 
 period, thus making one-third of its boys unavailable by 
 reason of age. The remedy proposed for this is only one 
 of fifty good reasons why the course should be reduced 
 from six to four years, and the age of admission limited 
 to not less than fifteen nor more than seventeen. 
 
 To pass, the candidate must be physically sound and 
 of robust constitution, have a sufficiently thorough knowl- 
 edge of arithmetic, algebra, geography, English grammar, 
 United States history, reading, writing, and spelling, and, 
 when appointed, be ready to take an oath to serve for 
 eight years, including the probationary period. When a 
 vacancy is likely to occur in any district, the Secretary 
 of the Navy must notify its Congressional Representa- 
 tive as soon as possible after the 5th of March, and if 
 by the ist of the following July no action has been taken, 
 
EIGHT BELLS COLORS 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 69 
 
 the privilege lapses, and the Secretary is empowered to 
 make the nomination. As this system permits the choice 
 of a candidate and his alternate to be deferred until 
 the May examination is really over, or, as in the majority 
 of cases, until the academic year is about to open, it 
 would seem to be better if the candidate and alternate 
 were named at least one year previous to the May exam- 
 ination. This would enable the applicant to pursue a 
 special course, well fitted as a direct preparation for his 
 professional studies, and when he passed to go at once 
 upon a cruise, which would teach him definitely his apti- 
 tude for life at sea. On the other hand, should the prin- 
 cipal fail, the alternate would stand ready to face the 
 same ordeal. 
 
 This standard of admission, confessedly low, is based 
 upon the theory that the possibilities of the academy must 
 be open so freely to boys of every condition as to make it 
 like the military school at West Point an essentially 
 democratic government school. Practically this very just 
 theory impairs the efficiency of the academy, as it pins the 
 qualifications at a point which rigorously forbids the ener- 
 gies of the teacher and of the average scholar being directed 
 immediately to the branches of education connected with 
 the naval profession. It may as well be stated, to disarm 
 sentimental criticism, that no extravagant standard of ad- 
 mission is desired by the advocates of this change ; all they 
 ask for is that thorough preliminary training which every 
 public and district school should, but to a startling degree 
 does not, give. I know this is a delicate question to ap- 
 proach, but one may risk it if he is sure the fact will be 
 kept in evidence that the academy was established, not to- 
 furnish an education to certain favored persons, but to train 
 officers equally selected from the whole country for its ser- 
 vice afloat. If these interests are alone to be considered, 
 
70 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 surely, here as everywhere, the methods and materials best 
 suited should be adopted, and this means, at the very least, 
 that where the tuition of the best common schools should 
 end, that of the academy ought to begin. The institution 
 belongs to the people, and must be and is open to every 
 district in this country, but it does seem as if those States 
 and Territories which are the first to cry out against a su- 
 perior standard ought to improve their own educational 
 methods rather than seek to lower those of the nation. 
 Whatever people may say, the academy is not a rich man's 
 sch'ool, and it is hardly a valid objection to insist that with 
 a higher standard the sons of the poor will be excluded, 
 because the establishment of almost any test would be, 
 somewhere, a discrimination in this sense. So far as the 
 methods of making nominations go, there are many perti- 
 nent inquiries which might be considered, notably that re- 
 lating to the value of competitive examinations. Much can 
 be advanced for and against this theory, but its discussion 
 may be dismissed here with the statement that experience 
 has so far proved its superiority. At the military academy 
 this is notably the case, for of 502 appointments secured 
 by competition, 306 sixty-one per cent. were graduated, 
 as opposed to 280 or forty-four per cent. of direct nom- 
 inations. 
 
THE LIFE-BOAT DRILL 
 
IV 
 
 ENTRANCE examinations are held in May and Septem- 
 ber, and should the candidate be nominated in time to at- 
 tend the first, he sees the academy under its most favorable 
 light. At this season the Annapolis spring is ripe with the 
 promises of early summer in the North. Skies are bright, 
 breezes are brisk, and the shining water and the air, laden 
 with the perfume of growing grasses and of bourgeoning 
 buds, fill the drowsy old colonial capital with the sweet 
 suggestions of the earth's new birth. Bayward, miles 
 away, the woodlands of Kent Island lift a barrier of green 
 to the tideways of the Chesapeake, and, in days when 
 light and wind are favorable, the shadowy Eastern Shore 
 is silhouetted on the sky, and the spires of Cambridge 
 glint spectrally in the silvery mirage. Within the academy 
 walls trees and shrubbery are dowered with leaf and blos- 
 som, and shoreward, sometimes in terraces, often with in- 
 clines so gentle as hardly to be traced, the trim lawns steal 
 to the river's banks. Streets silvered with the sun-filtered 
 tracery of leaves, and rambling roadways, reveal beneath 
 the arching branches new vistas at every turn. Near the 
 lower gate the library for more than a hundred years 
 the residence of Maryland's colonial and state Governors 
 is so happily situated as to merit the praise which, even 
 as far back as 1769, confessed that " but few mansions in 
 the most rich and cultivated parts of England are adorned 
 with such splendid and romantic scenery." Stretching on 
 either side, between the marine barracks at the southeast 
 
72 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 and the cadets' new quarters at the northwest, are the 
 chapel, officers' quarters, and hospital. Nearer the river- 
 front the armory and laboratory flank the steam-engineer- 
 ing building, and farther southward the observatory, mu- 
 seum, seamanship and recitation halls join the old cadet 
 quarters, now used principally as offices and as apartments 
 for the bachelor instructors. At right angles to these, and 
 almost in line with the library, the quaint, high-dormered 
 houses, dating from army days, look with disparaging eyes 
 upon the spick-and-span freshness of the superintendent's 
 house, and thank the fates which have given them a gen- 
 tility, a little faded, a little shabby, it may be, but real, 
 and still redolent of the good old times. Where the Sev- 
 ern meets an inlet from Chesapeake Bay, Windmill Point 
 breasts with easy curve the shallow water and carries, be- 
 hind the gun park at its edge, the old circular fort, now a 
 gymnasium, but once a warlike redoubt bristling with a 
 terrific defiance of pop-guns for the foe that never came. 
 War-ships, allotted for purposes of instruction, swing at 
 their anchorages in the river, and flotillas of steam- 
 launches and sailing cutters cluster about a long wharf 
 that reaches deep water and holds in safe moorings the 
 practice-ships and the school-ship Santee. A quiet, peace- 
 ful landscape fitly frames all this, for these school-days 
 prelude lives that will be filled with many a struggle in 
 stormy seas to be. 
 
 Should it be band hour or recreation-time, the lawns 
 and pathways are thronged with visitors, among them 
 mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, who saunter with their 
 young heroes in navy blue under the maples embowering 
 Love Lane, or along the pleasant road, wandering maze- 
 like by the granite shaft that tells how Herndon died. If 
 the candidate is bitten by the tarantula of anticipatory 
 delight, he riots in the dissipations of drills looked at, 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 73 
 
 when he ought to be " boning " for the examination near 
 at hand ; and his eyes kindle and his cheeks glisten as he 
 sees the artillery battalion rushing in quick time, in column 
 of platoons, down the campus and into the lower grounds. 
 Drag- ropes are tense, wheels are rattling, red -cheeked 
 cadets scamper over the soft ground with springy feet, 
 and there, where the bay view opens, a shrill command 
 rings out, " Fire to the front ! Right front into line ! In 
 battery ! Ma-a-a-a-rch !" and in an instant the stage is 
 transformed at a bugle-call. Where were guided ranks 
 and rigidly dressed pieces is now the gleam of guns dart- 
 ing forward and sideways at every angle ; a jumble of 
 tossing arms, of nimble legs, of white-gaitered feet, of flut- 
 tering guidons, and of waving banners. With sharp dis- 
 tinctness voices repeat the orders and mingle with the 
 spinning of spoke -hidden wheels, the jangle and jar of 
 quickly swung trail-pieces, and the clattering of ammuni- 
 tion-boxes ; and then a loud " bang " awakens the echoes, 
 rumbling hillward. Through the enshrouding smoke 
 dimly limned figures are seen loading and firing, and 
 other rforms, spectrally outlined in the powder fog, dash 
 backward and forward between the guns and their quarter- 
 gunner at the rear. At last the bugle rings with clarion 
 call, " Cease firing !" and after the inevitably late piece 
 has had its deferred but obstinately last word, the fight 
 is ended, the day is gallantly won. 
 
WHEN the candidate has passed the mental and phys- 
 ical examinations, he reports to the superintendent, takes 
 the oath of allegiance, and deposits twenty dollars for his 
 books, and such an additional sum as may be required for 
 the official outfit. This amount is specified annually, but 
 this represents everything, and from it there is always de- 
 ducted the value of such clothing brought from home as 
 need not be of standard pattern. One month after admis- 
 sion he is credited with his actual travelling expenses to 
 the academy, though this must be refunded if he resigns 
 voluntarily within a year. His annual pay is about $610 
 $500 pay proper, and one daily ration valued at thirty 
 cents. This begins at appointment, but while he acknowl- 
 edges its receipt and expenditure, his control ovef it is 
 purely nominal. He pays for books, clothing, mess, laun- 
 dry, barber indeed, for everything ; and all these ex- 
 penses, after being certified by him and approved by the 
 superintendent, are paid and charged monthly to his ac- 
 count. Every year sixty dollars are reserved from his 
 pay for a graduation outfit, and according to his conduct 
 he receives a monthly reward of pocket-money, usually 
 so microscopic as to keep him in the traditionally im- 
 pecunious condition that everywhere is the hall and mint 
 mark of a midshipman. Luckily, all his stores are sup- 
 plied at first cost, and that the purchasing power of his 
 money is high may perhaps be illustrated by the fact that 
 in his annual dentistry bills and his teeth are most rig- 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 75 
 
 orously and capably cared for only the actual cost of 
 the gold is charged. 
 
 When his immediate material necessities are settled, he 
 is assigned by the commandant of cadets to his duties in 
 the preliminary routine, is allowed to sport a uniform cap, 
 and ordered to report on board the Santee. Unless he is a 
 very good boy indeed, this is apt not to be his only ac- 
 quaintance with the school-ship. Usually he becomes very 
 nautical at once, and the earliest of his ambitions is to go 
 aloft, " to mount," as the shore poet has chastely put it, 
 "the dizzy tops"; but the gun or berth deck claims him 
 as its own, and his first maritime achievement slinging 
 the hammock which will be his bed for the next two 
 months or more teaches him that in ways marine his 
 fingers are all thumbs. He takes a keen delight in order- 
 ing his outfit and in stowing his locker with a kit that 
 grows wondrously, and he is somewhat startled, like his 
 forebears, with the courtesy which immediately splices 
 Mister to his name. 
 
 The earliest experiences of the cadet are not in harmony 
 with his new dignity ; he is not altogether happy, for while 
 he suffers from no direct hazing, and undergoes no such 
 " running " as my contemporaries endured, still the thinly 
 disguised contumely, the silent though stinging scorn of 
 the fourth-class men, are hard to bear. His awkwardness 
 at formations are not soothed with fraternal sympathy 
 except he be a Kentuckian, for the cadets from that State 
 are traditionally clannish, and nearly always claim kinship. 
 His gaucheries at the mess-table by the door plebe's par- 
 adise, as it is called are sins for which he does long pen- 
 ances, and whenever occasion serves his milk is boldly 
 confiscated, and he is made to feel that, after all is said 
 and done, his salvation is yet to be worked out by parlous 
 essay. He drills twice a day, is taught the school of the 
 
76 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 soldier, and in artillery the school of section, and has a 
 daily swimming-lesson. His envy of the senior classes 
 grows hourly, and his admiration and respect for the first- 
 class men are memories rarely forgotten, even after he has 
 attained their place, and gone out into the service which 
 in time levels so many academic distinctions. Then comes 
 to him, of course, as to all boys at any school, moments 
 of depression and homesickness, and he wonders at the 
 delusions which made him take the people's shilling ; he 
 loathes Marryat, forswears Cooper, denies Michael Scott, 
 derides Cupples, and when the night comes, and he tosses 
 feverishly in his hammock a stranger in a strange land 
 the poor lad thinks lovingly of his father's home. Finally 
 the academic year closes, his two or more weeks of Santee 
 life are ended, and with beating heart and happy anticipa- 
 tion he joins the practice-ship, and on a bright June morn- 
 ing sees the senior cadets tumble aloft, watches the top- 
 sails mast-headed, and discovers that, at last, he is fairly 
 away for his first shivering cruise. Before this is ended 
 he has learned a great deal of marline-spike seamanship, 
 and has decided definitely as to his fitness for the pro- 
 fession. 
 
 For a week or two he has drills, but no studies, and his 
 days are set in ways which, after all, are but a pleasant 
 overture before the prompter's bell lifts the curtain from 
 a stage where, major or minor though his part be, earnest 
 labor is expected. These are rare days, too, in anticipa- 
 tion, and so filled with high resolves, let us hope, that the 
 end of September, when the leave men return, is welcomed 
 gladly. 
 
 The next day studies begin. 
 
VI 
 
 THE academic year is divided into two terms, the first 
 ending on the Saturday nearest January 3Oth, the second 
 upon the last day of May, and during these eight months 
 cadet life follows a routine which is carefully adjusted to 
 the results demanded. It is a season of honest labor, of 
 mental progress, of physical growth, and the system, rich 
 in brain and brawn development for the studious, is relent- 
 less only for the idle and careless. Though the course ex- 
 acts unremittent effort, it is not a bloodless mechanism 
 imposing upon boys the burden men only should bear, nor 
 is it a race where the pace is set for genius alone. What- 
 ever ignorance or prejudice may assert, the records of many 
 years prove that of 855 appointments, 467, or nearly fifty- 
 five per cent., were graduated, and that sixty-six per cent, 
 of the candidates who entered between fourteen and fif- 
 teen years of age completed the four years' course, as 
 compared with fifty-two per cent, of those admitted be- 
 tween the ages of seventeen and eighteen. Above all 
 things, the contest is a fair one, and as the political or 
 social influences controlling appointments no longer serve, 
 success is handmaiden only to an individual merit that is 
 denied assistance from without or favor from within. The 
 environment supposes the student to be a grateful bene- 
 ficiary of a government which has selected him for its 
 present care, future honors, and life -long consideration, 
 and which expects that earnest study will be allied to the 
 obedience and subordination demanded in a naval career. 
 
78 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 The new cadet is assigned to the fourth or lowest class, 
 and becomes a unit in an organization assimilating, as far 
 as may be, with that of a ship of war. He is assigned to 
 one of sixteen crews grouped in four divisions, each of 
 which is made up of equal proportions of the different 
 classes. His immediate superiors are two cadet petty offi- 
 cers, chosen from the senior classes, and known as First 
 and Second Captains. Four crews form a division, com- 
 manded by a Cadet Lieutenant, and officered with a Cadet 
 Junior-Lieutenant and Cadet Ensign, all first-class men. 
 These four divisions make a battalion, having for its chief 
 a Cadet Lieutenant Commander, and for its Adjutant an 
 additional Cadet Lieutenant. Special privileges are en- 
 joyed by the student officers, and orders coming through 
 them are official and must be obeyed. At drills and prac- 
 tical exercises each crew mans a great gun, a howitzer sec- 
 tion, or a boat, and each division forms a howitzer battery, 
 a gun division, an infantry company, or a boat squadron. 
 The various details demanded of a cadet are apt, in the 
 beginning, to confuse a mind already disturbed by new 
 impressions and influences, but experience soon forges a 
 master-key that, before long, opens easily the doors of 
 many mysteries. Among other surprises, infantry drill 
 enters so much into his daily life that he who has dreamed 
 of swelling sails and tugging sheets and billows rolling 
 free, finds the first step in his career to be the goose-step, 
 and that his days and nights are infested with the cares of 
 formations, and filled with bugle-calls which, as they blow 
 him out of bed, sound but faintly as horns of elf-land wind- 
 ing clear. Ah ! those first reveilles, those awful reveilles are 
 ever rude awakenings, and is it a wonder the homesick, 
 half -aroused boy discovers life to be lonesome enough 
 when the gray daylight makes his windows in the four- 
 story back slowly grow a glimmering square? He lives 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 79 
 
 in the New Quarters, and an uglier residence devoted to 
 equal interests is not to be found the world over. 
 
 With the best intentions, it must be confessed that the 
 academy is not happy in its buildings. Its architects did 
 not keep pace with the school's progress in other direc- 
 tions, nor indeed profit by the examples of sincere art the 
 old colonial town offers at their hearth-stones. There is a 
 trim rigidity of limb about most of the structures which 
 gives one as a first and most lasting impression the convic- 
 tion that these, like the old sailing sloops of war, were sure- 
 ly built by the mile, and cut off in lengths to suit a fluct- 
 uating appropriation. A few of the older houses such, 
 I mean, as have not had their gifts improved away are 
 quaintly dignified, and one or two of the newer buildings 
 have luckily escaped the rigors of Gunter's scale and dead 
 reckoning ; but the New Quarters are anathema mara- 
 natha. They are hard-faced and gradgrindy ; their want of 
 grace is accentuated by their site, and their ugliness is 
 emphasized by the curves and lines of the monument sulk- 
 ing in their shadow. Were it not for a pseudo-mauresque, 
 a sort of far- away -Moses piazza on the main building, 
 this misplaced watch factory might be supposed to have 
 stepped out between two days from the first book of 
 Chauvenet's geometry. But apart from all considerations 
 of beauty and fitness, the quarters are badly built, poorly 
 ventilated, and so inadequate that their overcrowded limits 
 are encroached upon by kitchens, store-rooms, and a mess- 
 hall, which, from sanitary reasons, ought to be in a sepa- 
 rate building. 
 
 Two cadets are quartered in a room, and as discipline, 
 like charity, begins at home, here at the very threshold, 
 the hardening processes commence. The surroundings 
 are rigorously simple, as needs must be in a school organ- 
 ized upon the theory that the appointments which ex- 
 
8o MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 tinguish distinctions of wealth forbid its manifestations. 
 Everything within the room conforms to a standard pat- 
 tern, and as the display of unauthorized articles is a mis- 
 demeanor, this regulation is rarely violated. The room is 
 always in charge of a cadet, and during this weekly tour of 
 duty, which begins at reveille on Sunday morning, he is 
 responsible for its cleanliness, for the government prop- 
 erty, and for any violations of interior discipline. He 
 must sweep and arrange it carefully each morning for in- 
 spection, and in a bill of particulars as long as the main- 
 to-bowline he is directed what the outfit must be, how it 
 must be arranged, and what care must be taken of it. He 
 has an iron bedstead, a wooden chair, a wash-stand, a look- 
 ing-glass, a rug, and a wardrobe ; the table he shares with 
 his room-mate. No curtains, maps, nor pictures may be 
 hung, nails may not be driven into walls or wood-work, 
 the books in actual use alone may be in evidence, and the 
 gas may be lighted only when authorized. During study 
 hours a cadet may not visit another room, nor be absent 
 from his own unnecessarily; and as he is not allowed to 
 sit up after taps, prepare food, or give the slightest enter- 
 tainment in his quarters, those diluted Walpurgis-night 
 festivals so dear to the undergraduate marrow, so deadly 
 to the matriculating digestion, are unhonored and un- 
 sung. " Though a fiddle," says the sea-proverb, " is as 
 good as ten men on a tackle, and the best muscle not half 
 so strong as a cheery chantey," yet is the cadet forbid- 
 den to practise upon any musical instrument during study 
 hours, or at any time on Sunday, even if his psalmody 
 seeks to lift itself in praise " with trumpets, also shawms." 
 Loud talking, boisterous conduct, and skylarking mean 
 demerits innumerable, and the Santeis deepest deeps 
 yawn for the hardened sinner who, like Powhatan in the 
 play, is caught blowing away his cares with a dudeen, 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 81 
 
 raising the limit on a bobtail flush, or horresco referens 
 looking upon the Annapolis wine when it is red in the 
 cup. Of course many of the hard-and-fast regulations 
 are broken, but rarely in serious matters, because the sys- 
 tem is one of severe discipline for misdemeanors and of 
 liberal privileges for good conduct. Hence in the lowest, 
 most material sense, it does not pay to be in trouble, for 
 this denies a student the cakes and ale, and ginger hot i' 
 the mouth too, of academy life. Then there are tradi- 
 tions stronger than any fear of punishment, which are apt 
 to keep the youngster straight in the course he ought to 
 steer ; for, with Hotspur, he is taught to think, " I am not 
 covetous of gold, but if it be a sin to covet honor, I am 
 the most offending soul alive." In many ways the cadet 
 can never escape an unobtrusive but unwearied surveil- 
 lance, and in others his liberty of action is untrammelled, 
 simply because he is on his honor not to violate a confi- 
 dence of which, with his crew, class, or corps, he is a co- 
 trustee. 
 
 The duty of inspection and the care of discipline are 
 delegated to the commandant of cadets, and to assistants, 
 who are always graduates. The detail is taken in rota- 
 tion, and continues for twenty-four hours, during which 
 period the officer in charge is always a very busy and 
 often a much-bothered personage. He inspects the bat- 
 talion at roll-call, attends formations, is present at mess, 
 visits the quarters at regular, and, what is harrowing to the 
 cadet soul, at irregular hours, and, above all, sees that all 
 violations of discipline are checked and reported. Two 
 first-class men, assigned each morning, assist him in these 
 duties, and so, day in and day out, the wheels of discipline 
 roll in well-oiled grooves, and the life of the school runs 
 from start to finish briskly, happily, earnestly, with hands 
 down, head free, and curb that rarely frets. 
 6 
 
VII 
 
 SUMMER and winter reveille arouses the cadet at six 
 o'clock ; three-quarters of an hour later he attends morn- 
 ing roll-call, and marches to breakfast. The purchase and 
 service of mess supplies, the mess outfit, and the bill of 
 fare are duties intrusted to a naval paymaster. Every 
 cadet pays a mess entrance fee, but this is charged against 
 his account, and is refunded when he leaves the academy. 
 His monthly assessment for mess bill and laundry averages 
 about $22 ; but if for any reason he is absent on leave for 
 a week or longer, he receives credit for this absence on his 
 mess account. The officer in charge presides at meals, has 
 charge of the police of the mess-hall, and inspects it and 
 the servants daily. The food is well cooked, neatly served, 
 and furnished with the liberality and the variety demand- 
 ed by growing youths whose bodies and minds are at a 
 healthy strain. The bill of fare is not moulded months 
 ahead in cast-iron schedules, but is arranged from day 
 to day, so that appetites may be sharpened by the 
 gifts which one of the best markets in the world Balti- 
 more offers at the very door of the school. Breakfast 
 lasts thirty minutes, and the chaplain then reads morning 
 prayers. During the half-hour recreation which follows, 
 " sick call " is sounded, and cadets who are ill, or who think 
 they are incapacitated for full routine of studies and drills, 
 report to the surgeon. This officer prepares a list of those 
 excused from drills, and another of those whose ailments 
 are serious enough to forbid all work. Should these latter 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 83 
 
 cases require constant supervision, they are sent to the 
 Sick Quarters. 
 
 For the purpose of study and recreation the day is di- 
 vided into three periods of two hours each, the first period 
 commencing at 7.55 and ending at 10.10 A.M.; the second 
 extending from 10.20 A.M. to 12.35 P.M.; and the third 
 from 1.50 to 3.55 P.M. Each cadet, as a rule, attends three 
 recitations daily, and as the routine is regulated so that he 
 is seldom obliged to recite more than once in the same 
 period, he has an hour of study previous to each lesson, in 
 addition to the two hours which he is expected to employ 
 at night in general preparation. The course of instruction 
 is grouped under the special departments of (i) Seaman- 
 ship, Naval Construction, and Naval Tactics; (2) Ordnance 
 and Gunnery; (3) Astronomy, Navigation, and Surveying; 
 (4) Steam-engineering ; (5) Mechanics and Applied Math- 
 ematics ; (6) Physics and Chemistry ; (7) Mathematics ; (8) 
 English Studies, History, and Law; (9) Modern Lan- 
 guages; (10) Mechanical Drawing; and (li) Physiology 
 and Hygiene. This last includes " instruction in the nature 
 of alcoholic drinks and narcotics, with special reference to 
 their effects upon the human system." 
 
 The faculty, known here as the Academy Board, con- 
 sists of the Superintendent, the Commandant of Cadets, 
 and the eleven heads of departments. These are naval 
 officers, and mainly graduates of the academy. The di- 
 rect supervision of the institution is given by law to the 
 Secretary of the Navy, but its government is assigned to 
 a superintendent, who must be a line officer, not below the 
 grade of commander (lieutenant-colonel in relative army 
 rank). The personnel and materiel are under his com- 
 mand, and he can appoint or remove all employe's whose 
 tenures do not come within the special provisions of law 
 or regulations. The enforcement of interior discipline and 
 
84 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 the direction of drills and tactical instruction are intrusted 
 to the Commandant of Cadets, who must also be a line 
 officer not below the grade of commander. In all studies 
 the instruction is supervised by the heads of departments, 
 each one distributing its work among the assistants as- 
 signed to his special branch. Without going into more 
 burdensome details than are unavoidable, it may be said 
 that the academic course extends over four years, and is 
 divided as follows : Fourth class, Algebra, Geometry, Eng- 
 lish History, Rhetoric, and French ; third class, Trigonom- 
 etry, Descriptive Geometry, Analytic Geometry, English 
 History, the Constitution, Elementary Physics, Chemistry, 
 French, and Mechanical Drawing; second class, Marine 
 Engines and Boilers, Sound, Light, and Heat, Electricity, 
 Magnetism, Calculus, Mechanics, and International Law ; 
 and first class, Seamanship, Naval Tactics, Ordnance, Gun- 
 nery, Astronomy, Navigation, Surveying, and Physiology 
 and Hygiene. It will be seen from this that the first three 
 years are devoted mainly to a general education, and that 
 in the last year the course is technically adapted to the 
 naval service, more particularly to the duties of line offi- 
 cers. At the close of the academic term of four years 
 the cadets are distributed among the cruising vessels where 
 this professional tendency is supposed to be continued, 
 though, it must be confessed, this is more or less perfunc- 
 tory, except in practical matters. Two years after gradu- 
 ation the cadets are gathered from all over the world, sub- 
 jected to a final examination, and assigned such relative 
 positions among themselves, in the grade of ensign, as 
 their examination rank and cruise reports may determine. 
 With much that is good in this system goes much that 
 is evil, and radical changes should be made in it. No- 
 where are the demands for these changes more earnestly 
 and intelligently advocated than at the Academy, and if 
 
GOING ALOFT 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 85 
 
 Congress would consider the suggestions made by the 
 Superintendent, and indorsed by the Secretary, certain 
 measures of relief would be certain to follow. First of all, 
 the course should be reduced to four years, and at its 
 conclusion the selections for the various corps should be 
 made, and the surplus graduates be honorably discharged. 
 There are, in an educational sense, no arguments in favor 
 of the two years' course afloat, and the examination to be 
 passed at its end must, from the conditions imposed upon 
 the cadets by ship life, be similar in nature to that already 
 passed at the end of the four years' course. Upon going 
 afloat, at the end of the academic term, the varying condi- 
 tions of ship, station, and surroundings must be of such 
 undue advantage to some, and of such great disadvantage 
 to others, that should it be considered advisable to retain 
 the six years' course, the entire class ought, in all fairness, 
 to be placed on board the same ship and be subjected to 
 the same systematic training and discipline. There can be 
 no question of the unnecessary expense and hardship of 
 subjecting those who are reasonably sure, from their aca- 
 demic standing, to be surplus graduates to an additional 
 course afloat which tends to unfit them for civil pursuits ; 
 and, on the other hand, it is only right that a naval cadet 
 should, at graduation, be given, as at West Point, a com- 
 mission which will remove him as early as possible from 
 the probationary state. 
 
 Leaving out all question as to the modernity and ade- 
 quacy of the curriculum, what seems most to be needed are 
 provisions that the period of admission should be limited 
 to ages between fifteen and seventeen, inclusive ; that in 
 order to give opportunities for proper preparation, the ap- 
 pointments should be made one year in advance ; that en- 
 trance should be authorized only in May, and not, as at 
 present, in May and September; that the length of the 
 
86 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 course should be four years, and that, at its expiration, 
 graduates entering the service should be commissioned in 
 the lower grade of the line and of the engineer and ma- 
 rine corps, and those not entering should be given an hon- 
 orable discharge. 
 
 Whatever may be said of the defects of the system, no 
 faults may be found with its conduct, for its fine results 
 have been due largely to the loyalty and ability of those 
 intrusted with its control. There are given to every de- 
 tail an economy of labor and a fruition of energy which 
 forbid the vain conservatism that sacrifices results to meth- 
 ods, and looks rather to the perfection of the machinery 
 than to the work expected of the machine. 
 
VIII 
 
 RECITATIONS are heard by sections, which usually in- 
 clude from five to ten students, so that all instruction is 
 largely individual and direct. While this imposes a great 
 burden upon the teachers, still it is borne with a patience 
 that entitles these gentlemen to the gratitude of the coun- 
 try. Besides these mental benefits, a personal direction 
 is kept over the student's physical setting up to his man- 
 ner of entering and leaving the room, to his bearing at the 
 black-board, to his attitude while at rest. The value of 
 a recitation is estimated by a scale of marks ranging from 
 4 as a maximum to zero, all intermediate numerical qual- 
 ities representing such other relations that 2.5 is a min- 
 imum of proficiency, and all marks below this are unsatis- 
 factory. ' Every study day, except Saturday, there is a 
 drill or exercise which begins at 4.05 P.M., and may con- 
 tinue until 5.30 P.M. Though this instruction is distrib- 
 uted under forty heads, it may be grouped, for illustration, 
 under the general branches of Seamanship, Gunnery, In- 
 fantry Drill, Naval Tactics, Small Arms, Signalling, Navi- 
 gation, Surveying, Steam and Practical Electricity, Dan- 
 cing, and Physical Exercise. Drills are strictly progres- 
 sive, and are held usually by divisions, though at intervals 
 the corps is assembled for general instruction. The fourth 
 class is taught Seamanship mainly rigging-loft work 
 Great -Gun Exercise, Infantry Tactics, Field Artillery, 
 Rowing, Swimming, and Dancing. The next year the 
 three last are omitted, and Fencing and Target Practice 
 
88 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 with muskets and pistols are added. In the second class 
 the target practice is extended to Great Guns and Ma- 
 chine-pieces, and there is a capital practical course in 
 Steam Machinery and Signalling. In the first-class year 
 Steam Tactics, Monitor Exercise, Great-Gun Target Prac- 
 tice, Torpedoes, Navigation, Surveying, Practical Electric- 
 ity, and Boxing complete the course. Gunnery, Seaman- 
 ship, and Steam Exercises take place at anchor and un- 
 der way, so that before the four years are ended each 
 cadet has received individual instruction in the details of 
 these sciences, from the manual labor of a landsman, coal- 
 heaver, and powderman, up to the command of the ship 
 and battery, and to the charge of the machinery under 
 way. After the daily drill there is a recreation period un- 
 til evening roll-call at 6.30. This is followed by supper 
 and another recreation period which ends at 7.30. Stud- 
 ies continue until 9.30, and then with gun-fire and tattoo 
 the day's work is over. For a happy half-hour books and 
 drills and all the petty cares and failures of the hour are 
 forgotten ; the grim building is merry with boyish voices ; 
 the tinkle of guitars, the resonant twang of banjos, and 
 the chorus of old -day songs are heard. But body and 
 mind are tired, and by -and -by lights disappear, voices 
 grow lower, the bugles sound taps, and, as if by magic, 
 the quarters slip into darkness, and the cadet's long day 
 is done. 
 
 Such is the brief and colorless record of daily life at the 
 academy. Summed up, it gives a student eight hours for 
 sleep, five and a half for studies, three for recitations, two 
 for drills and formations, one and a half for mess, and four 
 for recreation, though during this play-time official inter- 
 ruptions often make his leisure less than one-sixth of the 
 day. Saturday is a half-holiday, and studies and recita- 
 tions end at 10.10 A.M., and drills at 12.30 P.M. After 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 89 
 
 Sunday inspection or muster, church service is held. This 
 is non-sectarian, and attendance is obligatory, except with 
 cadets who have, at the written request of their parents 
 or guardians, received permission to attend the Annapolis 
 churches of their home faiths. These church parties march 
 to and from town in charge of a senior cadet, who is ex- 
 pected to maintain order and report violations of discipline. 
 
 Written examinations take place monthly, and the aca- 
 demic standing for that period is determined by adding 
 the mean of a cadet's weekly average (multiplied by two) 
 to the examination marks, and then dividing the sum by 
 three. A statement of this standing, together with the 
 number of demerits received and the relative class rank 
 attained, is bulletined for the information of the corps, 
 and forwarded monthly to the cadet's parents and to the 
 Secretary of the Navy. Sometimes different formulae for 
 determining averages are employed, but in every case the 
 essential principle is the same. The semi-annual and an- 
 nual examinations are written, and every paper submitted 
 is examined and marked separately by two instructors, 
 and all oral examinations must be conducted in the pres- 
 ence of the head of the department. 
 
 Objection is sometimes made that the standard of 
 scholarship is so artificial or so arbitrary mainly in the 
 preponderance given to mathematical attainments as to 
 drive out of the service many cadets who otherwise would 
 make capital officers. But is this true? I believe not, for 
 it is claimed years of experience prove that those who 
 have the best standing in the pure or applied mathemat- 
 ics show also higher capacity and superior industry in the 
 other branches. The board of visitors of 1884 made a 
 special investigation of this subject, and its conclusions are 
 worth quoting. " A numerical standard," it reports, " is 
 purely nominal, and at best only approximate. The chief 
 
90 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 practical question is as to its administration and applica- 
 tion. A careful inspection has surprised the board that 
 the standards of this school are interpreted and applied 
 with the utmost intelligence and liberality. Nothing 
 more is required than is fairly necessary to the efficiency 
 of the public service. Every reasonable indulgence is al- 
 lowed, every proper opportunity is offered to make good 
 deficiencies within reasonable limits, and every possible 
 encouragement is given to the cadet from the beginning 
 to the end of the course. The records are kept with the 
 utmost fulness, precision, and impartiality, and the stand- 
 ards of scholarship, as well as of merit and demerit in 
 conduct grades, are applied with discretion and leniency. 
 Every student gets the fullest credit for attainment and 
 for conduct, and it is difficult to see what better system 
 could be devised or how any system could be better ad- 
 ministered." 
 
 So the busy year runs away, but not unhappily, for 
 though these details may seem as joy-productive as the 
 Homeric enumeration of the ships, still cadet life is not all 
 work and no play, and our nautical Jack is far from being 
 a dull boy. He has his breathing-spaces, his privileges, 
 his amusements. On Saturday afternoons leave is granted 
 its frequency depending upon the student's standing 
 and conduct ; the first grade going weekly, the next every 
 fortnight, and the immortals of the last division but once 
 a month. This liberty begins at dinner formation, and 
 continues for the first class until gun-fire at 9.30 P.M., and 
 for the others until evening roll-call. In addition to these 
 general privileges, a first or second class man in the high- 
 est conduct grade has leave on Sunday afternoons, and, 
 where especially good behavior and standing warrant the 
 privilege, permission is given to visit Baltimore or Wash- 
 ington. Though this seems rather hard on the pent-up 
 
FURLING THE TOP-SAIL 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 91 
 
 third grade, still these careless young gentlemen do not 
 suffer as much as might be imagined, for, at the best, 
 Annapolis is a dull town, and nearly all amusements are 
 found within the academy walls. Naturally these take 
 the form of athletic exercises and competitions. There 
 are class clubs of all kinds, and of course an academy 
 crew, nine, and eleven for stirring holiday matches with 
 the athletes of Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Georgetown, or 
 St. John's, and with their brother cadets at West Point, 
 until for some occult reason this was forbidden. The 
 contests are managed by an association, and are finan- 
 cially supported by a fixed monthly contribution, and by 
 a tax which is ingeniously raised through the proposition 
 that " all cadets who do not wish to contribute towards a 
 new boat [for example] will please leave their names with 
 the officer of the day." Need it be added that public 
 spirit rises superior to the twenty-five or fifty cents ex- 
 pected, and that the officer of the day's aged and mouldy 
 list has been in all these years a tabula rasa? During 
 recreation hour the tennis-courts, pistol-gallery, and bowl- 
 ing-alley may be used, and on Saturdays the trim steam- 
 launches and graceful sailing cutters are at the disposition 
 of those who, like Pepys, " will take by boat a holiday in 
 merry company." 
 
 Hops are given in the gymnasium Saturday nights after 
 Thanksgiving, and twice a year two large balls make joy- 
 ous the hearts of many maidens whose dreams for weeks 
 previous have revolved in a circle, the centre of which is 
 the band-stand in the armory, where these entertainments 
 take place. During the winter the officers have private 
 theatricals, to which the cadets are invited, and an annual 
 tournament enables the first-class men to exhibit their 
 strength and grace as swordsmen, club-swingers, boxers, 
 and ground and lofty tumblers. Every form of legitimate 
 
92 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 sport, except that much-missed annual football match with 
 West Point, is encouraged by the superintendent, and so 
 when the annual examination comes in with the pleasant 
 days of May, parents mark with delight the physical de- 
 velopments of a year. They see broadening chests, rosy 
 cheeks, clear eyes, tense muscles, pink skins, and bodies as 
 hard as nails. Gone into thin air is the awkward, sham- 
 bling walk, and instead there is an upright, well-balanced 
 not automatic carriage, and a swinging gait nearly 
 akin to the rhythmic suppleness which has made the 
 marching of New York's Seventh Regiment famous ev- 
 erywhere. 
 
 Examinations are soon over, the graduating class goes 
 out into the service for its professional course afloat, shore 
 duty ends, and the new third-class man begins his two 
 months' busy life on shipboard. 
 
IX 
 
 " SIR," said Dr. Johnson, " no man will be a sailor who 
 has contrivance enough to get himself into jail ;" and, 
 " Sir," undauntedly answers the youngster, with his first 
 practice cruise still unsailed " sir. what an awful hum- 
 bug you can be sometimes." In the academy world this 
 initiatory cruise is eagerly expected by the cadet who 
 entered eight months before, because his surroundings 
 have magnified its mysteries, and given no little self-im- 
 portance to those who have made, if not the deep-water 
 voyages of the old days, at least the run between the 
 capes of Virginia and the Isles of Shoals. 
 
 Curiously enough, the academy's first practice -vessel 
 was a steamer, the John Hancock, though in the same 
 summer of 1851 the midshipmen cruised at sea and off 
 the coast of Maine in the sloop of war Preble. Before the 
 school was reorganized in that year, the course had been 
 always interrupted half-way by an obligatory three years' 
 service at sea in a cruising ship of war ; but as this dissi- 
 pated the benefits of instruction before habits of study 
 were formed, a curriculum extending through four suc- 
 cessive years, with an annual practice cruise, was adopted. 
 Since 1851 cruises have never been omitted, except in the 
 first year of the war, when the academy was moved to 
 Newport. From the modest beginning with the John 
 Hancock the value of the sea -work was found to be so 
 great, and the corps had so much increased, that the mid- 
 shipmen, during and for some years after the war, cruised 
 
94 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 not in a single ship, as at present, but in a squadron. 
 One of these that of 1866, if I remember correctly was 
 composed of seven vessels three sailing-ships (two frig- 
 ates and one sloop of war), three steamers, and the 
 schooner America. It is not generally known that this 
 famous yacht was captured in the St. John's River, about 
 1862, by the present Rear- Admiral T. H. Stevens (retired), 
 and that his officers and crew voluntarily offered to re- 
 sign all claims for prize-money upon the condition that 
 the schooner would be sent as a practice - vessel to the 
 Naval Academy. This promise was given and for some 
 years kept ; but in 1873, in defiance of decency and jus- 
 tice, the yacht was put up at auction by the government 
 and sold for $50x30, not a penny of which to make the 
 whole affair more dishonorable, if possible was ever 
 given to the blue -jackets, who were entitled to half the 
 prize value. 
 
 Other famous ships have been stationed at the acad- 
 emy, among them, and always first in the hearts of Amer- 
 icans, the Constitution of glorious memory. Here, also, 
 was stationed the Macedonian, captured in 1812 from the 
 British by the frigate United States, Captain Stephen De- 
 catur commanding; and for years the cadets cruised along 
 the coast in the Constellation, that renowned war -ship 
 which, under command of Commodore Thomas Truxton, 
 gallantly fought and defeated the frigates LInsurgente 
 and La Vengeance, in our " quasi war " with France. There 
 is inspiration in the very names of these old warriors; and 
 so long as copper bolts and locust trunnels will hold live- 
 oak together, such of these ships as have not been sold 
 ought to be kept at Annapolis. 
 
 As soon as the first and third classes and all the new 
 appointments report on board the steamer Bancroft or 
 the sailing-ship assigned for the duty with their bags and 
 
AN EARLY BATH 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 95 
 
 hammocks, they take up a routine which considers them 
 purely and simply as man-o'-war's men. They are sta- 
 tioned, berthed, and messed as if in cruising ships, the 
 first-class men being divided into weekly details, the du- 
 ties of which differ widely. In one group they act as offi- 
 cers of the forecastle, tops, gangway, and quarter-deck, and 
 as mates of decks ; in the other they are rated as petty 
 officers and seamen. The junior -class men are divided 
 into watches, and distributed as forecastle men, fore, main, 
 and mizzentop men, and after-guards ; they pull the boats, 
 man the gear, handle the sails, take the wheel, keep watch- 
 and-watch at sea, stand lookout, and, indeed, perform all 
 the duties, except cleaning ship, of the enlisted blue- 
 jackets in the service. The regular crew of eighty-odd 
 man the starboard battery, the cadets the port battery ; 
 but in pulling and hauling about decks the general work 
 is done together. 
 
 The first night on board is still mildly exciting for the 
 new appointments, but not as it was in the old days before 
 " hazing," which is generally silly, often barbarous, and al- 
 ways useless, was stamped out. 
 
 Within a few days the cadets shake easily into their 
 places, and by going over the mast-head every morning, 
 sending up and down the light spars, and giving a pull 
 here and a pull there and a long pull altogether every- 
 where for the best part of their waking hours, the young- 
 sters soon acquire a nautical air and a fairly good grip 
 upon the strange surroundings. Two or three days later 
 the practice-ship drops down the Annapolis Roads, stands 
 into Chesapeake Bay, and the long-looked-for cruise begins. 
 Practical work commences at once, and if the winds be 
 unfavorable, and they are usually, the ship beats down 
 the bay in the daytime, and anchors at sunset. Here the 
 new cadet sees the envied senior-class men in charge of 
 
96 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 the deck, make and take in sail, tack, wear, boxhaul, and 
 chapel ship ; sees him occasionally miss stays and box her 
 off, heave to, get casts of the deep-sea lead, shift sails and 
 spars, reef and shake out reefs, and bring the ship to an 
 anchor. All this time he is doing yeoman's service him- 
 self ; his hands get horny and hard ; his white working 
 clothes are tarry, and he is so used to " stamping and 
 going it " that when night comes he is glad to turn in 
 early, and leave the hardships of anchor watch to those 
 who have enjoyed the triumphs of the quarter-deck. 
 After Hampton Roads is reached, the vessel lies at 
 anchor for a week or more ; but this is a busy season, and 
 all day long there are great-gun, company, pistol, or small- 
 arm drills, fire quarters, boats armed and equipped, or that 
 stirring exercise when the crew and cadets are called to 
 " abandon ship." This drill is usually executed without 
 previous warning, exactly as it might be needed in any 
 sudden emergency, as in a collision or danger of founder- 
 ing on the high sea ; but within a moment after the order 
 rings out every one is at his station ; some lower the 
 boats, others stand sentry over the falls, so no unauthor- 
 ized or panic-stricken person may enter without orders; 
 the majority pass up provisions and water, cooking uten- 
 sils, arms, ammunition, and nautical instruments ; there is 
 heard everywhere the rush of feet, the whimper of boat- 
 falls as the davits creak and complain with the strain and 
 the weight of the crews lowering themselves by stopper 
 or halyards. From every gun -port willing hands pass 
 stores into the cutters, and when ready each reports its 
 name and number. In less than five minutes, if the dis- 
 cipline be good, the crew is embarked in cutters, whalers, 
 launches, gig, and dingy, all submerged almost to their 
 gunwales, and the ship is abandoned officially. 
 
 The distant, unvisited delights of Fortress Monroe are 
 
MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 97 
 
 soon left behind. The ship runs down the Roads with a 
 free and a gallant wind, let us hope ; a departure is taken 
 from the Capes, and the ship stands seaward. For the 
 most part, cruises are made to the northward and east- 
 ward, sometimes in Long Island Sound and Gardiner's 
 and Buzzard's bays, and always for some part of the time 
 between Nantucket and the western limits of the Gulf 
 Stream. All varieties of weather are taken as they come, 
 not dodged ; and during the cruise the cadets are pretty 
 sure to experience a fair share of gales, of heavy squalls, 
 of flat calms, when the ship rolls helplessly on a sea gleam- 
 ing like a shield of molten lead, of brisk breezes, of golden 
 summer days, and star -lit nights. New London, New- 
 port, or Portsmouth is visited, and a brief liberty given. 
 And it is a delight to watch these youngsters enjoy- 
 ing a run ashore with all the zest of John Oxenham and 
 Salvation Yeo, when, newly landed, these hearts of oak 
 roared on Bideford Quay to the lads of Devon the merry 
 catch of 
 
 "Westward ho! with a rumbelow, 
 And hurrah for the Spanish Main, O !" 
 
 In addition to. the usual exercises, and to the demands 
 made by the exigencies of weather upon a sailing-ship, a 
 course of instruction is regularly carried out. This is rig- 
 orously progressive, and includes practical work in sea- 
 manship, navigation, and gunnery. 
 
 The practice -ship sails slowly southward early in Au- 
 gust, and arrives in Chesapeake Bay about the I5th. 
 There is generally an exercise at carrying out anchors and 
 clearing hawse in Lynn Haven Bay, and a sail and boat 
 drill off Fortress Monroe ; and the monotony of the cruise 
 is invariably broken here by the long-expected ball given 
 at the Hygeia Hotel. Slowly the last weeks come and 
 go ; and a very happy day is it, indeed, when the ship picks 
 7 
 
98 MIDSHIPMEN, OLD AND NEW 
 
 up her old anchorage in the inner harbor of Annapolis, and 
 the first, second, and third class men go on leave for a month. 
 
 And by no one is this leave more appreciated or better 
 deserved than by the second-class men. During the cruise 
 they have lived on board the Santee, and have been given 
 practical work in the machine-shop; in running steam- 
 cutters ; in target practice, afloat and ashore, with howit- 
 zers, machine pieces, and great guns; in boat drill, sail, 
 and steam tactics, and in signalling with the navy and 
 the army codes. Many hours of this time were spent at 
 the work-benches of the steam-engineering building or in 
 running the shop engines, and when the 1st of September 
 gives them a well-earned holiday, they have something 
 more than a rough acquaintance with workshop tools and 
 appliances. 
 
 The youngster is now a proud third-class man ; now a 
 second ; and almost before he begins to realize his dignity 
 and honor in academy ways, his graduating day has come. 
 The Board of Visitors those potent, grave, and reverend 
 seigniors, selected from the navy, from both Houses of 
 Congress, and from civil life have heard him recite, have 
 seen him drill, have looked wise and overburdened with 
 the weight of responsibility, and have written the capital 
 report, which is so complimentary, so frank, and so full of 
 recommendations that are [worse luck] rarely read and 
 seldom adopted. Our happy youth has won the company 
 flag, for he is, of course, a ranking cadet officer, and has 
 worked hard to make his division victor in this traditional 
 competition. Then comes the solemn hour. His cheeks 
 are flushed; his heart beats intermittently; he listens to 
 the long address, hears his name, catches the loud roar of 
 applause his own division loudest, most earnest of all 
 receives his diploma, and his school-days are over his 
 world is all before him. 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 A FEW lustrums have ebbed since the United States 
 sloop of war Resaca was employed upon the Pacific side 
 in that optimistic survey of the Isthmus of Panama which 
 was to reveal a tide -water canal route from ocean to 
 ocean. I was attached to the ship at this time "very 
 much attached," as we all growled and, like the others, 
 found the climate villanous, the work rigorous, the sur- 
 roundings most depressing. Even in the preliminary 
 stages so many denials had to be enforced that at last, as 
 a concession to the civilized side of the men engaged 
 in the labor, an opportunity was offered them to send 
 home and receive letters through agencies less uncertain 
 than the pestilent bungoes which traded coastward from 
 the Gulf of San Miguel. Into these denials entered many 
 essentials, such as clean linen and mess stores, so when 
 it was announced that the sailing - launch, adequately 
 equipped and manned, was to go to Panama, there were 
 arrayed such a mail, personal and official, and such lists of 
 stores necessary for the successful pursuit of the elusive 
 routes, that the departure of the craft took on a fine air of 
 ceremonious congratulation. When the boat shoved clear of 
 the ship's side, the men crowding the rail, and the officers 
 
70.? 
 
 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 gathered aft, sped her in a hearty cheer the warmest of 
 God-speeds ; the ship's dog barked, the landsmen swore 
 at their bondage, and the forecastle cat glared silently 
 from the pivot-port. For hers was an absorbing interest, 
 as among the launch's crew was that very tender-hearted 
 blue-jacket whose affection for the cat had made him go 
 the length of sporting her tattooed portrait, in the pri- 
 mary colors so dear to Jacky, upon a stalwart forearm, 
 where a very weeping -willow and an impossible tomb 
 divided the muscles with a quaint distich out of a sailor's 
 hornbook. 
 
 The cat gazed long and uncannily from the pivot-port 
 rail, her tail waving a protesting adieu, and her whiskers 
 rigged out with the rigidity of a Greek brig's bowsprit. 
 When the boat turned a bend in the river, and was shut 
 in by a lush fringe of mangrove, the cat jumped spitefully 
 to the deck, walked forward (back arched and tail swollen, 
 like a magnified frankfurter), spat at the yellow dog we 
 had conveyed, the wise call it up-river, and then disap- 
 peared forever. 
 
 Whether she dropped overboard in the swift tide- 
 stream of the Tuyra, or was astrally translated, none of 
 us ever learned after the closest inquest; but that surely 
 was the end of cat number one, as we despairingly called 
 her. 
 
 Two nights afterwards, when in-shore, fairly well up 
 Panama way, the launch, spitted by a squall from no- 
 man's -land, turned turtle, belched mail, and coin, and 
 linen, and all the rest of it, to the sharks, and one man, 
 the cat's particular adoption, was drowned. 
 
 Six months later, and after a deal of trying work, the 
 Resaca gained a well-earned anchorage off the murky 
 coast of Callao. Here we met an American, a civil en- 
 gineer of exceeding promise, who was engaged as chief of 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 103 
 
 division in the survey of that cloud-assailing route which 
 started from Lima, skirted the Rimac, and then zigzagged 
 over the hills at an elevation deadly to the plain-reared 
 gringo. He was low in his clever mind, hipped, sapped 
 by fever and anxieties, and pathetically hungry for home 
 and American faces and ways. We stumbled into his 
 story through a lucky pitfall, though this may have no 
 place here. It opened our hearts, however, for he was a 
 stranger in a freebooting zone, and we were his country- 
 men, and surely that was enough to make the mess beg 
 him to come on board for a chance at the sea breezes and 
 a sure hit at American ways and faces. 
 
 The night he crawled over the gangway the ship's new 
 cat slipped overboard, but with such pitiful mewings and 
 clawings that the rush of rescuers nearly swamped the 
 lowered boat. By the flare of signal torches and deck 
 lanterns Tom was seen in the nick of time, and to every- 
 body's content was hauled safely inboard. 
 
 Our visitor found a tonic in the breeze and the rest and 
 novelty of the life ; he made a most receptive target for 
 the mess-worn stories, and all around proved such a good 
 sort of American that when, ten days later, he announced 
 his intention of striking the beach for the afternoon, a 
 howl of growls went up, which had a sane echo in the 
 calm and strong protest of the surgeon. It seemed, how- 
 ever, that he had to go, for one of his inventions, upon 
 which depended the immediate support of his old people 
 at home, was then under examination by the authorities. 
 
 He remained ashore after sundown, came off in the 
 damp boat of a drunken fletero, who raised a row half-way 
 to the ship about the fare, and when he climbed the gang- 
 way was so worn out with the running about and heat 
 and worry that he had to be helped to his state-room. 
 Just as two bells struck in the first watch (nine at night), 
 
104 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 and tattoo had its echo in taps beaten, the doctor came on 
 deck to tell us that the engineer was in a bad way ; but 
 in the middle of his explanations we heard a scramble on 
 the housed awning, saw a tangle of flying feet and claw- 
 ing paws, and heard a splash, a wailing mew of despair, 
 answered by the bleat of a belated seal paddling towards 
 San Lorenzo, seaward. Cat number two was overboard, 
 this time for good and all ; for though the nearest boat 
 went into the water by the run, and willing fingers gripped 
 oar -looms and handles, it was too late. The cat had 
 slipped into the darkness, and was borne shoreward on the 
 flood, surging riotously. 
 
 When the ebb was making, about two in the morning 
 of the second day, the young engineer stretched out a 
 faltering hand to the doctor and to the rest of us gath- 
 ered about him, tried to tell us something about his inven- 
 tion, and died. 
 
 After long days at sea, and longer ones in stunted 
 Peruvian and Chilian ports, the Resaca anchored one 
 breezy morning off the town of Talcahuano, which offers 
 such large possibilities to sailors. Here some one was 
 given a wonderful kitten, yellow and gray, with curious 
 interlacings of black and tawny rings. It was a breed 
 strange to the country, so everybody said, and no one pre- 
 tended to account for it save Lafferty, a Californian, who 
 ran the Fourth of July Hotel. This tavern was much fre- 
 quented by sailors of all degrees, and here one day, in the 
 captain's room, religiously tabooed to all save master- 
 mariners and naval officers, Lafferty told in an ornamental 
 lie how the kitten's mother had appeared suddenly after 
 a rainfall, and how she proved to be, not a Dago cat, but 
 one of an Indian breed, born on the silent, yellow pam- 
 pas, which stretched over the hills for miles and miles out 
 Argentine way. 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 105 
 
 The kitten grew into a very gentle cat, took kindly 
 to all hands, though it adopted as its special ward the 
 senior watch-officer, who, by-the-way, was the only man in 
 the mess that had a wife and baby to keep him out of 
 mischief. 
 
 Those were busy days for the ship off that nook-shotten 
 coast, and so after another six months the Resaca was 
 one morning at sea, standing up the shore, bound for 
 Payta, when the senior watch-officer came on deck and 
 learned that the cat was dead. In a mad chase after a 
 rat diving into a chain-pipe, it had made a jump from the 
 topgallant forecastle, struck its head on the cable, and 
 ended thus untimely its career. After his manner, the 
 senior watch-officer fell into sad forebodings. When the 
 day broke, the gear was laid up, decks were swept, and 
 preparations made for washing down. Hardly had the 
 hickory brooms begun their swishing when White John 
 White, captain of the starboard watch of the after-guard 
 staggered against the bulwarks, and said, " I feel bad, 
 sir," and then gripping his throat, continued, " all throt- 
 tled here." Two hands were ordered to help White for- 
 ward, the doctor was called, the apothecary aroused. 
 
 Just as the gray dawn silvered into a clear day the 
 doctor came in pajamas with a leap and a bound on 
 deck, asked what the row was, and started forward ; but 
 in the centre of a silent crowd of sailors of the watch 
 gathered at the weather-gangway he stopped. It was too 
 late ; White was dead. 
 
 After the captain of the after-guard had been buried, 
 and the ship had gathered way on her old course north- 
 ward, the petty officers came to the mast, and asked to 
 see the captain. When he appeared, the senior sailor- 
 man, cap in hand, forelock properly patted, spoke up man- 
 fully and quietly. The burden of his request this most 
 
106 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 gravely considered, most earnestly granted was that the 
 ship's company begged that no more cats be allowed on 
 board. He went on to prove that they brought bad luck, 
 black cats and strange, foreign cats especially, and while 
 the people forward were not superstitious, still queer 
 things had happened of late, and he felt it to be only fair 
 that the captain should know how the men looked at it. 
 
 Lafferty's pampas cat was the last we shipped that 
 cruise, and the rats had a fine run of the holds thereafter, 
 until one day Bill Clarke, late champion light-weight of 
 South Australia, and then proprietor of a snug English 
 pub and dog-pit in Callao, came off to the ship by con- 
 tract, and, baiting his traps with melon rinds, caught in 
 two nights more rats than may be chronicled here. 
 
 This, of course, is an over-long yarn to reel off in order 
 to prove that superstition is still foolishly potent with 
 sailors. It is as easy as fudging a day's work to show 
 that, in the case quoted, coincidences were mistaken for 
 causes, and that the evidence needed a link or two ; but it 
 was another curious coincidence that no more men died 
 suddenly that cruise after we gave up enlisting cats. 
 
II 
 
 AFTER studying them fairly well, I doubt if modern 
 sailors are more superstitious than any other class with 
 equal training and opportunities. I believe that every- 
 body is leavened with superstition, notably the noisiest 
 scoffers, and those mountebanks, the Thirteen Clubs, for 
 these gentry protest too much. It seems to be a human 
 instinct, modified by racial inheritances and developments. 
 In the youth of the world its manifestations were the 
 earliest recorded utterances of men concerning the visible 
 phenomena of the universe, and its grip on simple minds 
 was an outgrowth of the fear of the unknown. Of all 
 people sailors must deal at first hand, and helplessly to 
 some degree, with the most unknowable, uncontrollable 
 of material problems, the sea, and it is only natural that 
 their folk-lore should be, in part, land stories fitted with 
 sea meanings, and, in part, blind explanations of sea 
 phenomena both being maintained valorously by the 
 grewsome conservatism of the seaman, even after rational 
 causes come to the rescue. 
 
 In earlier days superstition was as much a part of every 
 ship as the water she was to float in ; for it entered with 
 the wood scarfed into her keel, and climbed to the flags 
 and garlands waving at her mast-heads ; it ran riotously at 
 her launching, controlled her name, her crew, and cargoes; 
 it timed her days and hours of sailing, and convoyed her 
 voyages. It summoned apparitions for her ill fortune, and 
 evoked portents and signs for her prosperity ; it made 
 
xoS SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 winds blow foul or fair, governed her successful ventures 
 and arrivals, and, when her work was done, promised a 
 port of rest somewhere off the shores of Fiddler's Green, 
 where all good sailors rest eternally, or threatened foul 
 moorings deep in the uncanny locker of Davy Jones of 
 ballad memory. 
 
 In many countries stolen wood was mortised into the 
 keel, as it made the ship sail faster at night ; though if the 
 first blow struck in fashioning this keel drew fire, the ship 
 was doomed to wreck upon her maiden voyage. Silver 
 (usually a coin) placed in the mainmast -step went for 
 lucky ventures, and misguided indeed was the owner who 
 permitted any of the unlucky timbers to enter into the 
 construction. Something of the ceremonious character 
 given to launchings survives to this day : where, of old, 
 ships were decked with flowers and crowns of leaves, 
 flags now flutter ; the libation poured on the deck, the 
 purification by the priest, the anointing with egg and 
 sulphur, find their exemplars in the well-aimed and wasted 
 magnums which are shattered on the receding cut-water as 
 the craft, released from the ways, slips, well greased, into 
 the sea ; the jar of wine put to his lips by the captain and 
 then emptied on deck, the cakes and ale set before the 
 crew, the stoup of wine offered to passers-by on the quay, 
 and the refusal of which was an evil omen all are real- 
 ized in these sadder lustrums by the builder's feast in the 
 mould-loft. 
 
 Lawyers, clergymen, and women are ever looked at 
 with disfavor on sailing-ships as sure to bring ill luck 
 lawyers, undoubtedly, from the antipathy of sailors to the 
 class, a dislike so pronounced that " sea-lawyer " is a very 
 bitter term of reproach, and " land-shark " is a synonyme. 
 Clergymen priests and parsons are unlucky, probably 
 because of their black gowns and their principal duty on 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 109 
 
 shipboard that of consoling the dying and burying the 
 dead though possibly because the devil, the great storm- 
 raiser, is their especial enemy, and sends tempests to de- 
 stroy them. Women who may reason out their unpop- 
 ularity? save that a ship is the last place for them, or 
 perhaps because of the dread of witches ; for of all spell- 
 workers in human form none is so dreaded as the female 
 brewers of hell - broth. Like the priests of the Middle 
 Ages, they can raise a prime quality of storm by tossing 
 sand or stones in the air, and, like Congreve's Lapland 
 sorceress, are supposed to live by selling contrary winds 
 and wrecked vessels. 
 
 Russian Fins or " Roosian " Fins, as Jacky has it 
 were, and are yet, wizards of high degree. Hurricanes 
 blew, calms beset, gales roared, as they willed, and their 
 incantations began to operate by the simple sticking of a 
 knife in the mast. If they wished to drive the rats out of 
 a vessel, they shoved the point of a snickersnee into the 
 deck, and every rat ran for the sharp blade, and willy-nilly 
 performed hara-kiri. No one ever saw, in sailor lore, a 
 penniless Russian Fin, for by slipping his hand into his 
 pocket he can always produce a gold doubloon why a 
 gold doubloon no one seems to know, but it is always 
 that coin ; his rum - bottle, often consulted silently and 
 alone, is never full nor empty a gentle plashing of tide- 
 half-tide bringing fat content, and woe be to the incau- 
 tious mariner who bites the weather-side of his thumb at 
 His High Nobility the spell-worker, for harm will surely 
 follow. 
 
 Certain families could never get sea employment under 
 their own surnames, not even such members as were born 
 with cauls, for they were tabooed, barred ; and many ani- 
 mals hares, pigs, and black cats, for example could nei- 
 ther be carried nor mentioned on shipboard, save under 
 
no SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 very stringent conditions. Scarborough wives kept a 
 black cat in the house to assure their husbands' lives at 
 sea ; but on voyages every black cat carried a gale in her 
 tail, and if she became unusually frolicsome a storm was 
 sure to follow. Years ago, on board the flag-ship Frank- 
 lin, up the Mediterranean, we had a yarn that illustrated 
 a survival of this antipathy to certain forms of animal life. 
 Two old quartermasters were heard during the morning 
 watch exchanging in the cockpit dismal experiences of 
 their dreams the night before. One was particularly har- 
 rowing, for the narrator wound up with, "And I say, Bill, 
 I was never so afeared in my life ; when I woke up it 
 seemed as true as day, and I was all of a tremble like an 
 asp on a leaf" 
 
 " What's that ?" said the other. " Pipe down ; don't 
 mention that rep-tile ; he's a hoodoo on shipboard." 
 
 Whistling and let us honor this sweet tradition is 
 very much against the proprieties of sea-life. You may, 
 in a calm, if not a landsman, woo with soothing whistle 
 San Antonio or Saint Nicholas, and a lagging wind may 
 be spurred in consequence by these patron saints of the 
 mariner ; but once the ship is going, never, wise and wary 
 passenger, whistle, if you fear keel - hauling, for, like the 
 Padrone in the " Golden Legend," you may find 
 
 " Only a little while ago, 
 I was whistling to Saint Antonio 
 For a capful of wind to fill our sail, 
 And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale." 
 
 Figure-heads were at first images of gods, and later of 
 saints and sea - heroes, and were held in high reverence. 
 To this hour the eyes glaring from the bow of a Chi- 
 nese junk enable the boat to voyage intelligently for 
 "no have two eyes, how can see? No can see, how can 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR ill 
 
 do ?" is the shibboleth of their sailors. Ships' bells were 
 blessed, and to-day if a mistake in their striking is made 
 by a stupid messenger-boy, they are struck backward to 
 break the spell. In one ship to which I was attached the 
 bell had come down to us from the Ticonderoga, through 
 the Thetis, I think, and was supposed to be under the 
 special control of a blue spirit of mischief. Why the 
 blue spirit should indulge in such vagaries is hidden, but 
 in the middle of deep - sea nights, when the moon rode in 
 an auspicious quarter, and the wind blew with the force 
 and from the direction necessary for the spell, the blue 
 bell was bound to make a complete circle, and ring out 
 nine bells stridently. Of course no one ever heard or 
 ought to hear nine bells at sea, for eight bells are as 
 fixed in limit as the decalogue ; but this was promised. 
 Whether the conditions failed to co-ordinate I cannot 
 say, but though the bell was watched by all sorts and 
 conditions of men, the occult ceremony was never per- 
 formed for our benefit. Is it necessary to add that by 
 report it was a common event in the other ships men- 
 tioned ? 
 
 The proverbial desertion of sinking ships by rats is 
 founded upon reason, and undoubtedly occurs, for as rats 
 like to prowl about dry-footed, and will stick to one place 
 so long as food is plenty, it is probable that the ship they 
 leave is so leaky and unseaworthy that their underdeck 
 work is too wet to suit them. 
 
 Most of the ceremonies of ship-life are of long descent, 
 but, I believe, none is more ancient nor more honored in 
 the observance than those attendant upon crossing the 
 line, whether it be the equator with deep-water ships or 
 the arctic circle with whalers. The details of the per- 
 formance vary even among the ships of the same waters ; 
 but it is always a tribute to Neptune exacted of the offi- 
 
H2 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 cers, crew, and passengers new to the waters entered. 
 Bassett gives a description, taken from Marryat's Frank 
 Mildmay, which is true of our ships in essentials. With 
 us the ship is usually hailed from the supposed depths of 
 the sea the evening before the line is to be reached, and 
 the captain is given the compliments of Neptune, and 
 asked to muster his novices for the sea-lord's inspection. 
 The next day the ship is hove to at the proper moment, 
 and Neptune, with his dear Amphitrite and suite, comes 
 on board over the bow or through a bridle-port, if the 
 weather permits. 
 
 " Neptune appears [writes Marryat] preceded by a young man, 
 dandily dressed in tights and riding on a car made of a gun-car- 
 riage drawn by six nearly naked blacks, spotted with yellow paint. 
 He has a long beard of oakum, an iron crown on his head, and 
 carries a trident with a small dolphin between its prongs. His 
 attendants consist of a secretary with quills of the sea-fowl ; a sur- 
 geon with lancet and pill-box ; a barber with a huge wooden razor, 
 with its blade made of an iron hoop, and a barber's mate, with a tub 
 for a shaving-box. Amphitrite, wearing a woman's nightcap with 
 sea-weed ribbons on her head, and bearing an albacore on a harpoon, 
 carries a ship's boy in her lap as a baby, with a marlinspike to cut 
 his teeth on. She is attended by three men dressed as nymphs, 
 with currycombs, mirrors, and pots of paint. The sheep-pen, lined 
 with canvas and filled with water, has already been prepared. The 
 victim, seated on a platform laid over it, is blindfolded, then shaved 
 by the barber, and finally plunged backward into the water. Offi- 
 cers escape by paying a fine in money or rum." 
 
 To this day it is the roughest sort of rough man-hand- 
 ling, but it is a short shrift for those who take it good- 
 naturedly, and, like bear-baiting, affords great amusement 
 to the spectators. 
 
 On Good Friday, in many ports, Roman Catholic sailors 
 cockbill their yards, slack their gear, and scourge Judas, 
 as signs of mourning. In the harbor of New York I have 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 113 
 
 seen the effigy of Judas hanged to a yard-arm until sun- 
 set, then lowered, and so belabored and beaten, so cuffed 
 and kicked, that it seemed a mercy when it was burned to 
 a charred mass in the galley, and the ashes were scattered 
 with contumely on the water. Spanish sailors, on certain 
 days of the week or month, lay aloft at sunset, and beat 
 the sheaves and pins of the blocks pulleys, as shore peo- 
 ple call them. This is driving the devil out of the gear, 
 and a fine din it makes, for the Spaniards put their brawn 
 into it. After all, it is nothing more than a general order 
 popularized, and is the result of a certain disaster, when a 
 Spanish squadron, surprised at a long-occupied anchorage, 
 could not make sail to engage the enemy because the pins 
 and sheaves of all the principal blocks had rusted in their 
 seatings. 
 
 Nothing was more common at sea in the old days than 
 apparitions, from horned and monstrous seamen, through 
 saints and red-bearded Norse gods, to that dreadful spec- 
 tre of the Cape, Adamastor, who is sometimes seen even 
 yet, in the twilight, hovering in cloud and mist over the 
 white folds of the Devil's Table-cloth mantling the head- 
 land of Good Hope. More picturesque than any other, 
 perhaps, is the Flying Dutchman, whose tale is told with 
 variations in nearly every maritime country, and whose 
 sad mishaps have formed the burden of many a song and 
 story. Jal gives the accepted version thus : 
 
 " An unbelieving Dutch captain had vainly tried to round Cape 
 Horn against a head gale. He swore he would do it, and when the 
 gale increased, laughed at the fears of his crew, smoked his pipe, 
 and drank his beer. He threw overboard some of the crew who 
 tried to make him seek a port. The Holy Ghost descended upon 
 the vessel, but, firing his pistol at the apparition, he pierced his 
 own hand and paralyzed his arm. He cursed God, and was then 
 condemned to navigate always without putting into port ; only 
 8 
 
H4 SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 
 
 having gall to drink, and red-hot iron to eat, and a watch to keep 
 that should last forever. He was to be the evil genius of the sea, 
 to torment Spanish sailors ; the sight of his storm-tossed bark to 
 carry presage of ill-fortune to luckless beholders. He sends white 
 squalls, disasters, tempests. Should he visit a ship, wine sours, 
 and all food becomes beans ; should he bring or send letters they 
 must not be touched on pain of death and damnation. His crew are 
 all old sinners of the sea, sailor thieves, cowards, and murderers, 
 who suffer and toil eternally, and have little to eat and less to drink." 
 
 Cooper tells us that the vessel is said to be a double- 
 decker, seen always to windward, sometimes half hidden 
 during clear weather, often under all sail in a gale, and on 
 occasions veering and hauling among the clouds. The 
 ship's history has been chronicled with the particularity of 
 a great war, and in the late Lieutenant Bassett's book 
 many curious particulars of her woful fate and of her 
 Heaven-cursed skipper will be found. 
 
 To the adventurous globe-trotter who has climbed the 
 rock -path to the sailors' church of Notre Dame de la 
 Garde, dominating the Phenician port of Marseilles, the 
 potent influence of sacrifices and offerings for perils passed 
 and to come must be no old story. There is a pathos, 
 even for the worldly, in the quaint ships and galleons, 
 in the rusting marline - spikes and shattered tiller -heads, 
 swinging to the mistral, in reverential offering before 
 the shrines. These graces after danger, these insurances 
 against evil to come, circle the world. No people have 
 escaped the influence of such hopes and thanks. Our Ind- 
 ians were fettered by them, and no ceremonious offerings 
 were more common than those which went to appease 
 the angry Spirit of the Waters. On the upper tributaries 
 of the Mississippi, the Indians, with occult rites, gave 
 tribute of tobacco from a beetling cliff to the Great Spirit 
 of the River, and to the winds that smote the waters with 
 
FLOGGING JUDAS 
 
SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SAILOR 115 
 
 blasts from the caverns of the jealous gods. Algonquins 
 in the North, Aztecs, sons of Atahualpa and Manco Capac, 
 in the South all blew incense out of their pipes, and 
 strewed upon the currents and tideways just such offer- 
 ings of tobacco as, in our more subjective days, we give 
 with lost meanings to the minor gods who rule the man's 
 hour in our feasts. 
 
 But not alone did apparitions, or votive offerings which 
 must be made, crowd to daunt the sailor, for in his voy- 
 ages ghostly lights would gleam suddenly from yard-arms 
 or mast-heads, and at the bowsprit-cap spectral flames might 
 cast weird reflections upon the water. 
 
 "High on the mast, with pale and lurid rays, 
 Amid the gloom portentous meteors blaze," 
 
 is the manner in which Falconer sang of it, though among 
 the Latin seafaring races the St. Elmo's Fire or the cor- 
 posant is, especially if seen double, the best of omens, and 
 is hailed as evidence of Heaven's care for ship and crew. 
 Dampier described it as a small, glittering light, like a star 
 when it shines at the mast-head, like a glowworm when it 
 appears on deck. He believed it to be some kind of a 
 jelly, but we know now that it is an electrical discharge, 
 which occurs in rarefied conditions of the atmosphere, and 
 adheres to the iron of the spars, as the metal is the best 
 conductor available. 
 
 Many modern sailors will reject this explanation as in- 
 complete, and in the older days it would have been scoffed 
 at, and banned by bell, book, and candle, for it was one of 
 the commonest and most cherished of superstitions held 
 by the men who went down to the sea in ships and saw 
 the supernatural everywhere. 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 IF anything ought to have reconciled the crew of the 
 Resaca, sloop of war, to the prospect of a nine-months' 
 cruise among the trade -wind islands of the Pacific iso- 
 lated as they were to be from newspapers, shore grub, 
 and home letters, indeed from all that makes the civiliza- 
 tion of sailors it should have been the glorious weather 
 blessing the first month of the voyage. Beautiful days 
 and starry nights encircled the run, and its log recorded 
 blithe memoranda of blue waters, bright .skies, and honest 
 breezes. Steadily westward the ship slipped over the trop- 
 ical seas, her port stunsails bellying alow and aloft in the 
 daylight, plain sail to to'-gallant sails holding after sun- 
 down, and, for a mariner's merry merry-making all work, 
 save drills, beginning and ending with an occasional pull 
 here and a pull there on sheets and tacks and halyards. 
 Not an hour of gale roared, not a bucket of rain fell 
 " old woman's weather," the blue-jackets called it a sea- 
 going as dry as remainder biscuit after voyage, and with- 
 out a prophecy of that other sailorizing which later they 
 were to know in the roaring Forties. 
 
 Twenty-eight days after the headlands of San Lorenzo 
 were lost in the mists of Callao Bay the ship reached the 
 eastern edge of the treacherous Paumotus ; and when 
 " Land ho !" rang from the mast-head lookout, eager eyes 
 
120 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 saw two isolated clumps of palm-trees lifting their trunks 
 and branches, seemingly, out from the depths of an ocean 
 which no lead had sounded. At their distance from the 
 ship the fringe of low reef and the spit of coral were 
 shrouded by the horizon, and it needed an unquestioning 
 faith in the sines and cosines of the Navigator, fortified 
 by the hard - and - fast facts of the sailing directions, to 
 make these spectral trees anything but delusions of the 
 place and season. When they dipped below the verge 
 sternward new islets lifted their welcoming groves, these 
 atolls being often frail rings of coral, raised but a few feet 
 above the sea, and cut, where the prevailing currents bat- 
 tered steadily, into channel-ways, through which-the long 
 rollers surged brokenly. For forty-eight hours more the 
 ship ran through uncharted tide -streams past other isl- 
 ands ; and then, just after one bell in the morning watch 
 of a day in June, a little flare of light, hanging steadfastly 
 over the great Pacific billows, punctuated the graying 
 darkness of the morning. It was too low for a star, too 
 steady for a light afloat, but it grew and grew until at 
 last; just before the day broke, it blossomed into the 
 promise that Point Venus of Tahiti the Nouvelle Cy- 
 the"re of Bouganville was waiting dead ahead, as the 
 course was shaped. 
 
 The morning dawned sullenly, with such a diffusion of 
 grayish tints and such a sluggish uprising of the sun that 
 the island seemed more a ghostly shape wreathed in mist 
 than the earthly paradise the early voyagers had pictured. 
 Its precipitous summits towered over harsh gorges, and 
 its gray sides frowned as aridly as the mountains domi- 
 nating the narrow shorelands of Chili and Peru. As the 
 day marched other islands stole out of the sea, some show- 
 ing the tips of fantastic peaks and others silhouetting their 
 sharp outlines against a background of clearing sky. By- 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 121 
 
 and-by the wind freshened, and as the Resaca rushed land- 
 ward before a brave to'gallant breeze glints and gleams 
 warmed the upper sky. Then the sunshine sought slowly 
 the steep ridges of the island, bathing peak and pinnacle 
 in a flood of gold, and then it crept shoreward with a 
 slow enfolding that glorified the foot-hills and the slopes. 
 
 The pilot, beaming with a thousand welcomes, awaited 
 clear of the barrier reef ; and when he had guided the ship 
 through the coral gates and shot her, under top-sails, jib, 
 and spanker, into the choicest anchorage of the harbor, 
 he took off his cap, and with his finest bow welcomed 
 everybody to "the garden-spot of the world to Papeete 1 ." 
 
 "And Papeete" means? " asked the navigator. 
 
 " ' The Basket of the Sea.' " 
 
II 
 
 SEEN from the anchorage, Tahiti justified its traditions 
 and its sailor poets. It was a fairy vision of the sea, a 
 realization of the rapturous descriptions which glow in the 
 narratives of Prince Leboo and of those other navigators 
 who sang its glories in quaint and ardent phrases years ago. 
 Its beauty, really measureless by words, was far beyond 
 the high praise of Quoy, of Lesson, of Dumont d'Urville, 
 far beyond even that fervid appreciation which the pen, 
 usually so sober, of Captain Cook set down in the pages 
 of his Discoveries. 
 
 The town lay in a narrow plain that curved with the 
 shore, and was bedded in groves of bread-fruit, panda- 
 nus, and palm. Jasmine and crimson hibiscus accentuated 
 the greenness of hill-sides dotted with huts, which clung to 
 buttresses of trellised rock or hid beside crystal lakes that 
 hurried a hundred streams shoreward. The upper hills, 
 green with the broad leaves of the " faie " the native 
 plantain rose through terraces and crags into Ovethena, 
 seven thousand feet above the sea. 
 
 At the east and west cusps of the crescent beach Farevite 
 and Hotan^a Points closed the land view, while seaward 
 the billowing expanse was broken only by the rugged hills 
 of Moorea and by the domes of Tetuarova. 
 
 Watched from the shore, the silence of the long, foam- 
 less rollers of the Pacific was awe-inspiring, and their hid- 
 den powers were revealed only when, in their westerly 
 sweeping, they assaulted the coral barriers and rioted over 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 123 
 
 their walls in breakers booming thunderously. Within 
 the reef the waters were calm and still, and so clear that 
 the harbor's bed lay as an open book for your reading. 
 
 The cool streets were arched by trees interlaced so 
 thickly that the sunlight barely filtered in queer traceries 
 upon the turf, and everywhere was a fragrant and brilliant 
 shrubbery. The troops of natives thronging the beach 
 were mated to the scene. The women were tall, well 
 formed, and graceful, with every limb untrammelled by 
 the fetters of civilized dress ; their gowns, long and of a 
 dear old fashion, and in color everything from red to 
 white, floated loosely in an unstudied harmony ; their 
 hair, trailing negligently, was crowned with chaplets of 
 arroa-root or with the white and odorous reva-reva; and 
 their voices bubbled in the laughter of an age and season 
 where life was always play-time. The men, tall, firmly 
 built, and sure in carriage, were princes of the fairest of 
 fairy-lands, compared with the little, blustering Peruanos 
 left over the water, and their faces were as pleasant and 
 honest as an Easter-day. Their complexion, darker than 
 that of the Spaniards, was not so olive as with the higher 
 type of Moors, the men, if anything, being fairer than the 
 women. Nothing of the Papuan or negro showed in any 
 lineament, but well-developed Malay characteristics, recall- 
 ing strongly the types that exist on those shores whence 
 drifted years ago the progenitors of the race ; and their 
 eyes, black and mild, fairly sparkled with pleasure when 
 you were greeted, as you were always, with that merry 
 salutation, " Ya rana," which means so little and so much. 
 
 What a happy lot they seemed to be ! either so 
 blessed that life with them was a holiday, or so philo- 
 sophic that nothing could disturb their unruffled accept- 
 ance of the joys of the day ; and let it be chronicled here 
 that in all our time among them they never failed in that 
 
124 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 genuine good-nature and perfect courtesy which are among 
 the noblest characteristics of a race. Even the little chil- 
 dren lisped a greeting ; and to the poorest sailor that trod 
 the beach, or to the greatest swell for whom the harbor 
 guns blazed out a welcome, the same smile, the same in- 
 vitation to their huts, the perpetual and jocund " Ya rana" 
 were accorded. 
 
 The town of Papeete 1 is the largest in Tahiti indeed, 
 it is the only one that may be dignified with that name. 
 One principal street traversed its length, and from this, 
 branching at varying angles and following the whim of 
 the earliest builders, streets and lanes straggled to the 
 beach or to the base of the mountains. Here, perhaps, 
 narrowed to some winding path, these crept upward to 
 the exterior fastnesses of the island, for there is no in- 
 terior to the island not in our sense, at least and all 
 roads wound around, not over, the hills. The houses of 
 the foreigners faced the sea or the streets and lanes lead- 
 ing to it, and were built of wood in the American style. 
 They were well situated, cool, airy, and neat, with tempt- 
 ing verandas and enticing hammocks, and were surround- 
 ed by plants and trees, native and exotic. Here the aloe 
 and vanilla bloomed with the hibiscus and pandanus, or 
 with those others so long since acclimated as to be native 
 the orange, the lime, and the banana. The level land 
 had an average breadth of half a mile from the shore 
 to the mountain spurs, though valleys extended this in 
 many places far up the sides of the hills. Down the 
 mountain brooks skylarked to the sea, but not until they 
 had worked through the coral barrier the many openings 
 which pierce the reef. Beyond and surrounding the town 
 were the native huts, built of hibiscus poles and wattled 
 with twigs, the roofs thatched with pandanus and the 
 walls plastered with coral lime. Groves of plantain and 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 125 
 
 bread-fruit sheltered them on the landward side, and from 
 their door-steps foam-caps could be seen sporting in the 
 sunlight. Nothing was allowed to shut off this sea view ; 
 for the Tahitian has a keen perception of beauty, and to 
 him the blue ocean and the waving palm are necessities 
 born of his nature. 
 
 The more pretentious residences are grouped to the 
 eastward, and here were the government houses, the bar- 
 racks, the arsenal, the palace, and the club, all fronting 
 on the famous Broom or Purumu Road, which encircled 
 the island, but which here rejoiced in the name of Rue de 
 Rivoli. French influence was paramount everywhere, but 
 in nothing more assertively than in the titles of the streets 
 and buildings, the meanest alleys and the shabbiest struct- 
 ures revelling in names that recalled the noted thorough- 
 fares of famous cities. About the centre of the town, 
 and opposite the Rue de la Reine, was the palace of her 
 late Majesty Queen Pomare IV. a magnificent building 
 for Tahiti, glorious in unfulfilled promises, and situated 
 in mean though extensive grounds. Under its shadow 
 crouched two or three little cabins, and here in undig- 
 nified ease reposed her Majesty and her suite when it 
 pleased her to visit the town. 
 
 The principal shops and the warehouses of the wealth- 
 ier merchants fronted the beach, for trade was brisk with 
 the Paumotus and the Leeward Islands, and many cargoes 
 of oil and pearl shells were landed on the rickety jetties. 
 At one time this business was of great extent, and gen- 
 erally pursued among the groups, but it appeared here to 
 be engrossed by a few persons, who claimed its control 
 lay in Tahiti. The principal import trade was with Cali- 
 fornia, and in many of the shops the typical "toothpick 
 to an anchor " stock might be found, and, what was bet- 
 ter, with genuine Yankees to sell it. This trade was car- 
 
126 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 ried on by sharp, well-built " Frisco schooners," that made 
 most wonderful runs outward, and found for homeward 
 cargoes delicious oranges that rivalled those of Malaga 
 and Seville. To them, also, the people were indebted for 
 their mail, and to minds hungering for news their coming 
 was as great a matter of moment as will be the arrival 
 of mail steamers when the necessities of coaling stations 
 make these islands take their proper strategic place in 
 the sea power of the world. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE history of this group, from the year 1767, when 
 Wallis anchored in the harbor of Matavai, to the assump- 
 tion of the protectorate by Guizot, is a twice-told tale. 
 Captain James Cook landed here to observe the transit of 
 Venus, and, sailing northward and eastward, he discovered 
 and revisited those islands and shores that will carry his 
 fame to posterity as the Columbus of this ocean. Here 
 the mutineers of the Bounty rested, and like very tarry and 
 rough eighteenth-century lotus-eaters, here they revelled 
 greedily until the prospect of capture and a short shrift 
 sent them scurrying post-haste with their wives to more 
 distant, if securer, shores. Bouganville, La Pe"rouse, Kru- 
 senstern, and Wilkes, among other sea-worthies, surveyed 
 these waters. Here the missionaries, and later here the 
 French, came, and then the buzzing tops of clashing in- 
 terests began the spinning that wrecked the land. For 
 the Polynesian world is divided upon the merits of these 
 invaders, and the tales told by vituperative traders and 
 beach-combers, and the stories handed down in native tra- 
 dition, are no less difficult to reconcile with the truth than 
 the sweeping denials made by Church and State. Here, 
 later still, appeared the Jesuits and other missionaries of 
 denominations at war with the original teachers, and then 
 began in earnest that conflict of creed and race of which 
 the echoes rumble yet. What is certain, evil came out of 
 it all, for the heathens, who had at first willingly accepted 
 everything taught by the white man, now found them- 
 
128 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 selves between the devil and the deep sea of polemics. 
 They were forced to listen while their masters renewed 
 the world-tired battles of other lands ; to hear a different 
 and an only God preached in orthodox fashion ; to wan- 
 der confusedly through the subtleties of warring dogmas ; 
 until at last, in sheer confusion as to old landmarks and 
 charted channel ways, they lost their reckoning and drifted 
 pilotlessly into the dead seas of sectarianism. In the end 
 they were forced to choose, and, as often as not, they gave 
 allegiance not from belief and acceptance, but from a 
 worldly admiration of the physically bigger teacher, or of 
 him, big or little, whose stores of carnal goods promised 
 better rewards. 
 
 The fight was intensified by the old antagonism of races, 
 of a Frenchman against a Briton, of a fiery religious Cra- 
 paud against an obstinately religious Johbool ; and it was 
 imbittered by difference of cultures, of aims, of diverging in- 
 terests, and commingling fanaticisms. Finally, from theses 
 and polemics the disputants resorted to force and threats 
 of extinction ; and these, even to the regenerate, were no 
 easier to bear because they were clothed in sanctimoni- 
 ous phrase and pious invocation. In the end the priests 
 were condemned bell, book, and candle and expelled, 
 and under circumstances more galling than Exeter Hall 
 and the British Foreign Office would have the world be- 
 lieve. Finally, the Frenchman returned with his fleet, and 
 threatened with one noble broadside, after the approved 
 French manner the grand manner, they call it to blow 
 missionaries, heathens, towns, and churches down the idle 
 wind, and thus settle the affair forever. Pourparlers, pre- 
 texts, promises, intimidations, all the whimsical paper bul- 
 lets of the brain branded as diplomacy, followed ; and 
 then, after " seizure of the royal person " (poor dusky 
 monarch) and bombardment, the curtain rose on the last 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 129 
 
 scene of all, when, with blare of trumpet, and thundering 
 of guns, and vives till the welkin rang, the French king, 
 who scarcely knew that such an oasis bloomed in the wa- 
 tery desert, seized upon the groups under the inspiring plea 
 of " protection." Possession followed in name years after, 
 but from that day to this, through good fortune and ill 
 and all the vicissitudes of the home government, Tahiti 
 remained a part of colonial France. 
 
 The usual British growl, the time-worn explanations 
 from the ministerial benches, the inevitable native revolu- 
 tion followed, but in vain, for by the grace of the French 
 government, Pomare Vahine Pomare the woman was 
 allowed to succeed and to rule as a puppet, whose strings 
 were pulled by courteous commandants. The tricolor 
 was deftly woven in the union of the Tahitian flag, and 
 in the still evenings, where the blast of the war conch or 
 the pleading harmony of the ute" were wont to sound, the 
 fanfare of bugles echoing the fame of Pere Bugeaud suc- 
 ceeded, recalling, perhaps, to the sensitive Tahitian mind, 
 if such exist, the faded glories of a race that had crumbled 
 beneath the wheels of civilization. 
 
 With this seizure by the French the political power of 
 the missionary died, and it died hard. Though their books 
 and reports described a golden age reborn, in which sub- 
 mission, domestic and religious, was based upon the fervor 
 of a race awakened to the highest truths, we know it was 
 a strong, a relentless governing. Good came out of it in 
 many ways, and yet not such unmixed good as settles at 
 this day the dispute which rule, that of the early mission- 
 ary or that of the French, was the better. Making due 
 allowances for the prejudices which rankle, it is still a 
 vexed question, because there are no loci of agreement. 
 The first missionaries, were, as a rule, men of humble origin, 
 who could handle the jack-plane and the hammer more 
 
130 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 deftly than the intricacies of the moral law. It was a time 
 when the new regions entering the zone of man's knowl- 
 edge were opening fields for an extension of the charity 
 and humanity of the world's greatest religion. It was a 
 season when many earnest but untrained men felt com- 
 pelled to quit the guilds wherein they were adepts for the 
 higher mission of teaching the heathen ; to leave work 
 wherein they had become skilled through infinite care and 
 practice for other and more difficult labor, to which they 
 brought no other qualities than honest hearts, sound bodies, 
 and great intentions. It was a time, too, when men of 
 this class, stirred to their hearts by the bidding of the 
 gentle Master, were apt from biassed thought and half- 
 awakened perceptions to behold a mission, and perhaps 
 deluded by their wordy gift of " wagging a pow i' the pul- 
 pit," to believe themselves foreordained to convert the 
 heathen. The fallow field was waiting, and often the soci- 
 eties demanded little more than fixed religious principles, 
 zeal, and a ready obedience. 
 
 Burning with a noble desire, these early missionaries 
 sacrificed much for their work, and after trials and hard- 
 ships, for ships were slow and voyages long, reached a land 
 where everything was new, and, for their purposes, crude 
 and amorphous. They found a race just startled from the 
 dream that the arch spanning their horizon was the only 
 world, that they were the only people, and that beyond 
 them and theirs was nothing. This people, plastic for the 
 moulding, saw in the white man, with his superior intelli- 
 gence, as manifested in material things, a sort of demigod, 
 linked to their island and its gods by scarce remembered 
 traditions, and dimly shadowed in predictions which had 
 come from all time with the softened angles and blurred 
 faces folk-lore acquires in rolling towards us. 
 
 What a field it was ! And its fruits! 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 131 
 
 It is always dangerous for a sailor to write of mission- 
 aries, for by some queer twist of reasoning he is ranked 
 by the societies as an enemy to their systems. Yet noth- 
 ing is more senseless, for of all who drift about the world 
 no people, as a class, see missionaries and their work more 
 closely, and more willingly bear testimony to the high 
 value of the good men, or more persistently keep silent as 
 to the failings of the indifferent workers. But it should 
 be set down here that intelligent men long resident in 
 Polynesia claim that the greatest good resulted from the 
 stern paternalism of the early missionary rule ; while other 
 men, equally intelligent and experienced, declare that the 
 only real result, in a religious sense, was to make a fair 
 number of doubtful Christians out of a nation of really 
 zealous heathens. And this, too, among a people whose 
 religion could not have been utterly bad, since its profess- 
 ors were gentle in nature, brave in battle, moderate in con- 
 quest, and so utterly separated from the races about them 
 that cannibalism was unknown. They did, on occasion, 
 make living sacrifices, notably in seasons of national dis- 
 tress, but no record exists of any sacrifice of the "long 
 pig," as they euphemize cannibalism. The fact that these 
 sacrifices no longer exist, that the " Marais " where the re- 
 ligious murders were committed have become the play- 
 grounds of the children, is quoted as proof of the good that 
 was done ; but then good is always done by the association 
 of an inferior with a superior order. It is certain that 
 in many ways the natives were taught to lead better and 
 purer lives. Chastity was preached and modesty inculcated ; 
 marriage ties were made firmer and divorces more difficult ; 
 and in various directions the heathen mind was turned 
 from customs more sanctioned by their ignorance and the 
 example of their forefathers than by the rules of right and 
 wrong. Sacrifices were abolished, polygamy was forbidden, 
 
T32 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 and women were raised to a higher place in the domestic 
 scale. They learned honesty, not that they were thieves 
 or liars before, but the intermingling of families begot 
 peculiar ideas of meum et tuum, and an airy style of walk- 
 ing off with the goods of others was excused upon the 
 grounds of possible need and probable consanguinity. 
 They built better houses, attended to drainage, and gave 
 up a slavish dependence upon multitudinous gods, not 
 even fearing to disembowel that great blue shark son of 
 this and cousin of that to untold generations which be- 
 fore they had fed and encouraged with barbaric pomp and 
 traditional fear. The men and women clothed themselves, 
 sacrificing grace and aesthetical requirements to Old World 
 ideas of propriety, though it is to be feared or hoped that 
 in this the leaven still lingers. The men, in a spasmodic 
 religious reaction to which such natures are prone, gave up 
 their loved and medicinal kava, because it was mildly in- 
 toxicating, and after a time, whether to drown dull care 
 for care, like sin, came in with the law or to ape those 
 other white men, not missionaries, who drifted to their 
 shores, took to orange rum, and later to beer and brandy, 
 and so down the prohibitory scale until they thirsted for 
 square gin. 
 
 With these other adventurers, whether traders or beach- 
 combers, came new perceptions and a gradual drifting 
 from the plane upon which their minds had rested. Here 
 the natives reasoned in a natural though untrained way, 
 here were men who did not arrogate to themselves all 
 the virtues, who followed neither by precept nor practice 
 a religious life, who liked the free living and the dimin- 
 ished costume of the natives and adopted both, and yet 
 handled tools more deftly, built better boats, had more of 
 the worldly goods that really make the Tahitianized heav- 
 en, and in trade were more liberal and in purchase less 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 133 
 
 exacting. Jolly good -fellows all were they, and fond, 
 notably when at flood tide in their cups, of telling the 
 heathen that while he was of course lower in the scale of 
 creation than white men, yet the earth was meant for en- 
 joyment and not as a prison where he who goody-goodies 
 most has the best chance for salvation. This was the 
 doctrine to suit the very much hymned and more preached 
 at natives ; and with white men to sustain them, the nat- 
 ural consequences were that the missionaries fell from 
 high Olympus, and for a season the flocks strayed into 
 bare fields of worldly wickedness. The law was called 
 in to awaken the slumbering consciences, and while 
 the severities and restrictions which can be imposed 
 when politics and dogma go hand in hand frightened 
 most into a neutral condition, they drove others, gener- 
 ally the high-spirited and more intelligent, into regions 
 whence no pleadings could ever lure them. Anathemas 
 were hurled at the offending white men, and at once 
 all the intolerance against other foreigners and other 
 creeds which had been smouldering for years and years 
 burst into a sudden flame that no concessions could 
 quench or smother. 
 
 At a fair average the beach-comber was not a moral 
 man nor a man of fine perceptions, but he had been lord- 
 ing it patronizingly over the natives, and did not like 
 being held up as a personification of all evil as a Poly- 
 nesio - Spartan terrible example. In his tipple, which 
 was often, and out of it, which was seldom, he told many 
 unpleasant truths. He put into the heads of the natives 
 wicked, worldly ideas of rights of property, tithes, and 
 domestic interference ; and bellowing that he'd be this'd 
 and be that'd, after the beach comber manner, if he 
 would stand it, he bade Jackee strike for his altars and 
 his fires. Inspired by the alcoholic eloquence of the in- 
 
134 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 dignant white man, Jackee did strike, and against every- 
 thing that he had before accepted in a lazy, unquestioning 
 mood. As open rebellion was opposed to his nature, he 
 often led two kinds of lives: one of public prayer, the 
 other of private immorality. With all their acuteness, the 
 missionaries neither knew this, or, knowing, were power- 
 less to correct it. 
 
 After years of bickering the beach-combers and the 
 Jesuits were expelled; and then, scape-goat for all ills, the 
 French, with the pomp of military government, usurped 
 the power of the missionaries. Forgotten were the enor- 
 mities of the stranded white men, lost the recollections of 
 the apostasy of the natives, and if one may believe the 
 religious societies, the death of everything that had flour- 
 ished before dates from French possession. Perhaps a 
 wise policy would have designated special groups as 
 the special fields for each sect, for had the integrity of 
 these territories been maintained, there could have arisen 
 no clashing of opinions, political or moral. When all is 
 said and done, however, the breaking down of the old 
 barriers at least argued more liberality of spirit and a 
 more healthful appreciation of the views held in well- 
 organized communities, and for this the French deserve 
 praise. As it was, all the sects founded schools and la- 
 bored zealously, if bitterly and resentfully, seemingly for- 
 getting that they were preaching one God and really for 
 one end. It is difficult to say which did the most good 
 or which was the most powerful. In his wife and in his 
 home life the Protestant had his most powerful auxil- 
 iaries, but in the pomp and ceremonies of the Catholic 
 Church there was much that appealed to the native mind. 
 The longer residence of the earlier missionary, his greater 
 wealth, and the fact that he was often Tahitian born, 
 made the balance at times seem to lean his way ; but the 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 135 
 
 tendency of the government, the close union between 
 Church and State, and, be it said with all fairness, the 
 superior culture, training, and adaptability of the priest, 
 more than compensated for what at first seemed over- 
 whelming advantages. 
 
IV 
 
 FAIR-MINDED men were agreed that the severity of the 
 French rule had retarded the prosperity of the islands by 
 dwarfing their industries and crippling their trade. These 
 are, of course, among the normal results of all purely mili- 
 tary governments, and are certain to operate wherever the 
 challenge of the sentry replaces the watchman's warning 
 hail. So far as municipal demands went, great improve- 
 ments were made, for the streets were kept clean and 
 guarded, shopkeepers were held with a tight hand, sani- 
 tary regulations were prescribed and obeyed, and citizens 
 and strangers were secured in their life and property. 
 Malcontents insisted that, owing to license and tax, the 
 property so carefully watched was valueless because it 
 finally reverted to the home government, and it is true 
 that taxes were oppressive. The payment of these fell 
 upon the white men ; and as the assessments, so often 
 made, had to be satisfied by less than one thousand peo- 
 ple, some of whom rejoiced in the immunities of beach- 
 combers and adventurers, the burden was unduly op- 
 pressive, whatever its achievements. The government 
 was certainly unpopular, and the fear inspired by the 
 garrison plainly showed how strictly municipal regula- 
 tions were enforced. Detachments of the marine in- 
 fantry and a body of gendarmes, assisted by native con- 
 stables or mutois, constituted the police force, the last 
 named doing their duty with a mild sort of protest, as if 
 they hated to spoil sport. When they made an arrest 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 137 
 
 they slunk off with the offender as if they were the real 
 culprits, and their strongest handcuffs were pieces of 
 hemp twine. Regulations concerning women were neces- 
 sarily strict and were rigidly enforced, especially by that 
 magnificent mystery the gendarme, who was everything 
 ten times multiplied that his brother of Paris loved to 
 be considered. Women were arrested if found upon the 
 streets after gun-fire without passes, or if discovered at any 
 time entering a bar-room. In this case the proprietor was 
 fined cumulatively for the first and second offences, and 
 for a third paid a heavy penalty and had his place closed. 
 Punishments were largely of a practical kind, minor sen- 
 tences being to work upon the roads and public buildings. 
 The excellent condition of the thoroughfares was due to 
 this ; and as drunkenness was a common offence, most of 
 the natives had at some time or another performed this 
 work. Hence no one lost caste by the enforced labor, and 
 the early morning sweepings were apt, Tahitian like, to 
 be more a frolic than a solemn satisfaction of the law. 
 Markets were regularly held, and all buying and selling 
 had to be done in the places established, any speculator 
 caught trying to do a little business on his own account 
 being severely punished. During the protectorate period 
 the power of the queen was always nominal, and it was 
 only upon rare state occasions that she appeared officially 
 to her subjects. She was very popular, and her people 
 realized thoroughly the situation in which fate had placed 
 her. She knew, too, her limitations and their indignities, 
 and there were times when she protested against both ; 
 but the " oui-ouis," as the French were contemptuously 
 called, made her realize that the satisfaction of the royal 
 butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers depended upon 
 her docility. When the ceremonies of her state appear- 
 ances were at an end, she retired to her residence at Pa- 
 
138 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 paoa, and there solaced herself ( with unlimited euchre and 
 with the regular visits of her kinsmen, who ruled with 
 mild pro-consular sway the other islands of the group. 
 
 Tahitian society was divided into two classes cliques 
 what you will and the line of demarcation was as fixed 
 as the laws of those ancients we are always quoting. One 
 consisted of whites, pure and simple, and the other of 
 half-castes. Both were charming, but, oh, so disdainful, 
 so abusive of the other ! one all dignity and virtue, the 
 other all mirth and good-nature ; the whites horrified if 
 you associated with the half-castes, and these always de- 
 lighted to meet you, provided you were neither a prig nor 
 a snob. Can it be doubted which was more popular with 
 the nomads? For while wealth, beauty, and education 
 were equally divided, piety, angularity, and prudishness 
 were not, and surely there are times when our edifying 
 virtues become tiresome. The half-castes had delightful 
 manners, and in their simple gracious conduct there was 
 nothing of rudeness nor any lack of refinement. 
 
 Not much can be told of the domestic life of the 
 natives, for it is only after years of dwelling among them 
 that this inner, unwritten life may be understood. If 
 cleanliness be next to godliness, however, then these 
 Tahitians may hope confidently for future good. The 
 clear running streams afforded the most healthful and 
 delightful bathing-places, and these were used incessantly, 
 for, contrary to the usually received impressions, the natives 
 seldom bathed in the open sea or bays. A native woman 
 with a soiled dress was a rare sight, and so scrupulous 
 were they in this particular that it became a badge which 
 distinguished them from the females of the other islands. 
 Native necessities were few, but these included liquor in 
 some form. Both sexes were inveterate smokers, the men 
 indulging with equal gusto in anything from a jack-pipe 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 139 
 
 to an Upmman, the women contenting themselves with 
 the dried bark of a native tree. They were hospitable to 
 a fault, and their cooking would have delighted a Brillat 
 Savarin ; indeed, when one came to know it well, there were 
 new delights in the mysteries of their kava. They were 
 honest, and so willing that it was a new sensation to 
 employ them, but, withal, paradoxical as it may seem, 
 lazy in everything that pertained to their own welfare. 
 Nature had been so bounteous in soil and climate that 
 there was no need of labor ; and as the duties of family 
 men were narrowed to a dilettante sort of fishing, farming, 
 and fruit-gathering, they had no incentives for gathering 
 the almighty dollar, nor any opportunities to which they 
 could devote their energies. From all this resulted the 
 moral degradation to which in one sense they had fallen ; 
 for as in the Hawaiian language there was no such word 
 as virtue, so with the Tahitians there was no apprecia- 
 tion of its meaning. The ancient and unexplained custom 
 of giving a child at its birth to friends or relatives was 
 a fruitful cause of this ignorance ; for the practice had 
 weakened those tender relations that should exist between 
 the parent and child, and through it, doubly, between the 
 parents. That this universal want of morality existed, 
 and that it continued despite missionary and lay gov- 
 ernment, legal enactments, and the example of the white 
 settlers, proved how deeply it had taken possession of 
 their otherwise easily guided natures. Like the Tongans, 
 Hawaiians, and Fijians, the population has steadily de- 
 creased, the ratio of births not equalling the death-rate, 
 and it requires no profound ethnological knowledge to 
 assign the causes. 
 
 The Chinese were the money-makers of the island, and 
 there was a thriving colony of these conservative people, 
 in no way different from what they were at home or in 
 
140 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 that new Cathay, California. Many had intermarried with 
 the natives, and were excellent husbands and citizens, and 
 in assuming their new interests they had opened avenues 
 of trade and gathered hoards of barbaric coin. Can the 
 speculative mind fancy a Chinese colony arising phoenix- 
 like from the ashes of Tahiti ? 
 
 Upon large plantations, as at Antimaos on the lee- 
 ward side, native " labor " from the Hervey and the Cook 
 groups was employed. This was really a form of slavery, 
 the supply for which, until it was regulated by war-ships, 
 had been controlled by as cruel a set of swashbuckling 
 brutes as ever " black-birded " on any coast or sea. The 
 trade was carried on in smart schooners and brigs, which 
 worked to the southward and westward, picking up cargoes 
 wherever prisoners could be secured from warring chiefs, 
 or, failing that, wherever helpless natives might safely be 
 "run" through trick and device. The wages promised 
 were about $24 yearly ; but those paid were actually what 
 the employers chose to add to the little looking-glasses 
 and the stores of beads, cloth, needles, and fish-hooks 
 furnished as enticements to engage. The bounty or head- 
 money demanded by these South Sea " Elizabethans," as 
 jingoes might delight in calling such murderous jail-birds, 
 was always high and exacted upon the spot. It is true 
 something was paid to the chiefs for the slaves supplied, 
 but often there was no one to whom .a bonus could be 
 offered, for when peace or other causes closed the usual 
 avenues of slave supply, these pirates anchored inside dis- 
 tant reefs, and luring the natives on board, rushed them 
 below, made sail, gained the open sea, and shaped a course 
 for other groups where the cargo was sold at a fine profit. 
 Once a smart schooner anchored near the entrance to the 
 port of a village which was noted for the kindliness of its 
 people. The captain, skilled in sea deviltries, sent word 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 141 
 
 ashore that a famous missionary would the next day hold 
 religious service on board, with music, and that subse- 
 quently he would distribute tracts and Bibles. At the 
 appointed hour the mate dressed himself in canonical 
 garb, the ship's bell was tolled slowly and solemnly, and 
 the natives swarmed on board and below, where the 
 ample, clean -swept holds had been rigged for church. 
 When the 'tween decks were rilled, the mate, who knew 
 the native dialect, started the service with a favorite hymn, 
 the accompaniment being played by a pious ship -mate 
 who was famous for the volume and the variety of his 
 " chanties." The natives joined earnestly and melodiously, 
 the mingled chorus drowning the devil's work going on 
 above, for by the time the second hymn was finished sail 
 had been made, the anchors lifted, the hatch covers 
 clapped on tightly, and the schooner was threading her 
 way through the coral channel, bound for a distant labor 
 market with the most profitable cargo of the year. 
 
 It was no unusual trick for these " black-birders " to run 
 down canoes at sea, and, after rescuing the crew and pas- 
 sengers, to sell them in islands which were civilized enough 
 to have representatives of foreign governments stationed 
 in their principal port. Some of these consular agents were 
 paid servants of the slave-dealers even after a spasmodic 
 effort had been made by one or two of the Christian nations 
 to regulate the trade. Formalities of law were supposed to 
 be insisted upon, and preparations had to be made by the 
 masters of the schooners to pass the perfunctory tests. 
 One of these was ingenious in its simple barbarity. When, 
 by fair means or foul, a cargo was shipped, and the vessel 
 reached an offing, no food or water was given the natives 
 until they were nearly daft with thirst and hunger. The 
 skipper, bristling with an armory, then appeared and an- 
 swered the pathetic pleadings of the men, women, and 
 
U2 THE BASKET OF THE SEA 
 
 little children by showing one green cocoa-nut and holding 
 up one finger, at the same time directing the natives to 
 imitate his occult pantomime. To each of the sufferers 
 who lifted a single finger he gave a green cocoa-nut, which 
 is meat and milk to the Polynesian. It is needless to say 
 that after one performance the company was perfect. The 
 next day, under parallel circumstances, two fingers and two 
 cocoa-nuts were shown, and thus the merry game was re- 
 hearsed, until a limit of four cocoa-nuts was reached, each 
 morning four displayed fingers securing four cocoa-nuts. 
 The day before the vessel arrived in her port was, however, 
 a banyan day, as sailors have it, and no pleadings could 
 produce the food. When the natives were landed and 
 arrayed before the consular office, the agent made a speech 
 which they did not understand, and demanded, in his finest 
 official manner, for what period, voluntarily and with full 
 knowledge, they had agreed to serve. Their late skipper, 
 standing behind the agent, turned this into their dialect 
 by asking what they wanted to eat, at the same time show- 
 ing his food-producing fingers. Very naturally four fingers 
 were lifted pleadingly by every half -starved man and 
 woman, and by every hungry little child. 
 
 " Do I understand you correctly," exclaimed the con- 
 sular agent, holding up four fingers, " for four years ?" 
 
 " For four cocoa-nuts," signalled the unsuspecting na- 
 tives, who had not engaged for a day, and were very hungry 
 and thirsty. 
 
 " Then four years, be it," replied the smiling function- 
 ary, " four years as the law provides." 
 
 The necessary papers were signed, the proper seals at- 
 tached, and the natives, with their four cocoa-nuts, were 
 marched to the plantations. Doubtless the consular agent 
 declared loudly that everything was most satisfactory, and 
 that skipper and employer were to be congratulated upon 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 143 
 
 getting so willing a force for five pounds a head less, of 
 course (this uttered privately), the customary percentage 
 due for fees and services by both sides. 
 
 Think of that, men and women with charity and the 
 love of little children in your hearts ! For the four years 
 meant all the years of their lives. 
 
IF in the bright morning, the sensuous noon, and the 
 quiet hours between midnight and dawn the chief attrac- 
 tion of Papeete" was its tranquil aspect, the early evening 
 until gun-fire possessed surely a witchery which coursed 
 like an elixir through the blood, for then the reckless Ta- 
 hitian world thronged merrily in the Rue de la Petite Po- 
 logne. All classes ebbed and flooded there, all circles 
 touched, all save the young lovers, who, with arms clasped 
 tenderly around each other's necks : after the approved 
 Tahitian way wandered along the bosky hedges of the 
 Purumu Road, or to the beach, where the flashing torches 
 of the fishermen were reflected in a hundred points of fire. 
 Men from most of the civilized nations of the world were 
 swept along this avenue with the jocund throng, making 
 their finest bows and compliments to the native belles, and 
 accepting smilingly the cigars which these returned after 
 they had laughingly stolen a puff or two. Gayly dressed 
 and crowned like nymphs of old, the women slowly drift- 
 ed along the roadway, singing, chatting, dancing, and all 
 with such a noble disregard of the proprieties that one's 
 moral sense drifted dreamily into approving it because, 
 though it was not right, it was delightful. The shops 
 blazed with the glory of lavish oil, the open bars resounded 
 with the interminable sea songs of the sailors, and soldiers, 
 mariners, constables, and gendarmes forgot their inherent 
 antipathies and unbent in profound salutations of mutual 
 regard. It all made a picture out of a fairy-book, and it 
 
THE BASKET OF THE SEA 145 
 
 needed only youth and hope and inexperience to read its 
 story aright. 
 
 If it chanced to be one of the native dance -nights 
 permitted by municipal rule, toute Papeete crowded the 
 dancing -greens. And what a dance it was! what a spec- 
 tacle of grace, of unthinking happiness, of joyous aban- 
 don ! There, perforce, went the morally dazed visitors ; 
 for a South Sea " hurra-hurra," or " hoola-hoola," is a tra- 
 dition, and one would as soon leave Paris with the myste- 
 ries of the quadrille unexplored, or Coquimbo or Lima 
 with the Samequacker unvisited, as Tahiti without a first, 
 and an undoubted second, glance at this survival from a 
 prototype that must have existed among the festively 
 inclined Aryans, or among those other forgotten revellers 
 who begot the races of this little sphere. It is a dance 
 found in Mexico and in China, in Algiers and in the wilds 
 of Darien, in Egypt and in the Atacamas ; it is found 
 everywhere probably in Upernavik and Kerguelen Land. 
 As these Tahitian damsels danced, so danced the Nautch 
 girls of India, the Gawazees of Arabia, the Chillenas of 
 the coast so danced every frolicsome female in the world 
 before the trammels of civilization clogged her challenging 
 feet. Where it was born no one knows ; but so danced 
 the forefathers or foremothers, rather and so will these 
 Tahitians dance for all their time to come. 
 
 And this dance, with a few pathetic songs, is all that is 
 left them out of a past which, as faintly pictured in weird 
 tradition, was glorious with deeds that should have lived 
 forever. The better memories of their race are lost, and 
 their longings for something better than their years now 
 give are dead. Year by year they sink in the scale of hu- 
 manity, and in the century to come the Tahiti we looked 
 upon will be a meaningless name. 
 
 10 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 " When waves 'gainst rocks and quicksands roar, 
 
 You ne'er hear him repine ; 
 Freezing on Greenland's icy shore, 
 
 Or burning near the line ; 
 But Jack with smiles each danger meets, 
 
 Casts anchor, heaves the log, 
 Trims all the sails, belays the sheets, 
 
 And drinks his can of grog." DIBDIN. 
 
 THIS is the hornpiping, jolly sailor as he appears to 
 most people ashore, and as he likes to be taken. But this 
 is mainly nonsense, except the grog mere ballad-monger- 
 ing. There is nowhere a better man than the sailor 
 man-o'-war or merchant and equally there is nowhere a 
 greater growler nor a worse repiner than this same Jack. 
 He is often far from a smiling person as, with the poet, 
 he casts anchor, heaves the log, trims the sails, and belays 
 the sheets duties, by-the-way, of which he does not have 
 the least: charge, as he has shipped to pull and haul and 
 not to direct. No one blames him for sticking up bluntly, 
 ship-shape and Bristol fashion, for his rights ; but he is led 
 so easily by sea-lawyers with jaw-tackles perpetually unrove 
 that he often does nothing when to leeward of the officers 
 but growl and growl, watch in and watch out. There is 
 
150 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 no ship like his last ship, no good station since he cruised 
 China-way or up the Straits years ago, and there are no 
 seamen, fore and aft, since he and Commodore John Junk, 
 U.S.N. (dead these fifty years) were laid up in ordinary. 
 
 In his Jack Bunsbyan opinion the men who follow the 
 sea in these degenerate days are, to say the least, lob- 
 scousers, canallers, mere stokers or baggage-smashers 
 moon -minions all- and there has not been a trick at the 
 wheel properly kept, not a nine-pound lead hove clear of the 
 cathead, nor a weather-earing passed smartly, since he was 
 paid off with one thousand dollars (squandered in a week) 
 from the Ticonderoga sloop of war some time in the sixties. 
 
 The truth is, these sheer hulks forget the past, ignore 
 the present, despair ignorantly of the future, and yarn 
 fearfully. For the life of a sailor in the old days was a 
 sad one, and its sadness is shadowed in his songs. 
 
 Sea-going always has been and always will be a career of 
 denial and hardship, but up to the end of the eighteenth 
 century these denials and hardships were cruel and rigor- 
 ous in the extreme. Curiously enough, sea-writers have 
 understated its horrors ; and after making every allow- 
 ance for the malicious exaggerations of Smollett, who was 
 unfitted for the service he abused, it must be admitted 
 that the life was, in essentials, worse than he described it 
 in Roderick Random. Cruises were long and heart-break- 
 ing ; ships were small, ill-equipped, and rotten ; battles, 
 filled with appalling slaughter, were frequent ; and as no 
 laws of hygiene were systematically ordered or observed, 
 the navy was devastated by the scourge of scurvy. While 
 ships were engaged for months and months in the unre- 
 lieved blockades of ports it was impossible to give the 
 men fresh provisions, pure water, or shore liberty ; and 
 when to the alertness of mind demanded by this duty was 
 added the strain imposed physically, is it a wonder that 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 151 
 
 even the strongest broke down ? These conditions exist- 
 ed up to the early part of this century, notably during 
 the blockade of Brest by Lord St. Vincent, when for a 
 vexatious period of one hundred and twenty days not a 
 single ration of fresh grub was served the crews afloat. 
 
 The only adopted remedy for scurvy the accepted 
 anti-scorbutic was beer ; and as water could not be kept 
 sweet in casks for any length of time, beer, often of the 
 vilest character, became at seasons on some stations the 
 chief beverage of crews. Grog as a part of the ration had 
 not been served out before the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, though the Dutch were even then accustomed 
 to give their crews a nip of Hollands before going into 
 action. The die-hards of England derisively termed this 
 "Dutch courage," but unfairly, for no men ever less need- 
 ed a stimulant to valor than those redoubtable fighters 
 from the dikes, who in their day swept the Channel with 
 brooms at the royal mast-heads, and burned the shipping 
 in the lower reaches of the Thames. 
 
 This scurvy, which annually carried off thousands of 
 English sailormen, was more destructive than villanous 
 saltpeter and grape - shot ; for while it is true that in the 
 Seven Years' War 1512 seamen and marines were killed, 
 yet over 133,000 died of disease or were reported missing. 
 Undoubtedly many of the missing were deserters ; but as 
 the sternest precautions were taken against this offence, 
 the fact still remains that the deaths from the ship-acquired 
 diseases mainly from scurvy must have been enormous. 
 Indeed, it was not until the return of Cook from his sec- 
 ond voyage that the preventive value of lime-juice was 
 recognized ; and it was only in Rodney's time mainly 
 through the great work of Fleet-surgeon Sir Gilbert Blane 
 that any intelligent, general attention was given to the 
 hygienic necessities of ship life. 
 
l$2 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 Though lime-juice had been in use since 1796, Lord 
 St. Vincent was the first to make it (circa 1800) an insep- 
 arable article of sea diet after the crews had been a certain 
 period afloat. The order prescribed that after a month 
 at sea the daily allowance of each man for the next three 
 weeks was to be one ounce of lime-juice and half an ounce 
 of sugar, mixed in a half-pint bottle. After three weeks 
 it was to be served out every other day until the ship re- 
 turned to port ; and the first lieutenant, master, and sur- 
 geon were to inspect its mixing and see that it was taken. 
 Other precautions were adopted. Properly fitted sick-bays 
 were substituted for the sick-berths usually rigged behind 
 screens; ships' store-rooms and wings were rearranged 
 with a view to improved ventilation ; and dry-scrubbing 
 with sand and holystones on the lower and orlop decks, 
 instead of the traditional washing, was ordered. Frequent 
 airing of the bedding every week when the weather per- 
 mitted was enforced; and on September 23, 1800, it was 
 announced that all seamen who wished it must be vacci- 
 nated. 
 
 These and kindred arrangements were planned so ju- 
 diciously, and enforced with so much system and regu- 
 larity, that when the fleet at length returned to Torbay 
 on October 19, 1800, there were only sixteen cases for 
 the hospital out of the 23,000 men who composed the 
 fleet. 
 
 After a while say in the last quarter of the eighteenth 
 century rum came in as a part of the regular dietary, and 
 the service of its tot took up the character of a duly hon- 
 ored ceremony. Everybody drank in those days, from 
 lord high chancellors to fish-wives ; and sea-going people, 
 who were especially notable as bottle -men, drank, rev- 
 elled, and swore fathoms deep and high. And such bev- 
 erages! The most approved were stingo, bumbo, and 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 153 
 
 hypsy, the last two dreadful compounds of rum, brandy, 
 or wine, all young and fiery, tempered with sweet cordials 
 or disguised in spices, and usually gulped blistering hot. 
 Think of those tipples and their next mornings ! or, for 
 that matter, imagine the later revivers of George Os- 
 borne's time, when, as Thackeray tells us, the roisterers 
 of the regiment cooled their matutinal heads with small 
 beer. 
 
 Sea language was pithy and picturesque, and its oaths 
 were frequent, fierce, quaint, and thunderous, larded with 
 archaic aspirations as to your eyes and limbs, and briny 
 and brimstony in similes. So common was this vice that 
 it was boastingly asserted of Admiral Sir Charles Saun- 
 ders, " he was never known to swear on board ship " ; this 
 abstention on board ship being an almost inconceivable 
 mark of self-restraint, worthy of the angels, to whom Ad- 
 miral Hawke compared his two victorious captains at 
 Quiberon. This mention of a famous sea-fight recalls not 
 only the neglect of the fleet by the government, even after 
 a victory which had saved the Islands from invasion, but 
 the consequent popularity of an epigram written of the 
 " Great Fifty-nine " (as the battle was called), which goes 
 as follows : 
 
 " Ere Hawke did bang 
 
 Monsieur Conflans, 
 You sent us beef and beer ; 
 
 Now, Monsieur's beat, 
 
 We've nought to eat, 
 Since you have nought to fear." 
 
 The navy was almost entirely recruited by impressment, 
 and this was carried on with unnecessary hardships, often 
 with great cruelty. Bounties were offered for seamen who 
 volunteered who were " persuaded," as the phrase went 
 but none was given to landsmen, of whom a good pro- 
 
154 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 portion was carried in every ship. When free enlistment 
 failed to secure crews, and it always did fail in war times, 
 recourse was had to the "press." The excitement and 
 rewards of this became a disease almost, for even when 
 persuasion might have succeeded, and a reasonable secu- 
 rity existed that enough men would come in, the quicker 
 method of compulsion pure and simple in its brutality 
 was adopted. 
 
 Press-gangs were recruited from the sailors who ha- 
 bitually enlisted in the navy the backbone of the service 
 they were fondly called and these heroes of the doctored 
 dram, the slung-shot, the cudgel, and the deft hanger, were 
 put in charge of " active officers," this being usually but 
 another name a euphemism for rum -hardened, deter- 
 mined ruffians of the sword. These gentry established 
 rendezvous in the sailor districts of the seaport towns, and 
 here men were gathered freely, when they would come, 
 but mainly by clapping hands on them or bludgeoning 
 them. Other active officers were given command of brisk 
 and handy tenders, which swarmed at the mouth of the 
 Channel, awaiting the hapless crews of homeward-bound 
 merchantmen. When the sail was sighted the cutters 
 made a tight race for first entrance, and the ship was 
 brought all standing into the wind by a gunshot across 
 the bow. Occasionally the shot plumped on board, or the 
 ship resisted, and then some of the crew were maimed or 
 killed. A notable case of this kind happened when one 
 of Rodney's lieutenants attempted to board the ship Bri- 
 tannia off Portland Bill. In the mel^e which followed 
 resistance four poor fellows were killed by the boarders of 
 the tender Princess Augusta, Lieutenant Robert Sax com- 
 manding. 
 
 The men thus taken out in the king's name were given 
 scant justice, as they were forced to serve any indefinite 
 
BREAKING A RECORD 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 155 
 
 period on any indefinite station, and often without so 
 much as an hour's sojourn on the land they had sighted 
 after months of deep-water sailing. 
 
 The simplicity of this plan made it much favored, as it 
 did not interfere with trade nor arouse the clamor of 
 merchants who had a vote, and it saved the press-gangs 
 a deal of trouble hunting the men in the back streets of 
 towns and along the dusty high-roads. Of course it was 
 a cruel fate for the poor fellows seized in such a brutal 
 fashion just as home lifted above the horizon ; but brutal- 
 ity was at a premium then, and the sea ruffian was a 
 " bucko " beloved of the state. Then, too, it was legal 
 enough, a survival of that Crown prerogative by which, 
 for example, Edward III. ordered the Lord Marchers to 
 bring up just as many Welshmen as were needed for his 
 French wars. Its downfall was due to Wilkes during 
 the Wilkes and Liberty period but not for poor human- 
 ity's sake. He saw in its suppression a political lever, and 
 he pried with it until he toppled over the system and his 
 enemies, despite the frenzied insistence of Chatham, who 
 implored the Ministers to authorize its practice if they 
 wished England to maintain her place among the nations. 
 Indirectly some good things came out of it, for it gave 
 her Captain James Cook, the discoverer, one of the famous 
 sea-worthies of the world. When war broke out between 
 England and France in 1755 a "hot press" was ordered; 
 Cook, then mate of a collier, was lying in the Thames, 
 and, as a prime seaman without particular friends, he was 
 a shining mark for " the persuasions" the wise call it 
 of the recruiting officers. He went in hiding at first, but 
 finding his precautions against the crimps and the gangs 
 in vain, he determined to go to Rodney's rendezvous in 
 Wapping and, like the long-headed Yorkshireman he 
 was, secure the bounty and the prospect of advance- 
 
156 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 ment as a volunteer, rather than be seized as a pressed 
 man, for whom there would be neither shillings nor 
 ratings. 
 
 It was the turning-point of his life, and he refers to 
 it with quaint thankfulness in his journals. 
 
II 
 
 ONE thing, however, both volunteers and pressed men 
 were sure of share and share alike if they failed of a 
 sharp eye to windward of the officers' favors, and that 
 was flogging. For this punishment was nearly as common 
 then as morning colors, and was so generally ordered 
 that even when the humane Cook came to his command, 
 notably in his First Voyage, the cat was never spared if 
 occasion demanded. We are told in the narrative with 
 grim particularity how it was inflicted upon the butcher 
 of the Endeavor, who had threatened to cut the throat of 
 a Tahitian woman with a reaping-hook because she had 
 refused to give him a native stone hatchet in exchange 
 for an iron nail. When the charge was examined and 
 established, orders were given for immediate punishment. 
 The sanguinary butcher was stripped and triced up to the 
 gratings in the rigging, "the Indians preserving a fixed 
 attention and awaiting the event in silent suspense. But 
 as soon as the first stroke was inflicted, such was the hu- 
 manity of these people, that they interfered with great 
 agitation, and earnestly entreated that the rest of the pun- 
 ishment might be remitted. To this, however, the lieu- 
 tenant" (Cook's grade at that time) " could not, for various 
 reasons, give his consent, and when the natives found that 
 their intercessions were ineffectual, they manifested their 
 compassion by tears." 
 
 I am sure that the lieutenant did quite right, and that 
 the butcher deserved an exemplary dozen, well laid on. 
 
158 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 Many of the old shellbacks considered flogging simply 
 as a disagreeable necessity of their service, and thought 
 so little of it as a degradation as to have preferred it to 
 the alternative of stopped or watered grog, or of depri- 
 vation of liberty ashore. The truth is, it was made too 
 common to strike that terror to the soul of the hardened 
 which would if anything could have excused it as a dis- 
 ciplinary measure. I have never heard old officers regret 
 its abolition, though I have often heard them condemn 
 its brutality. Still, it was highly valued in some coun- 
 tries, notably in England, where even to this day the 
 ships' boys may be birched for minor faults, and in rare 
 cases the older men are flogged for particularly heinous 
 offences. Even among yachtsmen permission to flog 
 was asked ; notably by the Earl of Yarborough, Com- 
 modore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, who offered the 
 Admiralty a gift of ;iooo if he could be accorded the 
 privilege of tricing up the black-listers of his crew and of 
 giving them a proper allowance of the cat, which with 
 his lordship doubtless meant the innumerable dozens of 
 Dick Deadeye. 
 
 In the merchant service as well as in the navy the mas- 
 ter enjoyed the right, under sanction of law, to adminis- 
 ter this punishment, and, what is more, he was expected 
 to give it in person. But in 1850 the cruel privilege was 
 forbidden to all ships flying the American flag. Upon 
 very high authority the law was construed to include the 
 use of the cat-o '-nine-tails and every similar form of pun- 
 ishment, but not necessarily to mean all corporal pun- 
 ishment, such as a blow with the hand or with a stick or 
 rope ; and in a case cited by Parsons and tried in Boston 
 it was held that the statute was intended to apply to de- 
 liberate flogging by way of punishment, and not to a blow 
 or blows of any kind inflicted in an emergency to produce 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 159 
 
 immediate obedience. In the navy, however, the third 
 section of the eighth article of war authorizes such pun- 
 ishment as a court-martial may inflict upon any person in 
 the service who quarrels with, strikes or assaults, or uses 
 provoking or reproachful words, gestures, or menaces tow- 
 ards any person in the navy, and, with a full knowledge 
 of its consequences, this very proper provision of law is 
 rarely violated. 
 
 Flogging was always an affair of ceremony on board 
 ships of wa,r. On the morning of the day appointed the 
 offenders were brought to the mast by the ship's police, 
 and all hands were piped to witness the punishment. The 
 boatswain's mate, with the cat in hand, stood by the 
 gangway, and near him in due order stood the officer of the 
 deck, the first lieutenant, the captain, and the surgeon. 
 The other officers were ranged on the quarter-deck, and 
 the crew was mustered in the gangway and abaft the mast 
 on the port side. The offence and sentence were read 
 aloud, the culprit was stripped of his shirt, triced up 
 by his hands to a suspended grating, and as the lashes 
 were deftly laid over his bare back a petty officer called 
 out their number. The hardened old tars took it philo- 
 sophically enough after their first anchorage under the 
 biting thongs ; but many a brave lad's spirit was broken 
 by its unpardonable brutality, and many a promising ca- 
 reer was shunted into evil by the stinging cross-cuttings 
 of that devil's lash. 
 
 Of course tradition lingers over many service yarns 
 spun about scenes at the gangway, but there is room only 
 for that one which describes how a Jackie, ordered to re- 
 ceive his regular half-dozen, thought he might escape it 
 by having a picture of the crucifix tattooed over the whole 
 surface of his back, with the legend pricked around it, 
 "Don't dare strike your Master!" When he was next 
 
160 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 stripped at the gangway he turned his India-inked back 
 to the grim old commodore and said : " Look here, sir, 
 and read that." "Very good, my lad, very good," re- 
 sponded the officer; "we will not desecrate the picture. 
 Mr. Roundshot," turning to the first lieutenant, " have 
 this man's shirt put on, take off his trousers, lay him over 
 the breech of a gun, and give him a half-dozen extra. 
 Oh no ! we will respect your scruples, Barnacle ; and, 
 boatswain's-mate, lay the lashes on well and religiously." 
 It is said his messmates' ridicule was so great that he de- 
 serted the ship at the very next port. 
 
 Keelhauling was a method of naval discipline particu- 
 larly in vogue with the Dutch navy ; for as Van Tromp 
 swept the Channel with a broom at his mast-head, his 
 countrymen sometimes used human sweepers under their 
 keels. In large square-rigged vessels the victim, with iron 
 weights secured to his feet, was lashed to a spar; spans 
 were carried from this spar to lines which led to the main- 
 yard. When all was ready the culprit was swayed aloft 
 to the yard-arm, dropped into the sea, and then hauled 
 under the ship's bottom from side to side. Here is the 
 way Marryat describes its performance in the small cut- 
 ter where Smallbones suffered and Snarleyow was thought 
 to be a dog- fiend: "This ingenious process," he writes, 
 " is nothing more nor less than scudding a poor navigator 
 on a voyage of discovery under the bottom of the vessel, 
 lowering him down pver the bows, and, with the ropes, re- 
 taining him exactly in his position under the keelson, 
 while he is drawn aft by a hauling-line until he makes his 
 appearance at the rudder-chains, generally speaking, quite 
 out of breath not at the rapidity of his motion, but be- 
 cause when so long under the water he had expended all 
 the breath in his body and induced to take salt-water in 
 lieu. ... In the days of keelhauling the bottoms of 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 161 
 
 vessels were not coppered, and in consequence were well 
 studded with a species of shell -fish called barnacles; and 
 as these shells were all open-mouthed and with sharp, 
 cutting points, those who underwent this punishment 
 (for they were made to hug the keelson of the vessel by 
 the ropes at each side fastened to their arms) were cut 
 and scored all over the body as if with so many lancets, 
 generally coming up bleeding in every part. But this was 
 considered rather advantageous than otherwise, as the loss 
 of blood restored the patient if he was not quite drowned, 
 and the consequence was that one out of three, it is said, 
 have been known to recover after their submarine excur- 
 sion." 
 
 No words can add to this weird, if somewhat mixed, 
 description of a very old and hearty sea way of murdering. 
 
 Besides these physical miseries, many officers of the 
 lower grades who were without influence, and most of the 
 men, whether volunteered, shanghaied, or pressed into the 
 service, were systematically robbed or defrauded. Indeed, 
 everybody below command rank was underpaid and de- 
 frauded. 
 
 Here is a picture painted 1^1767 lj>y Captain Augustus 
 Hervey, when he succeeded in^passing through the House 
 of Commons a measure for improving the half-pay of 
 naval lieutenants by the addition of a shilling a day to 
 the miserable pittance of two shillings, which they had 
 hitherto received : " The lieutenants on half-pay are now 
 starving for want of subsistence, hiding themselves in the 
 most remote corners of the country, some for fear of 
 gaols, which their necessities and their misfortunes, not 
 their faults, have reduced them to be afraid of ; others, to 
 hide their wants from the world, being ashamed to appear 
 where they cannot support that character which their 
 long services, great merits, and a delicate sense of honor 
 
162 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 entitle them to. These, sir, in a few years must be lost 
 to the country. Already but too many of them have 
 been obliged to seek with their families a settlement in 
 America. Many are reduced to go as second mates in 
 merchant ships ; others have fixed themselves in trades." 
 
 The sailor, both naval and merchant, was everywhere 
 the prey of harpies, official and unofficial. For the sup- 
 port of maimed and worn-out naval seamen "a chest" 
 (locked with five keys, to prevent individual peculation) 
 was maintained at Chatham. This fund had been started 
 in the days of Queen Elizabeth by Sir Francis Drake and 
 other sea worthies, and by 1800 had grown, through the 
 accretions of years, into a great sum, capable of relieving 
 many needs ; and yet, out of 5205 pensions, only 309 were 
 paid directly to claimants, the rest going to land-sharks 
 who had cajoled the rightful owners out of powers of at- 
 torney. Prize-money was also most unequally distributed 
 or withheld, in some cases the shares of the enlisted men 
 being kept by the agents for eight years after the awards 
 had been made. 
 
 Merchant seamen were robbed ashore and afloat, but 
 nowhere more scandalously than by the government in its 
 administration of what was known as the Sixpenny Office. 
 : Beginning at 1694, all mariners were obliged to contribute 
 sixpence each month out of their wages for the support of 
 Greenwich Hospital, upon a promise that they would be 
 entitled to the benefits of that institution. In 1747 this 
 tax was raised to one shilling, and was continued in its 
 iniquity up to 1851, without the least privilege having 
 been accorded the merchant mariner, whose contribu- 
 tions then exceeded $10,000,000. When the robbery was 
 examined into about 1800, it was learned that the 
 permanent establishment for the collection of the duty 
 consisted of three commissioners : the first, the receiver 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 163 
 
 of the tax, was an invalid who never went anywhere ; the 
 second, the accountant, was a gentleman of elegant leisure, 
 who never went to the office ; and the third, the treasurer, 
 was a professor at Cambridge University, who had never 
 been near enough to the office to know its street or parish. 
 
 Even the sick and unfortunate were robbed. An in^ 
 quiry into the Sick and Wounded Office proved that on 
 board one ship assigned to sick prisoners of war " the sur- 
 geon's chief assistant kept a table for the officers at a cost 
 of 2000 a year, the wretches in the wardroom consuming 
 the very articles supplied for sick prisoners. The charge 
 of prisoners of war, when wounded and sick, had thus 
 fallen into the hands of a set of villains whose consciences 
 were proof against pity." 
 
 In cruising ships matters were, of course, somewhat 
 better ; but the surroundings during nearly the whole of 
 the sail period were most trying and depressing. In an 
 article by a living witness by an officer yet vigorous, 
 who saw distinguished service, and is an acknowledged au- 
 thority upon the British service this description is found : 
 "A few words," writes Admiral Ryder, "will describe a 
 sailor's life on board a man-of-war, such as it was in the 
 memory of many living men. No leave to go on shore 
 from the day the ship was commissioned until paid off. 
 No wages until paid off, but occasionally prize-money./ 
 The ship filled with prostitutes in every port by permis- 
 sion of the commanding officer. The majority of the 
 able and ordinary seamen, and many petty officers, got 
 drunk on every opportunity viz., when their boats went 
 on shore, or by smuggling liquor on board, or by saving 
 up their daily allowance. Flogging was a weekly, almost 
 a daily, occurrence. It was almost certain that somebody 
 would be drunk at evening muster, and punishment was 
 flogging at 11.30 next forenoon. 
 
104 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 " The men, as a rule, could neither read nor write. 
 They were brave as lions, and generous, if utter reckless- 
 ness with their money when they got it could be called 
 generosity. 
 
 "After a three -years commission men had received 
 from 60 to ^100 in pay alone, irrespective of prize- 
 money. As a general rule, they lost all their money the 
 first night after the ship was paid off, and the penniless 
 men re-entered for another term of service." 
 
 Is it any wonder then that, notwithstanding the pun- 
 ishments inflicted when captured, desertions' from such 
 surroundings were so frequent, or that, like Kingsley's 
 " Last Buccaneer," many of them abandoned their lives of 
 privation and misery and turned sea-rover, pirate, smug- 
 gler, and sang with him who served under the " Jolly 
 Roger " : 
 
 " Oh ! England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high, 
 But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I ; 
 And such a port for mariners I'll never see again 
 As the pleasant Isle of Aves beside the Spanish Main. 
 
 " There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout, 
 All furnished well with small-arms and cannon all about ; 
 And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free 
 To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. 
 
 " Then we sailed against the Spaniard, with his hoards of plate 
 
 and gold, 
 
 Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folks of old ; 
 Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, 
 Who flog men and keelhaul them and starve them to the bone. 
 
 " Oh ! palms grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold, 
 And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold, 
 And the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee 
 To welcome gallant sailors a-sweeping in from sea. 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 165 
 
 ' Oh ! sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze, 
 A swing, with good tobacco, in a net between the trees, 
 With a negro lass to fan you while you listen to the roar 
 Of the breakers on the reef outside which never touched the 
 shore. 
 
 1 But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be, 
 So the King's ships sailed on Aves, and quite put down were we, 
 All day we fought like bull-dogs, but they burned the booms at 
 
 night, 
 And I fled in a piragua sore wounded from the fight. 
 
 1 Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside, 
 Till, for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died. 
 But as I lay a-gasping a Bristol sail came by, 
 And brought me home to England, here to beg until I die. 
 
 ' And now I'm old and going I'm sure I can't tell where. 
 One comfort is, this world's so hard I can't be worse off there. 
 If I might be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main 
 To the pleasant Isle of Aves, to look at it once again." 
 
Ill 
 
 IN France, then as now, matters were better ordered ; 
 but, even at the best, the rights of the sailor were few, and 
 the power of the captain was unbounded. All nations 
 .were supposed to have laws or traditions, though most of 
 these were little honored in the observance, except the 
 one by which some of the Continental maritime nations 
 were perfunctorily governed. This, familiarly known as 
 the Judgments of Oleron, was one of the earliest systems 
 of European maritime law, and is said to have been com- 
 piled and promulgated in the Isle of Oleron during the 
 reign of the First Richard. 
 
 It was based upon the Rhodian laws and the Consolato, 
 and was so cruel that the great Colbert, moved by its 
 abuses notably by the one told later induced Louis 
 XIV. to withdraw it, and to substitute the regulations out 
 of which has grown the present Code Maritime of France. 
 The story set down here of its operation in one notorious 
 instance, taken from Norman's French Corsairs, is also 
 interesting, as it throws a side-light upon the character of 
 Jean Bart, of Dunkirk, one of the greatest sailors the world 
 has known. So great, indeed, was this Frenchman that 
 in his day he captured nearly two hundred and fifty vessels 
 of all classes, from feluccas to ships of the line, and once, 
 in 1691, he landed in England and scoured the country in 
 the neighborhood of Newcastle. 
 
 In 1666, when sixteen years of age, Jean was appointed 
 mate of the smart brigantine Cochon Gras, which was com- 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 167 
 
 manded by the pilot Valbue". The vessel carried among 
 its crew a Huguenot sailor, Martin Lanoix, whose religion 
 made him a butt for the brutal pleasantries of his skipper, 
 and for the scoffings of all his messmates save Jean Bart 
 and Antoine Sauret. This last, a skilled pilot of the time, 
 and Jean's preceptor, was an old shipmate of his grand- 
 father and father one the noted Michel Jacobsen, called 
 Le Renard de la Mer, and the other Maitre Cornil Bart. 
 Both were famous for their daring and skill among the 
 Dunkirk and Malouine privateersmen of those valorous 
 days, and both had chosen Sauret as the teacher of Jean 
 Bart. 
 
 One afternoon Valbue", when more than half-seas over, 
 spun his open-mouthed crew a yarn of the miraculous aid 
 offered to a sinking Breton fisher-boat by a ghostly bishop, 
 who first appeared walking on the water, and then, after 
 quietly stepping over the side, infused such fresh life and 
 vigor into the worn-out crew that with more than human 
 power they stuck to the pumps until the craft was safe in 
 harbor. When his tale was done, Valbue" took the oppor- 
 tunity of launching injurious epithets at his Huguenot 
 seaman, and of finishing his abuse by hurling a half-empty 
 drinking-can at Lanoix's head. 
 
 With provoking calmness the Huguenot wiped the 
 dripping cider from his face and beard, and replied, "Mas- 
 ter, the Judgments of Oleron lay down that the captain 
 should be moderate in his language and just in his deal- 
 ings to his crew if you please." 
 
 Exasperated at the tone of Lanoix's reply, Valbue" ad- 
 vanced towards him with uplifted hand and threatening 
 words. The Huguenot, falling back, continued, in the 
 same provoking tone, "The Judgments of Oleron, which 
 bind you as well as me, decree that the captain is not to 
 punish the sailor until his anger has cooled." 
 
168 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 " What !" shouted the enraged Valbu6, " you, who 
 blaspheme the Blessed Virgin, dare to quote the law to 
 me ! Take that." And lifting a capstan-bar which lay 
 on the open hatch, he aimed a blow at Lanoix's head 
 that, grazing the face, fell full on the sailor's shoulder. 
 
 Sauret, as the oldest member of the crew, rose to inter- 
 pose, but Valbu threatened to strike him also, and the 
 old sea-wolf as the French grimly call their veterans 
 knowing the absolute authority of the captain, held his 
 peace wisely. 
 
 " Captain," said Lanoix, " I have now received your first 
 blow, as the law enjoins ; but now," lightly jumping over 
 the iron rail which ran across the forepart of the ship and 
 marked the quarters of the crew, " now, if you strike me, 
 you exceed your rights, and I can resume mine, for I have 
 passed the chain." 
 
 " What !" shrieked Valbue, beside himself with rage. 
 " What ! Wait, just wait a moment, and I will show you 
 what laws are applicable to swine, to Jews, and to Hugue- 
 nots." 
 
 Then, seeing Lanoix still on his guard behind the chain, 
 Valbue sprang forward and struck him two violent blows 
 in the face. In an instant the knife of the Huguenot 
 flashed in the air and was buried in the captain's right 
 arm. The gleam of steel was caught by the crew, and, 
 though disgusted at their captain's brutalities, the sense 
 of discipline was strong within them. They rushed to 
 Valbue's aid, and Lanoix was borne down and pinioned 
 in a trice, but not before he had turned on the first man 
 who approached and stabbed him to the heart. 
 
 Pale and trembling with fright and anger, Valbu6 
 yelped to his mess - boy : " Run to my cabin ; there, in 
 a box on the locker, you will find a book bound in white 
 parchment. Bring it to me." 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 169 
 
 The boy disappeared, and in a few moments tumbled 
 on deck with the book in which were set forth the fatal 
 decrees all knew so well. 
 
 Jean Bart, taking his trick at the tiller, stood motion- 
 less while this tragedy was being enacted. A glance of 
 intelligence passed between him and Sauret, and then the 
 pilot, walking aft, sat on the weather - rail by his young- 
 ster's side. 
 
 Valbue, turning towards them, shouted : " You know 
 how to read, Sauret ; read this." 
 
 " I will not read it," replied Sauret. 
 
 " Then I will." 
 
 " Valbue 1 ," interrupted Sauret, "you are not acting ac- 
 cording to the law. That unfortunate should be allowed 
 three meals at which he may acknowledge his fault ; nay, 
 more: he should be permitted the oaths on bread and on 
 wine and on salt the three oaths of our judgment that 
 he may swear to respect your authority in the future." 
 
 " Silence !" thundered Valbue\ " His blasphemies have 
 deprived him of all right to purge his offence. The chain 
 of refuge, the oaths of excuse, the meals of repentance 
 these are not for dogs like him. It is not I who judge 
 him, it is the law ; I am merely the accuser. Listen ! I, 
 Maitre Valbue, swear by the Holy Apostles that what I 
 read is the law. Listen, men of Dunkirk ! 
 
 " ' The sailor who strikes or raises his hand against his 
 captain shall be fastened to the mast by means of a sharp 
 knife, and compelled to withdraw his hand in such a man- 
 ner that one-half, at least, of the erring hand shall remain 
 affixed to the mast' " 
 
 Then, half closing the book, Valbue said : " According 
 to the Judgments of Oleron, any sailor blaspheming the 
 
170 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 Pope shall have his tongue pierced by a hot iron. Lanoix 
 had so blasphemed our Holy Father, and it was my inten- 
 tion to have carried out the letter of the law for the 
 offence. In attempting to arrest him he drew his knife 
 upon me, his captain, and wounded me in the arm. Now, 
 each man answer in his turn : Did Martin Lanoix blas- 
 pheme the name of his Holiness? and, furthermore, did 
 he strike his captain ?" 
 
 Rolling up the sleeve of his blouse and holding up his 
 arm, Valbue showed a flesh wound, fresh and bleeding. 
 " Answer !" shouted Valbue". " Yes or no ?" 
 
 The crew, cringing round the captain, murmured "Yes." 
 But from the stern of the ship, in old Sauret's well-known 
 voice, came the words, " Captain, you had passed the 
 chain, and " 
 
 Stamping his foot on the deck, Valbu6 cried : " That 
 is no answer to my question, son of a dog ! Did Martin 
 Lanoix inflict this wound on me or not?" 
 
 " But " interposed Sauret. 
 
 " Was it Martin Lanoix yes or no?" shrieked Valbue. 
 
 " Very well no," said Sauret ; and 
 
 " No," echoed the young Jean Bart. 
 
 Trembling with rage, Valbue" cried : " The law is sat- 
 isfied. Six of the crew affirm that Martin Lanoix did 
 wound his captain. Two of the crew say he did not. 
 The majority are right. Boy, fetch my cutlass.' 1 
 
 The 'mousse dived below, and after a dreadful minute 
 carried on deck a long, straight Spanish sword, that flaunt- 
 ed an edge as keen as a Sikh trooper's tulwar. 
 
 Stalking forward, Valbu6 hitched it to the windlass, 
 edge uppermost, and then, ordering the crew to lift La- 
 noix, he lashed the prisoner's arm to the murderous blade. 
 
 " Martin Lanoix, withdraw your arm, as the law di- 
 rects." 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 171 
 
 The Huguenot hesitated, and then this Valbue, seizing 
 the helpless prisoner by the throat, dashed him back- 
 ward ; and as he fell, the sword, severing flesh and mus- 
 cle, laid the quivering arm bare from wrist to elbow. 
 
 " Unlash the prisoner." 
 
 Faint with loss of blood, Lanoix sank bleeding on the 
 deck. 
 
 " Bring aft the body of Simon Larret," was the next 
 command. 
 
 "I swear by the Holy Apostles that what I read is true," 
 continued Valbue, again opening the book. " It is the 
 Judgment of Oleron. Listen, men of Dunkirk ! 
 
 " ' If any sailor kills a messmate, or so wounds him that 
 he dies from the effects of that wound, the living man shall 
 be lashed to the dead and both shall be cast into the sea' 
 
 " Yes or no how say you ? Did Martin Lanoix kill 
 Simon Larret?" 
 
 "Yes," answered the craven six, as before; and 
 
 "No," replied Sauret and Jean Bart fearless souls 
 both. 
 
 " Six recognize the murder, two refuse. The majority 
 are in the right. Let the law be satisfied." 
 
 And Martin Lanoix, victim to the hatred of a brutal 
 captain, was lashed, wounded and writhing, to the warm 
 corpse of Larret and cast into the sea of his home port. 
 
 But Colbert avenged him. 
 
IV 
 
 MARVELLOUS as has been the advance in ships and 
 weapons, still the progress to a higher standard of the 
 man behind the gun, and of his less ornamental brother 
 the man at the main-sheet, has been no less astonishing. 
 To-day the trade of seaman is one worth learning and 
 adopting ; for there are prizes for the apt and sober, and 
 a definite prospect of a competency, when self-restraint 
 goes hand in hand with subordinate energy. It is true 
 that in the navy there is little chance, except in war times, 
 for an enlisted man to rise beyond the grade of warrant- 
 officer (boatswain, carpenter, gunner, or sail-maker), or to 
 achieve a commission ; but these warrants are very desira- 
 ble, and are often held by men of the highest character. 
 
 As a class, men enrolled in the naval service of any 
 country are finer than the sailors of their native mer- 
 chant marine, and are surely better treated. In some of 
 the Continental nations advancement and command in the 
 merchant service presuppose an earlier naval enlistment, 
 and the supply for the national ships is sought as far into 
 the heart of the country as the highest spring -tides may 
 reach. 
 
 While our system is not so logical, yet we are securing 
 under it many continuous service men, for it is generally 
 accepted that in rations, clothing, privileges, leave, pay, 
 and retiring pension our navy is unequalled in liberality. 
 It has always attracted the best men of the North Atlan- 
 tic seaboards, and to-day, the world over, merchant-ships 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 173 
 
 of different nationalities are sailed and partly or wholly 
 owned by men who received their training and earned 
 their first savings under our flag. Lately enacted laws 
 prevent all but citizens native-born or naturalized serv- 
 ing in our navy ; and owing to this, and to the influence 
 of the apprentice system, nearly seventy per cent, of our 
 enlisted men owe allegiance to this country. 
 
 This is as it should be, for the navy of the United 
 States is the veritable Fiddlers' Green, the mariner's par- 
 adise ; and if you do not believe it, ask the first fair-mind- 
 ed, clean-looking, trim-built sailor you meet on the river- 
 front. He is subjected to discipline, of course, for this 
 is the breath of all maritime nostrils, but in essentials it 
 is neither burdensome nor heart-rending. Disobedience 
 and misconduct are necessarily punished severely, for 
 without subordination and obedience a ship would be 
 imperilled, if not lost. In the old order these matters ran 
 less smoothly and fairly, for there was no specific limit to 
 punishment, and this might be administered in any form 
 or any measure ; but to-day the restrictions governing the 
 forecastle control with equal rigor the cabin, and the rights 
 of both classes are defined with a particularity of detail 
 which ought to bar tyranny on one side and mutiny on 
 the other. Between the sailor and his officers there is a 
 community of interests which often works untiringly for 
 the inferior's good, and at times a positive affection exists 
 between the two classes a genuine respect. No mariner 
 who knows the duties of his station and performs them 
 cheerfully is liable to suffer ill-treatment except under ex- 
 traordinary circumstances, for it is always to the advan- 
 tage of officers, governments, and owners that fair deal- 
 ing should rule the conduct of the ship. 
 
 For the protection of ship and crew all maritime coun- 
 tries have codified rules of sea discipline, which with us 
 
174 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 and the English are known technically as the "Articles 
 for the Government of the Navy," or as " The Articles of 
 War." We derive ours from the older country, and on 
 them rests the foundation upon which the more elabo- 
 rate codes of the present day have been built. What the 
 "ancient usage" and the "practice of the sea" may have 
 authorized or excused it is hard to say, but the penalties 
 ran the gamut from death to deprivation of liberty to go 
 out of the ship. 
 
 At sea, as on shore, hanging was not an extraordinary 
 punishment, and many offences which are now satisfied by 
 imprisonment for brief periods were then deemed capital. 
 In our service a sentence of death may be imposed by a 
 properly constituted court, but since the Mexican War it 
 cannot be carried out until confirmed by the President of 
 the United States. The last execution on shipboard took 
 place in 1847. The culprit was an Englishman, rated as a 
 seaman on board the United States ship St. Marys, at 
 present training-ship in New York, and then engaged in 
 blockading the ports in the vicinity of Vera Cruz. This 
 sailor had been an insubordinate character during the war, 
 and finally reached the culmination of his offences by 
 striking the acting executive officer of the ship, in conse- 
 quence of a reprimand administered for an infraction of 
 discipline. The general court-martial before which he was 
 tried sentenced him to death, in conformity with the Arti- 
 cles of War, and Commodore Conner, who commanded the 
 squadron, had the punishment inflicted on board the St. 
 Marys. As the unfortunate man was run up to the yard- 
 arm by his own shipmates the crews of all the vessels were 
 mustered on deck to witness the execution. Whether the 
 effect was salutary or not, it resulted in the issue of a gen- 
 eral order forbidding thereafter the imposition of the ex- 
 treme penalty without the consent of the President. 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 175 
 
 With foreign navies, notably with Russia, the limita- 
 tions in the matter of capital punishment are not so exact. 
 Indeed, hanging is believed by all English-speaking crews 
 to be so common with the, Russians that whenever one of 
 their ships of war goes out of harbor for a day and then 
 returns, our people forward are firmly convinced that the 
 excursion was simply to reach the open sea at sundown, 
 so as to hang a man at a yard-arm clear of territorial 
 limits. 
 
 With us general courts-martial alone can examine into 
 the more serious charges, but minor offences may be passed 
 upon by summary courts, while the power of the captain 
 is limited to infractions of the regulations and of the inte- 
 rior routine, his relation, in a disciplinary sense, being much 
 the same as that of a magistrate to a court of record. 
 
 No commander of a vessel is allowed to inflict upon 
 a commissioned or warrant officer any other punishment 
 than private reprimand, suspension from duty, arrest, or 
 confinement, and this suspension may not extend beyond 
 ten days, unless a further period be necessary in order to 
 get the offender before a court-martial. Upon enlisted 
 men he may not order at any one time any punishment 
 for a single offence, except one of the following six : with- 
 drawal of any promotions reduction of any rating, it is 
 called officially made by himself; confinement, with or 
 without irons (handcuffs), single or double, for a period 
 not exceeding ten days, unless, as in the case of officers, a 
 further confinement is necessary in order to bring the pris- 
 oner before a court-martial; solitary confinement on bread 
 and water for a period not exceeding five days ; solitary 
 confinement not exceeding seven days ; deprivation of lib- 
 erty on shore ; and extra duties. All punishments inflicted 
 must be entered in full upon the ship's log, and the right 
 of appeal exists. 
 
176 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 During the civil war our volunteer officers brought into 
 the service many of the disciplinary ideas in vogue with 
 merchant skippers, for there was always a more or less 
 riotous disregard of statute on, board the Western ocean 
 packets and the California clippers. Spread-eagling an 
 alleged or genuine offender had, for example, the merit 
 of efficiency, if not of legality. No one, not even when 
 bucked and gagged, as soldiers may tell you, is more 
 thoroughly under control than a person triced up, bat-like, 
 inside the rigging, with hands and feet hauled out to the 
 ratlines of the farthest shrouds, with a loose bight of rope 
 passed round his body, and the head kept from snapping 
 off by efforts at rigidity which prevented protest. For 
 quieting effects it was superior to tricing up a man with 
 his hands ironed behind him and his toes just touching 
 the pitched seam of the deck, inasmuch as an offender in 
 the latter experiment could s\vear back. Another mode 
 of punishment was to mount an unskilled rider, usually a 
 landsman, upon the spanker-boom, and then, easing off the 
 sheets, to let the wooden horse roll from side to side with 
 the motion of the ship, while the equestrian held on by 
 hugging his steed with all fours or by digging his nails 
 into the wood. Sometimes the motion was so great that 
 the rider was dismounted and broke his leg, or staved in a 
 rib, or dislocated his spine; but as any of these was prefer- 
 able to a long gallop on the " gray mare," as the boom 
 was called, his legs were usually lashed together under the 
 spar. 
 
 Of course all these punishments were illegal, and were 
 the exception on shipboard. Whenever imposed it was 
 done without the sanction of tradition or authority, and 
 wherever reported to the proper officials the officer who 
 inflicted them received summary treatment. For, what- 
 ever may be said to the contrary, the discipline of our 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 177 
 
 ships of war is, in the main, salutary, and its infractions 
 are dealt with in a legal way. The conditions surrounding 
 ship life are so rarely considered by shore people that the 
 mere mention of statutory punishments is looked upon 
 with a scandalized horror that would be amusing were it 
 not so unjust. More injuries are inflicted in a day by the 
 police of our large cities than in all the ships of our 
 service in a year, and these are justified and condoned by 
 the very people who are most blatant over sea punish- 
 ments upon the grounds that the clubbed offender de- 
 served it. The American naval officer yields to no one in 
 his respect and regard for the genuine sailor. There are 
 many such in our navy, there are some in our merchant 
 marine ; but no ship leaves a navy-yard without a definite 
 number of ill-conditioned ruffians forward who are ripe for 
 mischief, who make the ship unhappy, and who respond 
 neither to kind treatment nor to salutary punishment. 
 No one pretends for a moment to justify any illegal bru- 
 tality aft, but when these alleged atrocities are examined 
 dispassionately, with a full knowledge of the environment 
 and of the circumstances, the employment of the heroic 
 and effective remedies will be understood, if not approved. 
 Elaborate as is our code of sea law, too few mandatory 
 penalties are prescribed by statute. This often leads to 
 unfair discriminations, though surely the average deeps 
 and shallows of a sailor's normal derelictions have been 
 sounded sufficiently to establish a rigorous rule. For any 
 given first offence the imprisonment, irrespective of the 
 captain's temperament or health or temper, should be ab- 
 solutely the same for every individual from the beginning 
 to the end of the cruise. Jack the favorite should get as 
 much as Bill the " hellion " ; and no punishments, except 
 in extraordinary cases, should be inflicted until twenty- 
 four hours have elapsed after the report. 
 
178 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 For many years men were at times confined in what 
 was called a "sweat-box" usually a narrow apartment 
 close to the galley, boarded and sheathed with iron, and 
 perforated with holes for ventilation and light. It was 
 built purposely near the galley, or ship's kitchen, and on 
 a warm day the situation of the occupant was trying in- 
 deed. But as some very bad results followed, the depart- 
 ment's conscience was stirred, and in March, 1870, a circu- 
 lar was issued by the Secretary of the Navy which declared 
 that "no rooms hitherto called 'sweat-boxes' will be al- 
 lowed on board any vessel of the navy, but each vessel 
 will have a proper place in which to secure persons sen- 
 tenced to be confined according to law. No room for this 
 purpose will be smaller than a state-room allowed a ward- 
 room officer in a sloop of war." It is impossible to say 
 how long this means of punishment was used, but it was 
 high time indeed to abolish a torture -chamber where the 
 prisoner would lie stark naked, bathed in perspiration, in 
 a twilight of misery, with lips glued to the holes in the 
 sides of his oven or to the cracks underneath the door. 
 
 No tradition tells us by what fiction of the law the 
 youngsters, the reefers, were mast-headed or made to ride 
 the " crojackyard " outside the lifts and braces ; or how they 
 advanced in the profession by being sent to " toe a seam " 
 on the lee side in a choice company of greasy mess-ser- 
 vants, lubberly landsmen, and shirking seamen, who had 
 missed their muster, or had gone below when their watch 
 was on deck. How the fond mammas of these suckling 
 Farraguts would have moaned their fate could they have 
 watched their jacketed darlings clinging like grim death 
 to the top-gallant shrouds and swearing their souls away, 
 as they swayed and swung over the angry waters from an 
 airy perch to leeward on the top-mast cross-trees ! Why 
 were they sent aloft to buffet the drizzle and the gale? 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 179 
 
 Why was a midshipman ever punished except for two 
 things for everything and for nothing ? 
 
 Of course these things are ordered better now, but 
 punishments are still inflicted which are harassing, unnec- 
 essary, unfit, and silly. In the old times there was no 
 regulation but the captain's will, no appeal from him, no 
 advancement save through his favorite report. To-day 
 navies suffer from survivals of these traditions ; and almost 
 as much as ever does it hold good, certainly in foreign 
 navies, that the lieutenant or junior officer who reports 
 his commander has but a slim chance for the good things 
 of the service. Such an act is looked upon as insub- 
 ordination, and as the line of demarcation between the 
 cabin and everywhere else is feudal in its character, the 
 subordinate usually has little chance to show anything but 
 the strictly official side of his nature. 
 
 And this official side is powerless to explain so many 
 things. 
 
IN the parlous days previous to this century, in all 
 services, as in these days with the English and ourselves, 
 the marines were the ships' police, and bitter was the ha- 
 tred in which they and all other soldiers were held by the 
 old-time mariners. This dislike for soldiers cherished by 
 sailors dated from the early days when the former com- 
 manded fleets, for originally the sailors who worked the 
 English ships were not the fighting men. " It was the 
 sagacity of the Tudor sovereigns, Henry VIII. and Eliza- 
 beth, which devised a separate class of fighting sea officers 
 trained to the sea. Until, however, the supremacy of the 
 English over the Dutch navy was at last secured, soldier 
 officers and sailors were still much intermixed. It was 
 perhaps partly, besides the natural tendency of things, 
 the rise of .such first-rate sailors as Sir John Narborough 
 and Sir Cloudesley Shovel which prevented the recur- 
 rence of the old irregularity in this matter. Making their 
 way up from the rank of common seamen, these gallant 
 and accomplished men, trained in the royal navy from 
 their earliest days, proved themselves so perfectly compe- 
 tent for the service in all the requirements of the period 
 that the fashion insensibly changed ; and if a soldier now 
 and then crept in from the court, or from some great fam- 
 ily, he found he must relinquish all his former ideas and 
 become a sailor out and out." * 
 
 * Burrows. 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 181 
 
 Still, the scions of good families who were soldiers and 
 not sailors did press their way into a service which was 
 always popular, and by family influence which was and 
 is still potent in that branch did force themselves above 
 the head of more deserving men. No one liked this, fore 
 and aft, and the hatred engendered lay at the bottom of 
 much of the discord which wrecked so many joint expedi- 
 tions. The feeling found expression in the lower ranks by 
 such terms as "land-lubber" on one side, and "drunken 
 swab " on the other ; while in the higher grades men like 
 General Mostyn, as reported by Horace Walpole, declared 
 "he was not amphibious enough to like seamen, because 
 there is as much difference between a sailor and a lands- 
 man as between a sea horse and a land horse." 
 
 All readers of the Pilot will remember Coxswain 
 Long Tom Coffin's answer when Captain Burroughcliff 
 tried to persuade him to enlist in his soldier company so 
 that he might secure his life and liberty. " Tom did not 
 laugh aloud," writes Cooper, "for that was a burst of feel- 
 ing in which he was seldom known to indulge, but every 
 feature of his weather-beaten visage contracted into an 
 expression of bitter, ironical contempt " as he " gave vent 
 to his emotion in these words : 
 
 "'A messmate before a shipmate; a shipmate before 
 a stranger ; a stranger before a dog ; but a dog before a 
 soldier.' " 
 
 This was, of course, a briny growl, a rough sea-humor, 
 redolent of tar and marlinespikes, but with enough of shad- 
 owy truth to make it palatable to a "fo'c's'le" audience; 
 for those were the days when these hearts of oak endured 
 only their own class, and cherished a curious antipathy to 
 landsmen in general and to soldiers in particular beggar- 
 ly lubbers and lobster -backs and jollies, as they dubbed 
 them. 
 
l82 THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 
 
 This dislike, up to the second half of this century, in- 
 cluded the marines ; indeed, its persistency was due to 
 them, for when not drilling and fighting and there was 
 plenty of both the routine work of marines on shipboard 
 was police and sentry duty. The proper performance of 
 this brought them into rough-and-ready conflict with all 
 violators of sea discipline ; and as the blue-jacket was apt, 
 in and out of season, to run a-muck and to get caught at 
 it, his turn at the gratings came too often to let him feel 
 kindly towards the person who had reported him. This 
 hatred was often encouraged by the officers at least neg- 
 atively, and for what they called " the best interests of the 
 service." In some ships the marines were isolated from 
 the seamen by a line as clearly cut as that separating the 
 officers and enlisted men, and any association was discour- 
 aged as tending to impair the discipline. 
 
 It can be easily imagined that the life of the marines 
 under such circumstances was not a happy one. Their 
 constabulary duties were trying and ungrateful ; their 
 charges were enterprising and reckless. Posted between 
 two fires Coventry forward, black list aft they got many 
 of the kicks and none of the ha'pence ; but be it said that 
 they rarely failed when called upon to assist in the main- 
 tenance of discipline and in the suppression of disorder. 
 As both classes progressed in intelligence, and were better 
 cared for in food and pay and in liberty to go ashore, po- 
 lice duties grew lighter; and finally, when hard-drinking 
 was banned fore and aft and the grog ration was abol- 
 ished, a friendlier feeling was established and the old lines 
 of personal antagonism gradually disappeared. 
 
 I say personal advisedly, for it must be recognized that 
 the official presence of marines on shipboard is deemed a 
 slur, a reflection upon the seamen, and these naturally 
 ask, "Why should a soldier be hired to watch a sailor? 
 
THE RIGOR OF THE GAME 183 
 
 Why should the billets of sea-going men be taken by peo- 
 ple who are not trained for sea work and not expected to 
 perform it ?" As it is, the complements of ships are alto- 
 gether too small for the cleaning, coaling, sailing, and fight- 
 ing, and why should they be still further reduced by the 
 employment of men who are not sailors, and who do not 
 assist in the cleaning, coaling, or sailing? 
 
 These are very interesting and pertinent questions, 
 which somehow seem to fail of an answer. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 IN one mysterious incident the wreck of the Rainier is 
 unparalleled in the history of sea misadventure. Pathetic 
 as are the usual tales of ocean disaster, of peril, suffering, 
 and heroism, this one is individualized by the claimed 
 operation of an occult agency which foretold and to a 
 slight degree aided the final rescue. 
 
 The value of the evidence depends, of course, upon the 
 credibility of the witnesses and their object in agreeing 
 upon the same testimony. Of these witnesses one was 
 the chief mate of the ship, another was his wife, the daugh- 
 ter of the Rainier s master, and others were seamen of that 
 vessel, who could gain nothing by agreeing to lie persist- 
 ently in a matter which did not affect their material in- 
 terests, and who told their common experiences with a 
 frankness and an earnestness no cross-questioning could 
 change. 
 
 The indirect evidence rests upon a careful examination 
 made at the time and place by the officers of an American 
 man-of-war. I questioned a number of these officers, and 
 they were agreed that the story was in its essentials con- 
 firmed by all the white people rescued on the island of 
 Ujea (pronounced Uji) ; and that the narrative of the 
 
iS8 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 captain and his part of the crew, as described by the 
 Spirit of Libogen, was verified when these mariners were 
 found subsequently at Jaluit, an island of the Rawlic 
 group. 
 
 I have followed substantially the lines of the story told 
 by the mate and by the naval officers, giving both such 
 condensation as the differences in the form of the narra- 
 tives demand. I have no theory to advance as to the un- 
 known forces described, not even the hackneyed one that 
 here as so often occurs in other stories submitted to the 
 test of psychic investigation the connecting link is miss- 
 ing or withheld, and that coincidences are mistaken for 
 causes. 
 
II 
 
 ON the 1 2th of August, 1883, the American merchant- 
 ship Rainier, Bath-built and of 2000 tons' burden, took her 
 departure from the Delaware Capes, bound for the port of 
 Kobe, in Japan. Thirty-five days out the line was crossed, 
 and after a prosperous run the forty-fifth degree of south 
 latitude was reached. Here she was hauled to the east- 
 ward for the long run of six thousand miles across the 
 Indian Ocean, on a course that was laid to pass to the 
 south'ard and east'ard of Australia and Micronesia. The 
 average vicissitudes of sea, wind, and weather were sup- 
 plemented by much sickness and many hardships, but 
 otherwise the voyage did not promise to be a perilous 
 nor an unusual one. 
 
 On the 28th of November Norfolk Island, in latitude 
 29 o' south, longitude 167 46' west, was made; and after 
 a supply of fresh provisions had been taken on board, the 
 ship filled away and ran along uneventfully until the trop- 
 ics were reached. Here the wind failed, and the ship lay 
 idly drifting in that perilous sea at the mercy of unknown 
 currents and uncharted reefs. Many days of fretting calms 
 and baffling airs beset her, but slowly and laboriously the 
 Rainier fanned along the course shaped, skirting at a safe 
 distance and at times sighting the treacherous coral out- 
 posts of the Caledonian, New Hebrides, and Solomon 
 islands. 
 
 On January 3, 1884, the ship then being 144 days out 
 from home, slight puffs of wind whitened the glassy water 
 
190 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 with foam-caps, and as the morning advanced these stead- 
 ied into gentle breezes from the north'ard and east'ard, 
 gladdening the hearts of all hands with the assurance that 
 the regions of the brave trades had been reached once 
 more. As the day grew the breezes freshened, and the 
 Rainier, listing handsomely under her press of all sail to 
 sky-sails, slipped eagerly northward the weight of wind 
 in her canvas, the clear sky, the unvexed, leeward sweep 
 of the billows, promising that another fortnight would see 
 her swinging idly to her anchor in the harbor of Kobe. 
 About three in the afternoon an island, supposed to be 
 Lae, of the Marshall group, was raised on the port bow, 
 and before sundown it bore abeam, distant eight miles as 
 established by cross-bearings. As this marked the long- 
 looked-for turning-point in the voyage, the captain changed 
 the course to northwest, and with a blithe acceptance, for 
 the ship was clear of the dangerous groups dotting that 
 roughly surveyed and unbeaconed sea, and nothing was 
 left save plain sailorizing before the shores of Japan, then 
 distant about two thousand miles, were lifted. 
 
 The moon set near the end of the second dog-watch 
 something after 7.30 and a veil of thin mist blotted out 
 the faint stars as the Rainier, sparing her light sails, rushed 
 into a night that was gloomier than the forecast of the 
 sundown promised. At eight bells the watch was mus- 
 tered and relieved, two men were stationed on the to'gal- 
 lant forecastle, and orders were passed for a brisk and 
 bright lookout forward. After a careful scrutiny alow and 
 aloft, the chief mate, who had taken the deck, found the 
 captain on the starboard quarter, peering with a long 
 night-glass into the darkness to windward and ahead. 
 The deck was silent save for the musical noises of a 
 peaceful sea night, and the decks were steeped in the 
 witcheries of that pleasant hour, when at last the course 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 191 
 
 for a long-sought port is set, and the intense watchfulness 
 of days and nights passed in dangerous seas is replaced 
 by a calm alertness which yields nothing in care, but 
 much in wearing anxiety. 
 
 The captain swept carefully the open stretches of wa- 
 ter, discovering nothing ; but as he was about to close the 
 glass he stopped suddenly and focused it earnestly sharp 
 on the bow, and then said hurriedly to his chief officer : 
 
 "What is that? There! On the bow and ahead ? Do 
 you see it? A queer white ridge? It looks like white 
 water it looks " 
 
 " Breakers ahead ! Breakers !" 
 
 The alert lookouts had seen it, and that dreaded hail, 
 ringing out in the night, penetrated the uttermost living 
 spaces of the ship. 
 
 The watch on deck jumped to their feet, the men below 
 tumbled out of their bunks and rushed half-clad to the 
 sheets and braces every man fore and aft at his station. 
 
 " Breakers ahead ! On both bows ! Breakers " 
 
 The cry rang again and again there was white water 
 everywhere. 
 
 " Hard a'starboard !" sang the captain, and as the wheel 
 swung ardently the port after-braces were let run and the 
 ship's head turned slightly to leeward. 
 
 But too late ! 
 
 The Rainier was in the smother of foam, was slipping 
 with a grinding crunching through the outer spurs of 
 coral, and with a dreadful crash, which brought yards and 
 spars tumbling from aloft, struck and stuck on the serrated 
 parapets of a South Sea atoll. 
 
 Her day was done. 
 
 After a night of dreadful hardship and labor the late 
 dawn broke and revealed a dreary outlook. On both 
 
192 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 bows breakers curled and foamed over barriers of coral, 
 which in some places, notably where the ship had struck, 
 were submerged, and in others lifted a grayish, crumbling 
 wall above a turbulent surf. When the day made the 
 sails of native boats gleamed in the sunshine, and as these 
 canoes drew near the savages manning them shouted so 
 madly and with such wild and threatening gesticulations 
 that death by sea seemed better than the fate which await- 
 ed reefward. 
 
 It was a desperate situation. The crew and officers 
 had gathered on the to'gallant forecastle about the cap- 
 tain's daughter, some lashed to the rail, and all hampered 
 by the tangle of wreckage, though to a degree sheltered 
 by the quarter-boats, which had been transported forward 
 during the night. The after-part of the ship was rapidly 
 disappearing under the incessant pounding of the sea, and 
 a litter of spars, held alongside by twisted running-gear 
 and trailing standing-rigging; for these at times darted 
 like battering-rams against the weakening timbers of the 
 frames. The sea swept riotously inboard, over the taffrail, 
 along the decks, through the cabins and deck-houses, up 
 the steep inclines forward, even into the eyes of the ship 
 everywhere and with such merciless energy that it was 
 feared the to'gallant forecastle would be carried away, and 
 with it, in the outgoing current, the hapless company. 
 
 The nearly naked savages, ranged knee -deep in the 
 water on the reef, clamored unceasingly their king loud- 
 est and fiercest of all and so menacingly that the officers 
 distributed the rifles and ammunition which had been 
 brought forward. The morning breeze had not yet fresh- 
 ened, and over the slight space separating ship and reef the 
 natives shouted a gibberish of mongrel Kanaka, garnished 
 with the words " captain," " king," " schooner," " whiskey," 
 and the like, undoubted inheritances from the white traders 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 193 
 
 who tramped, half-pirates and half-peddlers, over that sun- 
 lit sea. Finally it looked as if this blood-thirstiness might, 
 after all, be due more to excitement than to evil in- 
 tent, for the king made many pantomimic signs of amity, 
 shouted " friend," beat his breast, and pointed up the 
 shining lagoons to two knolls where the island of the atoll 
 raised its trees shadowily above the horizon. 
 
 Reassured by these manifestations, many sea devices 
 were tried on board to establish communication with the 
 reef, and so deftly that later the boats were lowered in 
 a smooth time, and the dangerous passage to the calm 
 water of the lagoon made with all hands and many 
 stores. By this time the day was nearly spent, and as 
 the land, almost undistinguishable from the ship, was fully 
 ten miles distant, the king determined to sail for home. 
 The boats were taken in tow, the large mat sails spread 
 and trimmed, and the convoy sped over the calm water so 
 speedily that just before sundown the canoes were close to 
 the beach of an island which was nearly a mile long and a 
 quarter of a mile wide, and was covered to the water's 
 edge with groves of cocoa-nut trees. The party landed 
 after the darkness had fallen, worn to the bone, and wet 
 and famished, and were assigned to low huts, before which 
 bonfires of husks were blazing. The shore was lined with 
 natives, and these by the king's orders brought baskets of 
 green cocoa-nuts to the half-starved white people. Before 
 they slept for the night the captain learned that the island 
 was called Ujea, and that the nearest trading station was 
 three hundred miles distant. Beyond this he could learn 
 little, though he tried hard to discover how the natives 
 knew of the ship's misadventure. 
 
 For this was a puzzling matter. 
 
 The Rainier had gone ashore in the darkness, the natives 
 had started before daylight, and no lanterns used on board, 
 13 
 
194 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 surely in the mist of that night, could have been seen from 
 the little island. Finally the king seemed to understand, 
 for, lowering his voice, he said, " Libogen speak, Libogen 
 tell" 
 
 " Libogen ?" repeated the captain. 
 
 The savage nodded his head, and said: 
 
 " Libogen. Libogen tell big canoe broke tell go," 
 and then he added, sweeping his hands to encircle the 
 horizon where the white men might be supposed to live, 
 " White Kanaka belong Libogen." 
 
Ill 
 
 AFTER a few days given to rest and to recuperation 
 from the bruises and excitement of the wreck, the cast- 
 aways began to build huts. But nimble-fingered as Jackie 
 is in most things, he was a poor hand at this, and was 
 glad to trade a shirt or a pair of tarry trousers for the 
 three hours' labor by which the deft natives could make a 
 shelter out of cocoa-nut branches and coral grass. The 
 captain, filled with a hundred anxieties, determined to lose 
 no time in seeking a port from which rescue might be sent; 
 and so, when the men were rested, he hauled out the long- 
 boat and made her ready for what, at the fairest chance, 
 would be a dreary and perilous journey. A volunteer 
 crew offered, the boat was soon in as good a condition as 
 circumstances allowed, and on the loth of January, with 
 the second mate in charge, she sailed before a fresh breeze 
 down the lagoon and into the coral sea. 
 
 The captain ordered the mate to hug the wind, and if 
 possible to reach a white man's trading station, called 
 Jaluit, which the natives had said was 300 miles distant. 
 If the wind blew too strong for this turning to windward, 
 the second mate was to run before it to Oulan Island, and 
 if no aid could be found there he was to shape a course 
 for Ascension, and thence to China, which would bear 
 west-southwest by compass, distant 3000 miles. 
 
 The weeks following the sailing of the long-boat were 
 bitter with strong winds and rough seas, and cheerless to 
 eyes that waited for sails no breezes lifted above the verge. 
 
196 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 Sickness beset them : one man the steward died, and 
 others seemed ready to succumb, partly to their miseries 
 and partly to the inroads of the fateful disease which had 
 attacked them on shipboard. The chief mate's wife was 
 in a sad case of physical misery, and the captain, stricken 
 by paralysis, was speechless and almost helpless in his 
 hands and feet. They had no proper food nor clothing ; 
 the medicine-chest was nearly exhausted ; and their stock 
 of possible presents and barter was rapidly going in ex- 
 change for food. The king and his people had lost some 
 of the kindly interest which, in the beginning, the fear 
 of Libogen and the possible appearance of a man-of-war 
 the boom-booms, they called them had inspired, and, 
 though not threatening, they were sulky. 
 
 With the intrepidity of his race and training, the cap- 
 tain determined to build a craft of some sort in which 
 Jaluit might be reached. 
 
 "Jaluit," said the ]ting "Emid" (good). "White 
 Kanaka belong Jaluit plenty, plenty." 
 
 On the label of an empty whiskey-bottle, greatly prized 
 by the natives, the captain had seen this name, and rea- 
 soned it must be one of the numerous trading stations of 
 the South Seas one of those sink -holes where, as the 
 pirates infesting it boasted, you could always tell Sunday 
 from the rest of the week because everybody was drunker 
 than usual, and the rights were more frequent and san- 
 guinary. 
 
 One day, in hobbling about the island, the captain 
 found a stout timber which the current had stranded on 
 the atoll, and as this was suitable for a keel-piece he set 
 his crew to work. But the king stopped this, on the plea 
 that the old log was too valuable ; and finally he had to 
 be bought off by the payment of a large overcoat, which 
 he could not possibly wear, but greatly desired. The work 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 197 
 
 dragged slowly; for though the carpenter was skilful 
 enough, the tools were few and imperfect, and the Rainier 
 had broken so fast and so completely that little of value 
 could be secured. Still, the clang of hammer and buzz of 
 saw went on valorously and with such industry that about 
 the middle of March, after fifty-two days of labor, the boat 
 was sparred, rigged, and pronounced ready for departure. 
 
 On the 1 7th of March all hands mustered early to cheer 
 the sailing of the Ujea. The schooner was hauled into 
 deep water, and the crew, including Liga Bucho, the king's 
 son, and his servant, who were to act as interpreters in any 
 outlying islands, boarded her. Sail was hoisted, the little 
 anchor was lifted, and with many fervent God-speeds she 
 jumped eagerly into the ripples of the lagoon, took the 
 freshening breeze into her canvas, and soon became a faint 
 speck, and then nothing, in the sky framing the silent 
 waters. 
 
 No word came from the Ujea for many days ; but 
 what happened to her and to the long-boat the hapless 
 ones learned later when the Spirit of Libogen revealed 
 their own and their shipmates' fates. 
 
IV 
 
 LIFE on Ujea was dreary enough, and privations and 
 heart - weariness broke the white men's health and de- 
 stroyed their belief in any hope of rescue. Then, too, 
 the natives began to show signs of hostility ; and as there 
 were no longer presents to give, and the strangers were 
 dependent upon the Kanakas for their daily cocoa-nuts 
 and bread - fruit, dissatisfaction ripened into mischief. 
 When three months of hopeless waiting had passed, the 
 mate determined to fit out the two quarter - boats and 
 leave the island. These preparations were watched cu- 
 riously by the king, and finally the mate confessed his 
 intention. The next evening Sunday Noma, one of 
 the king's wives, appeared at the door of the white man's 
 hut with a message from the chief. 
 
 In her native dialect and in the Pidgin -English the 
 mate's wife had taught her, Noma explained that Libogen 
 had come to the island and wished to talk with them in 
 the king's house. By this time they had heard much of 
 Libogen, frankly and fully from the king, but stealthily 
 from the others of lower caste, to whom he was tabu. 
 Piecing together the fragments of explanation, they gath- 
 ered that Libogen was a human being who had lived in 
 Ujea, had died in the hut they occupied, and was now 
 buried alone on a little island twenty miles or more down 
 the lagoon, which none but the king and his kinsmen dared 
 visit. Whether Libogen was man, woman, or child, no one 
 could tell ; but he was the guiding spirit of the island, the 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 199 
 
 ruler of all who journey by water, the special protector of 
 white sailors, and the adviser of the king, whom it visited 
 at times, and with whom alone it would converse. Speak- 
 ing at more length of the day of the wreck, Noma had re- 
 peated on several occasions, " So, long time gone, Libogen 
 speak king one night. King take canoe, go down reef, 
 find too big canoe, all broke. Plenty white Kanakas. 
 Spose king no good to white Kanakas. Bumby man-of- 
 war come and boom-boom king. So he go down reef one 
 morning before sun and see too big canoe all broke. He 
 get white Kanakas. So white Kanakas belong Libogen." 
 
 When the mate and his wife arrived at the house the 
 king was seated in the centre of the room surrounded by 
 his family; near the door the third officer and the seven 
 remaining sailors of the Rainier were clustered, all listen- 
 ing intently to a mysterious voice which could be heard 
 hissingly, first on one side, next on another, then over- 
 head, and at times in the centre of the enclosure. The 
 king motioned the visitors to a seat beside him, but be- 
 yond this no notice was taken of their appearance by the 
 intent groups eagerly listening to the mystical messages. 
 
 The room was dimly lighted, and the grewsome silence 
 was broken only by the murmuring of the night breeze 
 through the pandanus-trees, by the muffled echoes of the 
 sea thundering on the barriers up the wind miles away, 
 and by the voice. 
 
 This voice was low and distinct, with a curious sibilant 
 quality, and as it ebbed and flowed about the room the 
 mate and his wife, even with their slight knowledge, clearly 
 made out the meaning of many words. 
 
 Presently the king lifted his hand, palm outward, and 
 said, " Libogen speak to mate." 
 
 After pausing a moment and, as he confessed, very 
 much awed even granting it was all a clumsy trick of 
 
200 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 some native medicine-man the mate asked Libogen to tell 
 him three things : " First, what had become of the second 
 mate and the long-boat? Secondly, what was the fate of 
 the captain and the thirteen of the crew who had sailed on 
 the schooner? Thirdly, if he and the others with him 
 were to be rescued from the island ?" 
 
 The king slowly asked the questions, and as the faint 
 whispered replies came, now from here, now from there, at 
 times even in the ear of the mate, he translated them in 
 a mixture of dialects which, put together, made this mes- 
 sage: 
 
 " The second mate had been picked up by a ship near 
 an island called Pornipette" 
 
 Where Pornipette was neither the king nor any of the 
 white men knew when subsequently this question was dis- 
 cussed. 
 
 " The captain had arrived at Jaluit, was there then, but 
 too ill to leave ; no trading schooners were in the port, though 
 as soon as one arrived it would be sent to their rescue. In 
 one week a schooner would come to Ujea. In two weeks a 
 big schooner would come with the second mate, and they would 
 all be taken away" 
 
 The voice ceased for a moment, and then followed an- 
 other message announcing that the spirit of Silva, the stew- 
 ard who had died on the island, was present with Libogen. 
 
 Presently the king stated that Libogen had finished, and 
 told the mate to say " Good-night, Libogen." " Which," 
 said the mate, " I did, and was answered by ' Good-night, 
 mate,' in as plain English as I could speak myself. My wife 
 was asked to do the same, and was as plainly answered 
 ' Good-night, Emma ' this in the hearing of all." 
 
 As the long week drew to an end the king drifted to 
 the mate's hut one evening to get his usual pipe of oakum, 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 201 
 
 for the tobacco, and nearly all the tea, had been used long 
 ago. After smoking a few moments he said, " Libogen 
 speak, to-morrow one week up schooner come." 
 
 " Libogen," replied the mate, nervously, " Libogen tells 
 lies. Libogen does not speak true." 
 
 " No, no, no," answered the king, earnestly, " to-mor- 
 row come, sun finish, schooner come. Libogen no lie, 
 always speak true." 
 
 All Sunday the ten white people watched the sea eager- 
 ly from the lookout, where they had raised a flag-staff and 
 laid a fire for lighting. The day dragged slowly, and as 
 the sun declined the hope they had cherished in spite of 
 all reasoning was about to fade, when, just before sundown, 
 they heard a shout go up and saw a confused mass of yell- 
 ing natives running to the southern edge of the island. 
 The king, who was standing next to the mate, shouted, 
 "Schooner come! Libogen no lie." 
 
 The mate brought his sea-glasses to bear in the direc- 
 tion indicated, and made out a curiously built craft, carrying 
 a large three-cornered sail. Many natives swarmed about 
 her decks, and as he watched he feared that the deliver- 
 ance promised might be from life, but not from bondage. 
 The king, who saw his alarm, said, " Never mind, Kana- 
 kas no hurt mate. See ? Not come here, go another isl- 
 and." 
 
 It was as the king said, for just as the sun dipped the 
 sheets of the craft were lifted, and she rounded the outer 
 points of the atoll and sailed into the mysteries and silences 
 of the ocean night. 
 
 It was a queer realization of the first part of Libogen's 
 prophecy, and in their eagerness to find if the coming 
 week should have its fulfilment the days crept slothfully. 
 Even the sky and wind and sea were against them, for it 
 was the change of the monsoon, and the fine, brisk weather 
 
202 THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 
 
 had given way to fierce heat, which was succeeded by tor- 
 rents of rain and a wearying sultriness that would have 
 sapped all interest out of life were it not for the intensity 
 of hope that made the blood run fervidly in their veins. 
 
 On Saturday night the mate and his wife sat in their 
 hut, nervously discussing what the next day would bring 
 them, both hopeful for the other's sake, when suddenly 
 she started to her feet, exclaiming, " Listen, I hear a gun 
 a loud gun, not the surf but a gun," and at that mo- 
 ment a native rushed to the hut, crying, " Schooner come 
 boom-boom boom-boom ! Schooner come !" 
 
 The morning dawned with drizzle, and a wet, salt mist 
 shrouded the land and sea; even the nearest reef could 
 not be seen, and in the dulled sky no gleam of silvered 
 cloud showed where the sun was climbing. The crew had 
 been stationed so that the ocean could be swept in every 
 quarter, and the officers were about to visit these lookouts 
 when solemnly and sullenly the resounding clamor of a 
 heavy gun rolled over the dreary water. As they ran for 
 the highest point of the island another gun boomed mourn- 
 fully, and then the mist lifted its heavy vapors, and, borne 
 crazily on the light airs just making, came from lookout to 
 lookout that hail of hails, " Sail ho ! sail ho !" 
 
 Groups of natives stood around the coral-grass on the 
 knolls, pointing and shrieking wildly ; the lookouts danced 
 and waved their nerveless arms excitedly; the king and 
 the mate paused in a little clear space all gazing through 
 the sphering, sodden haze at a large vessel standing slowly 
 under fore-and-aft sail and skimming the southwest edges 
 of the reef. 
 
 " Mate, look !" said the king, proudly. " Boom-boom 
 Libogen no lie. Tell two weeks big schooner come. 
 Mate, look !" 
 
 No time for laggards then, and a rush was made by the 
 
THE SPIRIT OF LIBOGEN 203 
 
 white men for their boat, to intercept the vessel. She 
 might have seen the island indistinctly or not at all ; the 
 fog might shut down ; a thousand fears and contingencies 
 seized them, and all supreme effort was better than the 
 death of the hope now blazing riotously through their 
 blood. 
 
 It was a long pull, and a hot one, and they were weak 
 with illness and want of food, but it was a pull for life and 
 home. As soon as a safe place was discovered amidst the 
 breakers the boat was headed for the reef, dragged on the 
 coral wall, and there held poised until the smooth time came. 
 And when it came, with a loud cheer the craft was shoved 
 into the breathing space of the surf, and with nerved grip 
 and eager heart pulled clear of the breakers seaward. 
 
 The fog blew down the wind in pale, hurrying sheets, 
 tinted with glints of the clearing day, and as the sun burst 
 through the upper sky it lighted on the black hull of a 
 war steamer, over which streamed, in the moist, golden 
 light, the folds of the American ensign. The ship was 
 headed towards them, and as they drew under her lee 
 they saw their second mate leaning over the bulwarks 
 shouting a joyous welcome. 
 
 It was the American sloop of war Essex, sent by the 
 admiral of the China station to rescue the Rainier s crew. 
 
WHEN the threads of the ravelled yarns were gathered 
 the castaways learned that the second mate's boat had 
 been picked up near the island of Pornipette by the Brit- 
 ish bark Catalina, bound from Australia to Saigon, Cochin 
 China ; and that he had been sent to Hong-Kong, where, 
 on learning his story, the American admiral had ordered 
 Commander A. H. McCormick, commanding the Essex, 
 steam sloop of war, to the rescue. Two days after sailing 
 from Ujea the Essex arrived at Jaluit and the captain and 
 his part of the crew found. What is more, when the cap- 
 tain's story was told, the circumstances of his illness, of 
 the absence of schooners, and of his efforts to send relief 
 were as Libogen had revealed them. 
 
 These are the facts in the case, and it is a queer mys- 
 tery of the sea, an odd but true yarn is it not? 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 WITHOUT his breathing-spaces and his play-time naval 
 Jack would be the dullest of all dull boys. At the best, 
 sea life is so filled with perils, self-denials, and hardships, 
 that if it were unlightened the strongest and best would 
 bend under its strain. Even on the tautest ships this is 
 recognized, and always the routine of work, watches, and 
 drills is interrupted by recesses the sailor may call his 
 own. In these seasons of rest he gets his share of such 
 maritime pleasure as time and tide may dole ; then he 
 may weave and twist the undisputed yarn in the lee gang- 
 way to an audience that never tires nor dares to doubt ; 
 then may he pull placidly at the unvexed pipe, loaded to 
 the muzzle with the strongest tobacco in the world ; then 
 may he swing dolorously into the dreary variety-hall dit- 
 ties, which haplessly have sunk fathoms deep the dear old 
 sea -songs; or, if wind and weather permit, he may bake 
 on the " fo'c's'le " in the sunlight, and overhaul with mi- 
 nute care his clothes-bag and his ditty-box. 
 
 As a rule, the modern man-o '-war's man takes his pleas- 
 ure seriously, soberly, and in discreet company ; for, like 
 great Pan, the tar of fiction and of song is dead. You 
 will see him no more fresh from the Spanish Main, garbed 
 quaintly, and striking the attitudes of a master of dance 
 and combat ; no more will you mark him shifting quids, 
 
208 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 hitching trousers, damning eyes, and scattering double 
 handfuls of doubloons and moidores; no more will you 
 see him cross-gartered and pigtailed, sword -girded and 
 bepistoled, save in that weird melodrama where the gods 
 still love him. He is alert, vigorous, self-reliant, frank, 
 modest, brave, temperate. The type figuring in the pop- 
 ular mind as a die-hard is the exception ; and be sure that 
 the shore rovers, carrying lee gunwales under with a press 
 of canvas, and backing and filling filling especially 
 along the hospitable channel-ways of the Bowery, are not 
 true representatives of our Yankee tars. 
 
 Week after week I have seen the watches of a ship of 
 war go ashore with the utmost regularity, and return clean 
 and sober, usually before their liberty had expired and 
 rarely over time. I believe no class of similar station is 
 superior to sailor men ; and if you doubt this, take a 
 Jackie's Saturday night ashore, and ask the policemen 
 along the Bowery, or search the police records, and the 
 inquiries must convince you. Of course he is not a saint ; 
 and while there is no such regular spree as the blue Mon- 
 day of other working-men, occasional lapses are natural 
 enough. Often, when a blue-jacket strikes the beach, he 
 has so many lost opportunities of conviviality to make 
 up, and land-keeping people are so apt to view him with 
 a regard and a forgiveness yielded no other class, that his 
 good resolutions scurry whistling down the wind, and his 
 normal qualities are eclipsed by the gayeties of the run 
 ashore. 
 
 The naval seaman of our day has to think as well as to 
 pull and haul, and he must keep a sharp lookout to wind- 
 ward if he desires advancement in a trade where the spe- 
 cialties are many and the rewards are great for aptitude 
 and good behavior. Then, too, he has been advanced to 
 a higher plane, for he lives better, and is better clothed 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 209 
 
 and housed, than in the days of carronades and stunsails. 
 Save in exceptional voyages to distant stations, he is more 
 often, if not so long, in port, and he has greater opportu- 
 nities for shore -going more liberty, as he calls it and 
 more systematic discipline. To see him at his best is in 
 the open, in an emergency calling for brain and brawn, 
 and next, perhaps, in a port drill, when a rival ship is 
 pressing hard in a hot race against time. Then will be 
 revealed a type of honest, hard-working, patient yet eager 
 manhood that is an honor to the calling and the country. 
 
 Jack's life is set about with metes and bounds, as the 
 requirements of modern war machines may leave uncon- 
 sidered but few half -hours of the day. Usually he is 
 called at sunrise, and from then until four in the after- 
 noon he is busy with the persistency of a mechanic, and 
 alert with the readiness of a doctor for an unexpected 
 duty. During meal hours he is allowed to smoke within 
 his prescribed limits ; and so jealously are these times of 
 rest guarded that a red pennant flying aloft shows to the 
 outside world he may not be disturbed, even were it to 
 receive the admiral. After supper there are minor details 
 to be finished, a routine drill perhaps, at sea often a gun 
 exercise, but always when hammocks are piped down and 
 until tattoo is done the cherished leisure hours are made 
 as much his own as the cares of the ship permit. 
 
 This is his season of merriment, and his pleasure runs 
 the gamut of many physical bouts. He boxes, and gives 
 play with single-stick and quarter-staff, both vigorous, de- 
 termined, and honestly punctuated with resounding whacks 
 and grinning acceptances of pain. The bear is chased 
 amid much license of noise, and Jack swims, dives, rows, 
 wrestles, and dances. And how he dances ! Save on 
 board flag-ships, bands are extemporized affairs, for the 
 sailor loves his music dearly, even when he has to pay his 
 14 
 
210 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 piper, and is a prentice hand with various instruments, 
 though I think there is an unwritten law against the 
 wheezy and soul -envenoming concertina and a respected 
 prejudice concerning the piccolo. 
 
 I do not know that he hornpipes it so much as he jigs 
 it ; but when he does go in for form and style his tradi- 
 tional performance is filled with strength and grace and 
 honest delight. 
 
 It is at this hour, too, that the dumb pets of the crew 
 have their rarest frolic, for by the association, by the in- 
 spiration, perhaps, of the same sentiment, this twilight 
 season becomes to the sailor what the children's hour is to 
 the luckier landsman in homes where love is sanctified by 
 the tender witcheries of happy childhood. The isolation 
 of the sailor, the craving during long years of exile for 
 something that cares for him purely for himself, is a charm 
 to conjure with, and lucky indeed is the dumb brute whose 
 lines fall in the pleasant places of the forecastle. Indeed, 
 the fondness sailors show for their pets is proverbial, and 
 so intimately are these associated with certain famous 
 deeds of the sea that they have acquired a definite name 
 and fame, and are as well known and as fondly remem- 
 bered and lamented as are the racers of by-gone days by 
 ancient jocks and stable-boys. 
 
 With sailors this feeling often borders on a sincere af- 
 fection, and in the early twilight of a second dog-watch 
 I have seen weather-beaten, battle-scarred blue -jackets 
 fondling some pet as tenderly as a mother would her first- 
 born, and then, when darkness fell, stowing it in a secure 
 bed and bidding it the most affectionate good -night. 
 These pets are of every description, from field - mice to 
 bears, at times more than one sharing the allegiance of an 
 owner. I recall an aged foremast-man of one of our sloops 
 of war the Vandalia, I think who had collected a most 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 2ii 
 
 interesting family, consisting of a dog, goat, cat, rabbit, 
 hen, parrot, and monkey, all living in a harmony which 
 put to shame the immoral and quarrelsome members of 
 like households in stuffy museums. So well behaved and 
 decorous were they that even the strictest of first lieuten- 
 ants, watchful for holystoned decks and shining paint-work, 
 could not complain. Another of our war-ships mustered 
 a pig, a bear, and a dog in its books. These had become 
 thoroughly sailorized, going at drum -beat to quarters, 
 mustering with their divisions, and observing with a fine 
 precision the routine of the day. By an unexplained but 
 accepted assumption of rank the pig took his station on 
 the quarter-deck, the bear mustered amidships, and the 
 dog clung to the eyes of the ship, each in the wake of his 
 adopted gun's crew. Nothing was allowed to disturb this 
 ceremonial precedence, not even the riot and roar and the 
 slaughter, when the ship was sometimes hot in the hell of 
 action. At times the bear, with misty recollections of 
 pine woods and underbrush, would cut adrift from the 
 restraints of education and run " amook " in the gangways, 
 more or less violently hugging members of the crew. He 
 showed a fine discrimination between friend and foe, 
 cherishing for days the remembrance of an affront, and 
 never losing an opportunity of avenging it, as many a 
 madcap youngster had occasion to remember. 
 
 Of all pets none is better suited for ship life than the 
 wily goat, and the traditions of the navy are jocund with 
 quaint stories of this animal. Once in the good old days 
 of tarpaulin hats and true -lovers' knots a famous ship's 
 company owned one that fell into evil ways, such as 
 chewing tobacco, drinking grog, and challenging the best 
 men in the ship to butting matches. Indeed, he became 
 a very rakish, swash-buckling, eye-damning, timber-shiver- 
 ing goat, who lived long and not well, and died after a 
 
212 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 prolonged debauch in a fit akin to what Jackie calls " the 
 horrors." 
 
 Each day, by common consent, the men added a pint 
 of water to the grog-tub, and regularly in his turn Bill came 
 for his tot. At seasons, when the master's mate of the 
 spirit-room was disguised with overmuch drink, the goat, 
 like his two-legged messmates, doubled on the tub, and 
 secured a smuggled ration. He came to grief at last, for 
 on an occasion when the grog was stiff to his liking he got 
 well to wind'ard of the tub, charged, like a first boarder, 
 over a clear hammock-rail at the mate and purser's clerk, 
 took possession of the marine bar, and got so gloriously 
 fuddled, so gloriously " uncou'fou," that he never recov- 
 ered, but went overboard in a middle watch through 
 sheer despair and misery. 
 
 Another goat was the prized shipmate of one of our 
 vessels wrecked on the coast of India, fortunately in 
 weather moderate enough to launch the boats and rafts. 
 Each man was detailed for his place, and allowed to carry 
 his bag of clothes or his hammock, no greater provision 
 being needed, as the shore was close aboard. As the men 
 slowly lowered themselves over the ship's side, the nanny- 
 goat stood amongst the waiting ones, watching her mas- 
 ter, the ship's cook, who stood irresolutely at the mast 
 until his turn came. The cook was an old sailor, and 
 his kit was very valuable to him it was probably all 
 he had in the world but when his name was called he 
 dropped the bag, touched his forelock, and said : 
 
 " If you please, sir, I can't bear to leave Nanny behind. 
 I'll take her instead of the bag, for there isn't room for 
 both;" and then, appealingly, " Can I, sir?" 
 
 Nanny went over the side and landed with him, march- 
 ed by him through the desert, and when relief came 
 bleated her enjoyment in a way that repaid him for the 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 213 
 
 sacrifice. For many years she browsed among the scrap- 
 heaps and rare grass-plots of the Brooklyn Navy-yard, 
 where, surrounded by a numerous progeny, she doubtless 
 told, with many butts, the yarn of the day when her cook 
 and master saved her up Mozambique way. 
 
 I remember some pets of my sea-going days, cherished 
 in life and mourned in death. One was a scraggy hen, of 
 no known breed, raised in Polynesia, and given to one of 
 our officers by a native woman in Nukahiva. Her ab- 
 normal thinness saved her from the steward's knife in the 
 early days at sea ; but finally all hopes of fattening her 
 failed, and she was doomed for a ward-room ragout. One 
 of the men, a queer character in his way, who had made 
 a study of chickens, begged permission to keep her, and 
 as we had fresh grub enough, Nell, as he called her, was 
 saved. In a little while it was more damning than a Grain 
 Coast fetich or an Hawaiian taboo to harm her, and Nell 
 thrived and flourished. 
 
 She was carried through all the islands down to New 
 Zealand and Australia, and back to Chili and Peru, im- 
 proving daily, and displaying an intelligence that was sur- 
 prising. She was the queen regnant of the coop when 
 she deigned to enter, and was as jealous of her prerog- 
 atives as the King of Yvetot. Her cackle proclaimed the 
 late tropical daylight before her liege lord for the time 
 being had hailed the morn, and there was a row if Jemmy 
 Ducks, guardian and feeder of sea-poultry from time im- 
 memorial, did not hobble aft to give her a morning strut 
 to leeward. The first of the corn and water was hers, and 
 having the coign of vantage beyond the coop bars, all 
 lesser chickens, save the favored chanticleer of her affec- 
 tions, suffered. 
 
 She displayed a passion for bananas and yams, had 
 strongly marked likes and dislikes, and, though coquet- 
 
214 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 tish, manifested an affection that was not hampered by 
 official rank, but ran by a descending scale of years a 
 white-haired quartermaster possessing more than a ten- 
 der spot in her capacious heart, while the ship's boys were 
 held in a contempt beyond expression. The men swore 
 by all the pet warrantees of their profession that she 
 whistled and talked, and I know she was as good a storm- 
 glass as any standard instrument on shipboard. Her fa- 
 vorite roost was over the wardroom skylight, her chosen 
 time the dinner-hour, and there she would perch, eying, 
 with respectful familiarity, the senior lieutenant. Her in- 
 terest gradually increased as the dessert stage approached, 
 the appearance of the fruit awaking a cooing, beseech- 
 ing cackle that invariably brought her the ripest banana 
 or the juiciest mango. She often kept the deck officer 
 company in the middle watches, dozing to leeward of the 
 mast until the bell struck, when she would straighten 
 with an assertive air, as if she had never slept, and cackle 
 a warning hail to the lookout. Poor Nell died during the 
 Darien survey, from indigestion and old age, and when 
 she was carried ashore for burial in the neat coffin Chips, 
 the Scotch carpenter's mate, had fashioned, we felt that 
 she had made a place in our lives and memories that some 
 day deserved its record. 
 
 A ship-rat is usually not a cherished object of affection, 
 but I knew of one, and here is the outline of its story: 
 Once in the quarterly overhauling of a frigate's main-hold 
 a rat but a few days old was the only inmate found of a 
 predatory colony which had scurried off, been captured, or 
 carried away when the invaders entered. The ship's doc- 
 tor, a tender soul, took nest and all to his room, rigged 
 a crude but adequate feeding arrangement, and nursed 
 and strengthened the baby rat into a healthy childhood. 
 Nothing could have been tamer than the little gray creat- 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 215 
 
 ure, and it thrived lustily. It slept in the doctor's room, 
 but made rambling adventures through the civilized 
 plains of the ship, fearsomely avoiding the wilderness and 
 deserts closed to man in the frames and timbers of the 
 hull. At night it always awoke when the doctor came on 
 shipboard, waited for a little food and fondling, and then 
 slept peacefully until reveille sent it scampering to the 
 Steward for breakfast. It kept the doctor's quarters clear 
 of all winged insects, and made such a riot among the 
 ants and roaches of the wardroom that the executive 
 officer and mess caterer numbered it among their most 
 efficient aids. It is unnecessary to say that no cats were 
 allowed aft, and that the license and liberties of the offi- 
 cers' quarters were the cherished pleasure and hunting pre- 
 serves of the rodent. Its affection for the doctor was 
 unbounded, and it shared a particular fondness for the 
 photographs of his children, peering through the glass at 
 their innocent faces, and making a vantage-ground for its 
 mid-day naps upon one of the largest of the frames which 
 hung against the after bulkhead of the officers' bunk. 
 
 One night after a shore -going in a tropical port the 
 doctor lighted a candle at the wardroom lantern, and, 
 entering his room, heard a whirring note of anger over his 
 bed. Looking up he saw the little rat in a strange state 
 of fury, its eyes burning like points of fire, its hair ruffled, 
 and its legs gathered for a jump. Wondering at this un- 
 wonted excitement, the doctor called and whistled to it, 
 and then turned to his bunk to throw back the bed- 
 clothes. 
 
 Just as his hand reached the upper covering he heard 
 a strident shriek of anger and the whir of a flying body, 
 and saw, just beneath his uplifted hand, the rat struggling 
 in the bed with an animated ball of fuzzy black that bris- 
 tled with claw-like tentacles, writhing convulsively. The 
 
216 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 struggle was sudden, sharp, short, and when it was over 
 the doctor found lying dead on the bed one of the most 
 savage and venomous scorpions of that region. 
 
 It had come on board probably in the unbarked fire- 
 wood, and had worked its way aft through the hidden re- 
 cesses of the timbers to the doctor's room. Had his hand 
 ever touched the sheet where the scorpion rested, hidden 
 from him in the half-light, but visible to the rat, no power 
 could have saved him from the poison of the sting which 
 would have followed. 
 
 Of course his ratship was the hero of that day and of 
 many days, and I should like to add that it went on in the 
 pleasant lines of its youth, adding to its virtues hourly. 
 But one night when it had become big and strong it 
 strayed into the evil company of other rats, and crept with 
 them upon strange and parlous adventures. Gradually it 
 forsook its civilization and life of simple honesty, and dur- 
 ing a mid-watch close after four bells it was found dead 
 a prey to a jealous ship-cat who caught it stealing warily 
 towards a mess cheese forgotten in the 'tween-decks for- 
 ward. 
 
 Next in importance, but not chronologically, was a 
 wonderful pig not a euchre-playing, time-telling, disrepu- 
 table suckling but as plucky a four-legged shoat as ever 
 thirsted for a miry spot or ran straw-mouthed in windy 
 weather. What memories clustered around that animated 
 suckling ! What regrets filled our souls in after-days for 
 his early flight ! 
 
 By some lost correlation of ideas pigs who go down to 
 the sea are always dubbed " Dennis," and it is only a little 
 less than mutiny to name them otherwise. This Dennis, 
 I regret to say, was smuggled aboard secretly just as we 
 were leaving Talcahuano, in southern Chili. The truth is, 
 he had been stolen from the bosom of a family of six by 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 217 
 
 our unconscionable rogue of a wardroom steward, who af- 
 terwards repeated the performance on shipboard with dis- 
 tinguished success, except in this final scene our money 
 and not the pig dramatically disappeared. 
 
 Dennis was discovered by his grunted protests against 
 confinement shortly after we were under way probably 
 off Quinquina Island, and too late to make restitution and 
 his beauty and developing intelligence so appealed to us 
 that he was saved from a growling butcher to become an 
 important member of our ship family. He was entered 
 upon the cook's roster as Dennis O'Quiriquina, which was 
 softened to O'Quiri, and then, in compliment to the land 
 where his race is most prized, into Dennis O'Kerry -as 
 Milesian a title as Brian Boru of Clontarf and all the sons 
 of Heremon could have desired. 
 
 It must have been some time in March that he joined 
 us, for I remember on St. Patrick's Day, when the hills 
 back of Valparaiso were echoing with the strains of " Gar- 
 ryowen " and " The Connaughtman's Rambles," played 
 by the flag-ship's band, Dennis trotted aft at merry speed, 
 decked with green ribbons, and carrying a dhudeen around 
 his neck and the mealiest potato in the locker spliced to 
 his corkscrew tail. He appreciated the dignity of the time 
 and place, for when we went to quarters he made a polite 
 bow to the captain, and for the first time in his life assert- 
 ed and gained his right to the quarter-deck. On occa- 
 sions of special ceremony he had to be driven forward 
 with contumely, but ordinarily he could never be rooted 
 from the spot, for with the drum-beat he came aft on a 
 run to quarters blow high or blow low, fair weather or 
 foul and assumed, to a mathematical nicety, the station 
 selected on the saint's day. 
 
 He had his bath at daylight, and was washed and brushed 
 and combed into a state of snowy whiteness which pro- 
 
2l8 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 claimed the possibilities of piggy cleanliness, and then he 
 feasted in dignified ease within the honored and exclusive 
 precincts of the galley. During the day he lolled about the 
 decks, generally in the wake of the spare booms, filled with 
 the pride of placeship and never awed from the career of 
 his humor. He attended drills with praiseworthy punctu- 
 ality, and was in nobody's watch and everybody's mess, 
 which is the perfect flower of sea luxury. When night 
 came, in his early days of leanness, he sought his ham- 
 mock, and, later, his carefully prepared division-tub ; but 
 after a time, when fatness clung to his bones and no sail- 
 or's bed-devices would hold him, he would airily prome- 
 nade the deck, waking up a sailor here and there until he 
 found a shipmate fit for his high nobility. I have fre- 
 quently seen a man awake in the middle of the night, and, 
 calling Dennis, give him half his blanket or pea-jacket, 
 and then, with a contented grunt, Dennis would nestle 
 snugly in his new bed, and sailor and pig slept the sleep 
 of the just, their mingled snores filling the still hours of 
 the middle watch with touching tales of boon compan- 
 ionship. 
 
 But an end came to all this happy time, for Dennis ac- 
 quired undue fat, and fell into moralizing, sedate, and dig- 
 nified ways ; next he lost his sense of humor, his fondness 
 for fun ; and then, last scene of all, he forgot the labo- 
 riously taught proprieties of ship etiquette and sea life. 
 Could he have been dreaming of the lost wallowings of 
 his race, the prizes of unalloyed wealth that lay in sun- 
 bathed mires r* The truth is, Dennis degenerated with 
 his prosperity, and became touchy and captious. We 
 would have borne with his ailments, for he had sailed 
 thousands of miles with us, in good weather and bad ; he 
 had been in his day the most dandy and rakish of pigs, 
 and had such a way of cocking his weather eye knowingly 
 
ID AS SOON EAT MY BROTHER AS THAT PIG 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 219 
 
 to the wind'ard, such a rolling gait, and such an heroic 
 fondness for 'baccy and lobscouse, that we would have 
 cherished him to the end. 
 
 It was somewhere about the last of June, and we were 
 at anchor off Papeete, in Tahiti, when the captain said to 
 me, in his quiet way : " You will have to send the pig 
 ashore ; the executive officer reports him unfit for duty." 
 
 Of course, this sealed the fate of Dennis; so I sent for 
 the man who looked out for him, and said : " Barbe, my 
 lad, it will be the Fourth of July next week, and Dennis 
 has to be turned ashore or eaten. If you wish, your mess 
 may have him for dinner, say on the holiday." 
 
 Barbe glared at me in astonishment, almost in horror, 
 as if I had suggested he was a steamboat sailor and not a 
 man-of-war's man born and bred; and then, recoiling as 
 Dick Dead-eye does in the play, he said, mournfully : 
 
 "Why, sir, I'd as soon eat my brother as that pig, as 
 that Dennis, sir! He's weathered o' all we have, and I'd 
 as leave stick my knife into a babby as into that animal. 
 Of course, sir, if it's go ashore, go it is, sir; but I'd like to 
 make terms with the man that's to have him, so Dennis 
 '11 get the treatment and kindness he larned with us, sir." 
 
 It was as I had expected, and so the arrangements for 
 his new home were made at once. 
 
 Eheu, fugaces ! Dennis went ashore the next day in 
 the dingy, bag and hammock, ribbons, dhudeen and po- 
 tato and all, the men clustering in the bridle-ports and 
 gangways to salute him, and the officers waving a farewell 
 from aft. As his pigship pulled under the bows I heard 
 from forward a rousing cheer, and this was the last ship 
 greeting he was ever to know. 
 
 A countryman of ours had drifted into that land, and 
 Dennis had been consigned to his care under a guaran- 
 tee that his later days should be spent on a plantation 
 
220 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 inland, and that his sphere of duty should be as a breeder, 
 for, doubly blessed, we had in Dennis a prize in pig strain 
 we never knew. 
 
 I drifted ashore next day, and there, lying in the shadow 
 of a pandanus near the beach shingle, his nose buried in his 
 fore-trotters and his eyes closed in weary waiting and sor- 
 row, was Dennis. He looked up mournfully as I entered 
 the ship-chandler's, and gave me a grunt of sullen recogni- 
 tion, as if he felt I were the author of his misery, or, at 
 least, an aider and abettor of those who had sent him into 
 exile. His new owner said he had moped from the begin- 
 ning, at first wistfully roaming about, and at last settling 
 into the morbid melancholy condition in which I found 
 him. 
 
 It happened fortunately to be liberty week for the 
 men, and while we were discussing his woes the voices of 
 some of our crew came from the landing. The transition 
 was marvellous. Dennis sprang to his feet, gazed inquir- 
 ingly seaward for a moment, and then, as the men's voices 
 grew nearer and louder, he twisted his tail into the rigid- 
 ity of a corkscrew and bounded beachward, where the lib- 
 erty party was skylarking by the jetty under the palm- 
 trees. 
 
 No need to describe the meeting nor the subsequent 
 orgies. Dennis followed each party that came ashore, 
 trotting after the men into the back country, sleeping in 
 the bush, eating with them, and, it is reported, getting 
 as drunk as they did. He was first at the beach to wel- 
 come the coming, the last to speed the going, filling his 
 part of host with a grace and a dignity in town, and 
 an abandon and a freedom in the country, that woke in 
 after-days the tender regrets of his companions. 
 
 The dissipation of Dennis and his friends lasted a 
 scant week, and when the last boat-load left the beach he 
 
QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 221 
 
 turned mournfully shoreward, unheeding the re-echoing 
 cheers they gave him, and staggered, swaying port and 
 starboard, blear-eyed and shaky, towards the loneliness of 
 his new home. He fell into gloomy ways ; he lost his fat 
 and dignity ; he seemed on the verge of a decline ; he 
 took himself seriously as a persecuted exile in a far land. 
 Finally it was thought best to send him afield to his new 
 labors, and his master tried to woo him countryward, but 
 in vain. He had won his way into this American's heart, 
 for when force was suggested he declined to tie the pig's 
 legs together and throw him into a cart, as he would have 
 done with a pig of less degree. He declared that Dennis 
 was a gentleman by instinct, a little low in his mind just 
 then, but still a gentleman, and that he could wait until 
 Dennis might, as if in the gayety of a holiday, idly stray 
 with him in some early morning to the plantation inland. 
 But Dennis was obdurate and never gay, and so the day 
 before the ship sailed for Apia his old master (the ship's 
 cook) and the boatswain's mate were sent to him, for it 
 was known he would follow the trill of the bosun's call. 
 When he heard the familiar voices and saw the blue 
 shirts of his shipmates and caught the bird-like whistle of 
 the mate, he jumped to his feet, gave an ecstatic grunt, 
 and ran among the trees wildly, with the fire of youth 
 rioting in his trotters. 
 
 A two-wheeled cart was brought to the door, the driver 
 took the reins, the blue-jackets seated themselves in the 
 stern-sheets, and, with Dennis trotting gayly at the tail- 
 board, the merry companions waved a farewell to me as 
 they went slowly down the Purumu Road into the heart 
 of the land. 
 
 Just beyond the last police-station of the town a na- 
 tive bar-room faced the little curve where two roads 
 joined. Here the men dismounted, and here, after the 
 
222 
 
 QUEER PETS OF SAILOR JACK 
 
 sailor fashion, they toasted their happy meeting in a drink, 
 which Dennis shared; and then, mounting again, they 
 rounded the bend where the eager shrubbery found the 
 archway of the trees, and Dennis passed hillward out of 
 my life forever. 
 
J 
 
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