"Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - George Lewis Becke (the reader ebook .TXT) 📗

captain was a very, very little man). "I told him again just now, that if the wind comes away from west or south-west, or even if it falls calm, he'll find he's caught, to a dead certainty. But he as good as told me to mind my own business."

Naturally enough I was anxious. I had on board trade goods which had cost L1,100, and of course had not one penny of insurance on them. The brigantine, however, was well insured, though I do not impute this fact as being the cause of the captain's neglect of a sensible warning.

After supper, the captain turned in, while the mate and I, both feeling very uneasy, paced the deck till about nine o'clock, at which hour the wind had become perceptibly lighter, and the captain was called. He came on deck, trotted up and down in his pyjamas for a few minutes, sat on the rail, like a monkey on a fence, and then asked the mate snappishly what he was "scared about?"

The mate made no reply, and the captain was just going below again, when two fishing canoes, with four natives in each, came quite near us, both heading for the shore; and the skipper asked me to hail them and see if they had any fish to sell. I did so.

"No," was the reply; "we are going back again, because much rain and wind is coming from the westward, and we want to get over the reef before the surf becomes too great." Then one of them stood up and added--

"Why does not the ship go away quickly. This is a very bad place here when the wind and the sea come from the west. Your ship will be broken to pieces."

"What do they say?" inquired the little man.

I translated what they had said.

"Bosh, I say again," was the reply, "the glass has been as steady as a rock for the past three days," and then, to my intense anger, he added an insinuation that my fears had led me to deliberately misinterpret what the natives had said. The retort I made was of so practical a nature that the mate had to assist the skipper to his feet.

A quarter of an hour later, as the mate and I still walked the deck, discussing the captain's shortcomings, the wind died away suddenly, and then several of our native crew came aft, and said that a squall was coming up from the westward, and the mate, though neither he nor myself could then see any sign of it, went below and again called the captain.

He came on deck, with one hand covering his injured left optic, told me he would settle with me in the morning, and then took a long look astern, and there, certainly enough, was a long streak of black rising over the horizon. The mate stood by waiting his orders.

"It's not coming near us," said the little man more snappishly than ever, as he marched up and down the poop.

"I say it is," said Laird bluntly, "and I consider this ship will be ashore, if we don't slip and tow out a bit before it is too late."

The mate's manner had some effect on the obstinate little animal--"Oh, well, if there's such a lot of old women on board, I'll give in. Call the hands, and we'll heave up."

"Heave up!" echoed the mate in angry astonishment, "what's the use of trying to heave up now! That squall will be on us in ten minutes, and if we had an hour to spare, it would be none too long. Why, man, it's a dead calm, and the swell will send us into the surf on the reef quick enough without our dragging the ship into it. Reckon the best and only thing we can do, is down boats, and then slip cable right-away. We might get a show then to lay along the reef, and get clear."

"I'm not going to lose a new cable and anchor to please any one," was the stupid reply. (He could very easily have recovered both anchor and cable with the assistance of the natives on the following day, or indeed months after.)

Then he sang out to the men to man the windlass.

The hands, realising the danger, turned to with a will, but within five minutes the first breath of the squall caught us, and sent us ahead, as was evident by the way the slackened cable came in through the hawsepipe.

We had out fifty-five fathoms of chain, and before twenty-five were in, the squall was upon us properly; the brigantine went gracefully ahead, overran her anchor, plunged into the roaring breakers on the reef, and struck bows on.

In another moment or two a heavy sea caught her on the starboard quarter, canted her round, and dashed her broadside on to the reef with terrific violence. Then, fortunately for our lives, two or three further rollers sent her crashing along till she brought up against two or three coral boulders, whose tops were revealed every now and then by the backwash. In less than twenty minutes she was hopelessly bilged, and her decks swept by every sea.

We carried three boats, and our native sailors showed their pluck and skill by actually getting all three safely into the water, two on the lee side, and one on the other.

The captain, now conscious of his folly, became very modest, and gave his orders quietly. The crew, however, took no notice of him and looked to the mate. He (the captain) ordered me into the first boat, in which were the ship's papers, charts, chronometer, &c. I refused, and said I preferred getting on shore in my own way.

I had seen that two native boys (passengers) had run out on to the bowsprit, and, watching their chance, had dropped over into a curling roller, and were carried safely ashore.

I had with me on board about nine hundred silver Mexican and Chili dollars--some in a cash box, the rest in a bag. Calling my native servant, Levi, I asked him if he thought all the boats would get ashore safely. He shook his head, said that it was doubtful, and that it would be better for me to throw the bag and the cash box over the lee side, where they were pretty sure to be recovered in the morning at low tide.

"All the boats will capsize, or get stove in, going over the reef, or else will be smashed to bits on the shore," he said, "and the natives will steal everything they can lay their hands on, especially if the white men are drowned. So it is better to throw the money overboard."

I took his advice, and going on deck, we dropped both box and bag overboard, just where Levi pointed out a big boulder, against which the brigantine was crushing and pounding her quarter.

Again refusing to enter any of the boats, I watched my chance, and ran for'ard, followed by Levi, and as soon as a big roller came along, we dropped, and were carried ashore beautifully. Some hundreds of natives and the white trader were on the look out, and ran in and caught us before the backwash carried us out again.

The mate's boat had already reached the shore without accident, owing to the splendid manner in which he and his native crew had handled her; but both the captain and second mate came to grief, their boats broaching to and capsizing just as they were within a few fathoms of the shore.

However, no lives were lost, and although next morning the brigantine's decks had worked out of her and came ashore, the hull held together for some weeks, and we saved a lot of stores. My money I recovered two or three days later, though it had been carried more than a hundred yards away from the spot where it had been dropped overboard. The tin cashbox (which I had tied up in an oilskin coat, parcelled round with spun yarn, and weighted inside with several hundred Snider cartridges) was found buried in sand and broken coral, in a small pool on the reef; it presented a most curious appearance, being almost round in shape. The canvas bag was found near by, under a ledge of the reef, together with the binnacle bell--which was doubled flat--and a dinner plate! The bag (of No 2 canvas) had been hastily rolled up by Levi in the cabin table-cloth, weighted with all the loose Snider cartridges we could find in the darkened trade room, and tied up at each end like a "roly-poly." This proved its salvation, for when we dug it out (under three fathoms of water) the outer covering came away in fine shreds, and some of the big Mexican sun dollars had cut through the canvas.

So ended my second experience, and the only satisfactory thing about it to me, after losing over a thousand pounds worth of goods through the captain's obstinacy, was that when he was fussing about after the wreck trying to get one of the anchors ashore, he managed to lose his right forefinger. I regret to say that whilst I dressed the stump and bound up his hand for him, I could not help telling him that I was sorry it was not his head that had been knocked off--previous to our going ashore. 'Twas very unchristianlike, but I was very sore with the man for his pig-headedness, and then he so bewailed the loss of his finger; never thinking of the fact that the boatswain had all but lost an eye, but had never even murmured at his hard luck.

*****


My third experience of a "pig-headed" master mariner, followed very quickly--so quickly, that I began to think some evil star attended my fortunes, or rather misfortunes.

After living on the island for three months, after the loss of the brigantine, two vessels arrived on the same day--one, a schooner belonging to San Francisco, and bound to that port; the other, the _George Noble_, a fine handsome barquentine, bound to Sydney. Now, it would have suited me very well to go to California in the schooner, but finding that the skipper of the wrecked brigantine had arranged for passages for himself, officers and crew in her, I decided to-go to Sydney in the _George Noble_, purely because the little man with the missing finger had become so objectionable to me--brooding over my losses, and wondering how I could pay my debts--that I felt I could not possibly remain at close quarters with the man in a small schooner without taking a thousand pounds worth of damage out of him during the voyage, which "taking out" process might land me in a gaol with two years imprisonment to serve. So I bade goodbye to good mate Laird, and the boatswain with the injured eye, and the native crew who had acted so gallantly; and then with Levi standing by my side, holding my ponderous bag of my beloved Mexican dollars in one hand, and a few articles of clothing in the other, I told Captain ------ that I considered him to be an anthropoid ape, an old washerwoman, and a person who should be generally despised and rejected by all people, even those of the dullest intellects, such as those of the members of the firm who employed him. And then recalling to my memory the sarcastic remark of the mate of the _Rimitara_, to the pompous captain of the _Tuitoga_ about the command of a canal boat, I wound up by adding that he had missed