CHAPTER II
NORTH-WEST
The _Albatross_, bound from Cape Town to Melbourne, had been blown outof her course and south of the Crozet Islands; she was now steeringnorth-west, making towards Kerguelen, across an ice-blue sea, vast, likea country of broken crystal strewn with snow. The sky, against which thetop-gallant stay-sails shewed gull-white in the sun, had the cold blueof the sea and was hung round at the horizon by clouds like the whiteclouds that hang round the Pacific Trades.
Raft was at the wheel and Captain Pound the master was pacing the deckwith Mason the first officer, up and down, pausing now and then for aglance away to windward, now with an eye aloft at the steadfast canvas,talking all the time of subjects half a world away.
It was a sociable ship as far as the afterguard was concerned. Poundbeing a rough and capable man of the old school with no false dignityand an open manner of speech. He had been talking of his little house atTwickenham, of Mrs. Pound and the children, of servants and neighboursthat were unsociable and now he was talking of dreams. He had beendreaming the night before of Pembroke docks, the port he had startedfrom as a boy. Pembroke docks was a bad dream for Pound, and he said so.It always heralded some disaster when it appeared before him indreamland.
"I've always dreamt before that I was starting from there," said he,"but last night I was getting the old _Albatross_ in, and the tow ropewent, and the tug knocked herself to bits, and then the old hooker swunground and there was Mrs. P. on the quayside in her night attire shoutingto me to put the helm down--under hare sticks in the docks, mind you!"
"Dreams are crazy things," said Mason. "I don't believe there's anythingin them."
"Well, maybe not," said Pound. He glanced at the binnacle card and thenwent below.
Nothing is more impressive to the unaccustomed mind than the spars andcanvas of a ship under full sail seen from the deck, nothing moresuggestive of power and the daring of man than the sight of thoseleviathan spars and vast sail spaces rising dizzily from main andforesail in pyramids to where the truck works like a pencil pointwriting on the sky. Nothing more arresting than the power of thesteersman. A turn of the wheel in the hands of Raft would set all thatcanvas shuddering or thundering, spilling the wind as the water isspilled from a reservoir, a moment's indecision or slackness might losethe ship a mile on her course. But Raft steered as he breathed,automatically, almost unconsciously, almost without effort. He, whoashore was hopelessly adrift and without guidance, at the helm was allwisdom, direction and intuition.
The wake of the _Albatross_ lay as if drawn with a ruler.
His trick was nearly up, and when he was relieved he went forward;pausing at the fo'c'sle head to light a pipe he fell in talk with someof the hands, leaning with his back against the bulwarks and blown uponby the spill of the wind from the head sails.
An old shell-back by name of Ponting was holding the floor.
"We're comin' up to Kerguelen," he was saying. "Should think I did knowit. Put in there in a sealer out of New Bedford in '82. I wasn't more'na boy then. The Yanks used to use that place a lot in those days. Theblackest blastedest hole I ever struck. Christmas Island was where welay mostly, for two months, the chaps huntin' the wal'uses and killin'more than they could carry. The blastedest hole I ever struck."
"I was there in a Dane once," began another of the crew. "It was time ofyear the sea cows was matin' and you could hear the roarin' of them tenmile off."
"Dane," said Ponting, "what made you ship a'board a Dane--I've heardtell of Danes. Knew a chap signed on in one of them Leith boots out ofCopenhagen runnin' north, one of them old North Sea cattle trucks turnedinto a passenger tramp, passengers and ponies with a hundred ton of haystowed forward and the passengers lyin' on their backs on it smokin'their pipes, and the bridge crawled over with passengers, girls andchildren, and the chap at the wheel havin' to push 'em out of the way,kept hittin' reefs all the run from Leith to God knows where, and theOld Man playin' the fiddle most of the time."
"That chap said the Danes was a d----d lot too sociable for him."
Raft listened without entirely comprehending. He had always been afore-mast hand. He knew practically nothing of steam and he would justas soon have fancied himself a railway porter as a hand on a passengership. He was one of the old school of merchant seamen and the idea of acargo of girls and children and general passengers, not to speak ofponies, was beyond him.
The girls he had mostly known were of the wharf-side. He finished hispipe and went down below--and turned in.
He was rousted out by the voice of the Bo'sw'n calling for all hands ondeck and slipping into his oilskins he came up, receiving a smack of seain his face as he emerged from the fo'c'sle hatch. The wind had shiftedand a black squall coming up from astern had hit the ship. More wascoming and through the sheeting rain and spindrift the voice of theBo'sw'n was roaring to let go the fore top-gallant halyards.
Next moment Raft was in the rigging followed by others. The sail had tobe stowed. The wind tried to tear him loose and the sheeting rain todrown him, but he went on clinging to the top-gallant mast-stays andlooking down he could see the faces of the others following him, facessheeted over with rain and working blindly upwards.
Ponting was the man immediately below him, and taking breath for amoment and against the wind, Ponting was now yelling out that they hadtheir work cut out for them.
They had.
The top-gallant sail had taken charge of itself, and Raft and Ponting asthey lay out on the yard seemed battling with a thing alive,intelligent, and desperately wicked.
The sail snored and trembled and sang, standing out in great hoods andfolds, hard as steel; now it would yield, owing to a slackening of thewind, and then, like a brute that had only been waiting to take them bysurprise, it would burst out again, releasing itself, whilst the yardbuckled and sprang, almost casting them from it.
Then began a battle fought without a sound or cry except the bubblingand snoring of the great sail struggling for its wicked liberty, itshrank and they flung themselves on it, it bellied and flung them back,clinging to the lift they saved themselves, attacking it again with thedumb fury of dogs or wolves on a fighting prey. Twenty times it tried todestroy them and twenty times they all but had it under.
The fight died out of the monster for a moment and Raft had nearly anarmful of it in when it stiffened, fighting free of him, owing toPonting and the other fellow not having made good. They clung for amoment without moving, resting, and Raft glancing down saw far awaybelow the narrow deck driving wedge-like through the foam-capped seas.
Then the struggle began again. The sail, like its would-be captors,seemed also to have taken breath, it held firm, relaxed, banged outagain in thunder, developed new hoods and folds as a struggling monstermight develop new heads and kinks, and then, all of a sudden when itseemed that no effort was of avail the end came.
The wind paused for a moment, as if gathering up all its strengthagainst the dogged persistency which is man, and in that moment thethree on the yard had the sail under their chests beating and crushingthe life out of it. Then the gaskets were passed round it and they clungfor a moment to rest and breathe.
It was nothing, or they thought nothing of it, this battle for life witha monster, just the stowing of a top-gallant sail in dirty weather, andmost likely when they got down the Bo'sw'n would call them farmers forbeing such a time over it. Meanwhile they clung idly for a moment,partly to rest and partly to look at something worth seeing.
The squall was blowing out, there was nothing behind it and away on theport quarter the almost setting sun had broken through the smother andwas lighting the sea.
There, set in a thousand square acres of snowcapped tourmaline, white asa gull and beautiful as grace itself, was running a vessel under bearpoles. The two yellow funnels, the cut of the hull, told Ponting whatshe was. He had seen her twice before and no sailor who had once seteyes on her could forget her.
"See that blighter," he yelled across to Raft. "Kno
w her?"
"Should think I did, she's the _Gaston de Paree_--a yacht--seen her inT'lon."
Then they came down, crawling like weary men, and on deck no one abusedthem for their slackness or the time they'd been over their job. The_Albatross_ was running easy and the Bo'sw'n with others was taken upwith a momentary curiosity over the great white yacht.
No one knew her but Ponting, who had for several years acted as deckhand on some of the Mediterranean boats.
"I know her," said he ranging up beside the others. "She's the _Gastonde Paree_, a yot--seen her in T'lon harbour and seen her again at Suez,she's a thousand tonner, y'can't mistake them funnels nor the width ofthem, she's a twenty knotter and the chap that owns her is a king orsomethin'; last time I saw her she was off to the China seas, they sayshe's all cluttered up with dredges and dipsy gear, and she mostlyspends her time takin' soundin's and scrabblin' up shell fish andsuch--that's his way of amusin' himself."
"Then he must be crazy," said the Bo'sw'n, "but b'God he's got a beautyunder him--what's he doin' down here away?"
"Ax me another," said Ponting. Raft stood with the others, watching the_Gaston de Paris_ from whose funnels now the smoke was coming festoonedon the wind, then he went below to shed his oilskins and smoke.
She had ceased to interest him.