Chapter Fifteen
Christmas Day in the Doldrums
“See the pudding, hear the fun;
The laugh and joke and glee;
The ship may in the Doldrums lie,
But – ’tis Christmas Day at sea.”
Anon.
Scene: A ship in the Doldrums. It is the saucy Brilliant. She has been to Calcutta, and is now on her way back to the Cape. And it is Christmas Day, and she ship is in the Doldrums. Longitude 90 degrees East; latitude nothing at all, for she is as nearly “on top o’ the ’quator,” as Jack calls it, as possible. She encountered a tornado farther north, which gives the reason for her being now somewhat out of her course. But she stood it well, and to see her now, with her long black lines, her tapering spars, and snow-white decks, you could not believe that but a fortnight before she had hardly a morsel of bulwark left, that, in fact, the bulwarks were more like sheep hurdles than anything shipshape.
The Doldrums! There isn’t a breath of wind; the surface of the great rolling waves is as smooth as polished steel, and much about the same colour. The sun is beating straight down from a blue but cruelly hot sky. The pitch is soft in the deck seams; the men in the stoke-hole are to be pitied.
Yes, steam is up, there is a frothy wake behind her, and her bows cut through the water like a knife.
But the awning is spread all over the quarter-deck, and her tables are laid, for the captain is a right good fellow, and the men are all coming to dine with him.
They are dropping aft even now, one by one or twos and twos, somewhat shy-looking, but with beaming faces, and dressed in their best, bare-footed, in blue serge pants and clean spruce white jerseys.
“How different Christmas in the Doldrums is,” said Captain Smith, “from what we are used to have it at home in old England. Sit in, men; no ceremony to-day. Mr McAlpine, you’ll carve the beef. Mr McCrane, I’m sure you will show the men a good example at your end of the table. Now, doctor, will you ask a blessing?”
Fiddles were placed across the table – long sticks shipped together by pieces of line – and the cloth was laid over that, so that, in spite of the incessant and most uneasy motion of the vessel, the dishes themselves were kept fairly steady.
As soon as eating was well commenced, tongues were loosed, and the conversation flowed freely enough, and why should it not? The captain was jolly, frank, and open, and his officers gentlemen in manners, so the men were not afraid to speak before them.
Yarn followed yarn, and tale tale, but all short and crisp; the captain joked himself, and encouraged his men to joke, so that, despite the heat, it really was a very pleasant Christmas dinner-party.
But the coming of the pudding was the great event. For, you see, it was an immensely large one, and as the ship rolled so much, the danger of its being sent flying into the scuppers before reaching the table, and being all smashed, was very great indeed.
Even the night before, the captain had commissioned the doctor to superintend its safe delivery. And that worthy had positively got Chips to make a kind of ambulance stretcher, partly canvas and partly bamboo cane, to put the trencher on, and this was borne by two men.
“Now,” said the captain, when the roast beef had been taken away, “are you all ready, doctor?”
“Yes,” said the man of physic, wiping the sweat off his brow. “I’m all ready if the pudding is.”
“The cook’s waiting, sir,” said the steward, who was trying to steady himself by keeping firm hold of the mizen rigging.
“Well, here’s for off,” said the surgeon, getting up.
“Do your duty like a man,” cried the captain, laughing, as the doctor went staggering forward. “And keep to your legs, doctor, keep to your legs.”
There was silence now around the table for many long anxious minutes.
It was a solemn time. There was nothing to be heard but the throb-throb of the engines – the beating of the ship’s great heart.
Would the doctor and his party succeed in landing the pudding aft? That was the great question for the time being, which every one was asking himself. Would the pudding arrive in safety?
Every eye was turned forward.
Behold, they come. Their heads are already above the fore hatch. Slowly they emerge, and stand for a moment swaying hither and thither. The doctor heads the procession. The cook himself brings up the rear. Now the doctor’s voice is heard.
“Are you all ready again, men?”
“All ready, sir.”
“Steady, then; steady as you go. March!”
How steady they move! How quietly! A soldier’s funeral is nothing to it! How they rock, and how they sway, taking advantage of every seeming break in the ship’s motion, cautioning each other with uplifted fingers, the doctor with his left hand over the prize, the cook with his right, ready to clutch it if it moves, ready to fall with it if it falls.
Nearer and nearer they come. Nearer and nearer the great IT – the pudding – comes. And now it is almost alongside the captain and the expectant crew, when – oh moment of grief and horror! – the ship gives a fearful lurch, and the whole procession, pudding and all, is sent flying across the deck and brought up all of a heap close under the port bulwarks.
A groan of disappointment rises up from the table. The pudding is smashed to pieces, of course. No, for see – bravo! the doctor – he has clutched the trencher at a critical moment. Phoenix-like, he uprises with it from that chaos of arms and legs. He watches the chance. He gives one quick glance around him, at sea, at sky, at moving ship. He stakes his honour, his fame, and the very existence of that glorious globe of fragrant dough on one bold manoeuvre. Bearing it high over his head, he glides, he slides, he skates, one might say, towards the table; and in shorter time by far than it takes me to describe the gallant deed, he plumps the “great champion of the pudding race” down in front of the captain’s pile of plates.
“Hurrah! hurrah!”
Why, the very sharks deep down in the ocean’s blackest depths heard the shout; they took it for a battle-cry, and came surface-wards in all haste, making sure of a glorious feast. And an answering shout came up from the engine-room, where the stokers were at work. For they knew that the pudding was safely landed, and that their share would shortly come.
And the captain must needs shake the doctor by the hand, while tears of joy and admiration stood in his eyes.
“Doctor,” he said, “you’re a brick, sir, a brick and a half, sir. I never saw a bolder move. I never saw anything so pluckily done in my life before. I’m proud of my surgeon, proud of you.”
Then he sat down.
The doctor made some reply, which was hardly heard amid the exclamations of accord in the captain’s speech, which uprose from all round the table.
A rough old sea-dog of a doctor he was, too, a thorough sailor. Any one could have seen that at a glance. Rough he was, yet kindly-hearted, and there was not a man on board, from the captain to the Kroo boy who helped the cook, who wouldn’t have risked his life for their surgeon.
I leave you to guess whether or not justice was done to that Christmas plum-pudding. Indeed, I only wish you could have seen the happy smiling faces that now surrounded the table, and really – though it was not polite of them – several of the crew had no less than three helps, for “Cut and come again” was the captain’s motto on this Christmas Day in the Doldrums.
Well, of course songs and yarns followed dinner. The captain told a story, Archie told a story, Kenneth sang and played, the old bo’sun called Pipes had something queer to say, and so had the carpenter called Chips.
“Now then, doctor,” cried the captain. “It’s your turn. Tell us something good.”
The doctor cleared his throat.
“I’ll do my best, sir,” said the doctor with a modest smile.
Chapter Sixteen
Frozen up in the North
“Now hie’ we to the Norlan seas
And far-off fields of ice.”
Anon.
“It is twenty years ago! Twenty years ago! Twenty years!” began the doctor.
“Yes, I own to it; no need for this matter-of-fact memory of mine to nudge me so, and keep on reminding me of the flight of sly old Father Time. ’Tis twenty years ago this very summer since I sailed away to Polar seas, in a small but sturdy brig of barely three hundred tons. A medical student I was, in charge of fifty men, all told, and with all a medical student’s audacity and ignorance of the noble profession to which I have now the honour to belong. What cared I then if half the crew fell ill? There was plenty of medicine in the chest. I would do my best, and dose them. Well, if, after being dosed, they should die, why, the sea was deep enough – they should not want for decent burial! And what cared I that a fearful accident might take place, and heads be gashed, and limbs be crushed? There were surgical instruments galore on board, practice makes perfect, and if my patients succumbed after an operation, well, every dog has his day, and the post hoc propter hoc argument has been proved to be unsound.
“Gentlemen, have ever you roughed it in the Arctic Ocean, in a bit of a ship so small that a schoolboy, with average length of legs, could clear its decks from binnacle to bowsprit with a hop, step, and jump, the saloon not larger than two railway compartments, your state-room not half so big as one? Have you been in a gale of wind in such a craft? Was she on her beam-ends, with the cold, green seas, curling higher and higher as they advanced, forming awful arches of water, into which the vessel seemed to be sucked, and which broke, not on, but over and beyond her? Have you been ice-logged in a sea-way in such a vessel, no land, nor even a berg, in sight – only the restless waves, that twanged and hummed, and sang in the frosty air as they passed you, with bows and bulwarks, decks and spars, and rigging and blocks, mere shapes of ice, and ice alone to all appearance, the men’s caps and coats, and hair and beards, so white with the freezing spray, that they looked, as they moved to and fro on the slippery decks, like the ghostly crew of a ghost ship? Have you been in such a craft when she was being squeezed in this pack, the one dark spot in the midst of a limitless plain of dazzling snow-clad ice, all lifting and rolling and moving with the pressure of the invisible waves that are passing swiftly underneath? Have you ever heard the terrible sounds an ice-pack emits, when the swell from a distant storm comes sweeping under it, the groaning, the wailing, grinding, griding noise, as if the ocean on which you stood were filled with old-world monsters in their dying agonies? Have you ever listened to the roaring thunder of a lofty iceberg rent in pieces, and falling headlong into the sea? Have you stood on the pack and seen two bergs crush an acre of bay ice between them, piling the pieces one over the other, like leaves of a book or cards in a pack, till they stood high as the tallest tree in a forest of pines? Have you been out alone on the ice-field at night, far away from your ship, amid a silence that, like Egyptian darkness, could be felt, watching the glorious tints of the —
“‘Aurora Borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place?’
“And, even while gazing and admiring, have you seen dark clouds roll rapidly up from the horizon and blot this aurora out, so that ere you could reach your brig you were surrounded by swirling drift and blinding snow, more dangerous far than the sand-storms that sweep over the Soudan deserts, with the thunder rattling close o’erhead, and the bewildering lightning in swift diffusive gleams intensifying the cave-like darkness that followed?
“If such experiences have not been yours, you may have been tossed about on the giant waves of the broad Atlantic, you may have weathered the Cape in a gale, and the Horn in a snow-storm, you may have sweltered for weeks in a rolling calm under a tropical sun, and been the sport of a tornado in the Indian Ocean, yet there are wonders in the mighty deep seen by some who go down to the sea in ships to which you are a total stranger. From beginning to end, our voyage in that little brig, twenty years ago, was a non-propitious one. We ran before a gale all the way to Lerwick, where the Greenland fleet lay anchored. We had hardly left the rock-bound shores of Shetland – that ‘sea-begirdled peat moss’ – ere the blackness of darkness settled down on the ocean around us; and storm and tempest became our constant companions for three long weeks, till sheltered at last under the lee of the pack, with bowsprit and topmasts gone, and the bulwarks more like the palings one sometimes sees around a cattle-field than anything else in the world. But even worse was to follow: with several other ships we took the ice, which was loose, and in three weeks’ time we found ourselves all alone in the midst of a hard frozen ice-field, and fully one hundred miles from the open water, a bright blue frosty sky above us, and in silence – a silence never broken even by the cry of a bird or guttural roar of Arctic bear.
“After many months of ‘solitary confinement,’ we escaped and reached home at last. Many of the men’s relations met us on the pier, dressed in deepest mourning; the ‘blacks,’ as such dress is called, had been donned for us, for our ship had been reported as lost with all hands!
“Life in that lonesome ice-pack was a weary ‘bide,’ —
“‘Day after day, day after day,
And neither breath nor motion.’
“No, not as much wind as would have sufficed to lift a snowflake, never a cloud in the sky, and the sun going round and round and round, but far above the horizon even at midnight. We tired of reading books; we tired of card-playing and games on the ice; we even tired of music itself. Monotony generated ennui; ennui bred melancholy; plenty of exercise on the ice alone could save us from succumbing to actual illness. We knew that well, but we were thoroughly apathetic, and did not care to take it. The captain, a young and energetic man, at last hit upon a happy expedient which succeeded most completely in restoring something of life and animation to the crew, who were rapidly merging into a state of Rip Van Winkleism, painful to behold. He determined to form a camp three miles away from the ship. Simply walking to and from it would be some little excitement, it would be exercise with a purpose, and exercise, as medical men will tell you, without pleasure or purpose, is entirely useless in a hygienic point of view.
“Our captain, the first and second mates, and myself were seated at breakfast one morning when he made his proposal.
“‘Doctor,’ he said – NB, he called me ‘Doctor’ always, but at that time I had no more business with the title than the tailor had —
“‘Doctor, how are the men getting on forward?’
“‘They haven’t much life in them,’ I replied; ‘they are all making silver rings now out of sixpenny bits and shillings. That is the latest fad, but the coins will soon be all used up; then I suppose all hands will go to sleep for a month or two.’
“‘I think, doctor,’ said Captain Peters, ‘that their livers want stirring up. Eh? Don’t you, doctor?’
“‘Well,’ I replied, ‘anything for a quiet life. There is plenty of blue pill and black draught on board. I’ll stir their livers up. Pass the ham.’
“‘All right, then,’ said the captain; ‘you stir their livers up, and I’ll propose something to-morrow to prevent them getting sluggish again.’
“True to my promise, I gave all hands a blue pill that night, and next forenoon, at a little before twelve, the captain called the men aft, and ordered the steward to bring up a gallon of rum and five pounds of tobacco. Then he doled out the latter and ordered the mainbrace to be spliced. The men after this looked more lively than they had done for a month.
“‘Now that I’ve got you awake with the help of the doctor and black Jack’ (black Jack was the rum measure), said the captain, ‘let me tell you what we are going to do. We are going to convey wood and canvas by sleigh across the pack, to a patch of bay ice about three miles from here, and by the side of it, on the top of the heavy berg, we will build a tent, with a fire-place in it, big enough to roast a bear. This tent or marquee will be a regular Hall of Delights by the sad sea wave; we will cook in it, and eat in it, and dance and sing and tell stories in it. What say you, men?’
“The men broke out into a wild cheer.
“‘Wait a wee,’ continued the captain; ‘I’m going to do more for you than that, for goodness only knows how long we may have to remain in this gloomy ice-field, and if I don’t keep you alive, you’ll all go to sleep and not waken any more in this world. We shall set to work, then, and make an immense great hole in that patch of bay ice, and it will be your duty to keep it from freezing; then seals will come up, and maybe walruses too, and catching these and the sharks will be glorious fun and keep us all alive and awake. That is my plan complete.’
“This idea of the captain’s was a splendid one, and we all entered into it heart and soul. We built rude sledges and tooled wood and all other necessaries over the pack, and before a week was over we had erected a large and handsome marquee with a floor of timber, doors and windows, table and fire-place all comfortable and jolly.
“We had hammocks slung round it also, so that when tired we could lounge and read, or lounge and sleep, and on the whole we felt like new beings, and each of us was as happy as a schoolboy with a tin whistle.
“The opening in the bay ice proved a wondrous success, for the rays of sunlight penetrated far down into the black-blue water, and seals, seeing the light from afar, swam wondering towards it, then finding a hole, came out to breathe and look about them, and so fell victims to their curiosity. We had seal’s liver and bacon for breakfast then, and found it a great treat. We skinned the phocas for sake of their blubber, with the following results: sharks in dozens came to eat the crangs we threw back into the sea, and birds reappeared, malleys, gulls, skuas, and terns, to pick up the stray bits of grease, so we had sport enough, and regained our spirits and strength in consequence. But when a great fire was built on a berg, and the carcase of a seal roasted thereon, bears sniffed the perfume, though they must have been miles and miles away, and came prowling down to the feast, which I ought to add had been prepared for their especial delectation.
“They were somewhat shy at first, they preferred squatting at a distance, and contenting themselves with the delicious odour of the tit-bits placed temptingly on the hummock near, but as their numbers increased, so did their courage, and before very long we had the satisfaction of seeing them in twos and even threes, wrangling together over juicy joints. Then was our chance, and we did not hesitate to avail ourselves thereof. Hungry bears are by no means easily scared, and so our sport was good.
“There was no more laziness among our crew now, no more danger of our fellows falling into Rip Van Winkleism, for every day brought us sport and excitement and fun and adventure. We all began to sing again, and that is always a good sign on board a ship. There was singing fore and singing aft, and tales told in the saloon and yarns spun around the galley fire.
“The Hall of Delights by the sad sea wave proved a very great success indeed. Somehow or other we came to like it better than the ship itself, and although we always came home to sleep, it was often very late indeed before we scrambled on board our slippery-decked brig, and went below to the dingy darkness of state-room, hammock, or bunk.
“In this Hall of Delights we had music, for Peter Kelty played the violin, and Sandy Watson the clarionet; then there was big Magnus Rugg could put in a bass with his voice alone that you couldn’t have told from a violoncello. We had plenty of fire in the hall, but when the fiddles started of an evening, it wasn’t much heat we needed, for those —
“‘Hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in our heels.’
“When tired of dancing, or rather, I should say, in the intervals between the dances, we had singing and recitations. The simplest of the simple both were, for in the latter I don’t think we ever got beyond ‘Douglas’s Tragedy’ or ‘Tam o’ Shanter,’ and in the former ‘Annie Laurie’ or ‘The Braes o’ Balquidder’ were far more appreciated than anything from the best of operas could have been.
“But the summus mons, in a musical way, was attained by our spectioneer, or third officer, for he not only sang most charmingly, but he accompanied himself on the zither.
“He was somewhat of a character, was this individual. He was far from old-looking in the face, but his hair and beard were like the very snow itself. He seldom even smiled, or if he did, it was a languid, sad kind of smile that kept well down about the lips, and never curved round the eyes or made them sparkle. He was tender and kind in heart, though, and a favourite with all hands.
“By-the-bye, his name was Summers, but he was always called Winter, and didn’t mind it a bit, he was so good-natured.
“We were all enjoying ourselves one evening in the Hall of Delights, we had danced till the fiddlers were tired, and everybody that could sing had sung, so there was a kind of lull – a momentary silence, in fact. Now, as it was nearly ten o’clock, if this silence had continued for even fifteen seconds, the captain would certainly have jumped up and said:
“‘Well, lads, we’d better be moving.’
“We didn’t feel like moving yet, so the silence was not allowed to extend itself.
“‘Hi!’ cried Kelty, ‘I call upon you for a comic song, Mr Winter.’
“‘Or a funny story,’ cried somebody else.
“There was loud laughing at the bare idea of Winter treating us to either.
“Winter looked round among us, in an amused kind of way, as if he quite enjoyed the joke, and when the laugh subsided, we all glanced towards him for his reply. I think I see him now; one hand rested on the zither bringing out stray chords, the other rested on the table, the great oil lamp that stood at one side threw his features into semi-shadow, and there was a thoughtful far-away look in his eyes.
“‘Yes,’ he said, at last, ‘I’ll tell you a story.’
“‘A funny one? Eh?’ said the mate.
“‘Well – no, not very funny. But anything to pass the time, I suppose. I’ll tell you a story of my own grey hairs.’
“‘Capital,’ we cried, and hammered with our feet on the wooden floor, by way of giving him encouragement. Then we lit our pipes and prepared to listen.”