第33章 OUR FIRST CALLING-PLACE(4)
Tired as we all were, very little sleep came to us that night--we were barely seasoned yet to the exigencies of a whaler's life --but afterwards I believe nothing short of dismasting or running the ship ashore would wake us, once we got to sleep.In the morning we commenced operations in a howling gale of wind, which placed the lives of the officers on the "cutting in" stage in great danger.The wonderful seaworthy qualities of our old ship shone brilliantly now.When an ordinary modern-built sailing-ship would have been making such weather of it as not only to drown anybody about the deck, but making it impossible to keep your footing anywhere without holding on, we were enabled to cut in this whale.True, the work was terribly exhausting and decidedly dangerous, but it was not impossible, for it was done.
By great care and constant attention, the whole work of cutting in and trying out was got through without a single accident; but had another whale turned up to continue the trying time, I am fully persuaded that some of us would have gone under from sheer fatigue.For there was no mercy shown.All that I have ever read of "putting the slaves through for all they were worth" on the plantations was fully realized here, and our worthy skipper must have been a lineal descendent of the doughty Simon Legree.
The men were afraid to go on to the sick-list.Nothing short of total inability to continue would have prevented them from working, such was the terror with which that man had inspired us all.It may be said that we were a pack of cowards, who, without the courage to demand better treatment, deserved all we got.
While admitting that such a conclusion is quite a natural one at which to arrive, I must deny its truth.There were men in that forecastle as good citizens and as brave fellows as you would wish to meet--men who in their own sphere would have commanded and obtained respect.But under the painful and abnormal circumstances in which they found themselves--beaten and driven like dogs while in the throes of sea-sickness, half starved and hopeless, their spirit had been so broken, and they were so kept down to that sad level by the display of force, aided by deadly weapons aft, that no other condition could be expected for them but that of broken-hearted slaves.My own case was many degrees better than that of the other whites, as I have before noted; but I was perfectly well aware that the slightest attempt on my part to show that I resented our common treatment would meet with the most brutal repression, and, in addition, I might look for a dreadful time of it for the rest of the voyage.
The memory of that week of misery is so strong upon me even now that my hand trembles almost to preventing me from writing about it.Weak and feeble do the words seem as I look at them, making me wish for the fire and force of Carlyle or Macaulay to portray our unnecessary sufferings.
Like all other earthly ills, however, they came to an end, at least for a time, and I was delighted to note that we were getting to the northward again.In making the outward passage round the Cape, it is necessary to go well south, in order to avoid the great westerly set of the Agulhas current, which for ever sweeps steadily round the southern extremity of the African continent at an average rate of three or four miles an hour.To homeward-bound ships this is a great boon.No matter what the weather may be--a stark calm or a gale of wind right on end in your teeth--that vast, silent river in the sea steadily bears you on at the same rate in the direction of home.It is perfectly true that with a gale blowing across the set of this great current, one of the very ugliest combinations of broken waves is raised; but who cares for that, when he knows that, as long as the ship holds together, some seventy or eighty miles per day nearer home must be placed to her credit? In like manner, it is of the deepest comfort to know that, storm or calm, fair or foul, the current of time, unhasting, unresting, bears us on to the goal that we shall surely reach--the haven of unbroken rest.
Not the least of the minor troubles on board the CACHALOT was the uncertainty of our destination; we never knew where we were going.It may seem a small point, but it is really not so unimportant as a landsman might imagine.On an ordinary passage, certain well-known signs are as easily read by the seaman as if the ship's position were given out to him every day.Every alteration of the course signifies some point of the journey reached, some well-known track entered upon, and every landfall made becomes a new departure from whence to base one's calculations, which, rough as they are, rarely err more than a few days.
Say, for instance, you are bound for Calcutta.The first of the north-east trades will give a fair idea of your latitude being about the edge of the tropics somewhere, or say from 20deg.to 25deg.N., whether you have sighted any of the islands or not.
Then away you go before the wind down towards the Equator, the approach to which is notified by the loss of the trade and the dirty, changeable weather of the "doldrums." That weary bit of work over, along come the south-east trades, making you brace "sharp up," and sometimes driving you uncomfortably near the Brazilian coast.Presently more "doldrums," with a good deal more wind in them than in the "wariables" of the line latitude.