Calm
WE were bound from the Columbia River for Falmouth, with a cargo of wheat. One morning when we were a few miles north of the line in the Atlantic, the last faint airs of the southeast trade wind died away. A windless unrippled sea rolled up from the southeast in long, smooth blue swells. With no wind to steady her, the ship rolled and pitched with a motion so sharp and jerky that, unless one held to handrail or bulwark, to walk her decks was impossible. The parrals clacked. Chains slatted against the masts. Sails flapped heavily against the rigging. Bubbling in at the scupper holes, water flowed in lazy trickles from side to side of the main deek. Presently the skipper came up from breakfast. He gazed round the horizon. There was no cloud, no vestige of any cloud, in all the sky. He scowled, and called an order to the mate.
One by one, to save them from chafing, we clewed up the square sails till courses, topsails, topgallant sails, and royals hung idly drooping in their gear. We brailed in the spanker. We hauled down the gaff topsail, the staysails and jibs.
Without an inch of canvas set, the ship tossed lifelessly on water so limpid that if one dropped anything overboard it could be seen till it was far below her 23-feet-deep keel. It was March, and the sun was overhead. The heat was intolerable.
During the forenoon a school of blackfish appeared, and stayed to sport about the bows. There were a few bulls, the largest perhaps eighteen feet long. There were many cows, and a number of small calves. They had been under the bows for an hour or so when we saw the triangular fin of a shark approaching. It was a small shark, no more than five feet in length, but the blackfish instantly took themselves off.
A Norwegian sailor went to the carpenter’s shop for the shark hook. From the carpenter he went to the cook to ask for a piece of salt pork. The bait was no sooner in the water than a number of pilot fish came to investigate. They were still swimming about it when the shark arrived. He dived, turned over, and rose with his white belly uppermost and his great semicircular jaws wide open. Another moment and, assisted by four of his comrades, the Norwegian was hauling him aboard.
A sailor fetched a capstan bar from the rack — a hard-wood bar some seven feet long, squared at one end, bluntly pointed at the other. They placed the pointed end between the shark’s jaws and thrust it well into his throat. ‘Bite on that, ye sailor-eatin’ devil!’ they jeered. He gnashed it savagely. They drove sheath knives deep in his brain. One cut his tail off. When, after a long time, he began to weaken, they cut his head off. An apprentice cut out his backbone to fashion it into a walking stick. Another took some of his teeth to have them made into tie pins when the ship reached port. At supper that evening the Scandinavian and German and Finnish sailors feasted. But the English sailors and apprentices preferred to sup upon the customary hard-tack and thin tea.
Day passed, oven-hot, with the pitch bubbling from the seams and the deck too sun-heated to walk upon barefoot. After sunset we slapped sea water over the deck’s length, to soak and tighten the scorched planks.
By sunset the swell had died down. After the decks were wetted, the sailors and apprentices gathered on the main hatch. The Norwegian who had caught the shark fetched his concertina. Twenty sailors danced, barefoot. Chips, the carpenter, sat on the bulwark to watch. The China cook stood grinning in his door. The two mates walked the quarter-deck together. The skipper moodily paced his poop.
Eight bells went. The sailors of the watch on deck and those of the watch below, and the apprentices of both watches, lay down on the hatches to sleep the night away. Lest they be struck moonblind, all slept with covered faces.
While the man at the wheel stood motionless in the bright moonlight, while the man on lookout on the forecastle head stood statue-still, the mate leaned on the taffrail and softly whistled for a wind. Shadows of mast and spar, of standing and running rigging, lay clear-cut upon the long white decks. No motion. No sound. From the open port of the cook’s room, on the deck of which lay the pigtailed cook and his compatriot the steward, a heavy odor of opium pervaded the becalmed ship.
Morning came. The sun leaped from beneath the sea rim. As we finished scrubbing the spotless decks from end to end the skipper appeared. Scowling, he looked round the cloudless horizon.
Day passed, the ship utterly motionless upon an utterly motionless ocean. During the afternoon dolphins appeared — long, blunt-nosed, tapering beauties, some of them five and six feet long. While swimming in the sunlit water they were of scintillant emerald. When they swam close in, under the ship’s shadow, they turned to scintillant purple and violet.
His hook baited with a scrap of red and white rag, an apprentice sat on the boom end fishing. That evening at supper the apprentices ate dolphin. The foremast sailors refused it. ‘It’ll poison a feller,’they said. The boys laughed at them; but within a few hours of supper the apprentices’ heads felt swollen and puffy.
Night passed as had the preceding night, save that sheet lightning played incessantly all round the moonlit horizon. All night the mate or second mate softly whistled for a wind. Now and again the skipper appeared, pajama-clad, to gaze round the horizon for a time and return scowling below.
Another day came. Another night came. Not an air. No cat’s-paw on the water. No motion. By day the blazing sun, by night the flashing lightning.
When the carpenter served out fresh water at four o’clock on the fifth afternoon the tank that had hitherto been drawn from was found to be almost empty. The other tank was still full. The carpenter pumped from it, and took a drink from the first bucket. He spat the water out and turned to the mate. ‘Rats must ha’ got into that tank, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s foul. It’d kill a man to drink it.’
Our water allowance was cut to the barest minimum. Until rain should enable us to replenish the all-but-empty tank, we must go thirsty. There would be no more water for morning coffee or for evening tea. To save the precious water, the salt pork must be boiled in the soup. We cut buttons from our clothing and kept them continually in our parched mouths to keep the saliva flowing.
Morning by morning we scrubbed the decks. Evening by evening we wetted them down again. During the day we worked in the blazing sun — some making spun yarn from old rope, some tarring the standing rigging, some chipping iron rust from the bulwarks, some painting. We no longer danced in the dogwatch. We no longer sang. At breakfast and at supper we munched sea biscuit — hard-tack that, having voyaged from Liverpool to Frisco, from Frisco to Australia, from Australia back to the Columbia, had grown soft. It was full of long white maggots. At dinner we swallowed pea or bean soup, and chewed old tough salt pork, the soup always over-salty from the pork that had been boiled in it. Night by night we gathered by the big washdeck tub, and, having pumped it full, slapped sea water over one another’s naked bodies. We took turns at sitting submerged in the tub. On Saturday evening we went without the customary weekly washing of hands and face. We went unshaved, our teeth unscrubbed.
While blazing day passed on to blazing day, we grew quarrelsome and bickered over mere nothings. On a Sunday afternoon two Scandinavian sailors came to blows. They fought on the main deck beside the forecastle, barefoot and half naked. Mirthful at their lack of pugilistic skill, the English sailors and apprentices jeered, and cheered them on. The skipper paid no heed. The mates looked on from the poop. Blood spattered the white planks. They fought till exhausted. The onlookers slapped sea water over them and urged them to further combat. They glowered at each other, muttered, and slouched wearily off.
Early that night, when the moon was not yet up and while for a brief space no lightning illumined the breathless sea, an apprentice reached into the carpenter’s room and stole the latter’s can of fresh water without disturbing his slumbers. Late in the night the carpenter woke, and strode to the deck blaspheming. He wakened the sailors and they damned him. He wakened the apprentices and they laughed at him. He went up to the poop to complain to the mate. Paying no attention, the mate leaned on the taffrail and softly whistled for a wind. The carpenter returned to the main deck, the torrid night resounding with his curses.
Twenty-one days, twenty-one nights we lay becalmed on the line. No sail set. No motion. No birds. No fish, since the dolphin. Thirst. Salt food. Hands sticky with tar and with paint. Faces stubbled and grimy. Eyes sullen. Bodies gaunt. Always, night and day, one or other of the mates softly whistling for a wind. Always the skipper mute and scowling. A ship forgotten of God, on an unremembered ocean, sun-dazzled by day, lightningdazzled ’neath the stars and moon.
At dawn of the twenty-second day a jet cloud appeared low along the western horizon. While it slowly rose we fetched up the rain sail and, stretching it from side to side of the deck, made it fast in the mizzen rigging, its long canvas spout pushed down into the now all but dry tank.
We stripped off our clothes and gathered at the railing — twenty naked sailors, dry-mouthed and voiceless.
Hanging from sky to sea, the black curtain advanced slowly. Rain in a well-nigh solid sheet — a wall of rain, straight-falling. Flying fish leaped in myriads at its foot. Dolphin, albacore, skipjack, bonito, barracoota, leaped to catch them on the wing. Sea birds dropped from above, wheeling and screaming.
The skipper spoke two words to the mate. The mate’s voice rang along the deck. ' Sheet home!'
We grasped the long-idle sheets and sheeted sail after sail home. We hoisted staysails and jibs — twenty naked sailors, running and shouting hoarsely.
We lay outstretched on the decks, on our backs, our mouths wide open. Having drunk deep, we fetched bars of soap and soaped one another. Rain stood two inches deep on the uncanted deck. Streaming from the scupper holes, fresh water spouted to the salt gray sea. We shouted, we laughed, we jested. We played leapfrog, and slapped one another’s glistening bodies, flathanded.
A light puff of wind came. Block, sheet, brace, and halyard creaked as the sails jerked full. The ship heeled over. Bubbles burst at her bow. Bubbles raced once more along her sides. Sailor’s weather again!