Chris Farrington: Able Seaman
If you vas in der old country ships, a liddle shaver like you vood wait on der able seamen. Und ven der able seaman sing oug, ‘Boy, der water-jug!’ you vood jump quick, like a shot, und bring der water-jug. Und ven der able seaman sing out, ‘Boy, my boots!’ you vood get der boots. Und you vood pe politeful, und say ‘Yessir!’ und ‘No sir!.’ But you pe in der American ship, und you t’ink you are so good as der able seamen. Chris, mine boy, I haf ben a sailorman for twenty-two years, und do you t’ink you are so good as me? I vas a sailorman pefore you vas borned, und I knot und reef und splice ven you play mit top-strings und fly kites.” on the Sophie Sutherland!
“But you are unfair, Emil!” cried Chris
Farrington, his sensitive face flushed and hurt. He was a slender though strongly built young fellow of seventeen, with Yankee ancestry writ large allover him.
“Dere you go vonce again!” the Swedish
sailor exploded. “My name is Mister Johansen, und a kid of a boy like you
call me ‘Emil!’ It vas insulting, und comes pecause of der American
ship!”
“But you call me ‘Chris!'” the boy
expostulated, reproachfully.
“But you vas a boy.”
“Who does a man’s work,” Chris
retorted. “And because I do a man’s work I have as much right to call you
by your first name as you me. We are all equals in this fo’c’sle, and you know
it. When we signed for the voyage in San Francisco, we signed as sailors on the Sophie Sutherland, and there was no difference made with any of us.
Haven’t I always done my work? Did I ever shirk? Did you or any other man ever
have to take a wheel for me? Or a lookout? Or go aloft?”
“Chris is right,” interrupted a young
English sailor. “No man has had to do a tap of his work yet. He signed as
good as any of us, and he’s shown himself as good ——”
“Better!” broke in a Nova Scotia man.
“Better than some of us! When we struck the sealing-grounds he turned out to be next to the best boat-steerer aboard. Only French Louis, who’d been at it for years, could beat him. I’m only a boat-puller, and you’re only a boat-puller, too, Emil Johansen, for all your twenty-two years at sea. Why
don’t you become a boat-steerer?”
“Too clumsy,” laughed the Englishman,
“and too slow.”
“Little that counts, one way or the
other,” joined in Dane Jurgensen, coming to the aid of his Scandinavian
brother. “Emil is a man grown and an able seaman; the boy is
neither.”
And so the argument raged back and forth, the
Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, because of race kinship, taking the part of
Johansen, and the English, Canadians and Americans taking the part of Chris.
From an unprejudiced point of view, the right was on the side of Chris. As he
had truly said, he did a man’s work, and the same work that any of them did.
But they were prejudiced, and badly so, and out of the words which passed rose
a standing quarrel which divided the forecastle into two parties.
The Sophie Sutherland was a seal-hunter,
registered out of San Francisco, and engaged in hunting the furry sea-animals
along the Japanese coast north to Bering Sea. The other vessels were two-masted
schooners, but she was a three-master and the largest in the fleet. In fact,
she was a full-rigged, three-topmast schooner, newly built.
Although Chris Farrington knew that justice was
with him, and that he performed all his work faithfully and well, many a time,
in secret thought, he longed for some pressing emergency to arise whereby he
could demonstrate to the Scandinavian seamen that he also was an able
seaman.
But one stormy night on The Sophie Sutherland, by an accident for which he
was in nowise accountable, in overhauling a spare anchor-chain he had all the
fingers of his left hand badly crushed. And his hopes were likewise crushed,
for it was impossible for him to continue hunting with the boats, and he was
forced to stay idly aboard until his fingers should heal. Yet, although he
little dreamed it, this very accident was to give him the long looked-for
opportunity.
One afternoon in the latter part of May the
Sophie Sutherland rolled sluggishly in a breathless calm. The seals were
abundant, the hunting good, and the boats were all away and out of sight. And
with them was almost every man of the crew. Besides Chris, there remained only
the captain, the sailing-master and the Chinese cook.
The captain was captain only by courtesy. He was
an old man, past eighty, and blissfully ignorant of the sea and its ways; but
he was the owner of the vessel, and hence the honorable title. Or course, the
sailing-master, who was really captain, was a thoroughgoing seaman. The mate,
whose post was aboard, was out with the boats, having temporarily taken Chris’s
place as boat-steerer.
When good weather and good sport came together,
the boats were accustomed to range far and wide, and often did not return to
the schooner until long after dark. But for all that it was a perfect hunting
day, Chris noted a growing anxiety on the part of the sailing-master. He paced
the deck nervously, and was constantly sweeping the horizon with his marine
glasses. Not a boat was in sight. As sunset arrived, he even sent Chris aloft
to the mizzen-topmast-head, but with no better luck. The boats could not
possibly be back before midnight.
Since noon the barometer had been falling with
startling rapidity, and all the signs were ripe for a great storm—how great,
not even the sailing-master anticipated. He and Chris set to work to prepare
for it. They put storm gaskets on the furled topsails, lowered and stowed the
foresail and spanker and took in the two inner jibs. In the one remaining jib
they put a single reef, and a single reef in the mainsail.
Night had fallen before they finished, and with
the darkness came the storm. A low moan swept over the sea, and the wind struck
the Sophie Sutherland flat. But she righted quickly, and with the
sailing-master at the wheel, sheered her bow into within five points of the
wind. Working as well as he could with his bandaged hand, and with the feeble
aid of the Chinese cook, Chris went forward and backed the jib over to the
weather side. This, with the flat mainsail, left the schooner hove to.
“God help the boats! It’s no gale! It’s a
typhoon!” the sailing-master shouted to Chris at eleven o’clock. “Too
much canvas! Got to get two more reefs into that mainsail, and got to do it
right away!” He glanced at the old captain, shivering in oilskins at the
binnacle and holding on for dear life. “There’s only you and I, Chris—and
the cook; but he’s next to worthless!”
In order to make the reef, it was necessary to
lower the mainsail, and the removal of this after pressure was bound to make
the schooner fall off before the wind and sea because of the forward pressure
of the jib.
“Take the wheel!” the sailing-master
directed. “And when I give the word, hard up with it! And when she’s
square before it, steady her! And keep her there! We’ll heave to again as soon
as I get the reefs in!”
Gripping the kicking spokes, Chris watched him
and the reluctant cook go forward into the howling darkness. The Sophie
Sutherland was plunging into the huge head-seas and wallowing tremendously,
the tense steel stays and taut rigging humming like harp-strings to the wind. A
buffeted cry came to his ears, and he felt the schooner’s bow paying off of its
own accord. The mainsail was down!
He ran the wheel hard-over and kept anxious track
of the changing direction of the wind on his face and of the heave of the
vessel. This was the crucial moment. In performing the evolution she would have
to pass broadside to the surge before she could get before it. The wind was
blowing directly on his right cheek, when he felt the Sophie Sutherland
lean over and begin to rise toward the sky—up—up—an infinite distance! Would
she clear the crest of the gigantic wave?
Again by the feel of it, for he could see
nothing, he knew that a wall of water was rearing and curving far above him
along the whole weather side. There was an instant’s calm as the liquid wall
intervened and shut off the wind. The schooner righted, and for that instant
seemed at perfect rest. Then she rolled to meet the descending rush.
Chris shouted to the captain to hold tight, and
prepared himself for the shock. But the man did not live who could face it. An
ocean of water smote Chris’s back, and his clutch on the spokes was loosened as
if it were a baby’s. Stunned, powerless, like a straw on the face of a torrent,
he was swept onward he knew not whither. Missing the corner of the cabin, he
was dashed forward along the poop runway a hundred feet or more, striking
violently against the foot of the foremast. A second wave, crushing inboard,
hurled him back the way he had come, and left him half-drowned where the poop
steps should have been.
Bruised and bleeding, dimly conscious, he felt
for the rail and dragged himself to his feet. Unless something could be done,
he knew the last moment had come. As he faced the poop the wind drove into his
mouth with suffocating force. This fact brought him back to his senses with a
start. The wind was blowing from dead aft! The schooner was out of the trough
and before it! But the send of the sea was bound to broach her to again.
Crawling up the runway, he managed to get to the wheel just in time to prevent
this. The binnacle light was still burning. They were safe!
That is, he and the schooner were safe. As to the
welfare of his three companions he could not say. Nor did he dare leave the
wheel in order to find out, for it took every second of his undivided attention
to keep the vessel to her course. The least fraction of carelessness and the
heave of the sea under the quarter was liable to thrust her into the trough.
So, a boy of one hundred and forty pounds, he clung to his Herculean task of
guiding the two hundred straining tons of fabric amid the chaos of the great
storm forces.
Half an hour later, groaning and sobbing, the
captain crawled to Chris’s feet. All was lost, he whimpered. He was smitten
unto death. The galley had gone by the board, the mainsail and running-gear,
the cook, everything!
“Where’s the sailing-master?” Chris
demanded, when he caught breath after steadying a wild lurch of the schooner.
It was no child’s play to steer a vessel under single-reefed jib before a
typhoon.
“Clean up for’ard,” the old man
replied. “Jammed under the fo’c’sle-head, but still breathing. Both his
arms are broken, he says, and he doesn’t know how many ribs. He’s hurt
bad.”
“Well, he’ll drown there the way she’s
shipping water through the hawse-pipes. Go for’ard!” Chris commanded,
taking charge of things as a matter of course. “Tell him not to worry;
that I’m at the wheel. Help him as much as you can, and make him help—”
he stopped and ran the spokes to starboard as a tremendous billow rose under
the stern and yawed the schooner to port—”and make him help himself for
the rest. Unship the fo’c’sle-hatch and get him down into a bunk. Then ship the
hatch again.”
The captain turned his aged face forward and
wavered pitifully. The waist of the ship was full of water to the bulwarks. He
had just come through it, and knew death lurked every inch of the way.
“Go!” Chris shouted, feebly. And as the
fear-stricken man started, “And take another look for the cook!”
Two hours later, almost dead from suffering, the
captain returned. He had obeyed orders. The sailing-master was helpless
although safe in a bunk; the cook was gone. Chris sent the captain below to the
cabin to change his clothes.
After interminable hours of toil, day broke cold
and gray. Chris looked about him. The Sophie Sutherland was racing
before the typhoon like a thing possessed. There was no rain, but the wind
whipped the spray of the sea mast-high, obscuring everything except in the
immediate neighborhood.
Two waves only could Chris see at a time—the one
before and the one behind. So small and insignificant the schooner seemed on
the long Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a
cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward and down
into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself in the smother of foam at the
bottom. Then the recovery, another mountain, another sickening upward rush,
another poise, and the downward crash! Abreast of him, to starboard, like a
ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing apace with the schooner.
Evidently, when washed overboard, he had grasped and become entangled in a
trailing halyard.
For three hours more, alone with this gruesome
companion, Chris held the Sophie Sutherland before the wind and sea. He
had long since forgotten his mangled fingers. The bandages had been torn away,
and the cold, salt spray had eaten into the half-healed wounds until they were
numb and no longer pained. But he was not cold. The terrific labor of steering
forced the perspiration from every pore. Yet he was faint and weak with hunger
and exhaustion, and hailed with delight the advent on deck of the captain, who
fed him all of a pound of cake-chocolate. It strengthened him at once.
He ordered the captain to cut the halyard by
which the cook’s body was towing, and also to go forward and cut loose the
jib-halyard and sheet. When he had done so, the jib fluttered a couple of
moments like a handkerchief, then tore out of the belt-ropes and vanished. The
Sophie Sutherland was running under bare poles.
By noon the storm had spent itself, and by six in
the evening the waves had died down sufficiently to let Chris leave the helm.
It was almost hopeless to dream of the small boats weathering the typhoon, but
there is always the chance in saving human life, and Chris at once applied
himself to going back over the course along which he had fled. He managed to
get a reef in the spanker, and then, with the aid of the watch-tackle, to hoist
them to the stiff breeze that yet blew. And all through the night, tacking back
and forth on the back track, he shook out the canvas as fast as the wind would
permit.
The injured sailing-master had turned delirious,
and between tending him and lending a hand with the ship, Chris kept the
captain busy. “Taught me more seamanship,” as he afterward said,
“than I’d learned on the whole voyage.” But by daybreak the old man’s
feeble frame succumbed, and he fell off into exhausted sleep on the weather
poop.
Chris, who could now lash the wheel, covered the
tired man with blankets from below, and went fishing in the lazaretto for
something to eat. But by the day following he found himself forced to give in,
drowsing fitfully by the wheel and waking ever and anon to take a look at
things.
On the afternoon of the third day he picked up a
schooner, dismasted and battered. As he approached, close-hauled on the wind,
he saw her decks crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing closer,
made out among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the
nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An hour later
they, with the crew of the sinking craft, were aboard the Sophie
Sutherland.
Having wandered so far from their own vessel,
they had taken refuge on the strange schooner just before the storm broke. She
was a Canadian sealer on her first voyage, and as was now apparent, her
last.
The captain of the Sophie Sutherland had a
story to tell, also, and he told it well—so well, in fact, that when all hands
were gathered together on deck during the dog-watch, Emil Johansen strode over
to Chris and gripped him by the hand.
“Chris,” he said, so loudly that all
could hear, “Chris, I gif in. You vas yoost so good a sailorman as I. You
vas a bully boy und able seaman, und I be proud for you!
“Und Chris!” He turned as if he had
forgotten something, and called back, “From dis time always you call me
‘Emil’ mitout der ‘Mister!'”
From the May 23, 1901 issue of The Youth’s Companion magazine.
Back to the Jack London Bookstore First Editions.