After six days swinging to an anchor, with always an eye on our slumbering friend down below, giving him an occasional sousing with the hoses, along came the s.s. Toro from Buenos Ayres. (sic) A full blown tug, with no doubt about what he could and would do. He just kicked up his heels, and stretched out that thirteen inch coir hawser of ours, till it looked like a fishing line. We could now send the sails down, and did, gladly. Another couple of hours, and we were moored alongside the one and only wharf the place possessed. A rickety contraption at its best. As a precaution we dropped a couple of anchors just in case we should wake up some bright morning and find ourselves bound down river with wharf attached.
There is over thirty feet of a rise and fall in the tide, at Bahia, and as we broke the end of out precious teakwood companion ladder the first night, to say nothing of a couple of mooring ropes, I, as Third Mate, took on the night watch. The broken gangway was one reason, and another was that being a pretty fair shot I was able to keep the ship supplied with game. I wasn’t asked how I managed to stay awake night and day, so long as no more gangways were broken. Most nights after everyone was in the hay, I piped down on the galley seat. First, I led a line from one of the wharf piles in through the scupper holes in the ship’s side, through the scupper hole in the galley, and made the loose end fast to a pile of kids (double handled tin dishes the food is carried in). As the ship rose to the level of the wharf, so the line tightened up and eventually landed all the kids with a mighty crash on the deck. As an additional precaution, I tied the bare end to my foot, so I was pretty sure to wake up — at least at any rate before I went through the scupper hole. The noise of the kids was enough to waken the dead, and it always worked.
Then, after slacking up the moorings, and tending the gangway, I was free again. In this way I scrounged a good few hours’ unofficial shut eye. After breakfast, instead of turning in, I made for the Saldero, where I was certain of a mount and a dog from one of the Directors — a Major Dicks. Then, with a gun I had purchased, I hit the trail for the foot of a low range of hills, where there was heaps of game. Partridges, also a kind of grouse, and, best of all, a Martinet; about the size of a Buff Orpington hen, white flesh, and good eating. I was always sure of enough for at least two good meals for all hands — officers and crew. This was good luck for everyone, including the skipper, for although he lived ashore, it eased his hand in providing meat.
Ships’ allowances for food in foreign ports those days were notoriously low. I suppose owners thought all we had to do was to slip ashore and pick peaches, bananas, and oranges, to our heart’s content. I expect they also thought that wild pigs came to the foot of the gangway, or perhaps the galley door.
One day I bagged a wild cat, though it should have bagged me by rights! I’d got tired of the level plain at the foot of the hills, and started in one day to explore the hills themselves. Mostly pretty sheer cliffs. Climbing round a particularly awkward bit, I just got footing on a small plateau, when, at the same time, my long whiskered friend decided to come out of her lair to see what the row was about. She put her belly to the ground and waved her wand in an unmistakable manner. It was a case of who’s going to be first; well, I was, by a split second, which I believe is the shortest measurement of time. She got both barrels as she rose, and before she could rise again, the contents of a Derringer I had, by luck, in my pocket. Dicks fixed the skin up for me at the Saldero, and I think someone in England still has it.
One night before leaving Bahia Blanca, whilst cruising around the shore with some of the other chaps, I had the distinction of being jailed for murder. Just how it came about in the first instance, is rather difficult to say. We were on the pampas or open plain, and I somehow or other, lost touch with the other chaps; I suppose I must have been taking a short cut, and I’m afraid my short cuts are rather notorious. Be that as it may, the fact remains, that I got completely lost, and to make touch with the others again, as evidently shouting seemed ineffective, I blew my whistle, the ordinary whistle that every officer on board ship carries. They answered, and we came together all right.
We were journeying along in the dark, quite cheerfully, when we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by gendarmes. What they said we didn’t know and for what we were saying they didn’t seem to care. They went through us each individually, and pretty effectively, until they came across my whistle, gave a slight blow on it, gurgled with what might have been anger or delight — and about three of them seized me by various portions of my anatomy and shuffled me off, just as hard as they could go. Our other fellows naturally thought, “Here, this won’t do,” when they saw me vanishing into the dark, and several of the gendarmes soon found themselves sprawling on the ground. This added to the fun, and also fuel to the fire, for more gendarmes seemed to spring up out of the ground. In any case, they were on us like a shot. We got a downright sound whacking, with the flat of their swords, and I was pushed into a tin tabernacle they called the jail. It behoved one not to be too violent, or, judging from appearances, and the way it swayed, the whole thing would come clattering down.
There were two or three drunks sharing the cell, and I passed an interesting hour or so until the other chaps routed out the British Consul, who gave me back my whistle and my freedom. The only fact that I could sort out from a jumbled up story was that a man that night had committed a murder, and he had a whistle. Heaven help the whistlers on a night like that!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE NITRATE COAST
It was in Bahia I got promotion, and once again found myself second mate of a three skysail yarder. It happened through the appointed second mate going on a terrific binge. He was an awfully good chap, and a splendid sailor, but a bit wet.
Scores come a cropper the same way, though in the aggregate they consume less alcohol than their prototype ashore.
The fact is, that through months of enforced abstinence, a sailor becomes very susceptible to the effects of drink and if he has any weakness in that way, he is fairly sure to come a cropper in the long run.
Having discharged part of the cargo and completely extinguished the fire, we eventually battened down the hatches again towed down river and, with the remainder of the cargo sailed for Iquiqui (sic) on the Nitrate Coast.
It was a grand feeling, and one I thoroughly enjoyed, having once again a big ship with her mountains of towering canvas under my sole charge during my watch. One never tires of the bright moonlight nights such as one experiences in the tropics. So bright that it is dangerous to sleep in the full glare of the moon without shelter of some kind. The phosphorus in the water is sometimes dazzling as the ship cuts her way; so bright, in fact that I have actually read a piece of newspaper by the light of the phosphorus alone, stirred up by the rudder. Of course, by moonlight such as I speak of, in the tropics, it is quite easy to see to read; every rope and every rope yarn is picked out like a clear sharp etching. The truck, although over 200 ft. away, can be seen with absolute distinctness, waving in lines across a sky literally smothered in stars. Here and there the deep vast purple between the constellations is only made the deeper by their particular brightness.
To watch such a star as Sirius setting, is almost like looking through a kaleidoscope of boyhood memories. It resembles nothing better than a huge lamp, changing colour second by second through every hue, purple, crimson, blue, red. But it must be seen to be appreciated, and then only in the tropics. I’ve known many an old shell wax poetic over the glories of one of these tropical nights.