Halfhyde Outward Bound

by Philip McCutchan

  The treatment seemed to work; the seawater was expelled, and some colour came back into the girl’s face.

  “Feeling better?” Halfhyde asked.

  She nodded without speaking. She was shaking like a pendant in a gale of wind. He turned to the steward, his naval authority coming back almost unconsciously. He said, “Blankets, and quickly.” He saw the hesitation in the man’s manner: his nose had been put out of joint. Aboard a merchant ship, it was the steward who provided the first medical attention before handing over to the Master, the final arbiter on health and injury at sea. Beside which, Halfhyde was nothing but a fo’c’sle hand. Halfhyde said, “Jump to it, Goss.”

  Goss turned away, looking sullen. Halfhyde called after him, “Bring brandy as well. Look sharp!”

  Goss said, “Now look. I’m not here to take orders from bloody deckhands—”

  “You will take orders from me and like it. I said, look sharp.” The eyes of the two men met. Goss couldn’t long meet the stare; he turned away, muttering. Halfhyde knelt down by the girl’s side. He took one of her hands in his, felt the coldness, tried to give it some of his own comparative warmth. Like the fo’c’sle, the saloon held a damp, cold fug; the fire, along with that in the galley, had been drawn as part of the precautions against the bad weather. In a voice only just audible, the girl said, “Thank you for what you’ve done.”

  “It was nothing. Only what any man would have done.”

  “Only you did it.”

  He grinned. “We’ll not quibble, Miss McRafferty.”

  Nothing more was said; the girl, who from a sense of modesty had drawn her wet clothing back over her body, closed her eyes. She had a beaten look about her; she was pretty enough, and attractive enough to make Halfhyde’s pulse beat a little faster as he looked at the outline of firm breasts beneath the wet chemise, but even when not recovering from a dousing he had noticed the strain in her face. Probably it was no easy thing to be McRafferty’s daughter and to live the life that was hers aboard a ship at sea. She needed the company of other persons of her own age, both women and men, and needed not to have every man deflected in advance by a hard, self-protective father. That, however, was no business of Halfhyde’s.

  Goss came back with blankets and a bottle of brandy. He tucked the blankets over the girl, then turned to Halfhyde. “Orders of the Master,” he said. “Nothing’s to be drunk at sea. It’s your responsibility if you ignore that.”

  Icily Halfhyde said, “I do not propose to drink myself. The lady’s in need. Pour a measure, and I shall feed it to her.”

  Lips pursed, Goss poured a little brandy into a tumbler. Halfhyde took it. “Thank you,” he said. At that moment he felt a sickening lurch of the deck beneath his feet and a heavy clatter of gear overhead. He would be needed on deck. “You’ll stay here and see that Miss MacRafferty comes to no harm.”

  WITH EXTREME suddenness, the Aysgarth Falls had been struck by a wind of near hurricane force. Hastening on deck Halfhyde was despatched for’ard by Bullock to assist in getting the remainder of the headsails off her. The jibs and foretops’l stays’ls had been sent down already but by this time a good deal of damage had been done. The fore and main upper tops’ls had been blown clear from the boltropes and had whipped away in tatters into the night. The Aysgarth Falls was taking it green and heavy over the weather rails and was riding sluggishly, wallowing, the wash-ports about as much use as a punt’s baler against the constant inrush. Halfhyde struggled along waist deep in swirling, foaming water, battered by a screaming wind that forced the breath from his lungs, half drowning him as he went right under at times, hanging on for his safety to the lifelines and waiting for the seas to drain away from above his head as half the North Atlantic, as it seemed, pounded aboard and fought to subdue the ship, to stop her dead in her tracks. Around him, green hands did their best to identify the ropes in a spider’s-web of sheets, braces, lifts and stays as the spin-drift flew into their faces from the wave tops, and the solid water knocked their feet from under them, and the wind continued to give ear-splitting tongue like a spirit in fury.

  Just before Halfhyde made the fo’c’sle-head, the forecourse joined the upper tops’ls, ripping out from the cringles, hanging for a moment from the rovings and then whipping away out of sight with a great crack that sounded clear and alarming above the gale. Mr Patience, the Second Mate, was laying about him like a lunatic when Halfhyde reached him, driving the hands on to get off the canvas before the rest of it went.

  Toil and sweat and breaking muscles did it: that, and time. Halfhyde, calling upon his experience under the Earl of Clanwilliam and his sail training squadron, felt as though he had used up the whole night to take in the fore lower tops’l alone by the time it was clewed up to windward, with the sail itself full of wind; lowered away the halliards and eased off the lee sheet, clewed the yard down and then hauled up on the lee clewline and the buntlines—all in that raving, screaming wind and the darkness, with the ship heeling over to such an extent that the men on the yards were swept viciously through an arc of some seventy degrees as they fought to keep their footing on the thin, swaying ropes. Even when that job had been done the ship didn’t seem to have been eased very much. She lurched and laboured still, the topgallant and royal masts bending and whipping beneath the strain of the movement.

  Halfhyde heard the shout from aft: “Clew up for reefing, main lower tops’l…let go maincourse halliards!” It seemed as though McRafferty meant to ride it out from now on, with just enough sail to keep the Aysgarth Falls into the wind and sea. The Second Mate came for’ard while other men went to the halliards belayed to the pinrail. Patience leapt above the pushing water into the shrouds, racing his fo’c’sle hands to the main lower tops’l yard to take his place at the weather earring for the reefing operation. He was aloft quickly, seeing the yard well down in the lifts and then laying out to the weather yard-arm; by the time the men were on the foot-rope he had the earring rove. He hauled it taut and made fast, and when the job was done in the teeth of the gale he shifted to take the bunt for furling the maincourse. The wind was starting to come abeam; they were not getting the sails off quickly enough despite the best efforts of all hands. Another heavy gust struck, pressed relentlessly against the ship, forcing her over and over until the lower yards on the lee side seemed scarcely to clear the foaming water that surged up to them; the yards seemed to Halfhyde to form an up-and-down, almost vertical steel link between the sea and the desperate, dark, spray-filled sky. But, slowly, the Aysgarth Falls righted herself, and once the canvas was off her she rode more easily under her close-reefed lower top’sls. The hands were set to work clearing up the mess and after this, the word was passed for one watch to go below. The fo’c’sle hands went with soaked clothing to their straw palliasses in their cramped mess, along the deck of which slopped a couple of inches of dirty water, evil smelling and forbidding. Halfhyde, from a long ingrained habit instilled by his days as lieutenant-in-command of Her Majesty’s torpedo-boat destroyers, remained on deck and was addressed by Captain McRafferty himself when the two were alone in the waist.

  “A sorry mess,” McRafferty said. He listened for a moment to the sounds of the storm and the thump and rattle of the blocks. “There’ll be much work for the hands when it’s blown itself out, Halfhyde. We must bend new sails and renew a number of ropes and there’ll be more overhauling to be done.”

  Halfhyde was not in the best of tempers, in no mood to accept the lowly status of the fo’c’sle. His response was caustic and insubordinate. “One would have thought,” he said, “that more such work should have been done before sailing.”

  “You are an impertinent fellow, Halfhyde—”

  “I have been told that before, sir. I tend to say what I think, however.” He gave an acid smile. “At least you will find me honest!”

  McRafferty didn’t answer for some moments. Then he said grudgingly, “I shall not fault you for that. But you must understand—and as an owner, you will understand
in due course—that running gear costs hard-earned money and everything must be made to play its full part before it is discarded. It is all a question of money in a hard commercial world.”

  “A short-sighted policy in my view. Worn-out gear leads to men being lost.”

  The Captain gave a short laugh. “Lives are the cheapest of commodities in the sailing ships, as you’ll learn.” He turned away and went aft to pace the poop, hands behind his back, his eye lifted constantly to his masts and yards. Halfhyde could appreciate his enforced frugality, if not to the point of risking men’s lives. To drive a windjammer through the seas for long hauls was a hard business, and no doubt it tended to make a man hard. But things would go differently aboard his own ship; Halfhyde had no intention of burdening his conscience with avoidable death.

  MCRAFFERTY’S WORDS were to prove prophetic, and quickly: Halfhyde learned the following afternoon that death at sea was accepted philosophically and that men could be covered for more easily and cheaply than a ripped-out maincourse. The wind had moderated considerably during the forenoon, leaving behind it a cold grey overcast and close horizons. After the men had had their midday meal the Captain ordered them aloft to shake out the topgallants’ls on the fore and main masts. A young seaman, who looked clumsy enough to Halfhyde, lost his footing below the fore topgallant yard and went crashing downward. As he fell he hit a man on the upper tops’l yard, and this man, who happened to be the Second Mate, also lost his balance. The first man went into the water on the flat of his back. Patience came down hard across the bulwarks, gave a wild shriek of agony and collapsed inboard. Men ran to pick him up while Bullock sent away the lee lifeboat to search for the first man, who meanwhile had disappeared. The lifeboat’s crew failed to find him during an hour’s search, after which time McRafferty ordered the boat to return to the davits for hoisting. In the meantime, Patience had died. His back had been broken and there was nothing to be done about that: the Ship Captain’s Medical Guide was not adequate to the task of repairing broken backs and Patience had died in sheer agony. As soon as the Captain had pronounced him dead, the body was removed to the sailmaker’s cubby-hole to be sewn into its canvas shroud for sea burial. That burial took place as soon as possible, for bodies aboard ships were unlucky things and sailormen were a superstitious breed. Once the service had been read by Captain McRafferty in the presence of the hands, and the body had been slid from a plank into the sea, the work of the ship went on as before. The bosun was sent for and informed that he had been promoted to the position of Uncertificated Acting Second Mate.

  “There will be no extra pay, Mr O’Connor,” McRafferty said in Halfhyde’s hearing. The bosun seemed not to be worried about that; the accolade of the “Mister” in the Captain’s mouth was good enough to be going on with. Halfhyde grinned sardonically. Mr Patience, out of sight now beneath the waves and dropping astern as the Aysgarth Falls proceeded away from England, was already becoming nothing but a memory and now Captain McRafferty had acquired a replacement Second Mate at the bargain price of a bosun’s pay. Halfhyde thought that the saving should go a long way towards some new deck gear.

  THE DAYS passed into weeks; after the gale had abated the Aysgarth Falls had picked up a fair wind from the north-east and had run with all sail set to the royals, making a fast passage down into the South Atlantic to the equator. Now she had met the doldrums, that area of light, changeable winds or, more often than not, of no wind at all.

  This was one of the times of no wind, and Captain McRafferty was on deck, whistling vigorously. This was the first time Halfhyde had seen the old sailing-ship adage in action: McRafferty was whistling for a wind. The ship lay motionless beneath a hot sun; sail had been shifted, the oldest suit of canvas being sent aloft to slat monotonously against the masts. Miss McRafferty sat in a deck chair on the poop dressed in a kilted frock of a deep prune colour, a sunshade held over her dark hair. As he whistled, McRafferty paced the deck in front of her, having the aspect of a guard. The girl had quickly recovered from her ordeal and was in good health, but her spirits seemed as low as ever. Halfhyde was at the wheel, keeping a sharp eye lifted for the first sign of a wind, the ruffle on the water or the shaking of a sail that would tell McRafferty he must stand by to trim the yards to catch the smallest breath that would send the ship even a short distance on her way. Time was money. Every extra day spent away from England meant more wages for the crew and reduced the value of McRafferty’s cargo contract. Too many days had been lost already in the doldrums.

  Bullock came up from the saloon hatch and the Captain shopped his whistling.

  “Good morning, sir,” Bullock said.

  “Good morning, Mister. Walk for’ard with me for a moment. I wish to take a look at the anchors.”

  The two men went down the ladder from the poop, paced slowly towards the fo’c’sle, conferring with heads close together. There was, Halfhyde knew, nothing about the anchors that needed examination: McRafferty wished for privacy in his conversation, and Halfhyde’s guess was that the talk was about the passenger waiting in Iquique, the passenger acquired through Bullock’s contacts. McRafferty had not spoken of the matter again to Halfhyde; he was possibly worried now in case the passenger should not wait for a delayed sailing ship and seek a steamer instead to take him to Sydney.

  Halfhyde smiled at the girl in the deck chair: by this time he knew her name to be Fiona, but it would be both impolite and rash for him to use it. She returned his smile, and some colour came in her face. There was no opportunity for conversation, for at that moment Halfhyde found evidence of a wind, a light one, from the north, and he called for’ard to the Captain. McRafferty waved in acknowledgement and came running aft with the First Mate, who was already shouting for the hands to stand by the braces. The wind failed them again after they had made a little progress, and once again they lay becalmed, but not for long. As though that wind had been a harbinger, a fresher blow came and kept up steadily and for long enough to clear the doldrums, to the relief of all hands. Within a couple of days the Aysgarth Falls had picked up the south-east trades and had begun the tack down towards the tip of the South American continent, into the offshore area where the Pampero blew from the pampas of the Plate, with its rapid fall in temperature, its teeming rain, its thunder and lightning that played around the masts and yards and sent frightening crashes down through the ship to shake her very frames. Then, as they dropped further south and came into the westerlies roaring around Cape Horn, the winds that blew without cease right around the world in the High South Latitudes, life became an apparently endless battle against wind and sea, and the call from the poop was constantly for all hands, with every man working to fight the ship round into the South Pacific, enduring a frozen, wet hell as McRafferty tried to find the elusive shift of wind that would carry him into gentler waters. It was a grey, dreary time of no hot food, no fires to dry out clothing, frozen fingers pulling the nails out on the ropes, sea-sores, nipped flesh and gashed arms and legs. Goss, the saloon steward, was kept busy with his medical chest, putting on plasters and bandages with the assistance of Fiona McRafferty, temporarily released from purdah in the interest of sending the hands back to duty as soon as possible.

  Halfhyde became one of her patients, having suffered a deep cut on his right forearm as it was caught by a stranded wire in the standing rigging. While she cleaned the wound with soap and precious water Halfhyde tried to draw her into conversation during one of Goss’ absences from the saloon, asking her how many times she had made the passage of the Horn.

  “Oh,” she said lightly, “I can’t remember. A lot of times. I’m quite used to it.” She hesitated, then went on, “Father told me you had been round—once, I think he said.”

  “Twice. Out and home. Outward bound aboard a battleship, the Meridian. It’s easier in steam. You can disregard the wind.” The short exchange ended when Goss came back; the steward’s cold, unresponsive manner seemed to make the girl close in on herself and become formal, as though she kne
w he would carry tales to her father.

  At last, the shift of wind came and was taken full advantage of and soon after this the Aysgarth Falls was round Cape Horn and into easier waters, though still tacking into the teeth of the westerlies, which called for expert handling of the canvas. Both McRafferty and Bullock showed their qualities: both were first-class seamen, as Halfhyde had been quick to recognize from the start. But now he began to recognize something else: McRafferty, though always the master when it came to the handling of his ship, gave the impression that he was playing it carefully where Bullock was concerned. Just little things; a touch of arrogance in the First Mate’s manner that was inappropriate towards the Captain, arrogance that brought no rebuke although McRafferty looked put out; muttered conversations out of hearing of the hands, when McRafferty’s face developed a scowl and he seemed ill-at-ease. Halfhyde had the notion that the First Mate had some kind of hold over the Captain, and once again he thought about the passenger waiting in Iquique.

  SOMEONE ELSE had got wind of that passenger: the seaman named Float, the knife-bearer who had joined with Halfhyde back in the Mersey. Float had overheard a conversation between McRafferty and the First Mate and he broadcast it around the fo’c’sle. “The Old Man’s uneasy,” he said. “Don’t go much on the idea, ’e don’t.”

  “Why?” Shotgun asked without much interest.

  “I dunno.”

  “Who’s the passenger?”

  “Dunno that either.”

  “Don’t know much, do you,” Shotgun said witheringly. “In any case, it’s not our worry. Won’t affect us, we’re just the scum.”