Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures

“Bravo!” cried Captain Blunt, “I’m but a plain man, and a plain outspoken sailor, but I’ll have you; and if there isn’t some life and go in you, blame me, but I’m no reader of character.”

That is the way – an unusual one, I grant – in which our heroes joined the merchant service, and here – after three years all spent in Captain Blunt’s ship – here, I say, on this lovely night, we find them both on deck, one keeping his watch, the other keeping him company, for they are having a talk about bygone times.

They have seen a bit of life even in that time, for the good ship Fairy Queen was seldom long out of active service.

They kept strictly to the terms of their engagement, and have been till now before the mast, refusing even to mess in the cabin, although invited to do so by kindly old Captain Blunt.

Both Douglas Fitzroy and Leonard Lyle were, as mere children, fond of the sea. What British boy is not? A ship had always had a strange fascination for each of them. When much younger they had often been taken by their parents to Glasgow, and they preferred a stroll among the shipping at the Broomielaw to even a saunter in the park itself. Beautiful in summer though the park might have been in those days – and there was but one – it was in Leonard’s eyes too artificial. The lad loved Nature, but he liked to meet her and to woo her in the woods and wilds.

At school in Edinburgh both boys were what are called inseparables. They just suited each other. It was not a case of extremes meet, however, for the tastes of both were identical. Although their books and lessons had by no means been neglected, still, task duty over, and off their minds for the day, they were free to follow the bent of their own wills. More beautiful or more romantic scenery than that close around Scotland’s capital there is hardly to be found anywhere. Our heroes knew every nook and corner of it, every hill and dell, every dingle, rock, and glen, and all the creatures that dwelt therein, whether clad in fur or feather. But for all that, they were as well known on the pier of Leith as “Mutchkin Jock,” the gigantic shore-porter, himself was. Never a ship worth the name of ship had entered, while they were at school, that they did not visit, scan, and criticise. They coolly invited themselves on board, too. Now this might have been resented at times had they not been gentlemanly lads. Gentlemanly in address, I mean. So, though they might often and often have been found “yarning” with sailors forward, whose hearts they well knew how to win, they were just as often invited down below to the cabin, and hobnobbed with the captain himself.

It would have pleased the surliest old ship captain who ever peeped over a binnacle edge, to have two such listeners as young Leon and Doug. How their bright eyes had sparkled, to be sure, as some skipper newly or lately arrived from foreign lands sat telling them of all the wonders he had seen! And how they had longed to sail away to summer seas, and behold for themselves wonders on a larger scale than any they could meet with among the mountains of their own country!

It was thus perhaps that a taste for wandering and a fondness for the sea had been engendered early in the breast of each of the boys.

It was this, I’m sure, that caused them once to write home to their respective parents, informing them that the 250-ton brig, Highland Donald, was to sail in a fortnight for Norway and the Baltic, and that the skipper had offered to take them if they could obtain permission.

Permission had been granted, and having been provided with suits of rough warm clothing, they had embarked one fine spring morning, and sailed away for the cold north.

Now, if any young reader thinks he would like to be a sailor, and has been led to believe, from books or otherwise, that a seaman’s life is one of unmitigated pleasure and general jollity, let him induce his father or guardian to place him on a grain, tar, or timber ship bound for Norway or the Baltic. If, after a month or two of such a life, he still believes in the joys of a seaman’s existence, let him join the merchant service forthwith, but I fear there are few lads who would come up smiling after so severe a test.

Our heroes, however, had stood this test, though they had roughed it in no ordinary way. True, they had been all but shipwrecked on an iron-bound coast, where no boat could have lived a minute; they had been in gale of wind after gale of wind; their provisions and fare had been of the coarsest; their beds were always wet or damp, and sometimes the cold had been intense, depressing, benumbing to both mind and body.

But their long voyage north had made sailors of them for all that, and that is saying a very great deal. It had proved of what mettle they were made, and given them confidence in themselves.

This is the first voyage, then, in which Leonard and Douglas have trod the deck as officers, and I do not deny that both are just a trifle proud of their position, although they feel fully the weight of responsibility the buttons have brought. They certainly took but little pride in the uniform which they wore, as some weak-minded lads would have done, albeit handsome they both had looked, as they sat at table on that last night at Grayling House. So, at all events, Leonard’s mother and poor Effie thought. The latter had done little else but cry all the day, that is, whenever she could get a chance of doing so unseen. This was the second time only that her brother and brother’s friend had been home since they went to sea for good. They had stayed at home for a whole month, and now were bound on a perilous cruise indeed, sailing far away to Arctic seas, Captain Blunt’s ship having been chosen to take stores and provisions out to Greenland for vessels employed in finding out the North-West Passage.

Something had seemed to whisper to Effie that she would never see her darling brother again. So no wonder her heart had been sad, and her eyes red with weeping, as our heroes left; or that a gloom, like the gloom of the grave, had fallen on Grayling House, as soon as they were gone.

Great old Ossian had come and put his head on her lap, and gazing up into her face with those brown speaking eyes of his, and his loving looks of pity, almost broke her heart. The tears had come fast enough then.

The Fairy Queen had sailed from Leith. Both parents had accompanied their sons thus far, and blessed them and given them Bibles each (it is a way they have in Scotland on such occasions), and bade them a hearty good-bye.

Yes, it was a hearty good-bye to all outward appearance, but there was a lump in Leonard’s throat all the same that he had a good deal of difficulty in swallowing; and as soon as the Fairy Queen was out of sight, the two fathers had left the pier – not side by side, remark we, but one in front of the other, Indian-file fashion. Why not side by side? Well, for this reason. There was a moisture in Major Fitzroy’s eyes, that, being a man, he was somewhat ashamed of, so he stumped on ahead, that Captain Lyle might not notice his weakness; and between you and me, reader, Captain Lyle, for some similar reason, was not sorry. I hope you quite understand it.

However, here on this beautiful summer’s night, with a gentle beam wind blowing from the westward, we find our friends on deck. There is a crowd of sail on her, and the ship lies away to the west of the Shetland Islands. They do not mean to touch there, so give the rocks a good offing.

Save for the occasional flapping of the sails or a footstep on deck, there is not a sound to break the solemn stillness.

They did encounter a gale of wind, however, shortly after leaving Leith, but the good ship stood it well, and it had not lasted long.

“I say, old fellow,” said Leonard, “hadn’t you better turn in? I think I would if I had a chance.”

“No, I don’t feel sleepy; I’m more inclined to continue our pleasant chat. Pleasant chat on a pleasant night, with every prospect of a pleasant voyage, eh?”

“I think so. Of course good weather cannot last for ever.”

“No, and then there is the ice.”

“Well, now, I’m not afraid of that. Remember, I superintended the fortifying of the ship, and you could hardly believe how solid we are. But of course ice will go through anything.”

“So I’ve heard, and we saw some bergs while coming round the Horn – didn’t we? – that I wouldn’t care to be embraced between.”

“Not unless the ship were made of indiarubber, and everybody in it.”

“I wonder how all are at Grayling House to-night. Poor sister Effie! Didn’t she cry! I’m afraid old Peter was croaking a bit. He is quite one of the family, you know, but very old-wifeish and crotchety, and thinks himself quite an old relation of father’s. Then there is that ridiculous superstition about the pike.”

“Yes, do you know the story?”

“Yes, and I may relate it some evening, perhaps, what little story there is; though it is only ridiculous nonsense. But look! what is that?”

“Why, a shoal of porpoises, but they are just like fishes of fire.”

“Phosphorescence. These seas on some summer nights are all alive with it. What a lovely sight! Strange life the creatures lead! I wonder do they ever sleep? Heigho! talking of sleep makes me think of my hammock. I believe I will turn in now, though it is really a pity to go below on so lovely a night. Ta, ta. Take care of us all.

“A Dios, Leonard.”

Yes, it was indeed a lovely night; but, ah! quickly indeed do scene and weather change at sea.

Book Two – Chapter Three

On the Wings of a Westerly Gale

“And now the storm-blast came, and he    Was tyrannous and strong;He struck with his o’ertaking wings    And chased us north along.And the ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,    And northward ay we flew.”Coleridge.

Scene: A ship on her beam ends, not far off the coast of Norway, the seas all around her houses high; their tops cut short off by the force of the wind, and the spray driven over the seemingly doomed ship, like the drift in a moorland snowstorm. The sky is clear, there is a yellow glare in the west where the sun went down. A full moon riding high in a yellow haze.

A gale of wind got out of its cave – for according to the ancients the winds do live in a cave. It was a gale from the west, with something southerly in it, and I feel nearly sure, from the rampancy with which it roared, from the vigour with which it blew, and the capers it cut, that this gale of wind must have taken French leave of its cave.

It seemed to rejoice in its freedom, nevertheless. No schoolboy just escaped from his tasks was ever more full of freaks and mischief.

It came hallooing over the Atlantic Ocean, and every ship it met had to do honour to it on the spot, by furling sails, or even laying to under bare poles.

If these sails were quickly taken in by men who moved in a pretty and sprightly fashion, all right – the gale went on. But if lubbers went to work aloft, or the wheel was badly handled – then “Pah!” the wind would cry, “I’ll shorten sail for you,” and away would go the sails in ribbons, cracking like half a million cart-whips, and perhaps a stick at the same time, a topmast or yard, and if a man or two were lost, the wind took neither blame nor further notice.

The gale came tearing up Channel, and roaring across the Irish Sea, and lucky indeed were those ships that managed to put back and get safely into harbour, where the storm could only scream vindictively through the empty rigging.

The gale went raging over towns and cities, doing rare damage among stalks and spires, ripping and rolling lead off roofs, and tossing the tiles about as one deals cards at whist. It swept along the thoroughfares, too, having fine fun with the unfortunate passengers who happened to be abroad, rending top coats and skirts, running off with the hats of old fogies, and turning umbrellas inside out.

The gale came shrieking over the country, changing a point or two more to the south’ard, so as to shake the British Islands from aft to fore. It picked up great clouds as it went northwards ho! and mixed them all together, so that when it descended on the vale of the Tweed, it came with thunderclap and lightning’s flash, and a darkness that could almost be felt. It tore through the woods and forests, overturning vast rocks, and uprooting mighty trees, that had grown green summer after summer for a hundred years.

In the avenue of Grayling House it spent an extra dose of its fury, it bedded the ground with dead wood, and wrenched off many a lordly limb from elm and chestnut.

Effie heard the voice of the roaring wind, and saw the destruction it was doing, and prayed for her brother and brother’s friend, who were far away at sea.

She stood by the parlour window beside her father, who was gazing outwards across the lawn, and her hands were clasped, as if in fear, around his left arm. Mrs Lyle herself had retired to her room.

Suddenly a flash shot athwart the trees, so dazzling and blinding that Effie was almost deprived of sight. The peal of thunder that followed was terrific.

About ten minutes after this, while the wind still roared, while the rain and hail beat the leaves ground-wards, and the grass was covered as deep almost in white as if it were mid-winter, old Peter – he is looking very old and grey now – staggered into the room. He had not waited even to knock. “Sir, sir, sir!” he cried.

“Well, Peter, what is it? Speak, man! You frighten the child.”

“Oh, sir, sir! Joe, sir, Joe!”

“Is dead?”

“Ay, as dead as a mawk.2 The great rock that o’erhung the water is rent in pieces, tons upon tons have fallen into the loch, the palin’ is washed away, Joe is dead, and there is an end to Glen Lyle. You mind the gipsy’s rhyme —

“‘When dead yon lordly pike shall float,While loud and hoarse the ravens call,Then grief and woe shall be thy lot,Glen Lyle’s brave house must fall.’”

“Hush, hush, hush, man!” cried Captain Lyle; “everything that lives must die; all things on earth must have an end. Why bother yourself about the death of a poor pike, man? Come, Peter; I fear that you are positively getting old.”

“By the way, Effie,” he added, turning to his daughter, “run and see how your mother is.”

Effie went away. She was used to obey. Dearly loved though she was by both her parents, she had many lonely sad hours now that her brother had become a wanderer, only to appear now and then at Glen Lyle to stay for a short time, he and Douglas, then disappear, and leave such a gloom behind that she hardly cared to live.

But she had never felt so sad as she did now. What was going to happen to her father or to her brother? She did not go to her mother’s room. She did not wish to show her tears. But she went to her own, threw herself on her bed, and cried and prayed till she fell asleep.

“Effie, child, are you here?”

It was her mother’s voice, and she started up. The moon was throwing a flood of light into the room.

Next moment she was in her mother’s arms, who was soothing her, and laughingly trying to banish her fears.

We leave them there and follow the gale.

It had gone careering on, over mountain, moorland, and lake, seeming to gather force as it went. It must have been at its height when it swept over the bleak, bare islands of Shetland, and made madly off for the Norwegian coast. Old, old, white-haired men, who had lived their lives in this ultima Thule, never remembered a fiercer storm. On one of the most barren and bleakest islands, next morning, the beach was found bestrewn with wreckage from some gallant ship, and the merciless waves had thrown up more than one dead body, and there they lay as if asleep, with dishevelled hair, in which were sand and weeds, hands half clenched, as if, in the agony of death, they had tried to grasp at something, and cold, hard, wet faces upturned to the morning sun.

The Fairy Queen was trying to round a rocky cape when the white horses of that gale of wind first appeared on the horizon, heading straight for them. Once round the point they would be comparatively safe.

“Look!” cried Leonard to Douglas, whose watch it was. The sun was going down behind the western waves. Wild and red he looked, and shorn of his beams, and tinging all the water ’twixt the barque and the horizon a bright blood-red.

On came the white horses. It was a race between the barque and the gale of wind. Before her loomed the rocky promontory. The cliffs rose straight up out of the sea, and their heads were buried in haze. Close to the wind sailed the barque, as close as ever could be.

On and on she speeds, but the white horses are almost close aboard of her.

“Hands, shorten sail!”

The wind is on her. To shorten sail now were madness. The wind is on her, the brave ship leans over to it, till the water rushes in through the lee scuppers.

The wind increases in force every moment.

The great black rocks are close above her lee bow. Looking upwards, the wild flowers can be seen hanging to the banks and cliffs – saxifrages, heath, broom, and golden gorse. So close is the barque that the sea-birds that have alighted on the cliffs as the sun kissed the waves, startled by the flapping canvas, soar off again and go screaming skywards.

The sun is down now altogether, and the gale has rushed at the vessel like a wild beast seeking its lawful prey; the seas are dashing over her, the spray flying high over the bending masts.

The gale has leapt upon them, too, from a pillar of cloud, and with forked and flashing lightning.

Are they round the point? No one on that deck can tell as yet. The roar and the surge is deafening. The gloom is appalling, men can hardly breathe, the words the captain tries to shout to those at the wheel are carried away on the wind. The crew clutch at the rigging, and feel choking, drowning.

“Keep her away now!” It was Leonard’s voice in a wheelman’s ear. They were round the point!

The barque is flying. The topsails are rent in ribbons. What matters it? The open sea is before them. Yes, but like a tiger baulked of its prey, the squall suddenly increases to the force of a hurricane, and next moment the good ship is helpless on her beam ends.

Had the force of the gale been kept up many minutes the ship would have foundered, none would have been left alive to tell the tale. In some sandy bay in through those rocks and cliffs other dead swollen bodies would have been cast up like those on the Shetland shores, to lie with lustreless eyes in the morning’s sunshine.

The squall abated, the sky cleared, the gale itself has spent its fury, and goes growling away to leeward.

With hatchet and knife in hardy hands the wreck is cleared away at last, and the Fairy Queen rides in the moonlight on an even keel.

The captain shakes hands with Leonard and Douglas. “You saved her,” he said. “My boys, you saved her! It was excellent seamanship. Had you shortened sail when the wind got stiff we never would have rounded that point, and the sharks would have had what was left of us.”

“Captain Blunt,” said Douglas, “take credit to yourself as well, for you superintended the ballasting of the barque. Had that shifted, then – ”

“Davy Jones, eh?” said the skipper, laughing.

He could afford to laugh now.

There was much still to be done, so no more was said. All hands were called to make the barque as snug as could be for the night.

When morning broke in a grey uncertain haze over the sea, and the rocky shore began to loom out to leeward and astern, the extent of the damage was more apparent, but after all the ship had come out of it fairly well. The fore topmast was gone, the mizzen damaged, the bulwarks broken, and more like sheep hurdles than anything else, but there was little other damage worth entering in the log-book.

The sky cleared when the sun rose, and after breakfast the men were set to work repairing damages.

The Fairy Queen had little business on the Norwegian coast at all, but she had been driven far out of her course by adverse winds.

In a few more days the breeze was fair, and the ship was making good way westwards, albeit she was jury-rigged. It was sincerely hoped by all on board that the terrible gale they had just encountered was the worst they would meet. The ship had borne it wonderfully well, and leaked not in the least; for many a day, therefore, everything went as merry as marriage bells on board.

Captain Blunt was happy, so were our heroes, and so, for the matter of that, was every one fore and aft. The crew of the Fairy Queen were all picked men. They were not feather-bed sailors; most of them had been in the Arctic regions before, and knew them well. But albeit a good seaman is not afraid to face danger in every shape and form, he is nevertheless happiest when things are going well.

So now, every night, around the galley fire, songs were sung and stories told, and by day many a jocund laugh around the fo’c’s’le mingling with the scream of the circling sea-birds told of light hearts and minds that were free from care.

Everything in these seas was new to young Douglas and Leonard. They passed the strange-looking Faroe group of islands to the north, and in good time Iceland to the south, and bore up, straight as a bird could fly, for Cape Farewell, the southernmost point of Greenland.

Those Faroe Isles, as seen from the sea, are indescribably fantastic and picturesque. Let me see if I cannot find a simile. Yes, here it is: take a number of pebbles and stones, with a few good-sized smithy cinders. Let these be of all sizes. Next take a broad, shallow basin, which partly fill with water stained dark blue with indigo; now place your stones, etc, in this water, with one end of each sticking up. Paint these ends and tip them and streak them with green, with white, and with crimson, and lo and behold! you have a model of the Faroe Islands.

The Fairy Queen called at Reykjavik, and the good people of that quaint wee “city” came trooping on board. Even the Danish parson came, carrying in his own hands – for he was not proud – a string of firm, delicious-looking rock cod as a present for the captain.

Almost every boat brought a gift of some kind. Well, I daresay they did expect some presents in return, and it is needless to say they got them. This was, after all, only a very pleasant and very justifiable way of doing a barter; much better, in my opinion, than if they had lain on their oars and said, —

“We have fresh fish, and mountain mutton, and eggs and game for sale; how much tobacco, biscuits, knives, hatches, and cooking utensils have you to spare?”

The good little clergyman innocently inquired whether the war betwixt England and France was still going on, and was astonished to be told it was over years ago.

But nothing could exceed the kindness and hospitality of these people to our young heroes when they went on shore. Had they eaten and drunk a hundredth part of what they were pressed to partake of, they would have been cleverer far than the Welsh giant I used to read of in my boyhood in “The Wonderful Adventures of Jack the Giant-killer.”

The Fairy Queen lay at Reykjavik – having to take in water – for three days, and then sailed away. But would it be believed that in this short time Leonard and Douglas won so many hearts among old and young, that there was hardly a dry eye in the village the morning they left, so primitive and simple were those people then?

Book Two – Chapter Four

On Silent Seas

“And now there came both mist and snow,    And it grew wondrous cold,And ice, mast high, came floating by,    As green as emerald.“And through the drifts the snowy clilts    Did send a dismal sheen,Nor shapes of men nor beast we ken —    The ice was all between.”Coleridge.

Scene: The Arctic Ocean. One solitary ship in sight. Ice all about, against which, in contrast, the water looks black as ink.

Yes, everything they saw in this voyage and in these seas was indeed very new to Leonard and Douglas. They certainly were pleased they had come. It was like being in a new world.

They saw so many icebergs before they reached Cape Farewell that they ceased to fear them. Nothing very tremendous, though, but of all sizes, mostly covered with snow, and of shapes the most fantastic. Everything on earth seemed to be mimicked in shape by these bergs. Churches and houses, or halls with domes and minarets, were common objects. Furniture of all kinds came next in order of frequency; then came animals of all sorts, pigs, sheep, lions, bears, giraffes, geese, swans, horses, cattle, cocks, and hens. And the most amusing part of the business was this: as the ship sailed past them, or through the midst of them, they kept altering their shapes or forms with the greatest coolness, so to speak.