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Read Ebook: From Chart House to Bush Hut Being the Record of a Sailor's 7 Years in the Queensland Bush by Bryde C W
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Ebook has 465 lines and 37932 words, and 10 pages
Chapter. Page.
L'Envoi 156
From Chart House to Bush Hut
THE NEWCASTLE -CHILE COAL RUN.
The trans-Pacific run is the most god-forsaken, monotonous trade in the world, I think. Our steamer was fairly fast for a tramp, and we were twenty-four days on the Eastbound trip and twenty-seven back to Newcastle--coal one way and ballast back. Not a solitary sail nor point of land to break the dreary monotony of grey sea and greyer sky, clear across to Valparaiso--5000 miles. Following the Great Circle track, you get down to 53 degrees or 54 degrees south latitude. In winter it's cold--blowing a gale pretty well all the time--and your ship's like a half-tide rock. In summer pretty much the same conditions prevail, with fog added. Occasionally there is a day when it's not blowing--then it rains. And there's ice to be looked out for at this time of the year, too, which is an added pleasantry.
Sweeping up on the Great Circle for Valparaiso, you close in gradually with the Chilean coast, the first land sighted being usually the rocky highlands round Curramilla Point, the high sierras of the Andes being obscured by mist most times. Occasionally one gets a glimpse of noble Aconcagua, the mighty 26,000 ft. Andean giant. I shall never forget my first sight of it. It was about six p.m., and we were then about 260 miles from the mountain. The sun was setting. All at once there appeared on the starboard bow a huge irregular truncated cone in the heavens, enlarged by refraction to an incredible size. It was a deep rose red, and every crevasse, ledge and spur was pencilled with distinctness. Talk about awe-inspiring grandeur and beauty! Every man-jack in the ship turned out to gaze and gaze while it slowly faded; and then, suddenly, puff! like a candle blown out, it was gone.
Then the long dreary run of 7000 miles back "along the parallel" starts! nothing to see, nothing to break the awful monotony, till you strike the Australian coast again--Newcastle, for more coal.
You arrive on Wednesday night. "Sure of a Sunday this time!" you think. Vain hope! A boat comes alongside about 11 p.m.
"Ready for fumigation, mister?"
We spend the night coughing, choking and cursing, and about 8 a.m. orders come to go alongside in the Basin. We go--and it's pandemonium let loose. The muffled roar of coal dropping in tons, clang of trimmers' shovels, hoarse shouts, stamping and crashings, with an occasional spasmodic clattering winch by way of variety.
All hands are on the beer ashore, and won't show up till Saturday at earliest. That leaves three officers and two apprentice boys to handle the ship, shift back and forth every half-hour or so, take stores aboard, put on 'tweendeck beams and hatches as required, and attend to the multifarious jobs connected with being in port. There isn't an earthly chance of going ashore further than the fruit shop over the way, especially for the mate, who has to be there all the time.
Finally the truth slowly comes home to you that you will be finished on Saturday night--8000 tons of cargo and bunkers in three days. At 7 p.m. on Saturday down comes the Navigation Department's inspector, with his hydrometer, to watch you finish. 8.30, and she's nearly down. You watch the marks closely, the inspector, grimly impassive, giving you no assistance.
"Can I put another truck in, sir?" I ask.
"You're loading her, mister, not me," is his discouraging reply.
You test the water with your hydrometer. Ah! Brackish. She'll stand it. So. Another? H'm! Something in the inspector's eye warns you, so you say "No" reluctantly to the impatient head-stevedore, for you're due for a wigging if this cargo's a waggon short of last voyage's.
"Um!" says Mr. Inspector musingly. "If you'd put that aboard, mister, I'd have made you dig it out again." Helpful!
I had that sort of thing to put up with from the same man seven voyages running. I used to pass watches at sea comforting myself with dreams of punching his head, and trying to think of some way of upsetting him. No go! All the annoying power possible was his.
At 9.30 the head stevedore reports the cargo all trimmed down. Tide's at 11.0. Right! You go to turn out all hands and find them dead-oh. After much shaking, you manage to get four more or less fit for duty, albeit soreheaded and groggy on their pins, so you make a start getting hatch-beams on. Fore and main hatch iron-work is in place, when the skipper and pilot hurry aboard.
"Single up, Mr. Senex."
"Ay, ay, sir!" Then, with a roar, "Break off there, and stand-by fore and aft."
Just singled up, when a sound like a mill wheel is heard, and Brown's old "Bungaree" comes alongside and makes fast.
"Let go fore and aft!" and away we go with a dismal shriek from the steam whistle, which, with water in the pipe, makes a snarling sound aptly expressive of our own feelings.
There's a lop of a sea outside the breakwaters, and the five derricks we still have up sway dangerously--to say nothing of the funnel, the guys of which are yet adrift. However, we drop anchor outside and all hands spend the night very pleasantly till nearly daybreak, securing gear, sorting out hatch covers and getting them on, setting up back stays, and so on.
A short spell of broken sleep, then, at 8.30 a.m. on this restful Sunday we finish clearing up the decks and wash down. Skipper comes aboard at noon, with all his papers in order. A hurried lunch, last letters handed to the agents' clerk; farewell! Up anchor, and so away again to sea--for a rest!
Thus it goes on, voyage after voyage the same. I had nine trips to Valparaiso and back, and it nearly broke both health and heart before I managed to cut the bonds and free myself from such slavery. The owners gave me ?10 a month as mate and no overtime for any of us, till we kicked like hell and threatened to go on strike; then we got 1/- an hour! and were looked on as mutinous.
A nightmare of a life. And though things are better now, I believe, than they were in my day, still it's past and done with for me, thank God!
ONE NIGHT IN PORT JACKSON.
Eight bells, noon. Our steamer, twenty-six days out from Talcahuano, lurched and rolled under the rapidly expiring influence of the snorting sou'-easter which had dogged us all the way across the Pacific. Ahead, clear-cut and blue in the rainwashed atmosphere, a stretch of the New South Wales coast. A point on the port bow, a little white finger pointing upward.
Sydney! The very thought of the place warmed our hearts with visions of the rest, beer, girls, picture palaces, newspapers and so forth, according to the particular bent of the individual seaman.
Magic name! The growling A.B.'s grew suddenly good-tempered, and evinced a certain alacrity in obeying orders from which nearly four weeks' bad weather had divorced them. Occasionally they even smiled. The skipper grew cheerful, and the mate ceased his everlasting faultfinding, and cracked a mild joke with the men now and again--which called forth its due meed of obsequious merriment. Once he even said, "It's going to be a fine evening after all, Mac," to an engineer, who nearly fell over his doorstep with the shock of being addressed with courtesy for the first time in a month.
Heavily our old hooker wallows along, and we raise the land fast.
"Anchors all ready, Mr. Senex?" from the skipper.
"All clear, sir."
"Right! See everything ready for the pilot."
"Ay, ay, sir!"
A half-hour passes, and South Head is close aboard, the surf breaking high. Another few minutes and the "Captain Cook" slides in a piratical fashion from behind a rock and makes for us. After some difficulty, for we are light ship and rolling heavily, the pilot hops aboard.
"You're to go up to Woolwich, Cap'n. The dry dock's all ready for you. Full ahead, please. Port a bit," and we make for Watson's Bay. A little manoeuvring, then--"Stand by your anchor.... Let go!" and away goes the mudhook with a roar and a cloud of rust-dust.
"ALL right, sir. I'll go and rouse him up," and away I went.
Diving down the engineroom ladder, I find Mr. Crafter frantically tugging with a spanner at a refractory nut.
"Doctor's waiting, Crafter."
"Blast the doctor!"
"Tellim t' goter'ell!!"
From the safe altitude of the first grating, I said sweetly, "All right, old man; I'll give him your message. Er--did it hurt?" and raced up the ladder just in time to miss the flying spanner.
Crafter came up, sweating and purple-faced, grumbling about disturbing men at important repair jobs, was pronounced free from small-pox, and instantly returned to his labours.
I leaned on the rail, drinking in the calm, peaceful beauty of the night. Across the water the innumerable lights and subdued hum of the city, the coloured lights of the moving shipping here and there, and the white reflection of South Head in the distance, the broad path of moonlit water, broken every now and then by a brilliant firefly of a ferry boat streaking across it. Nearer at hand, rocky, brush-covered points, romantic and inviting. Above all, and pervading everything, the subtle perfume of the faint breeze--a scent of flowers, hay, gum leaves, and warm rich earth, the very breath of the Goddess of Health. I don't know how long I stopped there, dreaming and thinking of the contrast between this haven of peace and the last month of turmoil, before I woke to the fact that I was dog-tired and had better turn in. Couldn't sleep, though. An hour or so of restless tossing about, and I was out again--the night more beautiful than ever. There was another form leaning on the gangway, pyjama'd, like myself.
"Hello, Crafter--that you? Isn't this just A1 at Lloyd's?"
"Dunno about that; but are you game for a stroll ashore?" I asked.
"Right you are!" And away we went.
We met nobody. There was no Caliban of a John Hop to point out the impropriety of our appearance on a public road in pyjamas and carpet slippers, and we walked on up Hunter's Hill way, Lane Cove glimmering through the trees on one side and the sweet-scented brush on the other. We fairly bathed in the beautiful night, plucked handfuls of gum leaves and buried our noses in them. We wandered on until the declining moon warned us it was time to get back. We reached the ship again about 3 a.m., and had no difficulty in getting to sleep this time.
That glorious night! It will live in my memory, for then and there was born the idea--not so long afterwards acted on--to say good-bye to the sea life and crowded old England, and make a home for myself in this wide, free young land. I have never regretted doing so.
GOOD-BYE TO THE SEA.
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