Jack London
Chris Farrington, Able Seaman
From "Dutch Courage and Other Stories"
"If you vas in der old country ships, a liddle shaver like you vood pe
only der boy, and you vood wait on der able seamen. Und ven der able seaman
sing out, 'Boy, der water-jug!' you vood jump quick, like a shot, and bring der
water-jug. Und ven der able seaman sing out, 'Boy, my boots!' you vood get der
boots. Und you vood pe politeful, and say 'Yessir' and 'No sir.' But you pe in
der American ship, and you t'ink you are so good as der able seamen. Chris,
mine boy, I haf ben a sailorman for twenty-two years, and do you t'ink you are
so good as me? I vas a sailorman pefore you vas borned, and I knot and reef and
splice ven you play mit topstrings and fly kites."
"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 all over him.
"Dere you go vonce again!" the Swedish sailor exploded. "My name is Mister
Johansen, and a kid of a boy like you call me 'Emil!' It vas insulting, and
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'castle, 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, 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. Of course the sailing-master, who was
really captain, was a thorough-going 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 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, 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 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 breach 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 had caught his 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'slehead,
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'castle 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, fiercely. 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, along 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 bolt-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 one of the
inner jibs and two reefs 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 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 in 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 and able seaman, and I pe
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!'"
First published in The Youth's Companion, v. 75, May 23, 1901
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