it has always been a matter of profound thankfulness with me that my evil genius never led me on board a cattle-boat. for i do think that to a man who has any feeling for the lower animals these vessels present scenes of suffering enough to turn his brain. and it does not in the least matter what provision is made for the safe conveyance of cattle in such numbers across the ocean. as long as the weather is fairly reasonable, the boxed-up animals have only to endure ten days or so of close confinement, with inability to lie down, and the nausea that attacks animals as well as human beings. the better the ship and the greater care bestowed upon the cattle-fittings the less will be the sufferings of the poor beasts; but the irreducible minimum is soon reached, and that means much more cruelty to animals than any merciful man would like to witness. but when a gale is encountered and the huge steamer wallows heavily in the mountainous irregularities of the atlantic, flooding herself fore and aft at every roll, and making the cattlemen’s task of attending to their miserable charges one surcharged with peril to life or limbs, then the condition of a cattle-ship is such as to require the coinage of special adjectives for its description. of course it will be said that human beings used to be carried across the ocean for sale in much the same way, and men calling themselves humane were not ashamed to grow rich on the receipts from such traffic; but surely that will never be advanced as an excuse for, or a palliative of, the horrors of the live cattle trade. i have passed through an area of sea bestrewn with the bodies of cattle that have been washed overboard in a gale—hurled out of the pens wherein they have been battered to death—when the return of fine weather has made it possible, and i have wished with all my heart that it could be made an offence against the laws to carry live cattle across the ocean at all.
no, the nearest approach that ever i had to being shipmates with a cargo of live stock was on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, when, after bringing a 24-ton schooner from a little village up the bay of fundy to antigua in the west indies, i found myself, as you may say, stranded in st. john, the principal port in that island. the dry rot which seems to have unfortunately overtaken our west indian possessions was even then very marked in antigua, for there was no vessel there larger than a 100-ton schooner, and only two or three of them, all yankees with one exception, a barbadian craft with the queerest name imaginable, the migumoo-weesoo. the shipping officer, seeing that i was a certificated mate, very kindly interested himself in me, going so far as to say that if i would take his advice and assistance i would immediately leave st. john in the migum, as he called her, for that the skipper, being a friend of his, would gladly give me a passage to barbadoes. i hope good advice was never wasted on me. at any rate this wasn’t, for i immediately went down to the beach, jumped into a boat, and ordered the darky in charge to put me on board the migum. when we got alongside i was mightily interested to see quite a little mob of horses calmly floating alongside with their heads just sticking out of the water. the first thing that suggested itself to me was that if those horses got on board with their full complement of legs it would be little less than a miracle, the harbour being notoriously infested with sharks. but presently i reflected that there was really no danger, the darkies who were busy with preparations for the embarkation of the poor beasts kicking up such a deafening row that no shark would have dared venture within a cable’s length of the spot. everybody engaged in the business seemed to be excited beyond measure, shouting, screeching with laughter, and yelling orders at the top of their voices, so that i could not see how anything was going to be done at all. the skipper was confined to his cabin with an attack of dysentery, and lay fretting himself into a fever at the riot going on overhead for want of his supervision. as soon as i introduced myself he begged me to go and take charge, but, although i humoured him to the extent of seeming to comply with his request, i knew enough of the insubordinate ’badian darkies to make me very careful how i interfered with them. but going forward, i found to my delight that they had made a start at last, and that two of the trembling horses were already on deck. four or five darkies[142] were in the water alongside, diving beneath the horses with slings which were very carefully placed round their bodies, then hooked to a tackle, by means of which they were hoisted on board, so subdued by fear that they suffered themselves to be pushed and hauled about the decks with the quiet submissiveness of sheep. there were twenty of them altogether, and when they had all been landed on deck there was not very much room left for working the schooner. however, as our passage lay through the heart of the trade winds, and nothing was less probable than bad weather, nobody minded that, not even when the remaining deck space was lumbered up with some very queer-looking forage.
as soon as the horses were on board we weighed, and stood out of harbour with a gentle, leading wind that, freshening as we got farther off the land, coaxed the smart craft along at a fairly good rate. this lasted until midnight, when, to the darkies’ dismay, the wind suddenly failed us, leaving us lazily rocking to the gently-gliding swell upon the wine-dark bosom of the glassy sea. overhead, the sky, being moonless, was hardly distinguishable from the sea, and as every brilliant star was faithfully duplicated beneath, it needed no great stretch of imagination to fancy that we were suspended in the centre of a vast globe utterly cut off from the rest of the world. but the poor skipper, enfeebled by his sad ailment and anxious about his freight, had no transcendental fancies. vainly i tried to comfort him with the assurance that we should certainly find a breeze at daybreak, and it would as certainly be fair for us. he refused consolation, insisting that we were in for a long spell of calm, and against his long experience of those waters i felt i could not argue. so i ceased my efforts and went on deck to enjoy the solemn beauty of the night once more, and listen to the quaint gabble of the three darkies forming the watch on deck.
sure enough the skipper was right. calms and baffling airs, persisting for three days, kept us almost motionless until every morsel of horse provender was eaten, and—what was still more serious—very little water was left. all of us wore long faces now, and the first return of steady wind was hailed by us with extravagant delight. continuing on our original course was out of the question under the circumstances, so we headed directly for the nearest port, which happened to be prince rupert, in the beautiful island of dominica. a few hours’ sail brought us into the picturesque harbour, with its ruined fortresses, once grimly guarding the entrance, now overgrown with dense tropical vegetation, huge trees growing out of yawning gaps in the masonry, and cable-like vines enwreathing the crumbling walls. within the harbour there was a profound silence; the lake-like expanse was unburdened by a single vessel, and although the roofs of a few scattered houses could be seen embosomed among the verdure, there was no other sign of human occupation. we lowered the little boat hanging astern and hastened ashore. hurrying toward the houses, we found ourselves in a wide street which from lack of traffic was all overgrown with weeds. here we found a few listless negroes, none of whom could speak a word of english, a barbarous french patois being their only medium of communication. but by signs we made them comprehend our needs—fodder for the horses, and water. after some little palaver we found that for a few shillings we might go into the nearest thicket of neglected sugar-cane and cut down as many of the feathery blades that crowned the canes as we wanted, but none of those sleepy-looking darkies volunteered their assistance—they seemed to be utterly independent of work. our energy amazed them, and i don’t think i ever saw such utter contempt as was expressed by our lively crew—true ’badians born—towards those lotus-eating dominicans. we had a heavy morning’s work before us, but by dint of vigorous pushing we managed to collect a couple of boatloads of cane-tops, carry them on board, and return for two casks of water which we had left one of our number ashore to fill. some deliberate fishermen were hauling a seine as we were about to depart, and we lingered awhile until they had finished their unusual industry, being rewarded by about a bushel of “bill-fish,” a sort of garfish, but with the beak an extension of the lower jaw instead of the upper. i offered to buy a few of the fish, but the fishermen seemed mightily careless whether they sold any or not. after much expenditure of energy in sign language, i managed to purchase three dozen (about the size of herrings) for the equivalent of twopence, and, very well satisfied, pushed off for the schooner, leaving the fishermen standing on the beach contemplating their newly-acquired wealth, as if quite unable to decide what to do with it.
it was worth all the labour we had expended to see the delight with which those patient horses munched the juicy green tops of the cane, and drank, plunging their muzzles deep into the buckets, of the clear water we had brought. and i felt quite pleased when, upon our arrival in barbadoes two days after, i watched the twenty of them walk sedately up a broad gangway of planks on to the wharf, and indulge in a playful prance and shake when they found their hoofs firmly planted upon the unrocking earth once more.
i hope i shall not be suspected of drawing a longue beau when i say that i was once in a big ship whose skipper was an ardent agriculturist. on my first visit to the poop i saw with much surprise a couple of cucumber frames lashed in secure positions, one on either side of the rail at the break of the poop. when i fancied myself unobserved, i lifted the top of one, and looked within, seeing that they contained a full allowance of rich black mould. and presently, peeping down the saloon skylight, i saw that carefully arranged along its sides, on brackets, were many large pots of flowering plants, all in first-rate condition and bloom. it was quite a novel experience for me, but withal a most pleasant one, for although it did appear somewhat strange and incongruous to find plant-life flourishing upon the sea, it gave more of a familiar domestic atmosphere to ’board-ship life than anything i have ever known; much the same feeling that strikes one when looking upon the round sterns of the dutch galliots, with their square windows embellished by snowy beribboned muslin curtains. when we got to sea, and well clear of the land, so that the skipper’s undivided attention could be given to his beloved hobby, there were great developments of it. for not content with growing lettuces, radishes, endive, and such “garden-sass,” as the yankees term it, in his cucumber frames, he enlarged his borders and tried experiments in raising all sorts of queer seeds of tropical fruits and vegetables. his garden took up so much room on the poop that the officers fretted a good deal at the circumscribed area of their domain, besides being considerably annoyed at having to cover up the frames, boxes, &c., when bad weather caused salt spray to break over them. but this was ungrateful of them, because there never was a skipper who interfered less with his officers, or a more peaceable, good-natured man. nor was the frequent mess of salad that graced the table in the saloon to be despised. in that humid atmosphere and equable temperature everything grew apace; so that for a couple of months at a time green crisp leaves were scarcely absent from the table for a day. mustard and cress were, of course, his main crop, but lettuce, radishes, and spring onions did remarkably well. that was on the utilitarian side. on the experimental side he raised date-palms, coco-palms, banana-palms, mango trees, and orange trees, dwarfing them after a fashion he had learned in china, so that in the saloon he had quite a conservatory. but there were many others of which none of us knew the names. and all around in the skylight,[147] beneath the brackets whereon the pots of geranium, fuchsia, &c., stood, hung orchids collected by the skipper on previous voyages, and most carefully tended, so that some lovely spikes of bloom were always to be seen. that saloon was a perfect bower of beauty, and although the ship herself was somewhat dwarfed by comparison with the magnificent clippers we forgathered with in calcutta, few vessels had so many visitors. her fame spread far, and nearly every day the delighted skipper would be busy showing a string of wondering shorefolk over his pleasaunce.
we went thence to hong-kong, and there, as if in emulation of the “old man’s” hobby for flowers, all hands went in for birds, mostly canaries, which can be obtained in china more cheaply, i believe, than in any part of the world. sampans, loaded with cages so that nothing can be seen of the hull, and making the whole harbour melodious with the singing of their pretty freight, are always in evidence. for the equivalent of 3s., if the purchaser be smart of eye, he can always buy a fine cock canary in full song, although the wily chinee never fails to attempt the substitution of a hen, no matter what price is paid. there arose a perfect mania on board of us for canaries, and when we departed for new zealand there were at least 400 of the songsters on board. truly for us the time of singing of birds had come. all day long that chorus went on, almost deafeningly, until we got used to it, for of course if one bird piped up after a short spell of quiet all hands joined in at the full pitch of their wonderful little lungs; so that, what with birds and flowers and good feeling, life on board the lady clare was as nearly idyllic as any seafaring i have ever heard of.
