“Good-morning, Captain Spence! This is a pleasant surprise for us; we scarcely hoped to see you before reaching Melbourne. What has happened to detain you on the way?”
“Good-morning, Captain Blyth! I am very glad we have fallen in with each other so early in the voyage,” answered Captain Spence. “I have been looking out for you during the last three or four days, for, with such very fine weather as we have had lately, I expected you would completely outsail us. How has the wind been with you? We have had it light and shy, so far, during the entire voyage, except for the little slant we got down channel on our first day out.”
“Ah, yes!” remarked Captain Blyth; “you had the advantage of us there. We had to beat the whole way from the Foreland to the Start.”
“An advantage which is more than counterbalanced by your beautiful model and your brand-new canvas,” observed Spence. “Our sails are so worn and thin that we can almost see through them; the wind goes through them like water through a sieve. But I am just about to shift them for a new suit, when I hope we shall be able to keep company with you at least as far as the line, where, if, as is most probable, we fall in with calms, I hope you and your passengers will do me the favour to come on board and dine with us.”
“That we will, with the greatest pleasure; and you and your passengers will, I hope, favour us with a return visit—if, when you have bent your new canvas, you do not run away from us altogether,” retorted Blyth. “Meanwhile,” he continued, raising his voice as the Flying Cloud drew gradually ahead of the Southern Cross, “I am afraid we must say good-bye for the present, as we seem to be slipping past you.”
With this parting shot Captain Blyth again raised his cap politely, and stepped down out of the rigging on to a hen-coop, and from thence to the poop; and so the little verbal sparring match between the rival skippers ended, each flattering himself that he had had the best of it, and that he had come out well in the eyes of the little audience before which he had been performing.
One thing, however, was certain, the Southern Cross had sailed twenty-four hours before her rival, and had by that rival been overtaken and passed—fairly outsailed; and whether Captain Spence’s somewhat laboured explanation of this circumstance satisfied his passengers or not, it assuredly did not satisfy himself. He was fain to confess—to himself—that the hitherto invincible Southern Cross had at length been subjected to the ignominy of defeat. The thought was unendurable; there could be no more happiness for him until the stain had been wiped from his tarnished laurels. And to do this with the least possible loss of time he at once went about the task of shifting his canvas, for which, as the ship was now running dead before the wind, he could not have a better opportunity. It was a heavy task, and all hands were set to work upon it, the steerage passengers—ay, and some of the gentlemen in the saloon also—so far identifying their own interests with that of the ship as to volunteer their services in the pulling and hauling part of the work, which enabled the skipper to send two strong gangs aloft. But it was all of no use—just then, at least. The fact was that the older suit of canvas was not nearly so unserviceable as Captain Spence chose to consider it, and the substitution of the new suit was therefore without appreciable effect—the result being that when night closed down upon the little comedy the people on board the Southern Cross had the mortification of seeing the rival ship hovering on the very verge of the horizon ahead of them.
On board the Flying Cloud, on the other hand, apart from her commander there was no very great amount of enthusiasm. The passengers were merely placidly satisfied at having outsailed a notoriously fast vessel; whilst the mates and crew were, or affected to be, supremely indifferent to the circumstance. Captain Blyth, however, made ample amends in his own person for the indifference of everybody else. He was simply exultant. Whatever might happen in the future, nothing could rob him of the right to boast that he had beaten the Southern Cross in a fair trial of sailing, with the two ships side by side. And with regard to the future, also, he was tolerably sanguine. It had been conclusively demonstrated that the Flying Cloud was the faster ship of the two before the wind and in ordinary trades weather, which weather he could now depend upon until he reached the region of the calms about the line; and it was also possible that, walking away from the Southern Cross at his present rate, he might get a slant across the calm belt which the other ship would miss, and a consequent start from thence into the south-east trades of nobody could say how many days. And if the worst came to the worst and he were overtaken in the calm belt, the two ships would at least make a fair start of it again from the line, when he was not without hopes that the extraordinary weatherliness of his own ship would enable him to keep the advantage already won. So that, looking at the matter in all its bearings, he was not only fully satisfied with the past and present, but hopeful for the future. At the same time, knowing by his recent experience how hard a ship to beat was the Southern Cross, he fully realised that he must neglect no means within his power to secure to himself the victory. Nor did he. Had his life and fortune both been staked on the result of the race, he could scarcely have manifested more eagerness. Indeed, he rather overdid it, imperilling his spars by carrying a heavy press of canvas up to the last moment possible; which, as the north-east trades happened to be blowing rather fresh, involved a great deal of clewing up, hauling down, furling, and subsequently re-setting of his lighter sails, and a consequent amount of extra work for the crew which was anything but to their taste.
A week passed thus; but on the seventh day following that on which the Southern Cross had been spoken, and within an hour or two of the time when the skipper, having worked up his meridian altitude of the sun, had expressed to his passengers a confident hope that they would have crossed the line by the time that they retired that night, the wind began to fail them, and by eight bells in the afternoon watch the ship was lying motionless on a sea the surface of which was smooth as polished glass, save for the undulations of the ground-swell which came creeping up to them from the northward and eastward. The sky was hazy but without a cloud, and the temperature of the motionless atmosphere was almost unbearably oppressive, the pitch melting out of the deck-seams and adhering to the shoe-soles even beneath the shelter of the awning which was spread over the poop.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” said Captain Blyth as he joined his passengers at the dinner-table that evening, “here we are in the Doldrums, fast enough, and no mistake. The nor’-east trades brought us so close up to the line that I was in hopes they’d be accommodating enough to carry us over it. However, we mustn’t grumble. We’re within sixty miles of the Equator, whilst on my last outward voyage I was left becalmed close upon two hundred miles to the nor’ard of it. And we’re not alone in our misery; I counted no less than fifteen sail in sight from the deck just before dark, but I couldn’t make out the Cross among ’em. I am in hopes of getting a start across and into the south-easters before she comes up.”
“How far astern do you think she is just now, captain?” asked Mrs. Henderson.
“Not an inch less than one hundred and fifty miles, ma’am,” answered the skipper. “And if she brings the trades as far down with her as we’ve done—which is doubtful—she can’t reach the spot sooner than nine o’clock to-morrow evening. So we’ve twenty-six hours the start of her now, and I’m going to do my best to keep it.”
The saloon was far too hot for the passengers to hold their usual concert there that evening; they therefore adjourned to the deck, and lounged there to the latest possible moment. It was a glorious night—brilliant star-light with a young moon—the combined light enabling them to just dimly make out here and there the hull and sails of one or another of their companions in misfortune, the side-lights, green or red according to the position of the vessel, gleaming brightly and throwing long, wavering, tremulous lines of colour along the polished surface of the water. On board one of these vessels, about a mile distant, someone was playing a concertina—very creditably, too—and singing a favourite forecastle ditty to its accompaniment; and it was surprising how softly yet clearly the sounds were conveyed across the intervening space of water. Singing and playing was also going on among