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She was the Empress of the Ocean, and her home port was Liverpool. Captain Elisha, as a free-born Yankee skipper, had an inherited and cherished contempt for British "lime-juicers," but he could not help admiring this one. To begin with, her size and tonnage were enormous. Also, she was four-masted, instead of the usual three, and her hull and lower spars were of steel instead of wood.
We slowed to little more than steerage-way and lay listening. Presently a hand-bellows foghorn jarred like a corncrake, and there rattled out of the mist a big ship literally above us. We could count the rivets in her plates as we scrooped by, and the little drops of dew gathered below them. "Wonder why they're always barks always steel always four-masted an' never less than two thousand tons.
Higher rose the wind, heavier rolled the sea, yet never a drop of water did we ship, nor did anything about the deck betoken what a heavy gale was blowing. During the worst of the weather, and just after the wind had shifted back into the N.E., making an uglier cross sea than ever get up, along comes an immense four-masted iron ship homeward bound.
We passed a ship, two schooners, and a four-masted barkentine under the smallest of canvas, and at eleven o'clock, running up the spanker and jib, we hove her to, and in another hour we were beating back again against the aftersea under full sail to regain the sealing ground away to the westward. Below, a couple of men were sewing the "bricklayer's" body in canvas preparatory to the sea burial.
At one time he was owner and master of a four-masted steel sailing ship that carried the English flag and coals from Newcastle.
Brand new, four-masted steel ship; first voyage; broke the old man's heart. He'd been forty years in the company. Just faded way and died the next year." Despite the wind and the early hour, the heat was suffocating. The wind whispered coolness, but did not deliver coolness. It might have blown off the Sahara, save for the extreme humidity with which it was laden.
The sea was the thing that beat all "the great sea perfect as a flower," the sight of it was a stab. There are great four-masted barques and full-rigged ships lying at the wharfs and outside double t'gallant yarders, my boy; I yelled at them by way of greeting down across the tree-tops. Nearer in lies a long black steamer, a transport. She is an ugly looking old tub, but in my eyes perfect.
Graham has been writing for the people to the King, to thank him for the message which he sent them through Lord Crawford. Monday, May 7. We do all our writing in the evening. Since we have been here three ships have been sighted. One was four-masted and came in quite close. It was a misty day with a rough sea.
Above the pines which shrouded the narrows shone the topsails of a timber-laden barque, and a crawling cloud of smoke betokened a steamer coming up out of the wastes of the Pacific, while four-masted ships lay two deep beneath the humming mills.
Possibly our most exasperating experience on the fish patrol was when Charley Le Grant and I laid a two weeks' siege to a big four-masted English ship. Before we had finished with the affair, it became a pretty mathematical problem, and it was by the merest chance that we came into possession of the instrument that brought it to a successful termination.
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