On my first return voyage, years after, we landed at St. Helena, which, interesting as it is from its historical associations, cannot in my opinion compare with Madeira in natural beauty.
Among the least pleasant experiences of the whole voyage was the ordeal of being becalmed near the line, where an oily sea sent back the glare of perpendicular rays: several days of this sort of thing proved too much for the tempers of the passengers, without evoking very choice selections from the copious vocabulary of the crew.
The cuddy table was patronized in stately silence, and at any time, indeed, conversation became as spasmodic and laconic as the merest courtesy would allow. We of the civilized persuasion have somehow drifted into the notion that it is imperative on us to talk at all times and seasons, so that few tongues ever rest from morning to night, when the timely interference of Providence paralyzes for a time our power of speech.
Being becalmed in such a spot has its ludicrous as well as its painful side; and few could help feeling amused at the sight of the ship’s bows pointing at different times to every direction of the compass, as the under-currents made us drift where we would not, intensifying our utter helplessness.
Then, too, the captain would come on deck, look around and aloft, whistle, and betake himself once more to the sacred precincts of his cabin. The officer on watch would imitate his chief with pious precision, especially the whistle, in which he had the faith peculiar to sailors in need of a favourable wind. But the son of Astræas remained in obdurate seclusion in his Thracian cave, and passengers and crew rose to the verge of desperation.
One early hour out of the twenty-four contained, indeed, some element of enjoyment, and that was when the decks were undergoing the beneficial process of “holy-stoning,” which consisted in rubbing them from stem to stern with a species of pumice and a plentiful supply of sea water. Then it was that the early bird could get a most enjoyable bath, not in the sea, indeed, which was infested with sharks, but on deck under the full play of a hose.
The bath was customarily followed by a cup of tea, extracted by bribery and corruption from the cook; and then we generally paced the deck barefoot and with just a suspicion of clothing, until the _levée_ of El Señor Sol, whom, from his nasty habit of insinuating himself under the brim of one’s hat, I have always found most trying at daybreak. The bath, the cup of tea, and an anteprandial pipe were not the only advantages of early rising, as one also escaped thereby the extremely trying noise of “holy-stoning” directly over one’s cabin.