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vladislav sogan
From Chart House to Bush Hut
From Chart House to Bush Hut
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• "TYPE 'SOGAN' IN THE NOOK BOOK SEARCH BOX TO VIEW ALL MY TITLES!"
• Illustrated book
• Images has been resized and optimized for the Nook
• Table of contents with working links to chapters is included
• The book has been corrected for spelling and grammatical errors
• New and improved version
•
On arriving at Valparaiso you moor to buoys, in about thirty fathoms of water. Instantly a horde of coaley pirates, who look (and smell) as if they never washed, swarms aboard and starts to cast adrift all your carefully prepared cargo gear, and alter it to suit themselves. You try and explain that "thisee ropee no boyno' ere," and are thereupon informed "Usted no sabe nada, pilote," or something like that, so you give way. Big lighters bump all the paint off alongside. Work goes on night and day, and in less than a week the coal is all out, and away you wallow to sea again. No chance of going ashore. Officers and engineers have to be here, there, and everywhere, for the lumpers pinch worse than—well! worse than the mate of a ship moored near a Government dockyard, and that's saying something. They make a trade, too, out of bringing aboard bottles of the awful muck the lower class Chileño delights in, such as casash, potato caña, etc., one glass of which makes a man see snakes for a week. I really think some sailors would guzzle kerosene out of a whisky bottle. Anyhow, you're glad to get to sea for a rest.
Then the long dreary run of 7000 miles back "along the parallel" starts! nothing to see, nothing to break the awful monotony, till you strike the Australian coast again—Newcastle, for more coal.
You arrive on Wednesday night. "Sure of a Sunday this time!" you think. Vain hope! A boat comes alongside about 11 p.m. (Ship at anchor in the stream.)
"Ready for fumigation, mister?"
"Oh! ——," you think, but don't say, for the officials can make things extremely unpleasant for you if they like. So its "Turn out, men, and get the stuff aboard." Five barrels of sulphur, and about four hundred little tin dishes to put it in. Ladle the sulphur in, each dish half-full, and pass it below. A lick of methylated spirits in each, a match, and the choking blue reek rises. On hatches! and batten well down; plug the ventilators—and then damn well go and camp on a stage slung over the bows, for nowhere else will you escape the caustic fumes. Sleep? I like to hear you! We've been getting cargo gear ready at sea this day, and we'll be all day to-morrow again, and no sleep this blessed night. Can you wonder at the men going on the drunk? My personal sympathy is with them, but I daren't show it, or I'd lose my job, get no reference from the skipper likely, and be ruined.
We spend the night coughing, choking and cursing, and about 8 a.m. (Thursday) orders come to go alongside in the Basin. We go—and it's pandemonium let loose. The muffled roar of coal dropping in tons, clang of trimmers' shovels, hoarse shouts, stamping and crashings, with an occasional spasmodic clattering winch by way of variety.
All hands are on the beer ashore, and won't show up till Saturday at earliest. That leaves three officers and two apprentice boys to handle...
• Illustrated book
• Images has been resized and optimized for the Nook
• Table of contents with working links to chapters is included
• The book has been corrected for spelling and grammatical errors
• New and improved version
•
On arriving at Valparaiso you moor to buoys, in about thirty fathoms of water. Instantly a horde of coaley pirates, who look (and smell) as if they never washed, swarms aboard and starts to cast adrift all your carefully prepared cargo gear, and alter it to suit themselves. You try and explain that "thisee ropee no boyno' ere," and are thereupon informed "Usted no sabe nada, pilote," or something like that, so you give way. Big lighters bump all the paint off alongside. Work goes on night and day, and in less than a week the coal is all out, and away you wallow to sea again. No chance of going ashore. Officers and engineers have to be here, there, and everywhere, for the lumpers pinch worse than—well! worse than the mate of a ship moored near a Government dockyard, and that's saying something. They make a trade, too, out of bringing aboard bottles of the awful muck the lower class Chileño delights in, such as casash, potato caña, etc., one glass of which makes a man see snakes for a week. I really think some sailors would guzzle kerosene out of a whisky bottle. Anyhow, you're glad to get to sea for a rest.
Then the long dreary run of 7000 miles back "along the parallel" starts! nothing to see, nothing to break the awful monotony, till you strike the Australian coast again—Newcastle, for more coal.
You arrive on Wednesday night. "Sure of a Sunday this time!" you think. Vain hope! A boat comes alongside about 11 p.m. (Ship at anchor in the stream.)
"Ready for fumigation, mister?"
"Oh! ——," you think, but don't say, for the officials can make things extremely unpleasant for you if they like. So its "Turn out, men, and get the stuff aboard." Five barrels of sulphur, and about four hundred little tin dishes to put it in. Ladle the sulphur in, each dish half-full, and pass it below. A lick of methylated spirits in each, a match, and the choking blue reek rises. On hatches! and batten well down; plug the ventilators—and then damn well go and camp on a stage slung over the bows, for nowhere else will you escape the caustic fumes. Sleep? I like to hear you! We've been getting cargo gear ready at sea this day, and we'll be all day to-morrow again, and no sleep this blessed night. Can you wonder at the men going on the drunk? My personal sympathy is with them, but I daren't show it, or I'd lose my job, get no reference from the skipper likely, and be ruined.
We spend the night coughing, choking and cursing, and about 8 a.m. (Thursday) orders come to go alongside in the Basin. We go—and it's pandemonium let loose. The muffled roar of coal dropping in tons, clang of trimmers' shovels, hoarse shouts, stamping and crashings, with an occasional spasmodic clattering winch by way of variety.
All hands are on the beer ashore, and won't show up till Saturday at earliest. That leaves three officers and two apprentice boys to handle...
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