Dirrik

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Title:     Dirrik
Author: Anthon B. E. Nilsen [More Titles by Nilsen]

The first time I met him was in 1867, on board the schooner Jenny of Svelvik. The skipper was an uncle of mine, and had taken me along as odd boy for a summer cruise. And Ole Didriksen, or Dirrik, as we called him, was first hand on board.

We had taken in a cargo of pit props at Drammen, and came down the fjord with a light northerly breeze. A little way out the wind dropped altogether and the Jenny lay drifting idly under a blazing sun.

Dirrik sounded the well, and declared that "the old swine was leaking like a sieve."--"Nonsense!" said the skipper. "Why, it's not more than three years since her last overhaul."--"Maybe," said Dirrik, "but she's powerful old."--"Old she may be--built in '32--and I won't say but she's a trifle groggy about the ribs; still, she's good for this bit of a run. And summer weather and all."

Dirrik tried again. "Twenty-two inches," he said, and looked inquiringly at the skipper. "Well, then, you two men get the boat and go ashore for a few sacks of caulking. There's plenty of ant-heaps up in the wood there."

I was ready to burst with pride at finding myself thus bracketed with Dirrik as a "man." I felt myself a sailor already, and would not have bartered the title for that of a Consul-General or Secretary of State.

But the ant-heaps puzzled me. I could see no connection between ant-heaps in a wood on shore and the caulking of a leaky schooner. However, the first duty of man at sea is to obey the orders of the supreme power on board, i.e. the skipper; I curbed my curiosity, then, for the time, and waited till we were a few lengths away from the ship.

"Ant-heaps?" said Dirrik. "Why, 'tis the only way to do with a leaky old tub like that. We dig 'em up, d'ye see, pine needles and all, and drag a caseful round her sides and down towards her keel, and she sucks it all up in her seams, ants and needles and bits of twigs, and the whole boiling, and that's the finest caulking you can get!"

"Queer sort of caulking," I said.

"There's queerer things than that, lad, when a vessel gets that old. It's the same like with human beings. Some of them keeps sound and fit, and others go rotten and mouldy and drink like hogs--but they often live the longest for all that!"

"Do you think we'll ever get her across to England, Dirrik?"

"Get her across? Why, what are you thinking of? She's never had so much as a copper nail put in these last thirty years, but she'll sail for all that. Run all heeled over on one side, she will, and squirming and screeching like a sea-serpent."

"She looks a bit cranky, anyway," I ventured.

"Warped and gaping. But still she'll do the trip for all that."

We reached the shore, and Dirrik ordered me up into the wood to fill the sacks, while he just ran up to old Iversen, the pilot, for a moment.

I managed, not without some difficulty, to get the boat loaded up, but it was a full half-hour before Dirrik appeared.

At last he came strolling down, in company with a pretty, buxom girl. "This is my young lady, an' her name's Margine," said Dirrik, and pointing to me: "Our new hand on board."--"Well, see you make a nice trip," said Margine, "and come back again soon."

We caulked the Jenny as per instructions, and got her taut as a bottle. "Ants, they trundles off sharp, all they know, into the holes for safety," Dirrik explained, "and take along the pine needles with 'em."

A fresh northerly wind took us well out into the North Sea; then, a few days later, we lay becalmed on the Dogger. An English fishing vessel sent a boat aboard of us, trading fresh cod for a couple of bottles of gin. Looking through the skylight I saw the old man quietly making up the two bottles from one, by the simple process of adding water to fill up. Rank swindling it seemed to me, but he explained afterwards that it was "our way of keeping down drunkenness, my boy."

Eight days out from Drammen we put in to Seaham Harbour. Half our cargo under deck was sodden through, for we'd three feet of water in the hold all the voyage, despite the patent caulking.

"Get it worse going home," said Dirrik. "We're taking small coal to Drobak."

A few hours later we were getting in our cargo, and soon the Jenny was loaded almost to the waterline with smalls. We were just about to batten down the hatches, when the skipper came along and told us to wait, there was some Government stuff still to come.

Down the quay trundled a heavy railway waggon with two pieces of cannon, and before we had properly time to wonder at the sight, the crane had taken hold, the guns swung high in the air above the quay, and--one, two, three--down they came into the main hatchway all among the coals.

The schooner gave a sort of gasp as the crane let go, and I thought for a moment we had broken her back. She went several inches lower in the water, till the chain bolts were awash, and the scuppers clear by no more than a hair's breadth.

"This looks dangerous," I said to the skipper cautiously, as he stood by the side.

"Why, what are you afraid of?"

"My life," was all I found to answer.

"And a lot to be afraid of in that!" said he, spitting several yards out into the dock. "The guns are for the fort at Oskarsborg, and it isn't every voyage I can make fifteen pounds over a couple of fellows like that."

We set off on our homeward voyage. Fortunately, our protecting ants still kept to their places in the leaks, or there would have been an end of us, and the guns as well. The skipper was ill, and stuck to his berth the whole way home. The night before we left Seaham Harbour he had been to a crab-supper ashore at the ship-chandler's, and what with stewed crabs and ginger beer, the feast had "upset all his innards," as he put it.

We got into trouble rounding the Ness. Dirrik was at the helm, and hailed the skipper to ask if we hadn't better shorten sail.

"Nonsense!" said the old man. "It's summer weather--keep all standing till she's clear." The rigging sang, and the water was flung in showers over the deck.

Dirrik ran her up into the wind as well as he could, but was afraid of going about. Then: Crack! from aloft, and crack! went the jibboom, and the flying jib was off and away to leeward like a bat. The skipper thrust up his head to take in the situation.

"Got her clear?" he asked. "Ay," says Dirrik calmly, "clear enough, and all we've got to do now is pull in the rags that's left, and paddle home as best we can."

We were not a pretty sight when we made Drobak, but the guns were landed safely, and that was the main thing.

* * * * *

After that, I saw no more of Dirrik till I met him at the Seaman's School in Piperviken in 1872.

There were three of us chums there: Rudolf, a great big giant of eighteen, with fair curly hair and smiling blue eyes. A good fellow was Rudolf, but uncommonly powerful and always ready to get to hand grips with anyone if they contradicted him.

Dirrik was fifteen years our senior at least. He had been twenty years at sea already, and reckoned the pair of us as "boys."

Dirrik had never got beyond the rank of "first-hand" on board; it was always this miserable exam that stood in his way. It was his highest ambition to pass for mate, and then perhaps some day, with luck, get a skipper's berth on some antiquated hulk along the coast. But Dirrik was unfortunate. It counted for nothing here that he had been several times round the Horn, and received a silver knife from the Dutch Government for going overboard in a gale, with a line round his waist, to rescue three Dutchmen whose boat was capsizing on the Dogger.

It was as much as he could do to write. I can still see his rugged fingers, misshapen after years of rough work at sea, gripping the penholder convulsively, as if it had been a marlin-spike, and screwing his mouth up, now to one side, now to the other, as he painfully scrawled some entry in the "log."

"No need to look as if you were going to have a tooth out," said Rudolf.

"I'd rather be lying out on Jan Mayen, shooting seal in forty degrees of frost," said Dirrik, wiping his brow.

"Devil take me, but I've half a mind to ship for the Arctic myself next spring," said Rudolf.

"Got to get through with this first," I said.

"Ay, that's true," said Dirrik. "I've been up four times now, and if I don't pass this time, my girl won't wait any longer."

"Girl?" said Rudolf, with sudden interest.

"Margine Iversen's her name. We've been promised now eleven years, and we must get married this spring."

"Must, eh?" said I.

"He's been drawing in advance, what!" said Rudolf, nudging me in the ribs.

"No more of that, lads," said Dirrik. "Womenfolk, they've their own art of navigation, and I know more about it than you've any call to do at your age."

Just then Captain Wille, the principal of the school, came up.

"Well, boys, how goes it?"

"Nicely, thank ye, Captain," answered Dirrik. "But this 'ere blamed azimuth's a hard nut to crack." Dirrik wiped the sweat from his brow with a blue-checked handkerchief, and blew his nose with startling violence. "You won't need a foghorn next time you get on board," said Wille slyly.

"I say, though, Captain," said Rudolf, "we must get old Dirrik through somehow. If he doesn't pass this time, he'll be all adrift."

"Oho!" said the Captain, smiling all over his kindly face. "And how's that?"

"Why, he's got to get married this spring, whether he wants to or no."

"But he doesn't need that certificate to get married."

"Ay, but I do, though, Captain," said Dirrik earnestly. "For look you, navigation's badly needed in these waters, and I'll sure come to grief without."

"Why, then, we must do what we can to get you through," said Wille. And, seating himself beside Dirrik, he began to explain the mysteries of sine, cosine and tangent.

Dirrik sat with all his mental nerves strained taut as the topmast shrouds in a storm. But the more he listened to Wille's explanations the more incomprehensible he seemed to find the noble art and science of navigation.

Presently Lt. Knap, the second master, came up, and relieved Captain Wille at his task. Knap was quite young in those days, an excitable fellow with a sharp nose that gave him an air of self-importance. But a splendid teacher, that he was. I can still hear his voice, after vain attempts to ram something into Dirrik's thick head: "But, damnation take it, man, I don't believe you understand a word!"

No, Dirrik didn't understand a word, or, at any rate, very little. One thing he did know, however, and that was, if a man can take his meridian and mark out his course on the chart, he can find his way anywhere on the high seas.

"All this rigmarole about azimuths and amplitudes and zeniths and moons and influence and tides, it's just invented to plague the life out of honest, seafaring folk." This heartfelt plaint of Dirrik's was received with loud applause by the rest of the school. Knap himself was as delighted as the rest, and sang out over our heads: "Well, you can be sure I'd be only too glad to leave out half of it, for it is all a man can do to knock the rest of it into your heads."

Skipper Sartz, the third master, was a very old and very slow, but a thorough-going old salt, who would rather spin us a yarn at any time than bother about navigation. We learned very little of that from him, and he was generally regarded more as a comrade than as a master. Rudolf supplied him with tobacco, free of charge, to smoke in lesson-time, so there was no very strict discipline during those hours. It was a trick of Rudolf's, I remember, when Sartz was going through lessons with him, to get hold of a ruler in his left hand and draw it gently up and down the tutor's back. Sartz would think it was me, and swing round suddenly to let off a volley, ending up as a rule with a recommendation to us generally to "give over these etcetera etcetera tricks, and try and behave as young gentlemen should."

At last the great day came when Dirrik was to go up for his exam. K. G. Smith--he's an admiral now--was the examiner. All of us, teachers included, were fond of Dirrik, and would have been sorry to see him fail again.

"Well, if I do get through this time," said Dirrik, smiling all over his cheery face, "I'll stand treat all round so the mess won't forget it for a week."

And really I think he would rather have faced a four week's gale of the winter-north-Atlantic type, or undertaken to assassinate the Emperor of China, than march up to that examination table.

When the time came for the viva voce, Rudolf and I could stand it no longer, we had to go in and listen.

Never before or since have I seen such depths of despair on any human face. Poor Dirrik mopped his brow, and blew his nose, and we sat there, with serious faces, feeling as if we were watching some dear departed about to be lowered into the grave. I can safely say I have never experienced a more solemn or trying ceremony, not even when I, myself, was launched into the state of holy matrimony before the altar.

The examiner sat bending over his work, entering something or other--of particular importance, to judge by the gravity of his looks.

We heard only the scratching of his pen on the paper.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a curious hissing sound:

"Fssst--fssst!" and then, a moment later, from the direction of the stove: "Sssss!"

It was Rudolf, who had squirted out a jet of tobacco juice between his teeth over on to the stove in the corner. Both the censors looked up, and the examiner laid down his pen, flashing a fiery glance at Rudolf from under his bushy brows.

"Pig!" said I, loud enough for the examiner to hear, and was rewarded with a nod of approval.

This saved the situation, for if the old man had lost his temper, it would have been all up with Dirrik's exam.

Rudolf sat staring before him, entirely unconcerned.

At last they began. I can still see the examiner's close-cropped hair and bushy eyebrows.

"Well, sir, can you tell me why a compass needle invariably points towards the north?"

Dirrik had not understood a syllable, but felt he ought in common decency to make pretence of thinking it out for a bit, then he said:

"Beg pardon, Captain, but would you mind reading out the question once again?"

A faint, almost imperceptible smile passed over the Captain's face. The two old skippers, Olsen and Wleugel, sat solemn as owls. Dirrik looked at the examiner, then at the censor, and finally his glance rested on us, with an expression of helpless resignation. Rudolf nodded, and whispered "Cheer up," but Dirrik neither saw nor heard.

"Compass," he murmured--"Compass needle--points--points...."

"Well," said the examiner, "why does it always point to the north?"

And suddenly Dirrik's face lit up with a flash of blessed inspiration:

"Why," he said cheerfully, "I suppose it's just a habit it's got."

This time the examiner could not help laughing, and the censors themselves seemed to thaw a little.

"H'm," said the examiner. "Yes ... well, and suppose your compass needle happened to forget that little habit it's got, as may happen, for instance, when a vessel's loaded with iron--what would you do?" Evidently he was in a good humour now.

"Sail by the sun and the watch," answered Dirrik promptly. He was wide awake now, and drew out as he spoke a big silver watch with a double case.

"I've sailed by this fellow here from the Newfoundland Bank to Barrow in twelve days--it was with the barque Himalaya, of Holmestrand."

"When was that?" asked the examiner.

"Seven years ago come Christmas it was."

Dirrik felt himself now master of the situation, and ran on gaily, as one thoroughly at ease.

"It was blinding snow on the Banks that time. The skipper was down with inflammation of the lungs, and lay in his bunk delirious; we'd shipped some heavy seas, and got four stanchions broken, and the mate with four of his ribs bashed in, so he couldn't move. And as for the crew, the less said about them the better. We'd three niggers aboard and an Irishman, and a couple of drunken gentlemen that'd never been to sea before.

"Well, I had to sail and navigate and all. It was a gale that went on day after day, till you'd think the devil himself was hard at it with a bellows. But, luckily, I'd this old watch of mine, and she's better than any of your chronometers, for it's a sixteen-ruby watch----"

"Sixteen ruby--what's that?" asked the examiner with interest.

Dirrik was proud as a peacock at the question; fancy the examiner having to ask him!

"Why, it's this way. If you look inside an ordinary watch, you'll find it's either five rubies or ten, but it's very rarely you come across one with sixteen, and the more rubies you've got in a watch, the better she goes. Well, anyway, when the watch came round to noon midday, I'd take the run and check off our course, and that way I got to windward of her deviations and magnetic variations and all the tricks there are to a compass mostly. Then, of course, I'd to look to the log, and mark off each day's run on the chart."

"Not so bad, not so bad," said the examiner, nodding to the skippers.

"No, we did none so badly, and that's the truth. For we got into Barrow at high water twelve days' sail from the Banks. The Insurance Company wanted to give me a gold watch, but I said, 'No, thank you, if t'was all the same, I'd rather have it in cash,' so they sent me what they call a testimonial, and £15. And that was doing the handsome thing, for it was no more than my duty after all. As for the crowd of rapscallions we'd aboard, I gave them a pound a-piece for themselves--the poor devils had done what they could, though it was little enough."

"Have you ever taken the sun's altitude with a sextant?"

"Surely," said Dirrik. "Meridian and latitude and all the rest of it."

"Well..." the examiner turned to the censors. "I think that ought to be enough...?" And the pair of them nodded approval.

"Right! That will do." Dirrik was dismissed with a gesture, and, making his bow to each in turn, he hurried out as fast as he could.

Next day one of the censors, Skipper Wleugel, came down to the school and informed us that Dirrik had passed, albeit with lowest possible marks.

Followed cheers for Dirrik, and cheers for the examiner, and cheers for Knap--the last-named happening to come out just at that moment, to see what all the noise was about. That evening Dirrik invited Rudolf and myself to the feast he had promised--great slabs of steak and heaps of onions, with beer and snaps ad lib., and toddy and black cigars to top off with.

And going home that night we knocked the stuffing out of five young students from the Academy, on the grounds that they lacked the higher education Dirrik now possessed. Altogether, it was a most successful evening.

Dirrik went back home after that and married his Margine. Three months later he was the father of a bouncing boy, who was christened Sinus Knap Didriksen, in pious memory of his father's studies in the art of navigation and his teacher in the same.

[The end]
Anthon B. E. Nilsen's short story: Dirrik

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