A New Year's Day at Sea.

Otago Witness, Issue 2317, 28 July 1898, Page 61

A New Year's Day at Sea.

DTirXKEN CHEW— SHIP LIKE A PANDEMONIUM.

The gieat Scottish festival on New Year's Day found us in the s.s. Atlas off Fernando Noronha, tho little island off the coast where the Brazilians had a penal settlement. The day broke hot, and as we passed the island it loomed low, the palm trees standing in a sort of mirage, so that they seemed to have no rootf. and float above the land like parasols, between the sand and sky.

How tho crew got the liquor no one e\e.r knew, but before 12 o'clock the ship was like a, pandemonium or the easl end of Glasgow on a fast day night. From the stokehole came the sounds of " Auld lang syne," tho watch on deck were stupid, and tho emigrants scattered before them like chickens before the gambols of a large Newfoundland pup. Just, when the skipper came on dock, his sextant, in his hand ready to shoot the sun, a man walked up to him and said, " Uoo are ye, captin? Ye ken, .iilhoiigl> my feyther sat under Dr Caadlisli, I'm a deovil wi' Iho lapses, and so aie yo yorself." The captain, who since early morn had been boiling with fury, giowled like a bear, told the man rougly I" go forward and lie down, received an insolent reply, knocked the man down, and had him put in irons, then carried to a spare cabin and locked in, where he continued to howl " Auld iaug syne " until he fell asleep. But by this time the decks were filthy, men falling down .and sick all over them, the mates and engineers working like slaves punching and kicking, driving the drunken crew below, until at last they were all got into tho forecastle and a man planted at the door armed with a handspike to keep them in. The cloy passed rather awkwardly, for though a special dinner had been prepared, a list of toasts drawn out, haggis and cock a loekte duly prepared, no one could oat it, for, till night, fell, the mates, the passengers, doctor, purser, and such of th« emigrants us were able were forced to work the ship; the doctor and myself steering occasionally and putting the helm invariably hard up when it should have beon put hard down, keeping the vessel yawing about as if we •wished to writ© our names upon the sea. Next morning decks were washed, black eyes and broken heads attended to, the prisoner let oufc on promise of amendment, and a search made to find out how the men had got tho drink. Nothing of course came out. — R. B. Cimumgb.auie-Grah.ain, in the Saturday Review.