Redburn: His First Voyage — Chapters LVI - LIX

CHAPTER LVI.

UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION

A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those melodies of other times and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew on Hermon.

And poor Harry was as the Hebrews.

He, too, had been carried away captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had insulted and derided him.

His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and pansied margins.

“_I_ can’t sing to-night”—sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with his watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his melody—“I can’t sing to-night.

But, Wellingborough,” he whispered,—and I stooped my ear,— “come _you_ with me under the lee of the long-boat, and there I’ll hum you an air.

” It was _The Banks of the Blue Moselle.

_ Poor, poor Harry!

and a thousand times friendless and forlorn!

To be singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,—to be singing it _here—here,_ as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.

But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with sprites, and cried _“chassez!

” “hands across!

”_ to the multitudinous quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.

But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his feelings, and make them subservient to his interests.

For so delighted, even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the being who was capable of yielding them such delight.

Carlo’s organ they did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an accordion in their ears.

So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.

Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers.

Harmless now the fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and fascinating brilliancy.

Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they relinquished their prey.

Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose cherisher and inspirer is solitude.

But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many things in his hitherto but partly divulged history, which I was very curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.

However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and if he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they were, which the future held out to him.

He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings left from the expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of his clothing, could he pay for his first week’s board in New York; and that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support.

And yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to England; and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal felicity.

“I have forgotten England,” he said, “and never more mean to think of it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?

” It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with one in similar circumstances.

For though we may look grave and behave kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can not with the best grace proffer our sympathy.

And perhaps there is no true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust that man’s sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.

So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by talking over our common affairs.

But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of my country; I accounted him the nation’s guest.

Hence, I esteemed it more befitting, that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that _his_ prospects and plans should engage our attention, in preference to my own.

Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be turned to account.

The thought struck him most favorably—“Gad, my boy, you have hit it, you have,” and then he went on to mention, that in some places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in lamentably decayed circumstances, and thread-bare coats—it was customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery shillings.

They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell—Are _the ladies and gentlemen in?

_ Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a gentle bow, and a smile, and say, _We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing you a song: we are singers, at your service.

_ And so, without waiting reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous voices, enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.

“Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?

” said Harry, “or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?

” he anxiously added.

Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets, fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.

I could not but be struck—and had I not been, from my birth, as it were, a cosmopolite—I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the civilization of my native land.

A greater patriot than myself might have resented his insinuations.

He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in wigwams, and wore bear-skins.

After all, Harry was a spice of a Cockney, and had shut up his Christendom in London.

Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on such a business.

Said I, “My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man has for an oration.

Sing?

Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling.

” So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea of singing himself into a livelihood.

“No, I won’t sing for my mutton,” said he—“what would Lady Georgiana say?

” “If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you, Harry,” returned I, who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom friend’s conscience, when he alluded to his various noble and right honorable friends and relations.

“But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your other accomplishments; and _that_ at least, will be sure to help you.

” “I _do_ write a hand,” he gladly rejoined—“there, look at the implement!

—do you not think, that such a hand as _that_ might dot an _i,_ or cross a _t,_ with a touching grace and tenderness?

” Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship.

It was small;

and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read.

It was not as the sturdy farmer’s hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the forum.

His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to the suffrages of that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his noble birth.

And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us—the son of a _man.

_ And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were entitled to consideration, would constitute the oligarchy of all Peru.

Folly and foolishness!

to think that a gentleman is known by his finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long in the pasture: or that the badge of nobility is to be found in the smallness of the foot, when even a fish has no foot at all!

Dandies!

amputate yourselves, if you will; but know, and be assured, oh, democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great man stands on a broad base.

It is only the brittle porcelain pagoda, that tottles on a toe.

But though Harry’s hand was lady-like looking, and had once been white as the queen’s cambric handkerchief, and free from a stain as the reputation of Diana; yet, his late pulling and hauling of halyards and clew-lines, and his occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had somewhat subtracted from its original daintiness.

Often he ruefully eyed it.

Oh!

hand!

thought Harry, ah, hand!

what have you come to?

Is it seemly, that you should be polluted with pitch, when you once handed countesses to their coaches?

Is _this_ the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana?

with which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to Lord Lovely?

_This_ the hand that Georgiana clasped to her bosom, when she vowed she was mine?

—Out of sight, recreant and apostate!

—deep down—disappear in this foul monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!

After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well decided, that upon our arrival at New York, some means should be taken among my few friends there, to get Harry a place in a mercantile house, where he might flourish his pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by traversing some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies are gently drawn through a park for an airing.

CHAPTER LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE

“Mammy!

mammy!

come and see the sailors eating out of little troughs, just like our pigs at home.

” Thus exclaimed one of the steerage children, who at dinner-time was peeping down into the forecastle, where the crew were assembled, helping themselves from the “kids,” which, indeed, resemble hog-troughs not a little.

“Pigs, is it?

” coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he sat presiding over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil who had lost his appetite by chewing sulphur.

—“Pigs, is it?

—and the day is close by, ye spalpeens, when you’ll want to be after taking a sup at our troughs!

” This malicious prophecy proved true.

As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and head winds drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence and shortsightedness of the passengers in the steerage, with regard to their outfits for the voyage, began to be followed by the inevitable results.

Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that they had nothing to eat, their provisions were expended, and they must be supplied from the ship’s stores, or starve.

This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a ukase from the cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose destitution was demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit and two potatoes a day; a sort of substitute for a muffin and a brace of poached eggs.

But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger: hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult.

The consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of the emigrants went about the decks, seeking what they might devour.

They plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked them at the public galley.

They made inroads upon the pig-pen in the boat, and carried off a promising young shoat: _him_ they devoured raw, not venturing to make an incognito of his carcass; they prowled about the cook’s caboose, till he threatened them with a ladle of scalding water;

they waylaid the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to the cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge; they beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets, craving a mouthful in the name of the Church.

At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the Grand Russian, Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to this effect: Whatsoever emigrant is found guilty of stealing, the same shall be tied into the rigging and flogged.

Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage, which almost alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but nothing serious took place, after all; and they even acquiesced in, or did not resent, a singular punishment which the captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of their clan, as a substitute for a flogging.

For no doubt he thought that such rigorous discipline as _that_ might exasperate five hundred emigrants into an insurrection.

A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs—the half of a cask; and into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller holes in the bottom of the tub.

The head—divided in the middle, across the diameter of the orifice—was now fitted round the culprit’s neck; and he was forthwith coopered up into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs protruded through the holes in the bottom.

It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with it; and so ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the indignity, he himself laughed with the rest at the figure he cut.

“Now, Pat, my boy,” said the mate, “fill that big wooden belly of yours, if you can.

” Compassionating his situation, our old “doctor” used to give him alms of food, placing it upon the cask-head before him; till at last, when the time for deliverance came, Pat protested against mercy, and would fain have continued playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving voyage.

CHAPTER LVIII.

THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND

Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage.

Though in the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so great a detention.

It is also true, that generally the passage out from America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the prevalence of westerly winds.

We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of a week.

During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their appearance on deck, during the entire passage.

During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public galley.

This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air.

When the lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into the sea.

No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of ocean-life.

Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops.

One morning, when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or two of something to windward.

Instantly it flew back in his face; and also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at the time.

The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.

During the frequent _hard blows_ we experienced, the hatchways on the steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their noisome den, those scores of human beings.

It was something to be marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago, overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel, during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.

Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.

The first report was, that two persons were affected.

No sooner was it known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the steerage.

But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.

Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the disease from extending into the cabin itself.

But this person denied being a physician; and from fear of contagion—though he did not confess that to be the motive—refused even to enter the steerage.

The cases increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued, over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.

Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather—wet, cold, and tempestuous—drove the best part of them again below.

Yet any other human beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage.

But some of these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities, that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.

The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication.

But this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only make still worse, what was already direful enough.

It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing, that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the captain’s order.

The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed.

It was like entering a crowded jail.

From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a suffocating vapor.

But this vapor was better than the native air of the place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.

In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their breath with a gasp.

At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;

while—notwithstanding the crowd—in front of it was a clear area, which the fear of contagion had left open.

“That bulkhead must come down,” cried the mate, in a voice that rose above the din.

“Take hold of it, boys.

” But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore they would slay us, if we did not desist.

“Haul it down!

” roared the mate.

But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to fight fifty to one.

Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to depart, without achieving our object.

About four o’clock that morning, the first four died.

They were all men; and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme.

Certainly, the bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed nothing more frightful.

Orders were at once passed to bury the dead.

But this was unnecessary.

By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives, rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried rites, were dropped into the ocean.

At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;

but the captain did not again go down to them.

It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered above, and their den have been given a thorough cleansing.

But, for the present, this was out of the question.

The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed their own salvation.

The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast.

Their clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old quarters, which communicated with the cabin.

On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the very hospital itself.

Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;

and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard against contagion.

Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps, presented a scene equally despairing.

Many, who had seldom prayed before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds and fine weather.

Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the loud jest had been so often heard.

Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.

On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor, and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward supposed to have been purely induced by her fears.

These last deaths brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers, cabin-passengers, and emigrants—all looked upon each other like lepers.

All but the only true leper among us—the mariner Jackson, who seemed elated with the thought, that for _him—_already in the deadly clutches of another disease—no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only swept off the comparatively healthy.

Thus, in the midst of the despair of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down;

not, at least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.

And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.

On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail.

In ten hours’ time, the waves ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy on the water.

Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.

But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic, and gale had hurried into the world before their time.

The first cry of one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its father’s body in the sea.

Thus we come and we go.

But, surrounded by death, both mothers and babes survived.

At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.

In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages, and groves, and gardens, might have nestled.

It was like a landscape in Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.

By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun’-sails alow and aloft;

and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his elbow;—bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.

The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who of late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food.

A detachment of them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the steerage, with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing, sending on deck, I know not how many bucketsful of defilements.

It was more like cleaning out a stable, than a retreat for men and women.

This day we buried three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.

But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the fever.

But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on;

and we made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for New York.

Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we still ran our course over a pleasant sea.

The steerage-passengers—at least by far the greater number—wore a still, subdued aspect, though a little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon reaching their port.

But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were.

Hard and bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief is no indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing reality, that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends;

and they must toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw down the hammer to lift up the coffin.

How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home, suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange land?

As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they?

drawing nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised land, without fear of fate.

One and all were generous and gay, the jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the steward.

The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning from a visit to an only brother in London.

She had no friend or relative on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.

But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.

And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to perish;—therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men with their fear.

For except in extraordinary instances of exposure, there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than themselves.

Accordingly, _craven_ is the phrase too often applied to any one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of sudden death, and yet lived to escape it.

Though, should he have perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of _craven_ would you hear.

This is the language of one, who more than once has beheld the scenes, whence these principles have been deduced.

The subject invites much subtle speculation; for in every being’s ideas of death, and his behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life and his faith.

Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in theory, yet he, too, died the death of the Christian,—humble, composed, without bravado; and though the most skeptical of philosophical skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the spheres.

Seneca died dictating to posterity;

Petronius lightly discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die;

but not even the last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.

The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more.

In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest favor.

More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin bulk-head.

But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he shone in the sun, none braver than he.

One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy orders upon his arrival in New York.

“Why so?

” said the other, “have I such an orotund voice?

” “No;” profanely returned his friend—“but you are a coward—just the man to be a parson, and pray.

” However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps taking place to-day.

But the only account you obtain of such events, is generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.

_There_ is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea.

They die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or seen.

But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of life and death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a three-worded sentence!

You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:—all is a blank.

And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details of the Highlander’s calamity.

Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances of disasters like these.

Such things, if widely known, operate unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.

In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said, concerning emigrant ships in general.

Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God’s right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with them.

For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China.

But we waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and come they must and will.

Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate.

If this law were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool.

But it is hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.

But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard lot of the emigrant.

What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and give them light and air in that foul den, where they are immured, during a long voyage across the Atlantic?

What ordinance necessitates him to place the _galley,_ or steerage-passengers’ stove, in a dry place of shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet weather?

What ordinance obliges him to give them more room on deck, and let them have an occasional run fore and aft?

—There is no law concerning these things.

And if there was, who but some Howard in office would see it enforced?

and how seldom is there a Howard in office!

We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of _them,_ go to heaven, before some of _us?

_ We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls.

We are blind to the real sights of this world;

deaf to its voice; and dead to its death.

And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.

CHAPTER LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON

“Off Cape Cod!

” said the steward, coming forward from the quarter-deck, where the captain had just been taking his noon observation; sweeping the vast horizon with his quadrant, like a dandy circumnavigating the dress-circle of an amphitheater with his glass.

_Off Cape Cod!

_ and in the shore-bloom that came to us— even from that desert of sand-hillocks—methought I could almost distinguish the fragrance of the rose-bush my sisters and I had planted, in our far inland garden at home.

Delicious odors are those of our mother Earth;

which like a flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager from afar.

The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie.

By night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a switch.

In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such, that at last the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail, and clap a reef into all three top-sails.

While the men were settling away the halyards on deck, and before they had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to the surprise of several, Jackson came up from the forecastle, and, for the first time in four weeks or more, took hold of a rope.

Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a voyage, have been off duty from sickness, he was, perhaps, desirous, just previous to entering port, of reminding the captain of his existence, and also that he expected his wages; but, alas!

his wages proved the wages of sin.

At no time could he better signalize his disposition to work, than upon an occasion like the present; which generally attracts every soul on deck, from the captain to the child in the steerage.

His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.

Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place at the extreme weather-end of the topsail-yard—which in reefing is accounted the post of honor.

For it was one of the characteristics of this man, that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work in a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and would yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of his unbounded dominion over the men.

Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard; the ship rearing and plunging under us, like a runaway steed; each man gripping his reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over toward Jackson, whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.

His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope, like a bridle.

At all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements, as they hang in the gale, between heaven and earth; and _then_ it is, too, that they are the most profane.

“Haul out to windward!

” coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.

But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood from his lungs.

As the man next him stretched out his arm to save, Jackson fell headlong from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the sea.

It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which, with the long projection of the yard-arm over the side, made him strike far out upon the water.

His fall was seen by the whole upward-gazing crowd on deck, some of whom were spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail, while they raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind man might have known something deadly had happened.

Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and gazed down to the one white, bubbling spot, which had closed over the head of our shipmate; but the next minute it was brewed into the common yeast of the waves, and Jackson never arose.

We waited a few minutes, expecting an order to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but instead of that, the next sound that greeted us was, “Bear a hand, and reef away, men!

” from the mate.

Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt to save Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead, ere he struck the sea—and if he had not been dead then, the first immersion must have driven his soul from his lacerated lungs—our jolly-boat would have taken full fifteen minutes to launch into the waves.

And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security in which too many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of some sudden disaster befalling the Highlander, have let us all drop into our graves.

Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the longboat and the jolly-boat.

The long boat, by far the largest and stoutest of the two, was permanently bolted down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its sides.

It was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel’s keel.

It was filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals.

Over this the jolly-boat was capsized without a _thole-pin_ in the gunwales; its bottom bleaching and cracking in the sun.

Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we shipwrecked; yet in this state, one merchant ship out of three, keeps its boats.

To be sure, no vessel full of emigrants, by any possible precautions, could in case of a fatal disaster at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the souls on board; yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of survivors, to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the worst of the calamities that befell patient Job, some _one_ at least of his servants escaped to report it.

In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors, in my hearing at least, and Harry’s, never made the slightest allusion to the departed Jackson.

One and all they seemed tacitly to unite in hushing up his memory among them.

Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection of a thing so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that _his_ death was _their_ deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits, unknown before.

Doubtless, this was to be in part imputed, however, to their now drawing near to their port.