Redburn: His First Voyage — Chapters XXI - XXV

CHAPTER XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN

The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he had shipped as an _ordinary seaman,_ and, for aught I could see, performed his duty very well.

When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by his intimate acquaintance with the monsters.

“They ar’n’t sperm whales,” said Larry, “their spouts ar’n’t bushy enough; they ar’n’t Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn’t stay up so long;

they ar’n’t Hump-backs, for they ar’n’t got any humps; they ar’n’t Fin-backs, for you won’t catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar’n’t Greenland whales, for we ar’n’t off the coast of Greenland; and they ar’n’t right whales, for it wouldn’t be right to say so.

I tell ye, men, them’s Crinkum-crankum whales.

” “And what are them?

” said a sailor.

“Why, them is whales that can’t be cotched.

” Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very hard.

And ever after, Larry’s judgment was relied upon concerning all strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any other class of seaman.

This was Larry’s first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to _“blubber-boilers,”_ as they contemptuously style those who hunt the leviathan.

But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise have encountered.

He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always examining your boots, when speaking to you.

I loved to hear him talk about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.

And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental distaste for civilized society.

When opportunity offered, he never omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.

“Why,” said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, “in _Madagasky_ there, they don’t wear any togs at all, nothing but a bowline round the midships; they don’t have no dinners, but keeps a dinin’ all day off fat pigs and dogs; they don’t go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin’ all the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of ’baccy, too, I tell ye.

Fine country, that!

Blast Ameriky, I say!

” To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations against civilization.

“And what’s the use of bein’ _snivelized!

”_ said he to me one night during our watch on deck; “snivelized chaps only learns the way to take on ’bout life, and snivel.

You don’t see any Methodist chaps feelin’ dreadful about their souls; you don’t see any darned beggars and pesky constables in _Madagasky, I_ tell ye; and none o’ them kings there gets their big toes pinched by the gout.

Blast Ameriky, I say.

” Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.

“Are _you_ now, Buttons, any better off for bein’ snivelized?

” coming close up to me and eying the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots very steadfastly.

“No; you ar’n’t a bit—but you’re a good deal _worse_ for it, Buttons.

I tell ye, ye wouldn’t have been to sea here, leadin’ this dog’s life, if you hadn’t been snivelized—that’s the cause why, now.

Snivelization has been the ruin on ye; and it’s spiled me complete; I might have been a great man in Madagasky; it’s too darned bad!

Blast Ameriky, I say.

” And in bitter grief at the social blight upon his whole past, present, and future, Larry turned away, pulling his hat still lower down over the bridge of his nose.

In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war’s man we had, who went by the name of _“Gun-Deck,”_ from his always talking of sailor life in the navy.

He was a little fellow with a small face and a prodigious mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide, braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers.

But he particularly prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and when we washed down decks of a morning, never mind how chilly it might be, he always took off his boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his pretty toes to show his charming feet.

He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole War in Florida, and had a good deal to say about sailing up the rivers there, through the everglades, and popping off Indians on the banks.

I remember his telling a story about a party being discovered at quite a distance from them; but one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in the sun.

This plate proved his death; for, according to _Gun-Deck,_ he himself shot it through the middle, and the ball entered the wearer’s heart.

It was a rat-killing war, he said.

_Gun-Deck_ had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibraltar; and ashore at Marseilles.

He had sunned himself in the Bay of Naples: eaten figs and oranges in Messina; and cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta, among the ladies there.

And about all these things, he talked like a romantic man-of-war’s man, who had seen the civilized world, and loved it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in.

So he and Larry never could agree in their respective views of civilization, and of savagery, of the Mediterranean and _Madagasky.

_ CHAPTER XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK

We were still on the Banks, when a terrific storm came down upon us, the like of which I had never before beheld, or imagined.

The rain poured down in sheets and cascades; the scupper holes could hardly carry it off the decks; and in bracing the yards we waded about almost up to our knees; every thing floating about, like chips in a dock.

This violent rain was the precursor of a hard squall, for which we duly prepared, taking in our canvas to double-reefed-top-sails.

The tornado came rushing along at last, like a troop of wild horses before the flaming rush of a burning prairie.

But after bowing and cringing to it awhile, the good Highlander was put off before it; and with her nose in the water, went wallowing on, ploughing milk-white waves, and leaving a streak of illuminated foam in her wake.

It was an awful scene.

It made me catch my breath as I gazed.

I could hardly stand on my feet, so violent was the motion of the ship.

But while I reeled to and fro, the sailors only laughed at me; and bade me look out that the ship did not fall overboard; and advised me to get a handspike, and hold it down hard in the weather-scuppers, to steady her wild motions.

But I was now getting a little too wise for this foolish kind of talk; though all through the voyage, they never gave it over.

This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea.

The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam.

We bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass.

Presently, we slowly passed alongside of it.

It was a dismantled, water-logged schooner, a most dismal sight, that must have been drifting about for several long weeks.

The bulwarks were pretty much gone; and here and there the bare _stanchions,_ or posts, were left standing, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the deck, lying almost even with the sea.

The foremast was snapt off less than four feet from its base; and the shattered and splintered remnant looked like the stump of a pine tree thrown over in the woods.

Every time she rolled in the trough of the sea, her open main-hatchway yawned into view; but was as quickly filled, and submerged again, with a rushing, gurgling sound, as the water ran into it with the lee-roll.

At the head of the stump of the mainmast, about ten feet above the deck, something like a sleeve seemed nailed; it was supposed to be the relic of a jacket, which must have been fastened there by the crew for a signal, and been frayed out and blown away by the wind.

Lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail, were three dark, green, grassy objects, that slowly swayed with every roll, but otherwise were motionless.

I saw the captain’s, glass directed toward them, and heard him say at last, “They must have been dead a long time.

” These were sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for safety; but must have famished.

Full of the awful interest of the scene, I surely thought the captain would lower a boat to bury the bodies, and find out something about the schooner.

But we did not stop at all; passing on our course, without so much as learning the schooner’s name, though every one supposed her to be a New Brunswick lumberman.

On the part of the sailors, no surprise was shown that our captain did not send off a boat to the wreck; but the steerage passengers were indignant at what they called his barbarity.

For me, I could not but feel amazed and shocked at his indifference; but my subsequent sea experiences have shown me, that such conduct as this is very common, though not, of course, when human life can be saved.

So away we sailed, and left her; drifting, drifting on; a garden spot for barnacles, and a playhouse for the sharks.

“Look there,” said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing—“look there; that’s a sailor’s coffin.

Ha!

ha!

Buttons,” turning round to me—“how do you like that, Buttons?

Wouldn’t you like to take a sail with them ’ere dead men?

Wouldn’t it be nice?

” And then he tried to laugh, but only coughed again.

“Don’t laugh at dem poor fellows,” said Max, looking grave; “do’ you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan de Cape of Dood Hope.

” “Dood Hope, Dood Hope,” shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin, mimicking the Dutchman, “dare is no dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are drowned and d ....

d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights.

” “No, no,” said Blunt, “all sailors are saved; they have plenty of squalls here below, but fair weather aloft.

” “And did you get that out of your silly Dream Book, you Greek?

” howled Jackson through a cough.

“Don’t talk of heaven to me—it’s a lie—I know it—and they are all fools that believe in it.

Do you think, you Greek, that there’s any heaven for _you?

_ Will they let _you_ in there, with that tarry hand, and that oily head of hair?

Avast!

when some shark gulps you down his hatchway one of these days, you’ll find, that by dying, you’ll only go from one gale of wind to another; mind that, you Irish cockney!

Yes, you’ll be bolted down like one of your own pills: and I should like to see the whole ship swallowed down in the Norway maelstrom, like a box on ’em.

That would be a dose of salts for ye!

” And so saying, he went off, holding his hands to his chest, and coughing, as if his last hour was come.

Every day this Jackson seemed to grow worse and worse, both in body and mind.

He seldom spoke, but to contradict, deride, or curse; and all the time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave them burning like tapers before a corpse.

Though he had never attended churches, and knew nothing about Christianity; no more than a Malay pirate; and though he could not read a word, yet he was spontaneously an atheist and an infidel; and during the long night watches, would enter into arguments, to prove that there was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth living for; but every thing to be hated, in the wide world.

He was a horrid desperado; and like a wild Indian, whom he resembled in his tawny skin and high cheek bones, he seemed to run amuck at heaven and earth.

He was a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near him.

But there seemed even more woe than wickedness about the man; and his wickedness seemed to spring from his woe; and for all his hideousness, there was that in his eye at times, that was ineffably pitiable and touching; and though there were moments when I almost hated this Jackson, yet I have pitied no man as I have pitied him.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried out.

But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must know that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship, plying in connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals, between the two ports.

No: she was only what is called a _regular trader_ to Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much as she pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in all her voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination.

Merchant vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among sailors come under the general head of _transient ships;_ which implies that they are here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins’s dog.

But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as possible, and sustain the ship’s reputation for speed.

Hence it is, that although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in the best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their constitutions— like robust young men, who live too fast in their teens—and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for the whaling business.

Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific.

And the mahogany and bird’s-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and many a bright eye sparkled, _now_ accommodates a bluff Quaker captain from Martha’s Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and savages at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to the literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of leisure and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and nonsense across the table, in transatlantic trips.

The broad quarter-deck, too, where these gentry promenaded, is now often choked up by the enormous head of the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous blubber; and every where reeks with oil during the prosecution of the fishery.

Sic _transit gloria mundi!

_ Thus departs the pride and glory of packet-ships!

_It is_ like a broken down importer of French silks embarking in the soap-boning business.

So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample accommodations for cabin passengers.

I believe there were not more than five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each.

At any rate, on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a business-like manner with his baggage.

He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger—the passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;

never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.

Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York, going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall concerning the signs of the times.

He was always in a brown study; sometimes sitting on the quarter-deck with arms folded, and head hanging upon his chest.

Then he would rise, and gaze out to windward, as if he had suddenly discovered a friend.

But looking disappointed, would retire slowly into his state-room, where you could see him through the little window, in an irregular sitting position, with the back part of him inserted into his berth, and his head, arms, and legs hanging out, buried in profound meditation, with his fore-finger aside of his nose.

He never was seen reading; never took a hand at cards; never smoked; never drank wine;

never conversed; and never staid to the dessert at dinner-time.

He seemed the true microcosm, or little world to himself: standing in no need of levying contributions upon the surrounding universe.

Conjecture was lost in speculating as to who he was, and what was his business.

The sailors, who are always curious with regard to such matters, and criticise cabin-passengers more than cabin-passengers are perhaps aware at the time, completely exhausted themselves in suppositions, some of which are characteristically curious.

One of the crew said he was a mysterious bearer of secret dispatches to the English court; others opined that he was a traveling surgeon and bonesetter, but for what reason they thought so, I never could learn;

and others declared that he must either be an unprincipled bigamist, flying from his last wife and several small children; or a scoundrelly forger, bank-robber, or general burglar, who was returning to his beloved country with his ill-gotten booty.

One observing sailor was of opinion that he was an English murderer, overwhelmed with speechless remorse, and returning home to make a full confession and be hanged.

But it was a little singular, that among all their sage and sometimes confident opinings, not one charitable one was made; no!

they were all sadly to the prejudice of his moral and religious character.

But this is the way all the world over.

Miserable man!

could you have had an inkling of what they thought of you, I know not what you would have done.

However, not knowing any thing about these surmisings and suspicions, this mysterious cabin-passenger went on his way, calm, cool, and collected; never troubled any body, and nobody troubled him.

Sometimes, of a moonlight night he glided about the deck, like the ghost of a hospital attendant; flitting from mast to mast; now hovering round the skylight, now vibrating in the vicinity of the binnacle.

Blunt, the Dream Book tar, swore he was a magician; and took an extra dose of salts, by way of precaution against his spells.

When we were but a few days from port, a comical adventure befell this cabin-passenger.

There is an old custom, still in vogue among some merchant sailors, of tying fast in the rigging any lubberly landsman of a passenger who may be detected taking excursions aloft, however moderate the flight of the awkward fowl.

This is called _“making a spread eagle”_ of the man; and before he is liberated, a promise is exacted, that before arriving in port, he shall furnish the ship’s company with money enough for a treat all round.

Now this being one of the perquisites of sailors, they are always on the keen look-out for an opportunity of levying such contributions upon incautious strangers; though they never attempt it in presence of the captain; as for the mates, they purposely avert their eyes, and are earnestly engaged about something else, whenever they get an inkling of this proceeding going on.

But, with only one poor fellow of a cabin-passenger on board of the Highlander, and _he_ such a quiet, unobtrusive, unadventurous wight, there seemed little chance for levying contributions.

One remarkably pleasant morning, however, what should be seen, half way up the mizzen rigging, but the figure of our cabin-passenger, holding on with might and main by all four limbs, and with his head fearfully turned round, gazing off to the horizon.

He looked as if he had the nightmare; and in some sudden and unaccountable fit of insanity, he must have been impelled to the taking up of that perilous position.

“Good heavens!

” said the mate, who was a bit of a wag, “you will surely fall, sir!

Steward, spread a mattress on deck, under the gentleman!

” But no sooner was our Greenland sailor’s attention called to the sight, than snatching up some rope-yarn, he ran softly up behind the passenger, and without speaking a word, began binding him hand and foot.

The stranger was more dumb than ever with amazement; at last violently remonstrated; but in vain; for as his fearfulness of falling made him keep his hands glued to the ropes, and so prevented him from any effectual resistance, he was soon made a handsome _spread-eagle_ of, to the great satisfaction of the crew.

It was now discovered for the first, that this singular passenger stammered and stuttered very badly, which, perhaps, was the cause of his reservedness.

“Wha-wha-what i-i-is this f-f-for?

” “Spread-eagle, sir,” said the Greenlander, thinking that those few words would at once make the matter plain.

“Wha-wha-what that me-me-mean?

” “Treats all round, sir,” said the Greenlander, wondering at the other’s obtusity, who, however, had never so much as heard of the thing before.

At last, upon his reluctant acquiescence in the demands of the sailor, and handing him two half-crown pieces, the unfortunate passenger was suffered to descend.

The last I ever saw of this man was his getting into a cab at Prince’s Dock Gates in Liverpool, and driving off alone to parts unknown.

He had nothing but a valise with him, and an umbrella; but his pockets looked stuffed out; perhaps he used them for carpet-bags.

I must now give some account of another and still more mysterious, though very different, sort of an occupant of the cabin, of whom I have previously hinted.

What say you to a charming young girl?

—just the girl to sing the Dashing White Sergeant; a martial, military-looking girl;

her father must have been a general.

Her hair was auburn; her eyes were blue; her cheeks were white and red; and Captain Riga was her most devoted.

To the curious questions of the sailors concerning who she was, the steward used to answer, that she was the daughter of one of the Liverpool dock-masters, who, for the benefit of her health and the improvement of her mind, had sent her out to America in the Highlander, under the captain’s charge, who was his particular friend; and that now the young lady was returning home from her tour.

And truly the captain proved an attentive father to her, and often promenaded with her hanging on his arm, past the forlorn bearer of secret dispatches, who would look up now and then out of his reveries, and cast a furtive glance of wonder, as if he thought the captain was audacious.

Considering his beautiful ward, I thought the captain behaved ungallantly, to say the least, in availing himself of the opportunity of her charming society, to wear out his remaining old clothes; for no gentleman ever pretends to save his best coat when a lady is in the case; indeed, he generally thirsts for a chance to abase it, by converting it into a pontoon over a puddle, like Sir Walter Raleigh, that the ladies may not soil the soles of their dainty slippers.

But this Captain Riga was no Raleigh, and hardly any sort of a true gentleman whatever, as I have formerly declared.

Yet, perhaps, he might have worn his old clothes in this instance, for the express purpose of proving, by his disdain for the toilet, that he was nothing but the young lady’s guardian; for many guardians do not care one fig how shabby they look.

But for all this, the passage out was one long paternal sort of a shabby flirtation between this hoydenish nymph and the ill-dressed captain.

And surely, if her good mother, were she living, could have seen this young lady, she would have given her an endless lecture for her conduct, and a copy of Mrs. Ellis’s Daughters of England to read and digest.

I shall say no more of this anonymous nymph; only, that when we arrived at Liverpool, she issued from her cabin in a richly embroidered silk dress, and lace hat and veil, and a sort of Chinese umbrella or parasol, which one of the sailors declared “spandangalous;”

and the captain followed after in his best broadcloth and beaver, with a gold-headed cane; and away they went in a carriage, and that was the last of her; I hope she is well and happy now; but I have some misgivings.

It now remains to speak of the steerage passengers.

There were not more than twenty or thirty of them, mostly mechanics, returning home, after a prosperous stay in America, to escort their wives and families back.

These were the only occupants of the steerage that I ever knew of; till early one morning, in the gray dawn, when we made Cape Clear, the south point of Ireland, the apparition of a tall Irishman, in a shabby shirt of bed-ticking, emerged from the fore hatchway, and stood leaning on the rail, looking landward with a fixed, reminiscent expression, and diligently scratching its back with both hands.

We all started at the sight, for no one had ever seen the apparition before; and when we remembered that it must have been burrowing all the passage down in its bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became shockingly obvious.

I had almost forgotten another passenger of ours, a little boy not four feet high, an English lad, who, when we were about forty-eight hours from New York, suddenly appeared on deck, asking for something to eat.

It seems he was the son of a carpenter, a widower, with this only child, who had gone out to America in the Highlander some six months previous, where he fell to drinking, and soon died, leaving the boy a friendless orphan in a foreign land.

For several weeks the boy wandered about the wharves, picking up a precarious livelihood by sucking molasses out of the casks discharged from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray oranges and lemons found floating in the docks.

He passed his nights sometimes in a stall in the markets, sometimes in an empty hogshead on the piers, sometimes in a doorway, and once in the watchhouse, from which he escaped the next morning, running as he told me, right between the doorkeeper’s legs, when he was taking another vagrant to task for repeatedly throwing himself upon the public charities.

At last, while straying along the docks, he chanced to catch sight of the Highlander, and immediately recognized her as the very ship which brought him and his father out from England.

He at once resolved to return in her; and, accosting the captain, stated his case, and begged a passage.

The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to the ship’s sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the _between-decks;_ and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space between two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his head for air.

And once a steerage passenger rose in the night and poked in and rattled about a stick where he was, thinking him an uncommon large rat, who was after stealing a passage across the Atlantic.

There are plenty of passengers of that kind continually plying between Liverpool and New York.

As soon as he divulged the fact of his being on board, which he took care should not happen till he thought the ship must be out of sight of land; the captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough shaking, and threatening to toss him overboard as a tit-bit for _John Shark,_ he told the mate to send him forward among the sailors, and let him live there.

The sailors received him with open arms; but before caressing him much, they gave him a thorough washing in the lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though thin and pale with the hardships he had suffered.

However, by good nursing and plenty to eat, he soon improved and grew fat; and before many days was as fine a looking little fellow, as you might pick out of Queen Victoria’s nursery.

The sailors took the warmest interest in him.

One made him a little hat with a long ribbon; another a little jacket;

a third a comical little pair of man-of-war’s-man’s trowsers; so that in the end, he looked like a juvenile boatswain’s mate.

Then the cook furnished him with a little tin pot and pan; and the steward made him a present of a pewter tea-spoon; and a steerage passenger gave him a jack knife.

And thus provided, he used to sit at meal times half way up on the forecastle ladder, making a great racket with his pot and pan, and merry as a cricket.

He was an uncommonly fine, cheerful, clever, arch little fellow, only six years old, and it was a thousand pities that he should be abandoned, as he was.

Who can say, whether he is fated to be a convict in New South Wales, or a member of Parliament for Liverpool?

When we got to that port, by the way, a purse was made up for him; the captain, officers, and the mysterious cabin passenger contributing their best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers something like fifteen dollars in cash and tobacco.

But I had almost forgot to add that the daughter of the dock-master gave him a fine lace pocket-handkerchief and a card-case to remember her by; very valuable, but somewhat inappropriate presents.

Thus supplied, the little hero went ashore by himself; and I lost sight of him in the vast crowds thronging the docks of Liverpool.

I must here mention, as some relief to the impression which Jackson’s character must have made upon the reader, that in several ways he at first befriended this boy; but the boy always shrunk from him; till, at last, stung by his conduct, Jackson spoke to him no more; and seemed to hate him, harmless as he was, along with all the rest of the world.

As for the Lancashire lad, he was a stupid sort of fellow, as I have before hinted.

So, little interest was taken in him, that he was permitted to go ashore at last, without a good-by from any person but one.

CHAPTER XXIV.

HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO’S MONKEY But we have not got to Liverpool yet; though, as there is little more to be said concerning the passage out, the Highlander may as well make sail and get there as soon as possible.

The brief interval will perhaps be profitably employed in relating what progress I made in learning the duties of a sailor.

After my heroic feat in loosing the main-skysail, the mate entertained good hopes of my becoming a rare mariner.

In the fullness of his heart, he ordered me to turn over the superintendence of the chicken-coop to the Lancashire boy; which I did, very willingly.

After that, I took care to show the utmost alacrity in running aloft, which by this time became mere fun for me; and nothing delighted me more than to sit on one of the topsail-yards, for hours together, helping Max or the Greenlander as they worked at the rigging.

At sea, the sailors are continually engaged in _“parcelling,” “serving,”_ and in a thousand ways ornamenting and repairing the numberless shrouds and stays; mending sails, or turning one side of the deck into a rope-walk, where they manufacture a clumsy sort of twine, called _spun-yarn.

_ This is spun with a winch; and many an hour the Lancashire boy had to play the part of an engine, and contribute the motive power.

For material, they use odds and ends of old rigging called _“junk,”_ the yarns of which are picked to pieces, and then twisted into new combinations, something as most books are manufactured.

This “junk” is bought at the junk shops along the wharves; outlandish looking dens, generally subterranean, full of old iron, old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum.

They look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with keels and cordage, swept ashore in a gale.

Yes, I was now as nimble as a monkey in the rigging, and at the cry of _“tumble up there, my hearties, and take in sail,” I_ was among the first ground-and-lofty tumblers, that sprang aloft at the word.

But the first time we reefed top-sails of a dark night, and I found myself hanging over the yard with eleven others, the ship plunging and rearing like a mad horse, till I felt like being jerked off the spar;

then, indeed, I thought of a feather-bed at home, and hung on with tooth and nail; with no chance for snoring.

But a few repetitions, soon made me used to it; and before long, I tied my reef-point as quickly and expertly as the best of them; never making what they call a _“granny-knot,”_ and slipt down on deck by the bare stays, instead of the shrouds.

It is surprising, how soon a boy overcomes his timidity about going aloft.

For my own part, my nerves became as steady as the earth’s diameter, and I felt as fearless on the royal yard, as Sam Patch on the cliff of Niagara.

To my amazement, also, I found, that running up the rigging at sea, especially during a squall, was much easier than while lying in port.

For as you always go up on the windward side, and the ship leans over, it makes more of a _stairs_ of the rigging; whereas, in harbor, it is almost straight up and down.

Besides, the pitching and rolling only imparts a pleasant sort of vitality to the vessel; so that the difference in being aloft in a ship at sea, and a ship in harbor, is pretty much the same, as riding a real live horse and a wooden one.

And even if the live charger should pitch you over his head, _that_ would be much more satisfactory, than an inglorious fall from the other.

I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and royals in a hard blow; which duty required two hands on the yard.

There was a wild delirium about it; a fine rushing of the blood about the heart; and a glad, thrilling, and throbbing of the whole system, to find yourself tossed up at every pitch into the clouds of a stormy sky, and hovering like a judgment angel between heaven and earth; both hands free, with one foot in the rigging, and one somewhere behind you in the air.

The sail would fill out like a balloon, with a report like a small cannon, and then collapse and sink away into a handful.

And the feeling of mastering the rebellious canvas, and tying it down like a slave to the spar, and binding it over and over with the _gasket,_ had a touch of pride and power in it, such as young King Richard must have felt, when he trampled down the insurgents of Wat Tyler.

As for steering, they never would let me go to the helm, except during a calm, when I and the figure-head on the bow were about equally employed.

By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to make mention of before.

He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander _“in full fig,”_ with bright tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue bonnet and the most vermilion of cheeks.

He was game to his wooden marrow, and stood up to it through thick and thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm stretched forward, daring on the waves.

In a gale of wind it was glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and plunging up and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands, as the ship went roaming on her way.

He was a veteran with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when he got to Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg, and gave him another wooden one, which I am sorry to say, did not fit him very well, for ever after he looked as if he limped.

Then this figure-head-surgeon gave him another nose, and touched up one eye, and repaired a rent in his tartans.

After that the painter came and made his toilet all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a plaid of a beautiful pattern.

I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I hope he is safe and snug with a handsome pension in the “Sailors’-Snug-Harbor” on Staten Island.

The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of learning to steer was this.

I was quite young and raw, and steering a ship is a great art, upon which much depends; especially the making a short passage;

for if the helmsman be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he keeps the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision as to its precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it may be pointing one while for Gibraltar, then for Rotterdam, and now for John o’ Groat’s; all of which is worse than wasted time.

Whereas, a true steersman keeps her to her work night and day; and tries to make a bee-line from port to port.

Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness at the helm, might make the ship _“lurch to”—or “bring her by the lee.

”_ And what those things are, the cabin passengers would never find out, when they found themselves going down, down, down, and bidding good-by forever to the moon and stars.

And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and ladies that they are, what an important personage, and how much to be had in reverence, is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket, whom they see standing at the wheel, now cocking his eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or looking out to windward.

Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his hand; and with one small and almost imperceptible motion of a spoke, in a gale of wind, might give a vast deal of work to surrogates and lawyers, in proving last wills and testaments.

Ay, you may well stare at him now.

He does not look much like a man who might play into the hands of an heir-at-law, does he?

Yet such is the case.

Watch him close, therefore; take him down into your state-room occasionally after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him.

A glass of cordial will do it.

And if you or your heirs are interested with the underwriters, then also have an eye on him.

And if you remark, that of the crew, all the men who come to the helm are careless, or inefficient; and if you observe the captain scolding them often, and crying out: _“Luff, you rascal; she’s falling off!

”_ or, _“Keep her steady, you scoundrel, you’re boxing the compass!

”_ then hurry down to your state-room, and if you have not yet made a will, get out your stationery and go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle, like Columbus’ log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when you are drowned in the next gale of wind.

CHAPTER XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE

Though, for reasons hinted at above, they would not let me steer, I contented myself with learning the compass, a graphic facsimile of which I drew on a blank leaf of the _“Wealth of Nations,”_ and studied it every morning, like the multiplication table.

I liked to peep in at the binnacle, and watch the needle; and I wondered how it was that it pointed north, rather than south or west;

for I do not know that any reason can be given why it points in the precise direction it does.

One would think, too, that, as since the beginning of the world almost, the tide of emigration has been setting west, the needle would point that way; whereas, it is forever pointing its fixed fore-finger toward the Pole, where there are few inducements to attract a sailor, unless it be plenty of ice for mint-juleps.

Our binnacle, by the way, the place that holds a ship’s compasses, deserves a word of mention.

It was a little house, about the bigness of a common bird-cage, with sliding panel doors, and two drawing-rooms within, and constantly perched upon a stand, right in front of the helm.

It had two chimney stacks to carry off the smoke of the lamp that burned in it by night.

It was painted green, and on two sides had Venetian blinds; and on one side two glazed sashes; so that it looked like a cool little summer retreat, a snug bit of an arbor at the end of a shady garden lane.

Had I been the captain, I would have planted vines in boxes, and placed them so as to overrun this binnacle; or I would have put canary-birds within; and so made an aviary of it.

It is surprising what a different air may be imparted to the meanest thing by the dainty hand of taste.

Nor must I omit the helm itself, which was one of a new construction, and a particular favorite of the captain.

It was a complex system of cogs and wheels and spindles, all of polished brass, and looked something like a printing-press, or power-loom.

The sailors, however, did not like it much, owing to the casualties that happened to their imprudent fingers, by catching in among the cogs and other intricate contrivances.

Then, sometimes in a calm, when the sudden swells would lift the ship, the helm would fetch a lurch, and send the helmsman revolving round like Ixion, often seriously hurting him; a sort of breaking on the wheel.

The _harness-cask,_ also, a sort of sea side-board, or rather meat-safe, in which a week’s allowance of salt pork and beef is kept, deserves being chronicled.

It formed part of the standing furniture of the quarter-deck.

Of an oval shape, it was banded round with hoops all silver-gilt, with gilded bands secured with gilded screws, and a gilded padlock, richly chased.

This formed the captain’s smoking-seat, where he would perch himself of an afternoon, a tasseled Chinese cap upon his head, and a fragrant Havanna between his white and canine-looking teeth.

He took much solid comfort, Captain Riga.

Then the magnificent _capstan!

_ The pride and glory of the whole ship’s company, the constant care and dandled darling of the cook, whose duty it was to keep it polished like a teapot; and it was an object of distant admiration to the steerage passengers.

Like a parlor center-table, it stood full in the middle of the quarter-deck, radiant with brazen stars, and variegated with diamond-shaped veneerings of mahogany and satin wood.

This was the captain’s lounge, and the chief mate’s secretary, in the bar-holes keeping paper and pencil for memorandums.

I might proceed and speak of the _booby-hatch,_ used as a sort of settee by the officers, and the _fife-rail_ round the mainmast, inclosing a little ark of canvas, painted green, where a small white dog with a blue ribbon round his neck, belonging to the dock-master’s daughter, used to take his morning walks, and air himself in this small edition of the New York Bowling-Green.