Redburn: His First Voyage — Chapters XXXIII - XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS

Surrounded by its broad belt of masonry, each Liverpool dock is a walled town, full of life and commotion; or rather, it is a small archipelago, an epitome of the world, where all the nations of Christendom, and even those of Heathendom, are represented.

For, in itself, each ship is an island, a floating colony of the tribe to which it belongs.

Here are brought together the remotest limits of the earth; and in the collective spars and timbers of these ships, all the forests of the globe are represented, as in a grand parliament of masts.

Canada and New Zealand send their pines; America her live oak; India her teak;

Norway her spruce; and the Right Honorable Mahogany, member for Honduras and Campeachy, is seen at his post by the wheel.

Here, under the beneficent sway of the Genius of Commerce, all climes and countries embrace; and yard-arm touches yard-arm in brotherly love.

A Liverpool dock is a grand caravansary inn, and hotel, on the spacious and liberal plan of the _Astor House.

_ Here ships are lodged at a moderate charge, and payment is not demanded till the time of departure.

Here they are comfortably housed and provided for; sheltered from all weathers and secured from all calamities.

For I can hardly credit a story I have heard, that sometimes, in heavy gales, ships lying in the very middle of the docks have lost their top-gallant-masts.

Whatever the toils and hardships encountered on the voyage, whether they come from Iceland or the coast of New Guinea, here their sufferings are ended, and they take their ease in their watery inn.

I know not how many hours I spent in gazing at the shipping in Prince’s Dock, and speculating concerning their past voyages and future prospects in life.

Some had just arrived from the most distant ports, worn, battered, and disabled; others were all a-taunt-o—spruce, gay, and brilliant, in readiness for sea.

Every day the Highlander had some new neighbor.

A black brig from Glasgow, with its crew of sober Scotch caps, and its staid, thrifty-looking skipper, would be replaced by a jovial French hermaphrodite, its forecastle echoing with songs, and its quarter-deck elastic from much dancing.

On the other side, perhaps, a magnificent New York Liner, huge as a seventy-four, and suggesting the idea of a Mivart’s or Delmonico’s afloat, would give way to a Sidney emigrant ship, receiving on board its live freight of shepherds from the Grampians, ere long to be tending their flocks on the hills and downs of New Holland.

I was particularly pleased and tickled, with a multitude of little salt-droghers, rigged like sloops, and not much bigger than a pilot-boat, but with broad bows painted black, and carrying red sails, which looked as if they had been pickled and stained in a tan-yard.

These little fellows were continually coming in with their cargoes for ships bound to America; and lying, five or six together, alongside of those lofty Yankee hulls, resembled a parcel of red ants about the carcass of a black buffalo.

When loaded, these comical little craft are about level with the water;

and frequently, when blowing fresh in the river, I have seen them flying through the foam with nothing visible but the mast and sail, and a man at the tiller; their entire cargo being snugly secured under hatches.

It was diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of these diminutive vessels.

He would give himself all the airs of an admiral on a three-decker’s poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of himself.

And why not?

What could Caesar want more?

Though his craft was none of the largest, it was subject to _him;_ and though his crew might only consist of himself; yet if he governed it well, he achieved a triumph, which the moralists of all ages have set above the victories of Alexander.

These craft have each a little cabin, the prettiest, charmingest, most delightful little dog-hole in the world; not much bigger than an old-fashioned alcove for a bed.

It is lighted by little round glasses placed in the deck; so that to the insider, the ceiling is like a small firmament twinkling with astral radiations.

For tall men, nevertheless, the place is but ill-adapted; a sitting, or recumbent position being indispensable to an occupancy of the premises.

Yet small, low, and narrow as the cabin is, somehow, it affords accommodations to the skipper and his family.

Often, I used to watch the tidy good-wife, seated at the open little scuttle, like a woman at a cottage door, engaged in knitting socks for her husband; or perhaps, cutting his hair, as he kneeled before her.

And once, while marveling how a couple like this found room to turn in, below, I was amazed by a noisy irruption of cherry-cheeked young tars from the scuttle, whence they came rolling forth, like so many curly spaniels from a kennel.

Upon one occasion, I had the curiosity to go on board a salt-drogher, and fall into conversation with its skipper, a bachelor, who kept house all alone.

I found him a very sociable, comfortable old fellow, who had an eye to having things cozy around him.

It was in the evening; and he invited me down into his sanctum to supper; and there we sat together like a couple in a box at an oyster-cellar.

“He, he,” he chuckled, kneeling down before a fat, moist, little cask of beer, and holding a cocked-hat pitcher to the faucet—“You see, Jack, I keep every thing down here; and nice times I have by myself.

Just before going to bed, it ain’t bad to take a nightcap, you know; eh!

Jack?

—here now, smack your lips over that, my boy—have a pipe?

—but stop, let’s to supper first.

” So he went to a little locker, a fixture against the side, and groping in it awhile, and addressing it with—_“What cheer here, what cheer?

”_ at last produced a loaf, a small cheese, a bit of ham, and a jar of butter.

And then placing a board on his lap, spread the table, the pitcher of beer in the center.

“Why that’s but a two legged table,” said I, “let’s make it four.

” So we divided the burthen, and supped merrily together on our knees.

He was an old ruby of a fellow, his cheeks toasted brown; and it did my soul good, to see the froth of the beer bubbling at his mouth, and sparkling on his nut-brown beard.

He looked so like a great mug of ale, that I almost felt like taking him by the neck and pouring him out.

“Now Jack,” said he, when supper was over, “now Jack, my boy, do you smoke?

—Well then, load away.

” And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of tobacco and a pipe.

We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and notwithstanding my host’s rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the fog.

“He, he, my boy,” then said he—“I don’t never have any bugs here, I tell ye: I smokes ’em all out every night before going to bed.

” “And where may you sleep?

” said I, looking round, and seeing no sign of a bed.

“Sleep?

” says he, “why I sleep in my jacket, that’s the best counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow.

He-he, funny, ain’t it?

” “Very funny,” says I. “Have some more ale?

” says he; “plenty more.

” “No more, thank you,” says I; “I guess I’ll go;” for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale, I began to feel like breathing fresh air.

Besides, my conscience smote me for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.

“Now, don’t go,” said he; “don’t go, my boy; don’t go out into the damp; take an old Christian’s advice,” laying his hand on my shoulder;

“it won’t do.

You see, by going out now, you’ll shake off the ale, and get broad awake again; but if you stay here, you’ll soon be dropping off for a nice little nap.

” But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host’s hand and departed.

There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the large New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every thing comfortable ere starting.

Old men, tottering with age, and little infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute, middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in one ship.

Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the forecastle to sing and pray.

And it was exalting to listen to their fine ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks.

Shut your eyes, and you would think you were in a cathedral.

They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as they hie to the land of the stranger.

And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and valuable of her foreign population.

It is they who have swelled the census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.

There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the prejudices of national dislikes.

Settled by the people of all nations, all nations may claim her for their own.

You can not spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.

Be he Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who scoffs at an American, calls his own brother _Raca,_ and stands in danger of the judgment.

We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a bigoted Hebrew nationality—whose blood has been debased in the attempt to ennoble it, by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves.

No: our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all pouring into one.

We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we may claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.

For who was our father and our mother?

Or can we point to any Romulus and Remus for our founders?

Our ancestry is lost in the universal paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world’s as our own.

We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide our inheritance.

On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and people are forming into one federated whole; and there is a future which shall see the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old hearthstone in Eden.

The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before Columbus’ time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth’s Paradise.

Not a Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God’s good pleasure, and in the fullness and mellowness of time.

The seed is sown, and the harvest must come; and our children’s children, on the world’s jubilee morning, shall all go with their sickles to the reaping.

Then shall the curse of Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall speak shall be the language of Britain.

Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots; and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto them cloven tongues as of fire.

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY

Among the various ships lying in Prince’s Dock, none interested me more than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a _“country ship,”_ which is the name bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India.

Forty years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and they still exceed the generality.

They are built of the celebrated teak wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, _“the King of the Oaks.

”_ The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of cotton.

She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of India, who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs of a higher caste.

While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen, this dignitary was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace, a cocked hat, and drawn sword.

But the general effect was quite spoiled by his bare feet.

In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in flagellating the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which long practice had made him exceedingly expert.

The poor fellows jumped away with the tackle-rope, elastic as cats.

One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat.

I gently pushed it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of my motives in paying a visit to the ship.

Whereupon he very considerately let me pass.

I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of _kayar,_ or cocoa-nut fiber.

The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck.

Among them were Malays, Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese.

They were seated round “kids” full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom, they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for quite another purpose.

They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I found that several of them could also speak very good English.

They were a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was informed made excellent seamen, though ill adapted to stand the hardships of northern voyaging.

They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity.

Two more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.

I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in the bitterest weather.

He talked about them much as a farmer would about the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.

The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three mates, master and boatswain.

These officers lived astern in the cabin, where every Sunday they read the Church of England’s prayers, while the heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and idols.

And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.

As if to symbolize this state of things, the _“fancy piece”_ astern comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a miter; while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a figure-head—a dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a switchy-looking tail.

After her cargo was discharged, which was done “to the sound of flutes and soft recorders”—something as work is done in the navy to the music of the boatswain’s pipe—the Lascars were set to _“stripping the ship”_ that is, to sending down all her spars and ropes.

At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost drowned our own voices.

In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars hopped about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless, showing much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their work.

Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to see this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds of the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of the Highlander’s rigging.

It was amusing at these times, to watch the old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars, even when they desired to be private.

These inquisitive old ladies seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the Zoological Gardens.

One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the wall outside.

It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as the regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on board his vessel.

Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the odor from it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied _“Joggerry,”_ which is a species of weed, used in place of tobacco.

Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like most smokers, I sat down by _Dattabdool-mans, as_ he called himself, and we fell into conversation.

So instructive was his discourse, that when we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge.

Indeed, it is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this.

He knows things you never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man from the moon—wholly strange, a new revelation.

If you want to learn romance, or gain an insight into things quaint, curious, and marvelous, drop your books of travel, and take a stroll along the docks of a great commercial port.

Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe himself among the crowds of mariners from all parts of the globe.

But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which I and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his account of the _teakwood_ and _kayar rope,_ concerning which things I was curious, and sought information.

The _“sagoon”_ as he called the tree which produces the teak, grows in its greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding.

He also spoke of another kind of wood, the _“sissor,”_ which supplies most of the _“shin-logs,”_ or “knees,” and crooked timbers in the _country ships.

_ The sagoon grows to an immense size; sometimes there is fifty feet of trunk, three feet through, before a single bough is put forth.

Its leaves are very large; and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar likened them to elephants’ ears.

He said a purple dye was extracted from them, for the purpose of staining cottons and silks.

The wood is specifically heavier than water; it is easily worked, and extremely strong and durable.

But its chief merit lies in resisting the action of the salt water, and the attacks of insects; which resistance is caused by its containing a resinous oil called _“poonja.

”_ To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed the European artisans.

The rigging, also, was of native manufacture.

As the _kayar,_ of which it is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend’s account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.

In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia.

The cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground.

In this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day.

But the _kayar_ is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten with mallets, and rubbed together into fibers.

After this being dried in the sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance.

The fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of a ship; while the same causes, united with its great strength and buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.

But the elasticity of the _kayar_ ill fits it for the shrouds and standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.

Hence, as the Irrawaddy’s shrouds were all of this substance, the Lascar told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm.

And the loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed to this circumstance.

After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her _kayar_ shrouds with hempen ones.

She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.

CHAPTER XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL

Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist, high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat among modish beavers.

The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.

They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and spars, so that all over it resembles the _“bright side”_ or polished _streak,_ usually banding round an American ship.

Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax and elbow vigor has been expended.

Before the wind, they sail well; but on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make leeway at a sad rate.

Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince’s Dock; and hardly would I gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.

Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea.

In appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.

She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun was a curiosity in itself.

It must have been some old veteran, condemned by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch.

It was an antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns, anchors, eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those of a tureen.

The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin’s head; and by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a human ear; and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the concussions it had heard.

The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.

Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and memorandum-book in hand.

The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple shirts, and arms wildly tattooed.

The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase.

There was a deal of swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.

This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into a mariner’s church.

A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took the place of a mast.

There was a little balcony near the base of the steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used to see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his Bible.

On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the _muezzin_ or cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would call the strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on his own account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but muster round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war.

This old worthy was the sexton.

I attended the chapel several times, and found there a very orderly but small congregation.

The first time I went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell of the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which I ever experienced.

The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things.

But as very few of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they might pass them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or wherever they can procure an audience.

Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.

Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England.

Never have I heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who, like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and undeniable as those of Euclid.

No mere rhetoric avails with such men;

fine periods are vanity.

You can not touch them with tropes.

They need to be pressed home by plain facts.

And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses, which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always succeeded in fastening their attention.

In particular, the two great vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to the ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged upon.

And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman addressing a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes and alleys in the neighborhood.

Is not this as it ought to be?

since the true calling of the reverend clergy is like their divine Master’s;—not to bring the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Did some of them leave the converted and comfortable congregations, before whom they have ministered year after year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and hearts of vice: _then_ indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope with; and a victory gained over _him,_ would entitle them to a conqueror’s wreath.

Better to save one sinner from an obvious vice that is destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten thousand saints.

And as from every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines of Holy Mary and the Child Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of his heaven;

even so should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places, and at street corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His children.

CHAPTER XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST.

NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE

The floating chapel recalls to mind the _“Old Church,”_ well known to the seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool.

It stands very near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town’s people is called the Church of St. Nicholas.

I believe it is the best preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.

Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of worship on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of Walton was a _chapel-of-ease;_ though from the straight backed pews, there could have been but little comfort taken in it.

In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St. Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous voyages.

In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our arrival in the dock.

It seemed to carry an admonition with it;

something like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow Bells.

_“Wellingborough!

Wellingborough!

you must not forget to go to church, Wellingborough!

Don’t forget, Wellingborough!

Wellingborough!

don’t forget.

”_ Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage.

How forcibly does this illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town!

Were the same custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.

What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the grave-yard surrounding it.

From its close vicinity to the haunts of the swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect, but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot), multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing the death’s-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed.

At noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping, retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining one for a table.

Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon these slabs; and once, removing a fellow’s arm, read the following inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the death:— HERE LYETH YE BODY OF

TOBIAS DRINKER.

For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to the Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall in the church for his reception.

And moreover, that in the time of Cromwell’s wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military prison and stable; when, no doubt, another _“sumptuous stall”_ was erected for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.

In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in Paris, where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by their friends, or till buried at the public charge.

From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has always more or less occupants.

Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door, upon the faces of the drowned within.

And once, when the door was opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed upon his arm.

It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own headstone.

I was told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount if irrecoverably drowned.

Lured by this, several horrid old men and women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies.

I observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then, the night-harvest has ripened.

There seems to be no calamity overtaking man, that can not be rendered merchantable.

Undertakers, sextons, tomb-makers, and hearse-drivers, get their living from the dead; and in times of plague most thrive.

And these miserable old men and women hunted after corpses to keep from going to the church-yard themselves; for they were the most wretched of starvelings.

CHAPTER XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT’S-HEY

The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of the docks are many very painful sights.

In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I generally passed through a narrow street called “Launcelott’s-Hey,” lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses.

In this street, or rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.

Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to come out of the earth.

It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into twilight; and not a soul was in sight.

I started, and could almost have run, when I heard that dismal sound.

It seemed the low, hopeless, endless wail of some one forever lost.

At last I advanced to an opening which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk, crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure of what had been a woman.

Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side.

At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead.

They made no sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening wail.

I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near; but there was no response.

Louder still; when one of the children lifted its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay motionless.

The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall her eye again.

They were dumb and next to dead with want.

How they had crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had crawled to die.

At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for death was so stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded them as already no more.

I stood looking down on them, while my whole soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right had any body in the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be seen?

It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of a Howard.

For who were these ghosts that I saw?

Were they not human beings?

A woman and two girls?

With eyes, and lips, and ears like any queen?

with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat with a dull, dead ache that was their life.

At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out and sold for a trifle.

I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew of the persons I had just left.

She replied, that she did not; nor did she want to.

I

then asked another, a miserable, toothless old woman, with a tattered strip of coarse baling stuff round her body.

Looking at me for an instant, she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she knew who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time to attend to beggars and their brats.

Accosting still another, who seemed to know my errand, I asked if there was no place to which the woman could be taken.

“Yes,” she replied, “to the church-yard.

” I said she was alive, and not dead.

“Then she’ll never die,” was the rejoinder.

“She’s been down there these three days, with nothing to eat;—that I know myself.

” “She desarves it,” said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, “that Betsy Jennings desarves it—was she ever married?

tell me that.

” Leaving Launcelott’s-Hey, I turned into a more frequented street; and soon meeting a policeman, told him of the condition of the woman and the girls.

“It’s none of my business, Jack,” said he.

“I don’t belong to that street.

” “Who does then?

” “I don’t know.

But what business is it of yours?

Are you not a Yankee?

” “Yes,” said I, “but come, I will help you remove that woman, if you say so.

” “There, now, Jack, go on board your ship and stick to it; and leave these matters to the town.

” I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success; they would not even go with me to the place.

The truth was, it was out of the way, in a silent, secluded spot; and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding away in the ground, did not obtrude upon any one.

Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention; but this time, none of the three looked up, or even stirred.

While I yet stood irresolute, a voice called to me from a high, iron-shuttered window in a loft over the way; and asked what I was about.

I beckoned to the man, a sort of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed down into the vault.

“Well,” said he, “what of it?

” “Can’t we get them out?

” said I, “haven’t you some place in your warehouse where you can put them?

have you nothing for them to eat?

” “You’re crazy, boy,” said he; “do you suppose, that Parkins and Wood want their warehouse turned into a hospital?

” I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome Mary of what I had seen; asking her if she could not do something to get the woman and girls removed; or if she could not do that, let me have some food for them.

But though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she gave away enough to beggars in her own street (which was true enough) without looking after the whole neighborhood.

Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up old Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the sailors called _Brandy-Nan;_ and begged her to give me some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to take to the vault.

But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the miserable occupants of the vault, and refused.

I then stepped into the room where our dinner was being spread; and waiting till the girl had gone out, I snatched some bread and cheese from a stand, and thrusting it into the bosom of my frock, left the house.

Hurrying to the lane, I dropped the food down into the vault.

One of the girls caught at it convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister pushed the other’s arm aside, and took the bread in her hand;

but with a weak uncertain grasp like an infant’s. She placed it to her mouth; but letting it fall again, murmuring faintly something like “water.

” The woman did not stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen her.