There are so many running to and fro, and knowledge is thereby so increased, that I doubted, at first, if my friends did well to ask me to write for publication an account of my voyage. But I considered that impressions made on every new observer add something to the already large information of intelligent readers, besides reviving agreeable recollections. The thought that I may suggest to some friend in need of long rest one means of finding it, or encourage him to adopt it, leads me to give, as requested, the following narrative.
The writer, having been ill in the early part of 1869, was advised by physicians and friends to try the effect of foreign travel; but in what direction it was difficult to decide. With every suggestion of experienced friends there would arise some association of fatigue in sight-seeing, of monotony in resting long in one place. Pleasant as it would be to nestle in some quiet nook in Switzerland, or to take up an abode in one of the Channel Islands,—Alderney, for example, where there would be much to gratify curiosity, and where the distance from the centres of information would not be great,—the thought of being confined to one place or even district of country, or of being tempted to visit interesting scenes, and especially to make the acquaintance of interesting men, awakened such anticipations of labor as to forbid any hope of restoration from that source.
A son of the writer was compelled in youth, by ill-health, to leave his studies and go to sea. In the fall of 1869 he received command of a commodious ship, the “Golden Fleece,” which sailed in October of that year for San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Manila. By the kindness of Messrs. William F. Weld & Co., the writer and two members of his family accompanied him as passengers.
Many were the questions to which these passengers required answers previous to their embarkation on so long a voyage. The gale of September, 1869, which levelled our Boston Coliseum, and damaged so many steeples, and made such havoc among poplars and other trees whose roots run near the surface, led to the inquiry, What were the ordinary chances of such gales at sea? This question was answered by producing the log-book of a recent voyage from Mexico, in which it appeared that the weather, day after day, was so free from any cause for fear that the impression was allowed to gain strength that storms were an exception in sea-faring life. As to the gale just mentioned, it seemed safer to be at sea at such a time, with sea-room, than under roofs and chimneys, or in streets.
October 28, 1869, the ship Golden Fleece left Pier No. 12, East River, New York, in charge of a tug, and dropped anchor in the stream until the next morning. Members of our family circle went with us till we came to anchor, when they went over the side into the tug, where one of them took a sketch of us with her pencil, completing a sketch already taken of our cabin and staterooms for friends at home. We finally saw them reach the wharf, when we ceased waving our adieus and repaired to the cabin to put ourselves in sea trim.
The sailors were in good condition. The Shipping Master who brought them on board, had told them that the Golden Fleece was a religious ship; no swearing or fighting is allowed; a minister is among the passengers; the captain is kind and would treat them well. He had collected a good set of men; and when they stood on the lower deck and the shipping master called their names and checked them on the capstan, it seemed to me that I had never seen so many good faces among so many sailors. None came on board intoxicated, but this was not strange seeing it was but the third hour of the day.
We weighed anchor at six o’clock the next morning. The pilot had charge and took us down to Sandy Hook. We heard bells on shore at Staten Island and supposed that they were ringing for church.
We saw the pilot boat coming for the pilot at noon. It took him from us, and we began our voyage. The hills of Neversink alone remained to remind us for a short time of home and country. Twenty or thirty sail started with us, but our good ship took the lead and kept it.
After dinner the two mates gathered the men on the main deck to divide them into watches. They were unknown to the mates by name, but as each chose a man he pointed to him. Being divided, they repaired to their bunks and changed from one side of the forecastle to the other according as they found themselves in either watch. It was touching to see them, each with all his worldly goods in his arms passing each other to their respective berths.
In two days after leaving New York we were in the Gulf Stream. We sailed through leagues of herbage which was borne from the shores by the Stream, and like us was going to sea. The ship rolled; and soon the wind freshened and we were in a gale. We had our first sight of “mountain waves,” so called; but they needed some imagination and a little fear to make them mountainous. They were enough however to make us uncomfortable. The gale lasted two days. We took the impression that such was to be the ordinary experience in the voyage,—discomfort and tediousness. But we were happy to find that it was not so; for, during the whole voyage, there were very few such experiences,—so infrequent, indeed, as to excite surprise when they came. The morning after the gale the weather was fine. Going on deck, we found that we had exchanged the sharp air of the latter part of October in New England for the temperature of the early part of June.
Soon we were in the Tropic of Cancer. It seemed like a new world. Never before had we looked upon such a sky. There was no stratification in the clouds, and nothing of the cumulus formation; but the surface of the sky was composed of innumerable fleecy things moving in the gentlest manner, as though they feared to disturb slumber. The gentle motion was just the thing to induce sleep. As we thought of the turbulent state of the elements the day before, the sky now looked like an army which had been dismissed. It seemed as though there was not wind enough to form a large cloud. The hammock was made fast, one end of it to an iron belaying-pin in the saddle of the mizzen mast, in the shade of the spanker, and the other end to the rail. A hammock meets you at every point with the needed support. It brought strange sensations of rest to lie and listen to the plashing of the water against the sides of the ship. The measured roll of the vessel now was pleasurable. There was an easy swing to the hammock, as though a considerate hand were keeping it moving. How much better this rest and peace than travelling in Switzerland, or being pent up in the Azores, or wandering through Italy, if one needs rest and at the same time change of place! To an overworked brain here is seclusion indeed. There is here no post-office, with its delivery three times a day, so welcome on shore; no newspapers; no door bell; no agents soliciting attention to new works, and begging you to put your name down and accept a copy, as though you had subscribed; no succession of engagements;
no crowd of passengers, nor daily calculation as to the day of arrival; nor jar of machinery, as in a steamboat, making you feel, day and night, that somebody is laboriously at work; and, to crown all, seemingly no end to your vacation.
But those clouds in the tropics! You had thought, perhaps, heretofore, that only at night the heavens declare the glory of God. Perhaps you find that the book which you brought on deck to read, but which you have no desire to open, may have in it a fly-leaf, on which, as you lie in the hammock, with one knee raised for a writing-table, you may indite these dreamy lines:—
THE CLOUDS IN THE TROPICS.
The meteorology in the latter part of the Book of Job stood in no need of modern science to captivate the hearts of the worshippers of the true God. “Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge?”
The charm of sea-life in a sailing-vessel I found to be constant occupation of the mind without wearying it. At first it seemed a duty to read the periodicals which we brought with us, the new books reserved for the voyage, the choice articles in the quarterlies which had been commended to us. But for these we found no time. What charm could there be in Dante when a school of porpoises was in sight, each of them leaping out of water just for the pleasure of the dive back? If the mate called down the companion-way, “A sail on the lee-bow!” the paper-folder must keep the place in the uncut volume till you know all about her. It would be tedious waiting at a corner of a street ten minutes for a horse-car; but it was pleasant to wait an hour and forty minutes to come up with the stranger ahead, gaining upon her all the time, meanwhile watching the flying-fish which the ship started on the wing, or going forward into the bows and looking over to see the ship dash through the waves, with “a bone in her mouth,” till suddenly the main topgallant-sail splits, and so fulfills the expectation expressed for the last five days that it could not long survive; and now, as it is the change of watch, and all hands are on deck, what could be more interesting than to see twenty-eight of them take in the old sail and bend the new one, then line the side of the ship with their curious faces to inspect the bark which we have now overtaken. She is the “Doon of Ayr,” one hundred and six days from Japan for New York, and as she was tacking we came so near that one might throw a biscuit on board. The captains of the bark and the ship had time for a few words of inquiry and information; then the two wanderers on the deep parted company, and watched each other for half an hour, and sighted each other, no doubt, occasionally, for an hour and a half, till each became to the other a speck. You have long ago forgotten your book, your journal, and magazine. This event, and its many interludes, are more interesting to you than a battle in Lord Derby’s Homer; it is practical life; you begin to feel that everything which you enjoy will be without the intrusion of periodical engagements, and you feel surprised that no such engagements now demand your thoughts.
Among the incidents at sea which give a charm to life, one is, Speaking a vessel. This is a metaphorical expression, retained from the former days before signals were used in conversation, and when vessels had to come near enough to each other for the speaking to act its part. We had been out five or six days, when a sail was descried on the starboard bow. It proved to be a bark; and we were as glad to see her as though we had met an old friend in a foreign land. The bark soon hoisted her ensign, which was the same as raising your hat in passing. We hoisted ours, which was a signal of recognition. The bark ran up four flags, which we recognized by the spyglass as 6 9 5 7, showing her number in the book to be 6957. Turning to it, we read “Sachem.” We ran up 4 5 9 1, our number in the book. The bark displayed 5 6 2 8, which we found to be “Salem.” We showed 4 7 8 2,—“New York.” The bark gave 6 8 7 4,—“Zanzibar.” We returned 2 1 8 0,—“California.” The bark showed 6,—“six days out.” We did the same. The bark showed numeral pendant,—this meaning “longitude,” and with it 54 38. We replied with 54 30,—our calculation. The bark then dipped her ensign, hauling it down half way, then raising it again. This was done three times. We did the same, which was equivalent to “good-bye” on either side, and lifting the hat; we added 6 3 8 9, meaning, “Wish you a pleasant voyage.” The answer was, 5 7 8 3, “Many thanks.”
These courtesies at sea are pleasant. Coming up with the vessel, or she and you drawing near in passing, reading the numbers by the spyglass, and arranging all the signals, is an agreeable occupation for the larger part of two hours, including the departure of the vessels from each other, as though friends were parting, leaving the ocean more a solitude than before.
Meeting vessels, or passing them at a distance, exchanging signals, making out their numbers, bring remote parts of the earth suddenly to mind. Thus new trains of thought succeed each other entirely disconnected. I always enjoyed exercise on horseback for one principal reason,—that on horseback you cannot long pursue one train of thought. Your conjunctions are disjunctive. If you purpose to make out your evening lecture on horseback, your attention is so frequently taken by something in the road, or by the action of the horse, that you probably come home without any connected plan. So at sea. The occasional sight of a sail is an illustration of the charm of sea-life as having complete possession of your thoughts without leaving you long at liberty to pore over a subject. If you meet a Norwegian bark, and the captain tells you he is twenty-four days from Buenos Ayres, there is Norway and Buenos Ayres for your meditation, and perhaps for your statistical or geographical inquiry. If the “Queen of the Pacific,” eighty-seven days from Macao for London, comes in sight, there is another chapter in the world’s great miscellany. That sail yonder proves to be the “Hungarian,” from Saguenay, twenty-one days out, bound to Melbourne, with lumber. You have another illustration of commerce binding together the ends of the earth. You soon excuse those friends of yours at home who commiserated you on the prospect of a long, monotonous sea-voyage. Where is the monotony? Not in the ship’s clock, which enumerates every hour and half-hour by a system of horology altogether different from shore time-pieces; not in the boatswain’s “Pumpship” at evening, when twelve or fifteen men entertain you with a song. Every tune at the pumps must have a chorus. The sentiment in the song is the least important feature of it; the celebration of some portion of the earth or seas, other than here and now: “I wish I was in Mobile Bay,” “I’m bound for the Rio Grande,” with the astounding chorus from twenty-eight men, part of whom the fine moonlight and the song tempt from their bunks, is an antidote to monotony.
The sailors were a merry set. Though only half of the crew—that is, one watch—were required each night at the pumps, all hands at first generally turned out because it was the time for a song. It was a nightly pleasure to be on the poop deck when the pumps were manned, and to hear twenty men sing. When making sail after a gale, the crew are ready for the loudest singing, unless it be at the pumps. For example, when hauling on the topsail halyards, they may have this song, the shanty man, as they call him, solo singer, beginning with a wailing strain:
by which time the topsail is mast-headed, and the mate cries, “Belay!”
When the mainsail is to be set, and they are hauling down the main tack, this, perhaps, is the song:—
the long pull, the strong pull, the pull altogether being given at the word “Joe;” then no more pulling till the same word recurs.
When hauling on the main sheet, this is often the song, sung responsively:
That no one may think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me, let me say that I find, on inquiry, that the “main tack” is the line which hauls down that corner of the main sail which is toward the wind; called, therefore, the “weather clew.” The “main sheet” hauls the other corner of the main sail; called, therefore, “the lee clew.” Why a rope should be called a sheet is a piece of nautical metonymy which it would be difficult to explain. “Larboard” and “starboard” were formerly used to designate respectively the left and the right side of the ship, standing aft and looking forward; but the two words, so much alike, were not always readily apprehended, and so were changed to “port and starboard.” Why the word “port” is used, does not appear; nor can any one tell why “Reuben Ranzo” is associated with one of the long pulls; if there be any philosophy in it, or historic association, it is as deep as the sea, or hopelessly lost.
After singing at the pumps in good weather when there was not much work, the men would have some amusement. Sometimes it was “Hunt the Slipper.” Then, again, two men sat down opposite each other, their hands and feet tied, and a capstan bar was run through each of the two men’s arms, behind him. The two would push each other with their feet till one would lose his balance, and fall over; then, being helpless, he was at the mercy of his comrade’s feet till he begged for quarter. These games were interspersed with declamations. We had some of Macauley’s “Lays of Ancient Rome,” “Spartacus,” “My name is Norval.” The merry laugh and the clapping of hands at the declaimers, and, now and then, the youthful voice of a boy reciting his piece from Henry Clay, or a story from the “Reader,” beguiled many an evening in the tropics.
On crossing the line, one evening when we were on the poop deck, we were startled by a voice on the lower deck, “What ship’s that?” The captain replied. The voice answered, “I shall call upon you to-morrow; I have an engagement this evening.” At 3, P. M., the next day, being Saturday, we were summoned on deck by one of the sailors, who announced that Neptune was coming on board. All at once we saw a grotesque figure swinging in the air over the water, half-way up to the main yard, two of the sailors pulling him in. He came on board, wet from his waist; and there came also over the sides a female figure and a young man. They came to the front cabin door, and saluted the captain, who stood ready to receive them. Neptune had on spectacles made of a tin can, epaulets of the same, buskins made of duck, long hair of rope-yarns, a duck tunic, and a girdle of twisted ropes. Mrs. Neptune had on a long duck mantle, her face blackened with burnt cork, and a large fan made of wood, and covered with sail-cloth; she used it gracefully. The son bore his father’s trident, which was a four pronged iron, called “the grains,” used for spearing sharks. He, also, was fantastically dressed. They made obeisance to the captain, who welcomed them on board in a short speech. They then repaired to a booth fitted up as a sort of marquee, flung up the sides, and called a young man from the crew. They asked him if he ever crossed the line before; then set him in a barrel, with his feet out, inquired his name, where from and whither bound, and as he opened his mouth to answer, they inserted the paint brush filled with soap and lime, with which the son was lathering him, who then produced an old saw fixed in a piece of wood for a sheath and handle and shaved him. Neptune then ordered him to be washed; when four men took him and dipped him into a barrel of water. This they did to three young men. They then came up to our deck and saluted us. The captain informed them that we were all liege subjects of Neptune and needed not to be sworn. They then wished us a pleasant voyage,—Mrs. N. taking her husband’s arm, fanning herself gracefully,—and they withdrew. While it was a successful masquerade, well sustained in all the parts,—the boys consenting to be hazed conscious that they were contributing something to the dramatic poetry of sea-life,—it was easy to see that it was capable of abuse. The officers saw that they should be careful how they allowed this liberty. To an invalid at sea these things are medicine; and, as I am writing in the interest of some who may betake themselves for the first time to sea in a sailing-ship for health, I would say that they must wait till they are in circumstances to find how “dulce est desipere in loco,” how pleasant it is at sea to be even gamesome upon occasions.
One day as I lay in the hammock I found myself in a revery; my eye being fixed on a bright, new rope which appeared among the running rigging. I mention it as an illustration of the frames of mind which steal upon an invalid passenger, especially in a sailing-ship, because undisturbed there by a crowd, or by the noise of steam and its machinery. Would any one think that a single halyard among five or six others could bring to mind Burke’s treatise on the “Sublime and Beautiful”? But it was even so. I found my eye going up the new rope in admiration at the perfect regularity in the twist of the strands. An artist cannot always combine the hempen yarns with the exactness which the ropemaker’s wheel gives them. My eye went from the new rope to the old ones; all had the same perfect twist throughout the ship. The ropes, from belaying-pin to truck, the signal halyard and the hawser, seemed instinct with “the beauty of fitness,” to borrow a term from the above-mentioned writer,—a common window-sash, with its parallelograms of panes, serving that great genius for an illustration.
I cannot forget the simple pleasure which this meditation on a rope gave me, carrying me back to youthful days in my native place, and to the ropewalks there, the swift spindles, the horse in the cellar turning the wheel, the spinners, each with a bunch of hemp around him hitching it to the spindle, then walking backwards, paying out the hemp through his hands with judicious care, the rope all the time growing lengthwise, down the walk. It used to be a wonder to me how the horse in the cellar, going about on the tan, could twist the twine at the end of the bridge as accurately as it was twisted at the spindle. Unconscious influence, remote causations, continents, oceans, years, intervening between the agent and the effect of his example and words, were illustrated by the horse in the ropewalk; and the revery would have been protracted, had not a vessel ahead caught my eye. Coming to my senses I thought of Dean Swift’s satire on Robert Boyle’s pious and sentimental writings, which the Dean had to read in the hearing of Lady Berkeley, whose simplicity and enthusiasm he was pleased to ridicule, in revenge for the task imposed on him, under the guise of mimicking Mr. Boyle, in the famous piece, “Meditations on a Broomstick.”
But few things have so pleasing an effect in solving the kinks in one’s brain as to lie in a hammock on deck at sea far away from care, and let the fancy like the poet’s river “wander at its own sweet will.” This wandering would have continued, had I not been startled by descrying as aforesaid a vessel ahead, hove to, directly across our course, under short sail, her jib-boom gone, all looking as if she was in distress and trying to intercept us for relief. We began to consider how many we could accommodate in case she proved to be in a sinking condition; how our provisions would hold out; and other prudential questionings; which were soon dissipated by finding that she was a whaler with a whale alongside, a man standing on him cutting in, and the rest of the crew, some of them, hoisting up the pieces, and others trying them out. This episode in practical life contrasted well with the revery with which the forenoon begun, making with it a good illustration of the variety in sea-life.
It had rained in torrents one night, and it kept on till nine o’clock the next day. The sailors stopped the lee scuppers, and soon the deck had several inches of water on the lee side. The ducks were released and thought their paradise regained. The sailors could not resist the opportunity to do a little washing; so flannel shirts and other articles of apparel came forth into the common tub, the main deck; being trampled on by bare feet instead of the more laborious process of the washing-board. The sturdy limbs bared up to the knees showed fine sets of muscles, enough to excite the admiration of an artist pursuing anatomical studies. After the sailors had finished, they turned their attention to the pigs, which were severally walked into the water on two legs by the men, when they were chased and knocked about and scrubbed, till, by their looks, they made you believe the saying of the market-men that ship-fed pork has no superior. There was no monotony here.
But there was monotony soon in the doldrums. These are a region near the equator, between the north-east and south-east trades, where calms and rains abound, puffs of wind varying in direction every half-hour, trying to the sailors, disappointing the captain’s hopes. He yearns for steam; even an old captain will resolve, for the hundredth time in his life, that he will never go to sea again; he jumps on his hat and whistles for the wind. Then a breeze springs up, and he rubs his hands, and thinks that, after all, his ship is better than a steamer, till, in half an hour, she is almost motionless.
Then is the time for the sharks to appear. They are slow creatures and cannot keep up with a good sailor; so in calms they come and lie alongside. The little pilot-fishes, the curious attendants of the shark, directing his attention to food, are with him. The grains are thrust at the shark; and, if they fasten in him, a bend of a rope around his tail brings him on board. Sailors have great spite against sharks; they may show tenderness to other creatures, but for sharks they have no mercy. They will use their sheath-knives about his nose, and disfigure him in all conceivable ways. Their theory is that a shark never dies till sunset. Sharks are hard to kill. You may cut off their heads and tails, and disembowel them, and even then the trunk will thrash the deck at so lively a rate that his executioners will have need to jump about for safety. In contrast with the shark, the dolphin seemed to me for beauty to verify all that poets have said of him. It is my belief that a dolphin’s mouth is as perfect a curve as nature ever produces. His tints, when dying, are no fiction. Two sword-fish were caught one day, and the rapidity with which they were stripped of their flesh, and their back-bones hung up to dry, rivalled the skill and speed of young surgical practitioners.
Few if any need to be informed that the mizzen mast is the hindmost of the three masts of a ship. The mizzen mast of the Golden Fleece is a solid stick, but the foremast and mainmast are built. In this section of the country it is not always easy to find trees large, tall, straight enough for the foremast and mainmast of a large ship. A smaller one will answer for a mizzen mast. The foremast and mainmast are specimens of ingenious mechanical work, eight or nine pieces in each of them making a circumference of sixty-two inches. Iron bands gird these heavy staves, which are grooved and jointed together. There are five hoops of broad iron, five feet apart. The mainmast being in the centre of the ship is continually scraped, oiled, and varnished. The iron hoops are painted vermilion, which sets off the color of the spruce wood. It is pleasant to look on the manufactured masts which show what human skill can do; for example, a mainmast that can support those immense yards which when lowered to the deck you can scarcely believe are each of them itself less than a mast, for it supports a huge weight of canvas stretched upon it.
The mainmast holds up a top mast also with its yards and sails, a top-gallant mast with yards and sails, the royal, and sometimes a sky sail. Then the foremast also, which bears the same burden and is also a manufactured thing; as you think of it, a hundred feet ahead of you, pioneering your way and taking the first brunt of the sea, you cannot help regarding it as the most heroic of the three masts. Inspiring as the sight of these always is, I cannot withhold from the mizzen mast peculiar attachment. As already stated, one end of the hammock is fastened to it, the other end to the rail; on one side or the other there is almost always a shade from the spanker, a principal fore and aft sail which swings from it.
Lying here about Thanksgiving time I was musing on the mizzen mast, when I fell asleep, but my musing continued. The mizzen mast, once a live tree, seemed now to be a living person; it appeared to be soliloquizing, though now and then it seemed to be addressing an audience, and again it was whispering to me. I fancied it saying thus:—
“I was once a shoot which a fox could tread down; then a sapling. I grew on the side of a hill in the Aroostook region. The Indian names of my native lakes and rivers have been for so long a time disused that I cannot now distinguish between the Chern-quas-a-ban-to-cook, the Ah-mo-gen-ga-mook and “the far-winding Skoo-doo-wab-skook-sis.” Once these names were familiar to me. Now I wander with you who sail with us in the wilderness of ocean. You sympathize with me, perhaps, in my exile from the stillness of nature. You are tempted to fancy me contrasting my rough life with the silence in which I grew. Years passed over me and my kindred in the untrodden forest; what ornithology I might describe; what songs I might recite; tell what eagles visited my top; what rare plumage is remembered as having showed itself in my foliage. Squirrels gambolled on my limbs, woodpeckers ransacked my sides for their prey. Many a woodbine has climbed into me, lived its short life, and turned crimson under the first touch of frost.
One day men came beneath me with axes, measured my girth, looked up to my top. Great was my fall. I lay on the ground, my top was brought to a level with my root. I became a mere trunk, was borne to the shipyard, my foot set in the hold of this ship then new, and soon I was made ready for my vesture of canvas in place of buds and blossoms; I began a new life among the winds on the seas. Now I am sailing about the world; I have been many times round Cape Horn, am familiar with the lightnings off the River Plate, have compared the gales around the Cape of Good Hope with those of the Horn; know the latitudes where the trade winds begin and where they cease. I am a favorite resort of passengers in a sailing ship. I stand aloof from the main deck where work is all the time going on and there is much passing to and fro. The house,” (here it seemed to be addressing an audience) “which is the raised covering of the cabin, is there, extending perhaps one third the whole length of the ship, affording on its top a place for promenading. From me swings the spanker, a large fore and aft sail, helping the wind to balance the ship and much of the time throwing a shade; and there is almost always a current of air stirring beneath it. Under me and in the spanker’s shade the passengers spend a large part of every pleasant day reading, writing, conversing, enjoying the ocean scenes. Every pleasant evening is sure to gather them under me. My length runs down through the forward cabin where I am cased in. There the preacher or reader stands, with a congregation of about thirty. I am therefore a witness of a large part of a passenger’s experience at sea. His impressions and reflections, his reading, his writing, his conversation, his journal, may properly be dated under me.
It might be supposed” (here it seemed to relapse into soliloquy,) “that the shipbuilder had ideality playing about him when he placed me, a tree of the wood, in the most interesting position, to be a centre of social life, a shelter to meditative hours, identifying myself with the choicest moments of sea life, retaining a magnetism which memory is destined to feel in coming years. Such is my origin and early history, and such the associations, in memory, with the mast under which most of the impressions to be recorded here, no doubt, by one of our passengers will be received. If his readers (should he have any) shall be so happy as to find themselves under a mizzen mast at sea, let it shed the healing, healthful influence on them which seem to be descending on the sleeper under my shade.”
This last remark, seeming to be such a personal allusion to myself, had the effect to startle me, and I roused myself, surprised at having been asleep, and I looked up to the mizzen mast to see who was speaking. It was the mate who that moment was saying, “Set the crojick;”1 whereupon four sailors came to the belaying-pins where my hammock swung and began to loosen the buntlines. I went below to prepare myself for the Thanksgiving dinner.
We kept Thanksgiving, it having been appointed before we sailed, so that we knew the day. We dined at four, instead of our usual hour (half past twelve), and so we were at table part of the time with those at home. Our dinner was:—1. Oyster soup; 2. Boiled salmon and scalloped oysters; 8. Roast fowl; 4. Huckleberry pudding; 5. Apple pies of dried apple. Now, should any one envy us, or should his mouth water at such a bill of fare, let him know that oysters and salmon from tin cans are not the same as those fresh from Faneuil-Hall Market.
We may be said to have had a Thanksgiving dinner once a week. But the principal dish was not fowl. Far from it. It was salt fish; but probably no better meal from this article of food is ever served on shore. With every desirable vegetable, and some sparkling champagne cider which a thoughtful friend had placed among our stores, we were rivals with Ruth when she sat beside the reapers of Boaz in the harvest field, and he reached her the parched corn “and she did eat and was sufficed and left.” For dessert we had at that meal “roly-poly,” which is thin flour paste spread with apple sauce, then rolled together and boiled; this with sweet sauce flavored with vanilla made us for the time imagine ourselves on shore. We entertained each other at these feasts with the choicest anecdotes, which our repasts disposed us to call to mind and to relish; for example, instances of Mr. Choate’s ingenuity, as, when defending a sea captain charged with cruelty to his crew, he undertook to show that so far from being cruel he was eminently considerate, so much so that instead of searching the law books to find out, as the witnesses alleged, what punishments were allowable and could be inflicted with impunity, he was only guarding himself against the excessive use of legitimate discipline; “he read the books with paternal yearnings; he was a mild but firm parent;” and instead of keeping his crew on vile trash, tasteless, sometime loathsome, “think, gentlemen of the jury, of applying such words to the nutritious lob scouse and the succulent dandy funk!” How could the jury help saying as they presently did, Not guilty?
Perhaps the reader, if he be not already versed in the articles of luxurious food served to sailors, will be willing to have his curiosity gratified as he reads what are the component parts of lob scouse and dandy funk, the mention of which by the eloquent advocate helped him to clear his client, the captain.
“Lob scouse” is salt meat and potatoes cut small and stewed.
“Dandy funk” is hard bread broken up, soaked in water, mixed with molasses, and baked in pans. Why Mr. Choate should call it “succulent,” or lob scouse “nutritious,” it requires legal cunning to detect.
“Sea Pie” is lob scouse with dumplings in it, the meat not cut so fine; perhaps fresh meat. When a pig is killed the sailors the next Sunday generally have sea pie for dinner, made with fresh pork.
“Bread Hash” is hard bread and salt meat minced fine and baked.
“Potato Hash” is potatoes and meat minced fine and baked.
“Manavellings” are remnants from the cabin table, the boy’s treat.
We mourned the disappearance of our apples. They began to decay three weeks after we left New York, and our steward was obliged to employ his ingenuity in finding ways to use them up. We thought with pleasure of the tropical fruits which we hoped one day to taste; but nothing, we felt sure, could take the place of a northern apple. We expected to miss it as much as Sydney Smith did his summer beverage, in a place which he lugubriously describes as being situated “five miles from a lemon.”
The steward was passing from the galley to the cabin table with a plate of hash. A sudden lurch made him lose his balance. His arms went into the air and the hash left the plate and went in a body against the side of the ship where a coil of rope hung; and it remained fast, the coil forming an oval frame for it. We pitied the steward but did not weep for the hash. Some of us thought we could understand the action of a company of boys at a boarding school, who were asked in Lent what luxury they would each propose to forego during the season of fasting and humiliation as a religious offering. Slips of paper were given to them and in a little while were collected. Every one of the forty papers bore the word, Hash. Some of our company were so lost to a sense of propriety as to exult at the steward’s mishap.
We have a stewardess, Annie Cardozo, wife of the steward who is a Cape de Verd, Portuguese, man. She is an Irish woman, very talkative, of good disposition. She was fixing my mattress; I remarked that it was too low on the side next the room. “Well,” said she, pleasantly, “we must think of the Lord, he had no where to lie down.” She may have thought that I was querulous, which in the present instance was not the case; but I accepted the admonition.
One evening in the Gulf Stream just at dark the top-gallant sail was blowing adrift from the “gaskets,” (the ropes with which it was furled;) and the whole sail was likely to get loose. The captain said that it must be secured. The mate doubted if it was safe to send men aloft in such a gale. The captain replied that he had been obliged when he was before the mast to go aloft in worse weather. He could not spare the sail. The mate gave the order: “Go aloft, some of you, and make fast that top-gallant sail.” Six or eight men sprang into the rigging and soon the sail was furled.
The captain’s eye is necessarily the most of the time all over the ship. We were sitting on deck when the ship was laboring in a cross sea. He noticed that the main topmast stays quivered. The stays had within a few days all been “set up” for Cape weather, but these were not so taut as they should be. It was only a wakeful eye which would have noticed it. The remedy was applied at once. It is interesting to me as a father to hear the young captain spoken of by the sailors to each other as “the old man.” Had he a wife, though she were only eighteen years of age she would nevertheless be called “the old woman.” This made it less offensive to hear myself, though decidedly far from seventy, spoken of as “the old gentleman.”
At night, or from eight P. M. the two mates take turns to be four hours each on deck, with or near the man at the wheel. They direct the steering according to the captain’s orders, oversee the ship, and report to the captain several times during the night as to wind and weather. Two of the crew keep a lookout in the bows two hours at a time watching against collisions and in some latitudes against ice. The law of the road, “When you meet turn to the right,” is the law at sea. The chances of collision are few. You wonder that you so unfrequently meet a sail, especially remembering the long list in every paper of arrivals, departures, vessels spoken. In thick weather, especially while on a coast, the danger increases and a sharp lookout is the rule.
I have seen at least a thousand in the last few weeks. They resemble the smelt, though larger. They start up before or near the ship in small flocks and fly fifty or a hundred feet. By taking wing though for short distances they are able to elude the dolphin, the swiftest of their pursuers, who wondering what has become of them, darts on ahead. Their escape by flying is probably as incredible to the dolphin as the sailors tell us it was to the mother of a sailor who was questioning him as to his experiences at sea. He told her many wonderful things, as, that a wheel of one of Pharaoh’s chariots came up on his anchor; that he saw a whale caught, in whose stomach was found a handkerchief with a Hebrew word on it which a minister on shore declared to be Jonah; that there are now fishes in the sea of Tiberias which have in their gills fluted pieces of pearl resembling money, by which name they are now called, and that some give them the name of “Peter’s pence,” supposing the fishes to be descendants of the fish which Peter drew from the sea. But when he described fishes flying in the air, taking wing before his ship, the faith of the listener gave way; the other stories, she said might be true, for they had a foundation in holy writ; but flying fish were too great a tax on her belief.—One was washed on board, whose wings, extended and dried, had a gossamer appearance so delicate that one might readily believe them to be the wings of something more delicate than a fish.
For about a week we have been directly under the sun. When we came under lat. 21° S. we could see nothing of our shadows at noon. Had we been ignorant of the cause we might have been in a frame of mind predisposing us to listen to German stories of a man’s selling his shadow to the evil one: for what had become of ours? Had we been of those ‘whose souls proud science never taught to stray far as the solar walk or milky way,’ we imagined what our speculations on this phenomenon would have been. One’s shadow certainly can never be less than in 21° S. Under our feet there was to each of us something like one of the clouds of Magellan.
These we saw in the evening in the south-east, half way up to the zenith. They are two dark spots, one larger than the other, about twenty paces apart, not far from two yards broad. No stars appear in them. The telescope shows them to be openings into a milky way or paths of star dust, groups of heavenly bodies so many and so distant that their light is confused. Hence these openings in the bright heavens have the appearance of clouds, though they are not clouds; but the light which is in them is darkness, its excess confusing the irradiation.
You can have sea water brought to your room for sponge baths, or there is easy access to a room in the ship fitted up with all the conveniences for bathing. The men pour water through a hole on deck into a reservoir over head; pure sea water; the quantity making you remember the saying of Horace, ‘Dulce est detrahere acervo’,—It is pleasant to draw from a heap. In the Gulf Stream the water would suit those who must dip their razors into warm water. All who wish for cold baths will have them as they get further North. You have a sense of affluence in drawing on the Atlantic for your morning bath.
It is interesting to meet birds hundreds of miles from land. When the ship is going at her greatest speed, twelve or thirteen miles an hour, these birds fly faster, some of them forty and fifty miles, making you feel how they surpass man in all his means of speed. One is astonished at their quickness of sight. You throw pieces of paper, for example, overboard, and though you have not been able for half an hour to see a bird, straightway they will come one by one around you, but you cannot tell whence. Their sharpness of sight also is marvellous, shown in their discovering fishes beneath the surface of the water, even when the sea is troubled.
A ship’s work is never done. All the time something is giving way and must be repaired; the sails are to be patched, ropes replaced, and day and night orders issue for taking in or making sail. None in particular are designated for ordinary work, but the order is given to the watch on deck: “Go aloft, some of you, and do this or that,” when they all spring into the shrouds; and when it is seen that enough are on their way the hindmost fall back.
In good weather, the sails which need mending are spread on the deck and subjected to the needle. The thimble instead of being on a finger is fixed on a leather “palm,” which is drawn over the hand and affords the means of giving a strong push. It is composing to sit by and watch the sewing, or to lie in your hammock soothed by the measured monotony of the stitching and the plashing water. It is doubtful whether anything furnishes an invalid with more complete repose than a life on board a well-appointed sailing ship.
The captain sent a man aloft at six A. M. to look for land. In fifteen minutes he called down, Land ho! It was Roccas Keys, one of the eastern projections of South America, about four miles from us. The white rollers soon showed themselves, with rocks behind the breakers. It was a pleasant sight in the morning sun, a relief after seeing nothing for a long time but the seemingly endless waters. A current had set in, but we were still in fifty fathoms of water. After watching the breakers an hour they disappeared. At four P. M. the captain thinking that we were too near the shore to pass Cape St. Rocque and Cape St. Augustine, tacked for two and a half hours, which made him feel sure of clearing the land in the night.
The twenty-fifth of November was a beautiful day in contrast to the probable state of the climate at home, and calling us all on deck. One of the passengers sat plying her needle on the chief signal flag, another writing, one enjoying the soothing influences of the day in his hammock, the captain fixing his signals with a contrivance for keeping them separate and easily handled. Soft airs were about us. The clouds showed that we were in the trade wind region. Instead of banks of clouds and thunderheads there were innumerable fleecy clouds, mostly small, giving a calm look to the heavens. We seldom see this for a long time on land. We are in all respects the larger part of the time as if we were in a pleasure boat. No doubt other ships would awaken as agreeable sensations, but we are much of the time impressed with the gracefulness of our ship’s motions. We are instructed that this is owing in part to the stowage. She is not too much “by the head” nor “by the stern;” yet, after all, there is sometimes an indescribable air of beauty in a craft which the wisest builder will fail to define or to account for, while every one sees and feels it. Wholly ignorant of niceties in the art of steering, I soon learned by the action of the ship that it made a difference in her behavior whether one man or another were at the wheel. Many a time have I been so impressed with the way in which the ship rode the waves that I have left my seat to see who was steering, and have found that Nelson was having his trick at the wheel. Nelson is a tall sailor, about fifty years of age, an American, not always as exemplary on shore for his temperate habits as at sea he is skillful in his profession. He has the eye and hand of a marksman in encountering groundswells, running through chop seas; making me think of the gallant manner in which some policemen help ladies cross the thoroughfares.
For nearly a month we have had quiet nights. Sleep is as deep and dreams as natural as on shore. Bed time is at half past nine and breakfast at half past seven. Going to sleep or waking in the night knowing that a mate and fifteen men are up and round about you and will be succeeded once in four hours by others, it is not strange that you should have a feeling of repose. It is useless for you to have an anxious thought. You could not go up to the royals nor out to the jib in an emergency; these men will go for you. How would it do at home to feel that angels who excel in strength are in the dwelling, in the cars, being caused to fly swiftly to keep you in all your ways?
We spent the afternoon on deck watching the waves, they being fairly entitled to the designation of billows. The sea was white with foam, though the day was fine; while round about the ship the eddying water presented numberless forms of beauty. These words by one of the poets are sometimes as true of sea water as of fresh: