LETTER II.
At Sea, October 20.—We have had fine weather for progress, so far, running with north and north-westerly winds from eight to ten knots an hour, and making, of course, over two hundred miles a day. The sea is still rough; and though the brig is light laden and rides very buoyantly, these mounting waves break over us now and then with a tremendous surge, keeping the decks constantly wet, and putting me to many an uncomfortable shiver. I have become reconciled, however, to much that I should have anticipated with no little horror. I can lie in my berth forty-eight hours, if the weather is chill or rainy, and amuse myself very well with talking bad French across the cabin to the captain, or laughing at the distresses of my friend and fellow-passenger, Turk (a fine setter dog, on his first voyage), or inventing some disguise for the peculiar flavor which that dismal cook gives to all his abominations, or, at worst, I can bury my head in my pillow, and brace from one side to the other against the swell, and enjoy my disturbed thoughts—all without losing my temper, or wishing that I had not undertaken the voyage.
Poor Turk! his philosophy is more severely tried. He has been bred a gentleman, and is amusingly exclusive. No assiduities can win him to take the least notice of the crew, and I soon discovered, that, when the captain and myself were below, he endured many a persecution. In an evil hour, a night or two since, I suffered his earnest appeals for freedom to work upon my feelings, and, releasing him from his chain under the windlass, I gave him the liberty of the cabin. He slept very quietly on the floor till about midnight, when the wind rose and the vessel began to roll very uncomfortably. With the first heavy lurch a couple of chairs went tumbling to leeward, and by the yelp of distress, Turk was somewhere in the way. He changed his position, and, with the next roll, the mate's trunk "brought away," and shooting across the cabin, jammed him with such violence against the captain's state-room door, that he sprang howling to the deck, where the first thing that met him was a washing sea, just taken in at midships, that kept him swimming above the hatches for five minutes. Half-drowned, and with a gallon of water in his long hair, he took again to the cabin, and making a desperate leap into the steward's berth, crouched down beside the sleeping creole with a long whine of satisfaction. The water soon penetrated however, and with a "sacré!" and a blow that he will remember for the remainder of the voyage, the poor dog was again driven from the cabin, and I heard no more of him till morning. His decided preference for me has since touched my vanity, and I have taken him under my more special protection—a circumstance which costs me two quarrels a day at least, with the cook and steward.
The only thing which forced a smile upon me during the first week of the passage was the achievement of dinner. In rough weather, it is as much as one person can do to keep his place at the table at all; and to guard the dishes, bottles, and castors, from a general slide in the direction of the lurch, requires a sleight and coolness reserved only for a sailor. "Prenez garde!" shouts the captain, as the sea strikes, and in the twinkling of an eye, everything is seized and held up to wait for the other lurch in attitudes which it would puzzle the pencil of Johnson to exaggerate. With his plate of soup in one hand, and the larboard end of the tureen in the other, the claret bottle between his teeth, and the crook of his elbow caught around the mounting corner of the table, the captain maintains his seat upon the transom, and, with a look of the most grave concern, keeps a wary eye on the shifting level of his vermicelli; the old weather-beaten mate, with the alacrity of a juggler, makes a long leg back to the cabin panels at the same moment, and with his breast against the table, takes his own plate and the castors, and one or two of the smaller dishes under his charge; and the steward, if he can keep his legs, looks out for the vegetables, or if he falls, makes as wide a lap as possible to intercept the volant articles in their descent. "Gentlemen that live at home at ease" forget to thank Providence for the blessings of a permanent level.
Oct. 24.—We are on the Grand Bank, and surrounded by hundreds of sea-birds. I have been watching them nearly all day. Their performances on the wing are certainly the perfection of grace and skill. With the steadiness of an eagle and the nice adroitness of a swallow, they wheel round in their constant circles with an arrowy swiftness, lifting their long tapering pinions scarce perceptibly, and mounting and falling as if by a mere act of volition, without the slightest apparent exertion of power. Their chief enjoyment seems to be to scoop through the deep hollows of the sea, and they do it so quickly that your eye can scarce follow them, just disturbing the polish of the smooth crescent, and leaving a fine line of ripple from swell to swell, but never wetting a wing, or dipping their white breasts a feather too deep in the capricious and wind-driven surface. I feel a strange interest in these wild-hearted birds. There is something in this fearless instinct, leading them away from the protecting and pleasant land to make their home on this tossing and desolate element, that moves both my admiration and my pity. I cannot comprehend it. It is unlike the self-caring instincts of the other families of Heaven's creatures. If I were half the Pythagorean that I used to be, I should believe they were souls in punishment—expiating some lifetime sin in this restless metempsychosis.
Now and then a land-bird has flown on board, driven to sea probably by the gale; and so fatigued as hardly to be able to rise again upon the wing. Yesterday morning a large curlew came struggling down the wind, and seemed to have just sufficient strength to reach the vessel. He attempted to alight on the main yard, but failed and dropped heavily into the long-boat, where he suffered himself to be taken without an attempt to escape. He must have been on the wing two or three days without food, for we were at least two hundred miles from land. His heart was throbbing hard through his ruffled feathers, and he held his head up with difficulty. He was passed aft; but, while I was deliberating on the best means for resuscitating and fitting him to get on the wing again, the captain had taken him from me and handed him over to the cook, who had his head off before I could remember French enough to arrest him. I dreamed all that night of the man "that shot the albatross." The captain relieved my mind, however, by telling me that he had tried repeatedly to preserve them, and that they died invariably in a few hours. The least food, in their exhausted state, swells in their throats and suffocates them. Poor Curlew! there was a tenderness in one breast for him at least—a feeling I have the melancholy satisfaction to know, fully reciprocated by the bird himself—that seat of his affections having been allotted to me for my breakfast the morning succeeding his demise.
Oct. 29.—We have a tandem of whales ahead. They have been playing about the ship an hour, and now are coursing away to the east, one after the other, in gallant style. If we could only get them into traces now, how beautiful it would be to stand in the foretop and drive a degree or two, on a summer sea! It would not be more wonderful, de novo, than the discovery of the lightning-rod, or navigation by steam! And by the way, the sight of these huge creatures has made me realize, for the first time, the extent to which the sea has grown upon my mind during the voyage. I have seen one or two whales, exhibited in the docks, and it seemed to me always that they were monsters—out of proportion, entirely, to the range of the ocean. I had been accustomed to look out to the horizon from land (the radius, of course, as great as at sea), and, calculating the probable speed with which they would compass the intervening space, and the disturbance they would make in doing it, it appeared that in any considerable numbers, they would occupy more than their share of notice and sea-room. Now—after sailing five days, at two hundred miles a day, and not meeting a single vessel—it seems to me that a troop of a thousand might swim the sea a century and chance to be never crossed, so endlessly does this eternal horizon open and stretch away!
Oct. 30.—The day has passed more pleasantly than usual The man at the helm cried "a sail," while we were at breakfast, and we gradually overtook a large ship, standing on the same course, with every sail set. We were passing half a mile to leeward, when she put up her helm and ran down to us, hoisting the English flag. We raised the "star-spangled banner" in answer, and "hove to," and she came dashing along our quarter, heaving most majestically to the sea, till she was near enough to speak us without a trumpet. Her fore-deck was covered with sailors dressed all alike and very neatly, and around the gangway stood a large group of officers in uniform, the oldest of whom, a noble-looking man with gray hair, hailed and answered us. Several ladies stood back by the cabin door—passengers apparently. She was a man of war, sailing as a king's packet between Halifax and Falmouth, and had been out from the former port nineteen days. After the usual courtesies had passed, she bore away a little, and then kept on her course again, the two vessels in company at the distance of half a pistol shot. I rarely have seen a more beautiful sight. The fine effect of a ship under sail is entirely lost to one on board, and it is only at sea and under circumstances like these, that it can be observed. The power of the swell, lifting such a huge body as lightly as an egg-shell on its bosom, and tossing it sometimes half out of the water without the slightest apparent effort, is astonishing. I sat on deck watching her with undiminished interest for hours. Apart from the spectacle, the feeling of companionship, meeting human beings in the middle of the ocean after so long a deprivation of society (five days without seeing a sail, and nearly three weeks unspoken from land), was delightful. Our brig was the faster sailer of the two, but our captain took in some of his canvas for company's sake; and all the afternoon we heard her half-hour bells, and the boatswain's whistle, and the orders of the officers of the deck, and I could distinguish very well, with a glass, the expression of the faces watching our own really beautiful vessel as she skimmed over the water like a bird. We parted at sunset, the man-of-war making northerly for her port, and we stretching south for the coast of France. I watched her till she went over the horizon, and felt as if I had lost friends when the night closed in and we were once more
"Alone on the wide, wide sea."
Nov. 3.—We have just made the port of Havre, and the pilot tells us that the packet has been delayed by contrary winds, and sails early to-morrow morning. The town bells are ringing "nine" (as delightful a sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I close in haste, for all is confusion on board.