A YOUNG SAILOR’S EXPERIENCE.
One who had been several years before the mast and afterwards successively third, second, first mate, lately said to me, “When a young man, standing on the top gallant forecastle, leaning against the forestay, in a foggy day or dark night, the ship rushing into the dark unknown beyond, I sometimes thought, What if there should be an end to the sea, a precipice over which we should plunge, an undiscovered continent against which we should run! How did Columbus feel on his first voyage in a fog or in darkness? What a picture of life, its unknown future! so little the sailor knows what may be ahead of the ship; but the captain, confident in his chart, compass and reckoning, knows the way that he takes.”
I have been much affected by what the young sailor told me of his first months before the mast; how he parted with members of his family circle, the ship just taken in tow by the tug, the last line which held them to the shore cast off, he standing with his arm on the rail, his head on his hand, looking at those he loved best on earth, and thinking what scenes he should pass through in the sixteen months before he should see them, if ever, again; when he was roused from his reverie by the mate’s calling to him, “Boy, what are you standing there for? go forward and tie up those cabbages.” He saw one of his family waving a handkerchief to him; but he was ashamed to be seen answering it; the hour of sentiment had passed; he must go and tie up the cabbages. The first few nights at sea the profane, vile talk of some of the sailors at night used to keep him awake, astonished and terrified. He used to say to himself, “My God! have I come to this? Did I once have a christian home? Why did I leave it? The physician said that I must go to sea, but he could not have known what life in a forecastle is. An old sailor said to me, ‘Boy, do you know that you stepped into hell afloat, when you came here?’ Soon I managed to stop up my ears when I turned in, so as not to hear the dreadful talk.”
I said to him, “How did you help using their language and practising their wicked ways?”
He replied, “So far from corrupting me you will think it strange, perhaps, if I say that it made me more pure. I left off some things which I used to practise without compunction. But the behavior of the men showed me what I should become, if I practised any kind of wickedness. When I heard the men swear and talk ribaldry, I repeated passages of Scripture as fast as I could, said all the hymns I could remember, and I knew a good many. My sister once promised me a half dollar if I would learn the Wesminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism; I said it to her, and she gave me the money, and I used to say that Catechism over and over in bed; Effectual Calling, Justification by faith, and, What is required, and What is forbidden in each of the commandments, used to be to me in that forecastle like a cloth dipped in some aromatic liquid and pressed to my face.”
I told the young man that if he would write and publish his experience he might find, by the good that he would do, why providence led him into that bitter experience in the forecastle.
“I often think,” said he, “of those words: ‘His way is in the sea,’ for I am sure it has been so with me.”
The recollection of this narrative was forced upon me in looking into the fog as I lay in the knightheads and looked over and watched the cutwater breaking the way for the ship. But it grew cold, and I retreated to the stove.
We had a lively time in the middle of the night. The jib could not stand the gale, part of it was blown to tatters, much of it was blown away. It is a three-cornered sail, sixty feet in its extreme length. The men said that the noise of the wind among the loose sails was as though the forward part of the ship was breaking up. The watch below had turned in half an hour before, but now all hands were ordered on deck. Twenty-four men were on the main yard taking in the sail. It makes a landsman dizzy to see them standing aloft on a foot rope, the wind filling the sail and keeping it stiffly bent from them; yet they must clutch it, bring it in against the wind, holding on by the little slack which they must contrive to gather, their feet meanwhile with nothing under them but a rope. I could liken the noise of the wind and the roar of the sea only to the noise made by an express train when you are standing on a platform at a railway station. The sound sleep into which I fell was not disturbed by this uproar, but it yielded to so slight a cause as the dropping of water upon my bed. The hot weather of previous weeks had made the chinks open, and now the rain had found its way through the deck. There was no more sleep in the premises for that night. An alarm of fire is hardly less effectual in its power to wake you than the slow, measured, dripping water. The captain brought his india rubber coat, spread it over the bed, and made a place for a pool, which in the morning was filled, the tenant having been obliged to beat a retreat for the remainder of the night to a cabin sofa.
Dec. 26. We are almost round the Cape. From Lat. 50° South in the Atlantic to 50° South in the Pacific is called “round the Cape.” We are getting into the longitude of Boston, 71° W., so that time with us will be the same as with those at home, for a while.