“Well, now,” said one of the party, “this is funny enough—Justice Gobble is turned Experimental Philosopher; who would have thought it?” and off they scattered to laugh at something else—light-hearted, and careless of all things about them—up to any mischief or any business, and gradually forming themselves, by an involuntary process, for the right performance of those varied duties which belong to their calling, and which, like the elements they have to deal with, are scarcely ever two days alike.
Some of these lads had a turn for mechanics, some for navigation; others devoted much of their time to rigging, and different branches of seamanship—their hands being constantly in the tar-bucket. A few applied themselves to reading and drawing; several desperate hands stuck resolutely to the flute; one or two thought of nothing but dress; and a few swore a pretty steady friendship to the grog-bottle; while every now and then a sentimental youth deemed himself inspired, and wrote execrable verses which we thought capital. By far the greater number of these promising young men have found graves, some on land—some in the deep sea!
On crossing the banks of Newfoundland the ship was hove to, for the purpose of sounding; and the quarter-master having tied a baited hook to the deep-sea lead, a noble cod was drawn to the surface, from the depth of ninety fathoms. Upon this hint, the captain, very considerately, agreed to lie by for an hour or two; and some fifty lines being put over, the decks were soon covered, fore and aft, with such a display of fish as Bilingsgate has rarely witnessed.
People who know nothing of a sea life fancy that fish is not a rarity with us; but there is nothing of which we taste so little; so that the greatest treat by far, when we come into port, is a dish of fresh soles or mackerel; and even the commonest fish that swims is looked upon as a treasure. It is only in soundings that any are to be met with; for, in the open and bottomless ocean, we meet with nothing but whales, porpoises, dolphins, sharks, bonitas, and flying fish. I shall, perhaps, have occasion to describe the mode of catching, dressing, and eating, all of these: for we demolish them all, excepting only the shark, between which and the sailors there rages an interminable war—something not unlike that which exists, from age to age, between the Indians and the Esquimaux—in which the sharks may be compared to the Indians, who eat their prisoners, and we to the Esquimaux, who only kill their captives, but prefer eating something else.
I never could conceive, or even form a probable conjecture, how it is that some persons manage to catch fish, and others none. It is easy to understand, that in angling, a certain degree of skill, or choice of situation, may determine the probable amount of success. But when a line is let down to the depth of eighty or a hundred fathoms, or even to twenty or thirty feet, quite out of sight, what has skill to do there? And yet, in a ship, on the banks of Newfoundland, or in a boat on the Thrumcap shoals in Halifax harbour, I have seen one man hauling in cods or haddocks as fast as he could bait his hooks; while others, similarly circumstanced in all apparent respects, might fret and fidget for half a day without getting more than a nibble.
There can be no doubt, of course, that intellectual power must be in operation at one end of the line, otherwise no fish will come to the other; but the puzzle is, by what mysterious process can human intelligence manage to find its way, like electricity, down the line to the bottom of the sea? I have often asked successful fishermen what they did to make the fish bite; but they could seldom give any available answer. Sometimes they said it depended on the bait. “Well, then,” I have answered, “let me take your line, and do you take mine.” But in two minutes after we had changed places, my companion was pulling in his fish as fast as before, while not a twitch was given to my new line, though, just before, the fish appeared to be jostling one another for the honour of my friend’s hook, to the total neglect of that which had been mine, now in high vogue amongst them.
There is some trick, or sleight of hand, I suppose, by which a certain kind of motion is given to the bait, so as to assimilate it to that of the worms which the fishes most affect in their ordinary researches for food. But, probably, this art is no more to be taught by description, or to be learnt without the drudgery of practice, than the dexterity with which an artist represents nature, or a dancer performs pirouettes. Uninstructed persons, therefore, who, like myself, lose patience because they cannot catch fish at the first cast of the line, had better turn their attention to something else.
Almost the only one I ever caught was during this first voyage across the Atlantic, when, after my line had been down a whole weary hour, I drew it up in despair. It felt so light, that I imagined the line must have been accidentally broken; but presently, and greatly to my astonishment, I beheld a huge cod float to the top, swollen to twice the usual dimensions by the expansion of its sound, as the air-bag is called, which lies along the back-bone. At the depth of eighty or ninety fathoms, this singular apparatus is compressed by the enormous addition of fifteen or sixteen atmospheres. But when the air is relieved of this weight, by approaching the surface, the strength of the muscles proves inadequate to retain it in its condensed form; and its consequent expansion not only kills the fish, but often bursts it open as completely as if it had been blown up with gunpowder.
After a passage of about six weeks, we reached Halifax, in Nova Scotia; and I can perfectly recollect the feelings with which I first put my foot on shore in the New World. “At last,” I said to myself, “I am decidedly abroad; and it shall go hard with me but this round globe shall be well tramped over by these feet before I rest!” This resolution has been tolerably well kept; but it is perhaps worthy of remark, that almost the whole of the journeys alluded to have been accomplished in the jog-trot routine of professional avocations, and generally without any express design on my part. It is true I once took a hasty scamper over Europe, and, more lately, a deliberate jaunt in North America; but with these exceptions, and a small trip to Prince Edward’s Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to which I shall possibly advert again,—every league of my voyaging and travelling has been at the expense of His Majesty, that is to say, in the exercise of purely professional duties.
I have mentioned this, merely because I think it furnishes a sort of encouragement to naval officers, of all ranks and ages, who, unless they be very stupid, or very unfortunate, or both, may, in the course of their lives, probably have nearly as ample means of observation in foreign parts, as if they had been born to fortunes, and spent them in the sole occupation of travelling. It is surely a pleasant affair to be carried about from place to place free of cost; and perhaps there is also some advantage in our being thus tossed about without any free choice of our own. There is often bitter disappointment, it is true, in being hurried away before our remarks are half made, with our curiosity only half satisfied, to be plunged into new scenes, piping hot from those we have left. But by this means the attention is kept briskly alive; and the powers of observation, being forced to act on the instant, are certainly rendered more acute. From so much, and such varied practice, also, the mind becomes more decided and clear, as well as more prompt, in its conclusions. And in consequence of this accumulation of knowledge, every new country visited appears to be more fertile than the last in objects of interest, till at length the field of view seems so thickly crowded, that the naval traveller, instead of having to search for materials, is generally overpowered by their abundance, and scarcely knows which to lay his hand upon, in order to describe the effect produced.