The Bristol water is invaluable, the ship water very black, and it smells vilely. I knew not before the value of good water; and, were it not for the shower bath, should be apt to wish myself where Truth is—at the bottom of a well.
Yesterday such a noise arose on deck, it brought me to the scene of action in a minute: “Come here! come here! look! look! There they go, like a pack of hounds in full cry!” I did come, and I did look; and there were some hundred of skip-jacks leaping out of the water, and following each other with great rapidity across the head of the ship. When many fish leaped up together, there was such laughing, shouting, pointing, and gazing, from four hundred full-grown people, it was absurd to see how much amusement the poor fish occasioned. I looked alternately at the fish and the people, and laughed at both.
A kind of rash teases me; in these latitudes they call it prickly heat, vow you cannot be healthy without it, and affirm that every one ought to be glad to have it. So am not I.
Having beaten about the line for a fortnight, with a contrary wind, at length we entertained hopes of crossing it, and letters were received on board from Neptune and Amphitrite, requesting to be supplied with clothes, having lost their own in a gale of wind.
July 30th.—Neptune and his lady came on board to acquaint the captain they would visit him in form the next day. The captain wished the god good night, when instantly the deck was deluged with showers of water from the main-top, while a flaming tar-barrel was thrown overboard, in which Neptune was supposed to have vanished in flame and water.
July 31st.—At 9 A.M. the private soldiers who were not to be shaved were stationed on the poop with their wives; on the quarter-deck the officers and ladies awaited the arrival of the ocean-god. First in procession marched the band, playing “God save the King;” several grotesque figures followed; then came the car of Neptune—a gun-carriage—with such a creature for a coachman! The carriage was drawn by six half-naked seamen, painted to represent Tritons, who were chained to the vehicle. We beheld the monarch and his bride, seated in the car, with a lovely girl, whom he called his tender offspring. These ladies were represented by the most brawny, muscular, ugly and powerful fellows in the ship; the letters requesting female attire having procured an abundance of finery. The boatswain’s mate, a powerful man, naked to the waist, with a pasteboard crown upon his head and his speaking-trumpet in his hand, who represented Neptune, descended from his car, and offered the captain two fowls as tropical birds, and a salted fish on the end of a trident, lamenting that the late boisterous weather had prevented his bringing any fresh. A doctor, a barber with a notched razor, a sea-bear and its keeper, closed the procession.
Re-ascending the car, they took their station in front of the poop, and a rope was drawn across the deck to represent the line. Neptune then summoned the colonel-commandant of the Lancers to his presence, who informed him he had before entered his dominions. The major was then conducted, by a fellow calling himself a constable, to the foot of the car: he went up, expecting to be shaved, but the sea god desired him to present his wife to Amphitrite. After the introduction they were both dismissed.
My husband and myself were then summoned: he pleaded having crossed the line before. Neptune said that would not avail, as his lady had entered the small latitudes for the first time. After a laughable discussion, of to be shaved or not to be shaved, we were allowed to retire. The remainder of the passengers were summoned in turn. The sentence of shaving was passed upon all who had not crossed the line, but not carried into execution on the officers of the ship. The crew were shaved and ducked in form, and in all good humour. In the mean time the fire-engine drenched every body on deck, and the officers and passengers amused themselves for hours throwing water over each other from buckets. Imagine four hundred people ducking one another, and you may have some idea of the frolic. In the evening the sailors danced, sang, recited verses, and spliced the main brace[9], until very late, and the day ended as jovially as it began. Several times they charmed us with an appropriate song, roared at the utmost pitch of their stentorian lungs, to the tune of “There’s na luck about the house.”
“We’ll lather away, and shave away,
And lather away so fine,