All looked grave—the affair was becoming serious—the colonel was a known fire-eater, and Grinnerson, who saw he had overshot the mark, seemed a little disconcerted, but struggled to preserve his composure—it was a juncture well calculated to test all the powers of impudence and tact of that very forward gentleman; but, somehow or other, he did back cleverly out of the scrape, without any additional offence to the colonel’s dignity, or a farther compromise of his own, and before the cloth was removed, a magnanimous challenge to Mr. Grinnerson, “to take wine,” came from the colonel (who at bottom was a very worthy little man, though addicted, unfortunately, to the Ferdinand Mendez Pinto vein), and convinced us that happily no other sort of challenge was to be apprehended. And so ended my first day’s dinner in a high sea in the Bay of Biscay.
Now had the moon, resplendent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s pure azure shed her sacred light.
In plain prose, it was past seven bells, and I (like Mahomet’s coffin) was swinging in the steerage, forgetful of all my cares; whether in my dreams I was wandering once more, as in childhood’s days, by the flowery margin of the silver Avon, listening to the blackbird’s mellow note from the hawthorn dell—lightly footing the Spanish dance in Mangeon’s ball-room at Clifton—or comfortably sipping a cup of bohea in the family circle at home—I do not now well remember: but whatever was the nature of those sweet illusions, they were suddenly dispelled, in the dead of the night, by one of the most fearful agglomerations of stunning sounds that ever broke the slumbers of a cadet: groaning timbers—hoarse shouts—smashing crockery—falling knife-boxes—and the loud gurgling bubble of invading waters—all at once, and with terrible discord, burst upon my astonished ear. Thinking the ship was scuttling, or, that some other (to me unknown) marine disaster was befalling her, I sprung up in a state between sleeping and waking, overbalanced my cot, and was pitched out head-foremost on the deck. Here a body of water, ancle-deep, and washing to and fro, lent a startling confirmation to my apprehensions that the ship was actually in articulo immersionis. I struggled to gain my feet, knocked my naked shins against a box of saddlery of the major’s, slipped and slid about on the wet and slimy deck, and finally, my feet flying from under me, came bump down on the broadest side of my person, with stunning emphasis and effect. Another effort to gain the erect position was successful, and, determined to visit the “glimpses of the moon” once more before I became food for fishes, I hurriedly and instinctively scrambled my way towards the companion ladder. Scarcely was I in its vicinity, and holding on by a staunchion, when the vessel gave another profound roll, so deep that the said ladder, being ill-secured, fell over backwards, saluting the deck with a tremendous bang, followed by a second crash, and bubbling of waters effecting a forcible entry. Paralyzed and confounded by this succession of sounds and disasters, I turned, still groping in the darkness, to seek some information touching this uproar, from some one of the neighbouring sleepers. I soon lighted on a hammock, and tracing the mummy-case affair from the feet upwards my hands rested on a cold nose, then a rough curly pate surmounting it, whose owner, snoring with a ten-pig power, would, I verily believe, have slept on had the crash of doom been around him. “Hollo! here,” said I, giving him a shake. A grunt and a mumbled execration were all it elicited. I repeated the experiment, and having produced some symptoms of consciousness, begged earnestly to know if all I had described was an ordinary occurrence, or if we were really going to the bottom. I had now fairly roused the sleeping lion; up he started in a terrible passion; asked me what the deuce made me bother him with my nonsense at that time of night, and then, consigning me to a place whence no visitor is permitted to return, once more addressed himself to his slumbers. This refreshing sample of nautical philosophy, though rather startling, convinced me that I had mistaken the extent of the danger; in fact, there was none at all; so feeling my way back to my cot, I once more, though with becoming caution, got into it, determined, sink or swim, to have my sleep out. On rising, disorder and misery, in various shapes, a wet deck and boxes displaced, met my view; I found my coat and pantaloons pleasantly saturated with sea-water, which it appeared had entered by an open port or scuttle, and that my boots had sailed away to some unknown region on a voyage of discovery. “Oh! why did I ‘list?’” I exclaimed, in the bitterness of my discomfort; “why did I ever ‘list?’” Ye cadets, attend to the moral which this narrative conveys, and learn, by my unhappy example, always to secure your toggery, high and dry, before you turn in, and to study well the infirmities of that curious pendulum balance, the cot, lest, like me, ye be suddenly decanted therefrom on the any-thing-but-downy surface of an oaken deck!
With what feelings of delight does the youth first enter upon the fairy region of the tropics, a region which Cook and Anson, and the immortal fictions of St. Pierre and De Foe, have invested in his estimation with a sweet and imperishable charm! The very air to him is redolent of a spicy aroma, of a balmy and tranquillizing influence, whilst delicious but indefinable visions of the scenes he is about to visit—of palmy groves, and painted birds, and coral isles “in the deep sea set,” float before him in all those roseate hues with which the young and excited fancy loves to paint them. Paul and Virgina—Robinson—Friday—goats—savages and monkeys—ye are all for ever bound to my heart by the golden links of early association and acquaintanceship. Happy Juan Fernandez, too! Atalantis of the wave—Utopia of the roving imagination—how oft have I longed to abide in ye, and envied Robinson his fate—honest man of goatskins and unrivalled resources! But one ingredient, a wife, was wanting to complete your felicity; had you but rescued one of the Miss Fridays from the culinary fate designed for her brother, and made her your companion, you would have been the most comfortable fellow on record.
Griffin as I was I partook strongly of these common but delightful feelings I have attempted to describe, and in the change of climate and objects which every week’s sail brought forth, found much to interest and excite me—the shoal of flying-fish, shooting like a silver shower from the ocean, and skimming lightly over the crested waves; the gambols of the porpoise; the capture of a shark; fishing for bonetta off the bowsprit; a waterspout; speculations on a distant sail; her approach; the friendly greeting; the first and last!—were all objects and events pleasing in themselves, but doubly so when viewed in relation to the general monotony of a life at sea. Nothing, I think, delighted me more than contemplating the gorgeous sunsets, as we approached the equator. Here, in England, that luminary is a sickly affair, but particularly so when viewed through our commonly murky atmosphere, and there may be some truth in the Italian’s splenetic remark in favour of the superior warmth of the moon of his own country. But in the fervid regions of the tropics it is that we see the glorious emblem of creative power in all his pride and majesty, whether rising in his strength, “robed in flames and amber light,” ruling in meridian splendour, or sinking slowly to rest on his ocean couch of gold and crimson, in softened but ineffable refulgence; it is (but particularly in its parting aspect) an object eminently calculated to awaken the most elevated thoughts of the Creator’s power, mingled with a boundless admiration for the beauty of His works. Yes, neither language, painting, nor poetry, can adequately portray that most glorious of spectacles—a tropical sunset.
Ensign O’Shaughnessy having sworn “by all the bogs in Kerry,” that he would put a brace of pistol-balls through Neptune, or Juno, or any “sa God” of them all, that should dare to lay hands upon him; and a determination to resist the initiatory process of ducking in bilge-water, and shaving with a rusty hoop, having manifested itself in other quarters, Captain McGuffin, glad of a pretext, and really apprehensive of mischief, had it intimated to the son of Saturn and his spouse, that their visit in crossing the line would be dispensed with. In so doing, it appears to me that he exercised a wise discretion; Neptune’s tomfooleries, at least when carried to their usual extent, being one of those ridiculous customs “more honoured in the breach than in the observance;” one which may well be allowed to sleep with “Maid Marian,” “the Lord of Misrule” and other samples of the “wisdom of our ancestors,” who were emphatically but “children of a larger growth,” to whom horse play and “tinsel” were most attractive. On crossing the equator, however, the old but more harmless joke of exhibiting the line through a telescope was played off on one greenhorn, sufficiently soft to admit of its taking effect.
“Do you make it out, Jones?” said Grinnerson, who had got up the scene, to one of the middys, a youngster intently engaged in reconnoitering through a glass half as long as himself.
“I think I do, sir,” said Jones, with a difficultly-suppressed grin.
“What is he looking for?” asked the simple victim.