In the midst of these conjectures some one of the passengers screamed and sprang from near the stairway entering the cabin, when it was discovered, to the thrilling amazement of all, that one of the bears had pawed open the hatchway, and was descending into the cabin! The ladies’ salon, beyond the cabin, was the refuge to which the instant rush was making, when the always good and musical sound of the captain’s voice was recognized. “Why! you don’t think I’m a grizly bear, do you?” The good fellow! he didn’t intend to frighten anybody. He had just raised the hatch and came down to get a little breath and a “drop to drink.” He is as unlike to a grizly bear as any one else in the world, both in looks and in disposition; but he happened to have on for the occasion a black oil-cloth hood or cap, which was tied under the chin; and a jacket covered with long fur on the outside, making his figure (which was of goodly size, and which just filled the gangway), with a little of the lively imagination belonging to such moments, look the counterpart of a grizly bear. “Where’s Catlin?” said he; “damn the bears!” “Are they out?” cried the passengers all together. “Out?—yes; they have eaten one man already, and another was knocked overboard with a handspike; he was mistaken for one of the bears. We are all in a mess on deck—it’s so dark we can’t see each other—the men are all aloft in the rigging. Steward! give me a glass of brandy-and-water—the ship must be managed, and I must go on deck. Keep close below here, and keep the hatches down, for the bruins are sick of the scene, and pawing about for a burrow in the ground, and will have the hatches up in a moment if you don’t look to them. Where’s Catlin?” “We don’t know,” was the reply from many mouths; “he is not in the cabin.”
“Will, here, Misther Captain, yer honour, I’ll till ye,” said a poor fellow, who in the general fright and flight had tumbled himself by accident into the cabin, and observed sullen silence until the present moment; “I’ll jist till ye—I saw Misther Cathlin (I sippose he’s the jintleman that owns the bastes) and his mon Dan (for I’ve known Dan for these many a long year in ould Amiriky, and I now he has chargin o’ the bears on board); I saw the two, God bliss them, when the bastes was about gettin their hinder parts out of the cage, stannin on the side jisth before ’em, Misther Cathlin with his double-barrel gun, and his mon Dan pointin at ’em in the face, with a pistol in each hand; and this was jist whin I heard they were outh, and I jimped down here jist in the wrong place, as I am after observin when it is too late, and I hope there is no offence to your honour.”
“Catlin’s gone then,” said the captain; “he is swallowed!”
The captain was at his post again, the hatches closed, and in the midst of dozing, and praying, and singing (and occasionally the hideous howlings of the grizlies whenever a wave made a breach over the deck of the vessel) was passed away that night of alarm and despair, until the rays of the morning’s sun having chased away the mist and assuaged the fury of the storm, had brought all hands together on the deck, and in the midst of them the cheerful face of our good captain; and in their huge cage, which had been driven from one side of the deck to the other, but now adjusted, sitting upon their haunches, with the most jaded and humiliating looks imaginable, as they gazed between their iron bars, their two grizly majesties, who had hurt nobody during the night, nor in all probability had meditated anything worse or more sinful than an escape, if possible, from the imprisonment and danger they considered themselves unfortunately in.
In the general alarm and scramble on deck in the forepart of the night, the total darkness having been such that it was impossible to tell whether the bears were out of their cage or not, and quite impossible to make one’s way to the quarter-deck, unaccustomed to the shapes of things to be passed over, “Misther Cathlin” had dropped himself into the steerage as the nearest refuge, just before the hatch was fastened down for the night. Any place, and anything under deck at that time, was acceptable; and even at so perilous a moment, and amidst such alarming apprehensions, I drew a fund of amusement from the scenes and conversations around me. The circumstance of sixty passengers, men, women, and children, being stowed into so small a compass, and to so familiar an acquaintance, would have been alone, and under different circumstances, a subject of curious interest for a stranger so suddenly to be introduced to; but to be dropped into the midst of such a group in the middle of the night, in the thickest of a raging tempest, and the hour of danger, when some were in bed—some upon their knees at their prayers—others making the most of the few remaining drops of brandy they had brought with them, and others were playing at cards and enjoying their jokes, and all together just rescued from the jaws and the claws of the bears over their heads, was one of no common occurrence, and worthy at least of a few passing remarks.
The wailings of the poor fellow whose wife had got into the cabin were incessant, and not much inferior to the howlings of the grizlies on deck. She had been put into my berth, and I had had the privilege of “turning in” with her disconsolate husband, if I had seen fit to have done so, or if his writhings and contortions had not taken up full twice the space allotted to him. It was known and told to him by some of his comrades, that they saw his wife go into the cabin, and that she was safe. “Yis,” said he, “but I’m unasy, I’m not asy about her, d’ye see; I don’t fale asy as she’s there, God knows where, along with those jintlemen.”
Amongst the passengers in this part of the vessel I at once found myself alongside of at least two very eccentric characters. The one, I afterwards learned, was familiarly called by the passengers “the little Irishman in black,” and the other “the half-Englishman, or broken-down swell.”
The first of these two eccentrics was a squatty little gentleman of about four feet nine inches elevation, and between two and three feet breadth of beam, with a wrinkled face and excessively sharp features. To be all in black he showed no signs of a shirt, though he was decently clad, but in black from head to foot, being in mourning, as he said, for “his son who had emigratin to Amiriky fifteen years sin, and livin there jist long enough to become a native, had died and leaven of a fortin, which he had been over to sittle up and receivin, with which he was recrossin the ocean to his native country.” He said he wished to be rispectable and dacent, havin received 12,000 dollars; and as he thought the dacent thing was in “payin,” now-a-days, he had paid for a berth in the cabin, but preferred to ride in the steerage. He made and found much amusement in that part of the vessel with his congenial spirits, and seemed peculiarly happy in the close communication with the other oddity of the steerage, whom I have said the passengers called the half-Englishman, or broken-down swell, who, I learned from my man Daniel, had laid in three barrels of old English porter, in bottles, when leaving the city of New York, and the last of which they were now opening and making the whole company merry with, as a sort of thanksgiving on their lucky escape from the grizly bears, who they firmly believed held possession of everything on the vessel outside of the hatchway.
This eccentric and droll, but good-natured gentleman, with the aid of porter made much amusement in the steerage, even in the hour of alarm; and though I did not at that time know his calibre, or exactly what to make of him, I afterwards learned that he was an English cockney who had been on a tour through the States, and was now on his way back to his fatherland. He had many amusing notions and anecdotes to relate of the Yankees, and in his good-natured mellowness told a very good one of himself, much to the amusement of the Yankees on board, and the little Irishman in black, and my man Daniel. He said that “the greatest luxury he found in New York were the hoisters, and much as he liked them he had eaten them for two years before he had learned whether they were spelled with a haitch or a ho.” Much valuable time would be lost to the reader if I were to chain him down to the rest of the incidents that happened between the middle of the ocean and Liverpool; and I meet him there at the beginning of my next chapter.