[CHAPTER VI.]
The Leucothea crept timidly out of the harbour, like a mouse out of its hole; but had scarcely got to sea, when one of the Northers that prevail at that season was upon us, and drove us far to the south. Thus each time, on leaving port, we had met with storms; and each time I had suffered from a renewal of sea-sickness, though far less severely on each successive occasion. The young Scot, who had shared my stateroom since leaving Rio, had now sold his berth to an American named Lewis, and taken up his quarters with the first mate, of whom he was an old friend and crony.
Lewis was about thirty-five years of age, of a slender habit, and a genteel sort of stoop, as if constantly afflicted with the stomach-ache. He possessed the most remarkable faculty of exaggeration, which he began to display almost as soon as his foot touched the deck. It was generally boastful, or egotistical; but, sometimes, free from the least taint or alloy, as if the habit had become so confirmed that he continued to indulge in it even when no motive could be detected. He had been a sailor, and engaged for many months in the opium trade on the coast of China, but, several years before, had settled in Chili, where he had since enjoyed great consideration as a master mechanic.
It was not to be expected that such a stick of drift wood should remain long in one place, especially in the height of such a freshet as was now sweeping past. He came on board with a large chest of sandal wood, a Spanish sarape, and a pick-axe about a foot in length, that looked more like a plaything for children than an instrument for the hard hands of a California miner. But he had not been long in the ship before the little pick-axe was regarded with a sort of mysterious envy by all those who had been unfortunate enough to provide themselves with the common two handed implement. In his hands it seemed the key which was to unlock those sumless and sunless treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth. It was a nut-picker, with which he intended to pick out the yellow meat from its stony shell. He was not going to burden himself with pan or rocker; but, with his pockets stuffed with provisions, his sarape on his back, a big leathern pouch in one hand, and his little pick-axe in the other, he would roam leisurely and pleasantly among the mountains and over the plains for two or three months; when he should have as much gold, so he said, as he knew what to do with. He had acquaintance, Chilians, who had been there before, who had promised to take him to places where there would be hardly enough difficulty in the work to make it pleasant.
All this seemed, by some strange necromancy, to grow out of that mysterious instrument; and, as I lay in my berth listening to his droning narrative of what he had heard, and what he intended to do, I was sometimes tempted to steal it while he slept. My envy, however, was somewhat allayed by his consolatory assurances that, even without such aid, I could make a very handsome fortune. Having hinted to him one day my modest expectations, "Humph," he said, in a tone that seemed to imply a degree of contempt for such poverty of spirits, "Humph! if that's all, there's no danger but what you'll make it fast enough; the least you can do is to dig fifty thousand this summer." If any one else had made this assertion, it would have carried no weight with it; but his manner was so imposing, and then there was the little pick-axe—it seemed to give a sort of authority in such matters. I felt grateful to him as if he had said, "I give you, out of the nobleness and generosity of my disposition, so many thousands."
Such stories, constantly repeated, could not fail to have their effect; the excitement in the ship visibly increased, and Lewis, by virtue of his superior knowledge, arrogated to himself prodigious importance. Meeting him on shore, a few days after we landed at San Francisco, I asked him when he was going to the mines; when, to my infinite surprise and consternation, he replied that he had made up his mind not to go at all. Nothing could have given my faith such a fearful shock; but just then, when it seemed about to perish altogether, it was fortunately confirmed in a new and surprising manner, an account of which will be given hereafter. Lewis, as well as my last room-mate, was something of a literary character, and the extent of his acquirements may be inferred from the fact that Lippard, and Rev. G. Chauncey Burr—I love, as the good vicar says, to give the whole name—were his favourite authors.
The storm having, at length, blown itself out, the ship began to present a scene of unusual activity. The hurricane deck was filled with tent-makers and boat-builders, a carpenter's bench was put up amidships, and a blacksmith's forge puffed and glowed under the forward galley. Knapsacks, powder-horns, pick-axes, boatsails, hammocks, and gold-washers were made or refitted; and those who were already provided with these various articles, or expected to have no use for them, caught the busy infection, and began to schrimpschong with most laudable perseverance. Schrimpschonging is a word of most varied significance. It is derived from the low Dutch, and includes all those kinds of labour between the useful and ornamental, but verging more on the latter. Whittling is the simplest form of the disease; most kinds of ladies' work, all those ingenious inventions in silk and worsted, must be regarded as still more alarming indications. With us, it manifested itself chiefly in making ornamental dippers out of cocoanut shells, and a certain necromantic puzzle, for which one of the crew, himself a confirmed schrimpschonger, had furnished the model.
We began also at this time to compare our different plans for the approaching struggle, all different, but all alike monstrous and impossible. From my present advanced position I look back upon our ignorant simplicity, with smiling pity, as if I possessed a duplicate personality, and had, in my present self, no concern in any of those absurd fictions that then imposed themselves upon us for truth.