While thus engaged, an old sailor on a chest just under me was puffing out volumes of tobacco smoke. My supper finished, he brushed the stem of his sooty pipe against the sleeve of his frock, and politely waved it toward me. The attention was sailor-like; as for the nicety of the thing, no man who has lived in forecastles is at all fastidious; and so, after a few vigorous whiffs to induce repose, I turned over and tried my best to forget myself. But in vain. My crib, instead of extending fore and aft, as it should have done, was placed athwart ships, that is, at right angles to the keel, and the vessel, going before the wind, rolled to such a degree, that-every time my heels went up and my head went down, I thought I was on the point of turning a somerset. Beside this, there were still more annoying causes of inquietude; and every once in a while a splash of water came down the open scuttle, and flung the spray in my face.
At last, after a sleepless night, broken twice by the merciless call of the watch, a peep of daylight struggled into view from above, and someone came below. It was my old friend with the pipe.
“Here, shipmate,” said I, “help me out of this place, and let me go on deck.”
“Halloa, who’s that croaking?” was the rejoinder, as he peered into the obscurity where I lay. “Ay, Typee, my king of the cannibals, is it you I But I say, my lad, how’s that spar of your’n? the mate says it’s in a devil of a way; and last night set the steward to sharpening the handsaw: hope he won’t have the carving of ye.”
Long before daylight we arrived off the bay of Nukuheva, and making short tacks until morning, we then ran in and sent a boat ashore with the natives who had brought me to the ship. Upon its return, we made sail again, and stood off from the land. There was a fine breeze; and notwithstanding my bad night’s rest, the cool, fresh air of a morning at sea was so bracing, mat, as soon as I breathed it, my spirits rose at once.
Seated upon the windlass the greater portion of the day, and chatting freely with the men, I learned the history of the voyage thus far, and everything respecting the ship and its present condition.
These matters I will now throw together in the next chapter.
CHAPTER II.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE SHIP
First and foremost, I must give some account of the Julia herself; or “Little Jule,” as the sailors familiarly styled her.
She was a small barque of a beautiful model, something more than two hundred tons, Yankee-built and very old. Fitted for a privateer out of a New England port during the war of 1812, she had been captured at sea by a British cruiser, and, after seeing all sorts of service, was at last employed as a government packet in the Australian seas. Being condemned, however, about two years previous, she was purchased at auction by a house in Sydney, who, after some slight repairs, dispatched her on the present voyage.