In such companionship then did I find myself—I just fresh from the tender protection of parents—from the company of kind friends, and associates. Oh! I was well cured of the sea fever, and would have given half my life to be on land again! How I reproached myself for my folly! How I reproached that friend of the family—the old salt—whose visionary adventures had no doubt been the cause of my sea longings! how in my heart I now execrated both him, and his fanciful stories! Would I had never heard them! would that I had never run away to sea!
Repentance had arrived too late to be of any use. I could no longer return—I must go on, and how long? merciful heaven, the prospect was horrible! Months of my painful life were to be endured. Months! nay years,—for I now remembered that the wretch of a captain had caused me to sign some agreement—I had not even read it, but I knew it was an article of indenture; and I was told afterwards that it bound me for years—for five long years—bound me not an apprentice but in reality a slave. A slave for five years to this hideous brute, who might scold me at will, cuff me at will, kick me at will, have me flogged or put in irons whenever the fancy crossed his mind.
There was no retreating from these hard conditions. Filled with bright visions of “life on the ocean wave,” I had subscribed to them without pause or thought. My name was down, and I was legally bound. So they told me both captain and mate, and I believed it.
I could not escape, no matter how severe the treatment. Should I attempt to run away from the ship, it would be desertion. I could be brought back and punished for it. Even in a foreign port the chances of desertion would be no better, but worse, since there the sailor finds it more difficult to conceal himself. I had no hope then of escaping from the cruel thrall in which I now found myself, but by putting an end to my existence, either by jumping into the sea or hanging myself from the yard-arm—a purpose which on more than one occasion I seriously entertained; but from which I was diverted by the religious teachings of my youth, now remembered in the midst of my misery.
It would be impossible for me to detail the number of cruelties and indignities to which I was forced to submit. My existence was a series of both.
Even my sleep, if sleep it could be called, I was not allowed to enjoy. I possessed neither mattress nor hammock, for I had come aboard in my common wearing clothes—in my school-jacket and cap—without either money in my pocket or luggage in my hands. I had not even the usual equipments of a runaway—the kerchief bundle and stick; I possessed absolutely nothing—much less a mattress or hammock. Such things a skipper does not find for his crew, and of course there was none for me. I was not even allowed a “bunk” to sleep in, for the forecastle was crowded and most of the bunks carried double. Those that were occupied by only one chanced to have for their tenants the most morose and ill-natured of the crew, and I was not permitted to share with them. Even still more inhospitable were these fiends—for I cannot help calling them so when I look back on what I suffered at their hands—I was not even allowed to lie upon their great chests, a row of which extended around the forecastle, in front of the respective bunks, and covered nearly the whole space of the floor. The floor itself did not leave room for me to lie down—besides it was often wet by dirty water being spilled upon it, or from the daily “swabbing” it usually received. The only place I could rest—with some slight chance of being left undisturbed—was in some corner upon the deck; but there it was at times so cold I could not endure it, for I had no blanket—no covering but my scanty clothes; and these were nearly always wet from washing the decks and the scud of the sea. The cold compelled me to seek shelter below, where if I stretched my weary limbs along the lid of a chest, and closed my eyes in sleep, I was sure to be aroused by its surly owner, who would push me rudely to the floor, and sometimes send me out of the forecastle altogether.
Add to this that I was almost constantly kept at work—by night as by day. I may say there was no drudgery—no “dirty work”—that was not mine. I was not only slave to captain, mates, and carpenter, but every man of the crew esteemed himself my master. Even “Snowball” in the “caboose”—as the cook was jocularly termed—ordered me about with a fierce exultation, that he had one white skin that he could command!
I was boot-black for the captain, mates, and carpenter, bottle-washer for the cook, and chamber-boy for the men—for it was mine to swab out the forecastle, and wait upon the sailors generally.
Oh! it was a terrible life. I was well punished for my one act of filial disobedience—well rewarded for my aspirations and longings for the sea. But it is just the rôle that many a poor sailor boy has to play—more especially if like me he has run away to sea.