You soon are so much used to the wild behavior of the sea that you lose all apprehension of danger. Some experiences in the cabin, in bad weather, make you feel that you are more safe on deck where you seem to have more ‘sea room.’ It is hard to walk in the cabin; the walls are so near you that your eye is more affected with the motion than on deck. You must watch for a windward roll, which does not let you down so low or so violently as a lee roll; then you run to your seat or to a side of the cabin, where you grasp something till the lee lurch has spent itself, when you make for the next point, like runners in playing ball. The difficulty of lifting your feet is marvellous. You are as really cumbered as though you had weights on your feet, or wore heavy clothing. It is amusing to see even the captain pause in the middle of the cabin, unable to move, his feet judiciously wide apart, waiting for the back roll to restore the level. He retorts by expressing the wish that the congregation at home could see their pastor in his efforts to get across the cabin.
But it is not all fun. I was sitting about six feet from the stove in the dining-room, in the forward cabin, in the low easy-chair which we brought from home. The back legs were inside a closet, the threshold of which it was hoped would serve for a stay against sliding; when the ship gave a lurch, and I went head first into the low wooden box, in which the stove, a very heavy one, stood, my weight pushing the stove out of place, and bringing me down on my knees and wrists, the chair following me on my back. The steward ran and helped me up. After a few moments I was well, but I record this as a merciful preservation. Feeling strong and able-bodied, I have no trouble from such mishaps, but I would not advise a feeble person to go to sea, certainly not round Cape Horn; but if he must go, to be as careful in the cabin as he can see that he must be on deck.
CHRISTMAS AT SEA.
It would have been pleasant to our friends to see stockings on our door handles and to witness the contents. Mine had a colored-letter drawing of the words, “The Lord is my Shepherd;” a long shoe-case made of duck, bound with green; a small muslin bag filled with lumps of white sugar, marked, Cape Horn confectionary. The captain had a green necktie, made in a region where neckties are not often devised, the materials, however, unquestionably from “Chandler’s” or “Hovey’s;” also a pen-wiper; the mates had some articles of needle work, and chains made in part of bloom raisins which came the other day from the brig Hazard. Fresh raisins off Cape Horn are a greater curiosity and luxury than friends at home can suppose. The captain’s presents to the donors of these gifts were, a jar of pickles and a bottle of olives; mine were destined to be for some time useless, there being no shops in this region; but the small pieces of gold expressed a good intention. The afternoon was spent by a party, including the captain and first mate, around the stove in the forward cabin listening to one of Dickens’ Christmas Carols, they having already enjoyed six volumes of his works in beguiling some dreary afternoons; also, in amusing themselves with the exercise of “bean bags,” on deck. When it was dark we were entertained with narratives of expedients which were used in preparing the presents, the emptying of the rag bag and the search among its contents for materials, the difficulty of standing, of going about and even of sitting at work while the ship was playing her antics of position; the devices by the principal actors in hanging up the presents so as to elude detection, pretending unusual wakefulness in sitting up beyond midnight and trying to persuade the captain that he needed sleep; and especially the attempt to keep awake beyond the hour when the mate would come down to the pantry to refresh himself with a bite of salt beef and pie. The amusements of the day ended with putting down the cabin light and standing at the window to see and hear the boatswain perform his Christmas Carol, sitting in his little room, his feet on his bunk level with his head, he singing, “Shall we gather at the river?” his pipe in his hand lifted to his mouth for a few whiffs at the end of each verse, the pipe seemingly performing the part of the customary interlude on the musical instrument at church. So we had our Christmas presents where a year ago we little expected. Last evening we observed our custom of having Milton’s Christmas Hymn read to us, the captain being appointed the reader. It was very dark and stormy at noon, but we had a merry Christmas.
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Dec. 26. It rains, and there is the thickest fog which it seems to me I ever saw. I groped my way into the bows, to look, as a transcendentalist would say, “into the invisible.” A sailor was in the bows alone, leaning against the forestay, wrapped in his oil-cloth coat, looking out for any vessel which might be passing. His watch was for two hours, a dreary, uninteresting service. He was a young man, full of zeal to go aloft, among the first to venture out to the weather earring, to leap upon the swinging board over the side or stern in painting. None seem so happy as the boys of the crew; but this duty of watching in a fog, of a cold day, has as little excitement in it as any thing in a sailor’s routine.
A YOUNG SAILOR’S EXPERIENCE.
One who had been several years before the mast and afterwards successively third, second, first mate, lately said to me, “When a young man, standing on the top gallant forecastle, leaning against the forestay, in a foggy day or dark night, the ship rushing into the dark unknown beyond, I sometimes thought, What if there should be an end to the sea, a precipice over which we should plunge, an undiscovered continent against which we should run! How did Columbus feel on his first voyage in a fog or in darkness? What a picture of life, its unknown future! so little the sailor knows what may be ahead of the ship; but the captain, confident in his chart, compass and reckoning, knows the way that he takes.”
I have been much affected by what the young sailor told me of his first months before the mast; how he parted with members of his family circle, the ship just taken in tow by the tug, the last line which held them to the shore cast off, he standing with his arm on the rail, his head on his hand, looking at those he loved best on earth, and thinking what scenes he should pass through in the sixteen months before he should see them, if ever, again; when he was roused from his reverie by the mate’s calling to him, “Boy, what are you standing there for? go forward and tie up those cabbages.” He saw one of his family waving a handkerchief to him; but he was ashamed to be seen answering it; the hour of sentiment had passed; he must go and tie up the cabbages. The first few nights at sea the profane, vile talk of some of the sailors at night used to keep him awake, astonished and terrified. He used to say to himself, “My God! have I come to this? Did I once have a christian home? Why did I leave it? The physician said that I must go to sea, but he could not have known what life in a forecastle is. An old sailor said to me, ‘Boy, do you know that you stepped into hell afloat, when you came here?’ Soon I managed to stop up my ears when I turned in, so as not to hear the dreadful talk.”
I said to him, “How did you help using their language and practising their wicked ways?”