“Well, captain went out and was gone thirty days, and come back, and his success was so good that his common hands shared five hundred dollars apiece, and if I’d a gone, I should have had my five hundred dollars back agin; but I’d no idee of going to be shot at for money, like these ’ere fools and gumps that goes down to the Florida swamps, to be shot at all day by Ingens, for eighteen pence a day. Captain met me one day in the street, and says he, ‘nig, if you’d only gone with me, you’d a been as big a cuffee now as any on ’em.’ I says ‘captain, I don’t care ’bout havin’ my head shot off of my shoulders; I’m big cuffee ’nough now!’
“Well, I didn’t go to sea durin’ the war, and afore we got through with that, I got off of the notion of goin’ at all, and I concluded I’d spend the rest of my days on ‘terra firma,’ as I’d been tossed round on the brine long ’nough, and satisfied myself with seein’ and travel, and so I stayed, and I han’t been out of sight of land ever sence.
“But, one dreadful thing happened to me by goin’ to sea,—I got dreadfully depraved; and I b’lieve there warn’t a man on the globe that would swear worse than I would, and a wickeder feller didn’t breathe than Pete Wheeler. No language was too vile or wicked for me to take into my mouth; and it did seem to me, when I thought about it, that I blasphemed my Maker almost every minute through the day; and I used to frequent the theatre, and all bad places, and drink till I was dead drunk for days; and nobody can bring a charge agin me for hardly one sin but murder and counterfeitin’ that I ain’t guilty on. When I thought ’bout it, I used to think it the greatest wonder on ‘arth that God Almighty didn’t cut me off and strike me to hell, for I desarved the deepest damnation in pardition; and if any man on ‘arth says I didn’t, why, all I have to say to sich a man is, that he ain’t a judge. Why, as for prayer, I never thought of sich a thing for years; and as for Sabbath day, I didn’t hardly know when it come, only I used to be on a frolic or spree on that day, worse than any other day in the week. As for the bible, why, for years and years I never see one, or heard one read; and I didn’t, at that time, know how to read myself a word; and for six years I never had a word said to me ’bout my soul, or the danger of losin’ my soul, and I become as much of a heathen as any man in the Hottentot country: and the truth is, no man can make me out so bad as I raly was, for besides all I acted out, there was a hell in my bosom all the time, and these outrageous things was only a little bilin’ over,—only a few leetle streams that run out of a black fountain-head.
“Oh! Mr. L.——, I don’t know what I should do at the judgment day, if I couldn’t have a Saviour. I know I shall have a blacker account than a’most any body there, and how can it all be blotted out, except by Christ’s blood?
“Why, Sir, you can’t tell how wicked sailors generally be. There ain’t more’n one out of a hundred that cares any thing ’bout religion, and they are head and ears in debauchery and intemperance, and gamblin’, and all kinds of sin, and oh! ‘twould make your heart ache to hear their oaths. I’ve seen ’em tremble, and try to pray durin’ a dreadful storm, and all looked like goin’ to the bottom—for I don’t care how heathenish and devilish any body is, if they see death starin’ on ’em in the face, and they ‘spect to die in a few minutes, he’ll cry to God for help—but no sooner than the storm abated they’d cuss worse than ever. Now this was jist my fashion, and if any body says that a man who abuses a good God like that don’t desarve to be cut off and put into hell, why then he han’t got any common sense.
“But all this comes pretty much from the officers. I never knowed but one sea captain but what would swear sometimes, and most all on ’em as fast as a dog can trot; and jist so sure as our officers swears, the hands will blaspheme ten times worse; and if the captain wouldn’t swear, and forbid it on board, his orders would be obeyed like any other orders, but, as long as officers swears, so long will sailors. ☜
“But sailors have some noble things about ’em as any body of men. They will always stand by their comrades in the heart of danger or misfortune, or attack; and if a company on ’em are on shore, you touch one you touch the whole; and if a sailor was on the Desert of Arabia, and hadn’t but a quart of water, he’d go snacks with a companion. They are sure to have a soft spot in their hearts somewhere, that you can touch if you can git at it, and when they feel, they feel with all their souls. But, arter all, it’s the ruination of men’s characters to go to sea, for they become heathens, and ginerally, ain’t fit for sober life arter it, and ten to one they ruin their souls.
“But my v’yges are finished, and I’ll sing you one sailor’s song, and then my yarn is done.”
Author. “Well, strike up, Peter.”
Peter sings—