The first time I went up at night to loose one of the royals, I thought I should never stop climbing. The deck soon vanished in the darkness of a very black tropical night, the mastheads were likewise lost in a Cimmerian obscurity—whatever that is. At last I found the yard. I wasn’t quite sure whether it was the right one or not. I didn’t know exactly what to do. I knew I had to untie something somewhere. But where? Meantime the savage Scotch second mate was bellowing, as it then seemed, a mile below me. I knew the bellow was for me. I had to do something and I commenced doing. I did know, or rather guessed, enough to cast off the lee and weather gaskets, or lines which bind the sail when furled to the yard, and then I made them up into a most slovenly knot. But the bunt-gasket (the line binding the middle and most bulky portion of the sail), bothered me. I couldn’t untie it. I picked away at it desperately, tore my nails and skinning my knuckles. The bellowing from below continued as fiercely as ever, which, though not intelligible as to words, was certainly exhorting me, and me only, to vigilance. Then the watch got tired waiting for me. Thinking the sail loosed, they began hoisting. They hoisted the yard to its proper place and me with it. I clung on and went up higher. That, by the way, always comes of holding fast to that which is good. Then a man’s head came bobbing up out of the darkness. It was that of a good-natured Nantucket boy, whose name of course was Coffin. He asked me the trouble. I went into a lengthy explanation about the unmanageable knot. “Oh—the knot!” said he. “Cut it!” and he cut it. I would never have cut it. In my then and even present nautical ignorance I should have expected the mast or yard to have fallen from cutting anything aloft. Only a few days previous I had seen the Captain on the quarter-deck jumping up and down in his tracks with rage because a common seamen had, by mistake, cut a mizzen brace, and the second mate, as usual, had jumped up and down on the seaman when he reached the deck. I feared to set a similar jumping process in operation. Coming on deck after my lengthy and blundering sojourn loosing a royal, I expected to be mauled to a pulp for my stupidity. But both watch and bellowing mate had gone below and I heard no more of it.
CHAPTER V.
SAN FRANCISCO IN 1856.
The Wizard sailed through a great bank of fog one August morning and all at once the headlands of the Golden Gate came in sight. It was the first land we had seen for four months. We sailed into the harbor, anchored, and the San Francisco of 1856 lay before us.
The ship was tied up to the wharf. All but the officers and “boys” left her. She seemed deserted, almost dead. We missed the ocean life of the set sails, the ship bowing to the waves and all the stir of the elements in the open ocean.
The captain called me one day into the cabin, paid me my scanty wages and told me he did not think I “was cut out for a sailor,” I was not handy enough about decks.
Considering that for two months I had been crippled by a felon on the middle finger of my right hand, which on healing had left that finger curved inward, with no power to straighten it, I thought the charge of awkwardness somewhat unjust.
However, I accepted the Captain’s opinion regarding my maritime capacities, as well as the hint that I was a superfluity on board.
I left the Wizard—left her for sixteen years of varied life in California.
I had no plans, nor aims, nor purpose, save to exist from day to day and take what the day might give me.
Let me say here never accept any person’s opinion of your qualifications or capacities for any calling. If you feel that you are “cut out” for any calling or that you desire to follow it, abide by that feeling, and trust to it. It will carry you through in time.