O’Rook began at once, and sang with such fervour and pathos, that his auditors became quite uproarious in their admiration. But when the Irishman called on the whalers for a ditty, a fine-looking youth sang a song of the “Homeward Bound,” in a voice so sweet and true, that the spirit of the men was changed, and many a moistened eye told that deep chords of sympathy had been touched.
“Can you play the fiddle?” asked one of the men of O’Rook, when the song was finished.
“Sure it’s myself can do that same,” he replied, with a modest air, which drew forth a peal of laughter. When the fiddle was produced and O’Rook struck up reels, and strathspeys, and hornpipes, with a precision of touch and time and perfection of tune that was far above the average of amateurs, the joy of the party could no longer find vent through eye and mouth. They were forced to open the safety-valves of heel and toe. For this purpose the quarter-deck was cleared, and flags were festooned round it; the officers joined, and Polly Samson was placed on the capstan, like the presiding angel of the scene.
Ah! reader, if you have not been for many months on the ocean, or in the lone wilderness, without seeing a new face, or hearing a sweet sound, or feeling the power of female influence, you cannot fully appreciate what we describe. There was no drink save coffee and tea at that feast. The Rainbow was a temperance ship. But the men required no spirits. Each one had more than sufficient within himself. The presence of Polly, too, had a powerful effect. Every man there saw his own particular Polly or Susan or Nancy in her pretty laughing face and sparkling eyes.
“Your men are powerful fellows,” said the captain of the Rainbow to the captain of the whaler; “I’ve no doubt they’ll be quite game for work to-morrow, though they should keep it up all night.”
“They certainly would,” replied the latter, “if called on to do duty; but they won’t be required to work to-morrow, for we keep the Sabbath on board of our ship as a duty we owe to God, and we find that we are great gainers in health and strength, while we are no losers of fish by doing so.”
“Ha! the great Captain Scoresby tried that before you, and said that he found keeping the Sabbath to be good both for body and soul,” said the captain of the Rainbow.
“I know he did,” replied the other, “and I am trying to follow in Scoresby’s wake.”
It was pretty late in the evening before the whalers could tear themselves away, and when at last they did so, they expressed a unanimous opinion that it had been the most successful gam they had ever had in their lives.
Not long after parting company from the whale-ship the Rainbow sailed into the cold and variable regions south of Cape Horn. Here they experienced what the men styled “very dirty weather.” The skies were seldom blue, and the decks were never dry, while it became necessary to keep the stove burning constantly in the cabin, and the berth-ports almost always shut.