At eight o'clock all hands were called aft, and the watches set for the voyage. Some changes were made; but I was glad to find myself still in the larboard watch. Our crew was somewhat diminished; for a man and a boy had gone in the Pilgrim; another was second mate of the Ayacucho; and a fourth, Harry Bennett, the oldest man of the crew, had broken down under the hard work and constant exposure on the coast, and, having had a stroke of the palsy, was left behind at the hide-house, under the charge of Captain Arthur. The poor fellow wished very much to come home in the ship; and he ought to have been brought home in her. But a live dog is better than a dead lion, and a sick sailor belongs to nobody's mess; so he was sent ashore with the rest of the lumber, which was only in the way. He had come on board, with his chest, in the morning, and tried to make himself useful about decks; but his shuffling feet and weak arms led him into trouble, and some words were said to him by the mate. He had the spirit of a man, and had become a little tender, perhaps weakened in mind, and said, ``Mr. Brown, I always did my duty aboard until I was sick. If you don't want me, say so, and I'll go ashore.'' ``Bring up his chest,'' said Mr. Brown, and poor Bennett went down into a boat and was taken ashore, with tears in his eyes. He loved the ship and the crew, and wished to get home, but could not bear to be treated as a soger or loafer on board. This was the only hard-hearted thing I ever knew Mr. Brown to do.
By these diminutions, we were short-handed for a voyage round Cape Horn in the dead of winter. Beside Stimson and myself, there were only five in the forecastle; who, together with four boys in the steerage, the sailmaker, carpenter, cook, and steward, composed the crew. In addition to this, we were only four days out, when the sailmaker, who was the oldest and best seaman on board, was taken with the palsy, and was useless for the rest of the voyage. The constant wading in the water, in all weathers, to take off hides, together with the other labors, is too much for men even in middle life, and for any who have not good constitutions. (Beside these two men of ours, the second officer of the California and the carpenter of the Pilgrim, as we afterwards learned, broke down under the work, and the latter died at Santa Barbara. The young man, too, Henry Mellus, who came out with us from Boston in the Pilgrim, had to be taken from his berth before the mast and made clerk, on account of a fit of rheumatism which attacked him soon after he came upon the coast.) By the loss of the sailmaker, our watch was reduced to five, of whom two were boys, who never steered but in fine weather, so that the other two and myself had to stand at the wheel four hours apiece out of every twenty-four; and the other watch had only four helmsmen. ``Never mind,— we're homeward bound!'' was the answer to everything; and we should not have minded this, were it not for the thought that we should be off Cape Horn in the very dead of winter. It was now the first part of May; and two months would bring us off the Cape in July, which is the worst month in the year there; when the sun rises at nine and sets at three, giving eighteen hours night, and there is snow and rain, gales and high seas, in abundance.
The prospect of meeting this in a ship half manned, and loaded so deep that every heavy sea must wash her fore and aft, was by no means pleasant. The Alert, in her passage out, doubled the Cape in the month of February, which is midsummer; and we came round in the Pilgrim in the latter part of October, which we thought was bad enough. There was only one of our crew who had been off there in the winter, and that was in a whale-ship, much lighter and higher than our ship; yet he said they had man-killing weather for twenty days without intermission, and their decks were swept twice, and they were all glad enough to see the last of it. The Brandywine frigate, also, in her recent passage round, had sixty days off the Cape, and lost several boats by the heavy seas. All this was for our comfort; yet pass it we must; and all hands agreed to make the best of it.
During our watches below we overhauled our clothes, and made and mended everything for bad weather. Each of us had made for himself a suit of oil-cloth or tarpaulin, and these we got out, and gave thorough coatings of oil or tar, and hung upon the stays to dry. Our stout boots, too, we covered over with a thick mixture of melted grease and tar. Thus we took advantage of the warm sun and fine weather of the Pacific to prepare for its other face. In the forenoon watches below, our forecastle looked like the workshop of what a sailor is,— a Jack-at-all-trades. Thick stockings and drawers were darned and patched; mittens dragged from the bottom of the chest and mended; comforters made for the neck and ears; old flannel shirts cut up to line monkey-jackets; southwesters were lined with flannel, and a pot of paint smuggled forward to give them a coat on the outside; and everything turned to hand; so that, although two years had left us but a scanty wardrobe, yet the economy and invention which necessity teaches a sailor soon put each of us in pretty good trim for bad weather, before we had seen the last of the fine. Even the cobbler's art was not out of place. Several old shoes were very decently repaired, and with waxed ends, an awl, and the top of an old boot, I made me quite a respectable sheath for my knife.
There was one difficulty, however, which nothing that we could do would remedy; and that was the leaking of the forecastle, which made it very uncomfortable in bad weather, and rendered half of the berths tenantless. The tightest ships, in a long voyage, from the constant strain which is upon the bowsprit, will leak more or less round the heel of the bowsprit and the bitts, which come down into the forecastle; but, in addition to this, we had an unaccountable leak on the starboard bow, near the cat-head, which drove us from the forward berths on that side, and, indeed, when she was on the starboard tack, from all the forward berths. One of the after berths, too, leaked in very bad weather; so that in a ship which was in other respects unusually tight, and brought her cargo to Boston perfectly dry, we had, after every effort made to prevent it, in the way of calking and leading, a forecastle with only three dry berths for seven of us. However, as there is never but one watch below at a time, by ``turning in and out,'' we did pretty well. And there being in our watch but three of us who lived forward, we generally had a dry berth apiece in bad weather.[1]
All this, however, was but anticipation. We were still in fine weather in the North Pacific, running down the northeast trades, which we took on the second day after leaving San Diego.
Sunday, May 15th, one week out, we were in latitude 14° 56' N., lon. 116° 14' W., having gone, by reckoning, over thirteen hundred miles in seven days. In fact, ever since leaving San Diego, we had had a fair wind, and as much as we wanted of it. For seven days our lower and topmast studding-sails were set all the time, and our royals and top-gallant studding-sails whenever she could stagger under them. Indeed, the captain had shown, from the moment we got to sea, that he was to have no boy's play, but that the ship was to carry all she could, and that he was going to make up by ``cracking on'' to her what she wanted in lightness. In this way we frequently made three degrees of latitude, besides something in longitude, in the course of twenty-four hours. Our days we spent in the usual ship's work. The rigging which had become slack from being long in port was to be set up; breast backstays got up; studding-sail booms rigged upon the main yard; and royal studding-sails got ready for the light trades; ring-tail set; and new rigging fitted, and sails made ready for Cape Horn. For, with a ship's gear, as well as a sailor's wardrobe, fine weather must be improved to get ready for the bad to come. Our forenoon watch below, as I have said, was given to our own work, and our night watches were spent in the usual manner,— a trick at the wheel, a lookout on the forecastle, a nap on a coil of rigging under the lee of the rail; a yarn round the windlass-end; or, as was generally my way, a solitary walk fore and aft, in the weather waist, between the windlass-end and the main tack. Every wave that she threw aside brought us nearer home, and every day's observation at noon showed a progress which, if it continued, would, in less than five months, take us into Boston Bay. This is the pleasure of life at sea,— fine weather, day after day, without interruption,— fair wind, and a plenty of it,— and homeward bound. Every one was in good humor; things went right; and all was done with a will. At the dog watch, all hands came on deck, and stood round the weather side of the forecastle, or sat upon the windlass, and sung sea-songs and those ballads of pirates and highwaymen which sailors delight in. Home, too, and what we should do when we got there, and when and how we should arrive, was no infrequent topic. Every night, after the kids and pots were put away, and we had lighted our pipes and cigars at the galley, and gathered about the windlass, the first question was,—
``Well, Dana, what was the latitude to-day?''
``Why, fourteen, north; and she has been going seven knots ever since.''
``Well, this will bring us to the line in five days.''