"Our voyages were short. I do not remember an instance of being at sea more than three consecutive days; so that, except when windbound, we were almost always taking in or taking out cargo. The work was hard, but the food was abundant, and on the whole the life, though rough, was not unpleasant.
"To me—thinking nothing of the pecuniary aspects of the question—the most enjoyable occasions were those which fierce contrary winds brought us, when we had to seek some harbour of refuge. These were by no means necessarily holidays, for, if the weather were dry, advantage was taken of the enforced leisure to give our craft a thorough cleaning, or to repair her rigging, or to make up the books. Moreover, the crew employed me to write letters to their wives from their dictation. These epistles were generally of a remarkable character, and some of them remain firmly fixed in my memory. The foregoing labours disposed of, and foul winds still prevailing, we had a washing day, or, better than all, a bout of tailoring, which did not generally get beyond repairing, though occasionally the ambitious flight of making a pair of trousers was attempted. On tailoring days it was understood that my clothes should be repaired for me, in order that I might read aloud for the general benefit. We assembled in our little cabin, where the stitching and smoking went on simultaneously, and with great vigour. My poor library consisted of a Bible, the eighth volume of the Spectator, Johnson's English Dictionary, a volume of the Weekly Miscellany, the History of John Gilpin, Baron Munchausen's Travels, Walkinghame's Arithmetic, and a book of songs. My hearers were not very fastidious, but allowed me to read pretty much what I pleased, though, truth to tell, the Spectator was not a favourite; some portions of it were held to be nonsensical, and others were considered to be so lacking in truthfulness that it was generally termed the 'lying book.' This ill repute was largely due to the story of Fadlallah (No. 578). Walkinghame was by no means unpopular. I occasionally read some of the questions, and my shipmates endeavoured to solve them mentally; and as the answers were all given by the author, I had to declare who had made the nearest guess, for it was very often but little more. Of all the questions, none excited so much interest as that which asks, What will be the cost of shoeing a horse at a farthing for the first nail, two for the second, and so on in geometrical progression for thirty-two nails, and which gives for the answer a sum but little short of four and a half million pounds sterling. This was so utterly unexpected that it went far to confer on Walkinghame the same name that Fadlallah had given to the Spectator."
Reproduced by permission of Mrs. H. Forbes Julian
William Pengelly tells a curious story of his father, Richard Pengelly:—
"After completing his fifteenth year he was thinking of going to sea. When he was sixteen, his father, who was a sailor, was drowned almost within sight of his home. The effect on the boy was to make him pause, and on his friends, to urge him to give up the idea. For some months these influences kept him quiet, but at length his restlessness returned so strongly, that he would have gone to sea at once, had he felt satisfied that his father would have approved the step. To ascertain this point he prayed frequently and earnestly that his father's spirit might be allowed to appear to him, with a pleasing or frowning aspect, according as he might approve or disapprove. At length he believed his prayer to have been answered, and that when in the field ploughing he saw his father, who passed by looking intently and smilingly at him. This decided him. He became a sailor at seventeen, and as such died at a good old age."
One bitterly cold night at sea, young Pengelly and some other of his shipmates having closed the cabin door, lit a charcoal fire, and speedily fell asleep, succumbing to the fumes of carbonic acid. Happily one of the crew who had been on deck entered the cabin. He found the greatest difficulty in awakening his comrades to sufficient consciousness to enable them to stumble up the ladder to get a breath of fresh air, for their sleep had well-nigh become that of death. The strong and hardy seamen soon recovered, but the boy was so seriously affected that, long after he had been carried upon deck, he could not be roused, and was only restored to consciousness by means of prolonged exertions on the part of his shipmates. His earliest geological experience was made when a sailor-boy weather-bound on the Dorsetshire coast, and he was wont to relate it thus:—
"I received my first lesson in geology at Lyme Regis, very soon after I had entered my teens. A labourer, whom I was observing, accidentally broke a large stone of blue lias and thus disclosed a fine ammonite —the first fossil of any kind that I had ever seen or heard of.
"In reply to my exclamation, 'What's that?' the workman said, with a sneer, 'If you had read your Bible you'd know what 'tis.' 'I have read my Bible. But what has that to do with it?'