The crew of the Siren having obtained leave to go on shore, full of my good purposes to lead a steady life on the land, I hurried directly to Broadway, to inquire for my former employer, the kind-hearted boot-maker. To my disappointment, he had gone to Philadelphia; so that I returned on board, somewhat chagrined at the failure of my plan.
The next morning we were conveyed, in a large sail-boat, on board the Tom Bowling, an hermaphrodite brig. Here I was congratulated by the old quartermaster, Lewis Deal, who was with me when we narrowly escaped capture at the mouth of Salem harbor, while on a fishing excursion. He said he had felt much anxiety for my safety all the voyage, especially as it was reported that my former captain had made strict search for the Macedonians among all the American prisoners who were carried to England. The kind-hearted old man wept tears of gladness at my safe return.
While we staid in the Tom Bowling, the September gale, mentioned above, took place. We were right glad, as it broke its fury over our anchorage in vain, to think we were so safely housed in a good harbor, instead of being exposed to its wrath on the deep. Many a brave heart perished in that memorable storm.
The two years having expired for which we shipped, we were paid off. With the sum of one hundred dollars, I hurried on shore and deposited my funds in the hands of my landlord, at a sailor’s boarding-house. Now followed a life of dissipation and folly. The grave resolutions, passed at sea, to settle down as steady farmers, vanished into air. Drinking, swearing, gambling, going to the theatre, and other kindred vices, took up all our time as long as our money lasted. Our religious vows were equally slighted and forgotten: instead of being better, we became worse than ever. We felt as if New York belonged to us, and that we were really the happiest, jolliest fellows in the world.
For my own part, I fell deeper into wickedness than ever before: drinking, swearing, and gambling as I had never done on any former occasion. How could it be otherwise? Who cared for the sailor then? Not one. He was left to his own depraved heart’s promptings. Bethels and religious boarding-houses did not then throw their genial influences round his path, to charm his footsteps to the shrines of virtue and religion. Near the very spot where the Bethel church now stands in New York, I have frequently gambled for hours, with a bottle of spirits on the table, uncaring and uncared for by any human being. Thrice blessed be the man who first established Bethels and temperance boarding-houses! They are the sailor’s life-boats, which snatch him from the gory jaws of the unprincipled landsharks who fatten on his ruin.
Sometimes, in a sober moment, I thought I would break away from this wicked mode of life. I even engaged myself to a boot-maker, to complete my knowledge of his business; but, the dread of the confinement to the shoe-bench, which my riotous fancy painted as being worse than a prison, drove me from my purpose, and left me still among my shipmates.
At last my landlord told me my money was all expended, and that I must look out for something to do. My shipmates were in a similar dilemma, their number decreasing every day, as one after another shipped in the various merchant vessels preparing for sea. Alas! for our farmers in perspective. Their dreams of ploughing the land evaporated, leaving them what they were before, and what most of them remained until death, the ploughmen of the ocean. My landlord’s gentle hint put a stop to my excesses, for the very sufficient reason that it was attended with a protest on my further checks for funds. For a while, I found employment in loading and unloading ships, and in assisting to fit them for sea. But this proving an uncertain employment, I was induced to join a number of my fellow-boarders in going to the rendezvous of the United States brig Boxer. Here we shipped for two years more. I was then eighteen years of age, and was rated as an ordinary seaman, with ten dollars per month wages. Behold me then, dear reader, once more on board a man of war, in spite of all the dangers I had escaped, and the promises I had made to risk myself no more on the ocean! The next chapter will unfold the events which transpired while I sailed in the Boxer.