Foster (called Mr. by virtue of his office) was but half a sailor, having always been short voyages and remained at home a long time between them. His father was a man of some property, and intended to have given his son a liberal education; but he, being idle and worthless, was sent off to sea, and succeeded no better there; for, unlike many scamps, he had none of the qualities of a sailor—he was “not of the stuff that they make sailors of.” He was one of the class of officers who are disliked by their captain and despised by the crew. He used to hold long yarns with the crew, and talk about the captain, and play with the boys, and relax discipline in every way.
This kind of conduct always makes the captain suspicious, and is never pleasant in the end, to the men; they preferring to have an officer active, vigilant, and distant as may be, with kindness. Among other bad practices, he frequently slept on his watch, and having been discovered asleep by the captain, he was told that he would be turned off duty if he did it again. To prevent it in every way possible, the hen-coops were ordered to be knocked up, for the captain never sat down oh deck himself, and never permitted an officer to do so.
The second night after crossing the equator, we had the watch from eight till twelve, and it was “my helm” for the last two hours. There had been light squalls through the night, and the captain told Mr. Foster, who commanded our watch, to keep a bright lookout. Soon after I came to the helm, I found that he was quite drowsy, and at last he stretched himself on the companion and went fast asleep.
Soon afterward, the captain came very quietly on deck, and stood by me for some time looking at the compass. The officer at length became aware of the captain’s presence, but pretending not to know it, began humming and whistling to himself, to show that he was not asleep, and went forward, without looking behind him, and ordered the main-royal to be loosed. On turning round to come aft, he pretended surprise at seeing the master on deck.
This would not do. The captain was too “wide awake” for him, and beginning upon him at once, gave him a grand blow-up, in true nautical style—“You’re a lazy good-for-nothing rascal; you’re neither man, boy, soger, nor sailor! you’re no more than a thing aboard a vessel! you don’t earn your salt! you’re worse than a Mahon soger!” and other still more choice extracts from the sailor’s vocabulary. After the poor fellow had taken this harangue, he was sent into his stateroom, and the captain stood the rest of the watch himself.
At seven bells in the morning, all hands were called aft and told that Foster was no longer an officer on board, and that we might choose one of our number for second mate. It is usual for the captain to make this offer, and it is very good policy, for the crew think themselves the choosers and are flattered by it, but have to obey, nevertheless.
Our crew, as is usual, refused to take the responsibility of choosing a man of whom we would never be able to complain, and left it to the captain. He picked out an active and intelligent young sailor born near the Kennebec, who had been several Canton voyages, and proclaimed him in the following manner:
“I choose Jim Hall—he’s your second mate. All you’ve got to do is, to obey him as you would me; and remember that he is Mr. Hall.” Foster went forward into the forecastle as a common sailor, and lost the handle to his name, while young foremast Jim became Mr. Hall, and took up his quarters in the land of knives and forks and tea-cups.
Sunday, Oct. 5th. It was our morning watch; when, soon after day began to break, a man on the forecastle called out, “Land ho!” I had never heard the cry before, and did not know what it meant (and few would suspect what the words were, when hearing the strange sound for the first time), but I soon found, by the direction of all eyes, that there was land stretching along on our weather beam. We immediately took in the studding sails and hauled our wind, running for the land. This was done to determine our longitude; for by the captain’s chronometer we were in 25° W., but by his observations we were much further, and he had been for some time in doubt whether it was his chronometer or his sextant which was out of order. This landfall settled the matter, and the former instrument was condemned, and becoming still worse, was never afterwards used.
As we ran in toward the coast, we found that we were directly off the port of Pernambuco, and could see with the telescope the roofs of the houses, and one large church, and the town of Olinda. We ran along by the mouth of the harbor, and saw a full-rigged brig going in. At two P.M., we again kept off before the wind, leaving the land on our quarter, and at sundown it was out of sight.