The usual salutations were exchanged; the boat was hoisted in; and I dove down into the mess-room to stow away my traps. It was full of officers. The second lieutenant, the purser, and my three fellow reefers greeted me heartily, as they rose from a long, narrow table, on which was a formidable display of salt junk and old Jamaica.
“Just in time, Parker,” sang out my old crony, Westbrook, “we’re stiffening ourselves to keep up against the fog outside. Push the bottle, Jack—a cut of the junk for Parker—and as there’s nothing like beginning right, here’s a jolly voyage to us.”
The toast had just been drunk, amid a whirlwind of huzzas, when the shrill whistle of the boatswain shrieked through the ship, followed by the hoarse cry, “all hands on deck, ahoy!”
In an instant the gun-room was deserted, and we were at our several posts; while the gallant brigantine echoed with the tramp of the crew, the orders of the first lieutenant, and the monotonous creaking of the windlass, as the anchor was being hove up to the bows.
By the time the anchor was catted the morning sun was just beginning to struggle over the heights of Long Island; and as the mists upon the water curled upward in fantastic wreaths beneath his rays, the head of our brigantine began slowly to incline from the breeze. In another instant, as her sails filled, the water could be heard rippling under the cut-water. Then as a sudden puff of wind pressed her down toward her bearings, and we shot rapidly ahead, the bubbles went whizzing along her sides, and eddying around her rudder, swept away astern in a long and glittering wake.
I stood, after the bustle of making sail was over, gazing on the scenery around me, with feelings such as I had never experienced before. It was to be my first voyage in a man-of-war: I would soon, doubtless, imbrue my hands in the blood of my fellow men; and I myself might never return alive from my cruize. I could not help, therefore, being filled with strange and new emotions, as I leaned over the taffrail, gazing on the now fast-receding town, and recurring, again and again, to the many happy days I had spent in my native city, and to the dear faces there which I might never see again. But gradually these feelings were lost in the admiration enkindled in my bosom by the beauty of the surrounding scenery.
It was indeed a glorious sight which opened around me. Right in the wake of the brigantine lay the city, still partly shrouded in the morning mists; while the back-ground was filled up by a range of uplands, through which a narrow opening disclosed where the Hudson rolled his arrowy course. To the right lay Governor’s Island, the East River, with its shipping, and the verdant shores of Long Island; while on the left rose up the bluff highlands of Staten Island, emerging, as it were, from a cloud of mist, and crowned with antique farm-houses, rich fields of verdant grass, and here and there a strip of woodland, as yet sparsely decked with its new-found leaves. Directly ahead were the Narrows, with the frowning heights on either hand; while a white, glittering line on the horizon without, and the long, undulating swell, heaving in through the streight, betokened our near approach to the ocean. A few sails flashed in the distance. All was still, beautiful, and serene. Occasionally, however, the measured sound of oars would give token of a passing fishing boat, or a snatch of a drinking song would float from some craft idly anchored in the stream. A few gulls screamed overhead. A flock of smaller water-fowl wheeled and settled on a strip of white, sandy beach just outside the Narrows. The surf broke with a hollow roar, in a long line of foam, along the neighboring coast; while out on the sea-board hung a dim haze, undulating slowly beneath the sun’s rays as he rose, blood-red, in the eastern horizon.
“A fine breeze for our first day’s cruize,” said Westbrook, “and, faith, a deuce of a one it will be, if we should happen to be caught by one of King George’s frigates, and either be strung up for rebels at the yard arm, or stifled to death in one of his cursed prison hulks. What think you of the prospect, comrades, isn’t it pleasant?”
“Pleasant do ye call it?” said Patrick O’Shaughnessy, a reefer of about my own age, who was a dangerously late emigrant to the colony, “shure, and it is rayther at my father’s hearth I would be, in dear, ould Ireland, afther all, if we’re to be thrated as rebels the day.”
“Your father’s hearth, Pat,” said Westbrook, “and do you really mean to say that they have such things in Galway, or wherever else it was that you were suffered to eat potatoes in ignorance, until your guardians brought you out here on a speculation.”