And where were our dear friends, the roughs, all this time? and how came it that they were so quiet? They have been asleep,—snoring off the effects of last night's diversions, and fortifying their constitutions against the influences to come. Ever since the music ceased playing, these fellows have been rolled away, singly or in heaps, in crooked corners, into which they seem to fit naturally. But now they began to rally, waking up and stretching themselves and yawning,—the last two actions appearing to be the leading operations of a rowdy's toilet; and, gathering round Lobster Bob, who has been steadily employed in opening oysters for all who have a midsummer faith in those mollusks, they commenced rapidly swallowing great quantities of the various kinds, which they seasoned to an alarming extent with coarse black pepper and brownish salt. The fierce thirst, which, with these men, is not a consequence, because it is a thing that was and is and ever will be, was brought vividly to their minds by this unnecessary adstimulation; and now the bar-keeper, whose lager-beer was wellnigh exhausted, from its connection with ham-sandwiches, had enough to do to furnish them with whiskey, of which stimulant there was but too large a supply on hand. The consequence of this was soon apparent in the ugly hilarity with which the rowdies entered upon the enjoyment of the afternoon. First, in spite of the remonstrances of the Teuton whose proper chattel it was, they seized upon the large drum, with which they made an astounding din in the public promenades of the vessel, abetted, I am sorry to say, by some who ought to have known better,—and did, probably, before the whiskey had curdled their wits. In this proceeding, as in all their movements, they were marshalled by Flashy Joe, whose comparatively spruce appearance, when he came on board in the morning, had been a good deal deteriorated by broken slumbers in places not remote from coals, and by the subsequent course of drinks. Quiet people were beginning to express some dissatisfaction with the noise made by these fellows, who, however, kept pretty much by themselves, as yet, and had got only to the musical stage of the proceedings, chorusing with unearthly yells a song contributed to the harmony of the afternoon by the first ruffian, the burden of which ran,—
"When this old hat was ny-oo, my boys,
When this old hat was ny-oo-ooo!"
No voice in this chorus dwelt more decidedly by itself than the shrill one belonging to the small, spare man already spoken of as having a buxom young wife and blue cotton overalls. During his wife's adjournment to the ladies' cabin, this person, I am obliged to record, had become boisterously drunk,—a condition in which the contradictory elements that make up the characters of most men are generally developed to an instructive extent. In his first paroxysm, the fighting man within him was all aroused, as is generally the case with diminutive men, when under the influence of drink. Already he had tucked his sleeves up to fight a large German musician, who could have put him into the bell of his brass-horn and played him out, without much trouble. But the song pacified him; and, with a misty sense of his importance in a convivial point of view, on account of the manner in which he had acquitted himself in the chorus, he now essayed a higher flight, and treated the party to a new version of "The Pope," oddly condensed into one verse, as follows:—
"The Pope, he leads a happy life,
He fears no married care nor strife,
His wives are many as be will:
I would the Sultan's place, then, fill!"
At this moment the buxom young wife descended suddenly from the upper deck by the forecastle-ladder, like Nemesis from a thunder-cloud, and, seizing upon the small warbler, to whom she administered a preliminary shake which must have sadly changed the current of his ideas, drove him ignominiously before her toward the stern of the vessel, rapping him occasionally about the ears with the hard end of her fan, to keep him on a straight course. Persons who traced the matter farther said that he was driven all the way to the upper deck, pushed with gentle violence into a state-room, the door locked upon him, and the key pocketed by the lady, who said triumphantly, as she walked away,—"That's the Sultan's place for him, I guess!" The moral to this little episode is but a horn-book one, and without any pretension to didactic force: That respectable citizens, like the small, spare man, would do well, on excursion-trips or elsewhere, to avoid whiskey and black-guards; and that wives might be saved a deal of trouble by keeping their eyes permanently on their husbands, when the latter are of uncertain ways.
This little domestic drama had hardly been played out, when a more serious one—almost a tragedy—was enacted on the forecastle. It originated in the misconduct of the red man, who, seized with a desire to catch porgies, went a short way to work for tackle, by snatching away the line of a peaceable, but stout Frenchman, who was paralyzed for a moment by the novelty of the thing, but, immediately recovering himself, expressed his dissent by smashing an earthen-ware dish, containing a great mess of raw clams for bait, upon the head of the red man, as he stooped over the railing to fish. This led to a general fight, in which blood flowed freely, and the roughs were getting rather the upper-hand. Knives were drawn by some of the Germans and others in self-defence, and great consternation reigned in the afterpart of the boat and the neighborhood of the ladies' cabin. Then the slim captain of the boat—the one in the black dress-coat—hurriedly whispered something to Lobster Bob, who rushed away aft, where the fight was now agglomerating, headed by the red man and Flashy Joe, both covered with blood, and looking like demons, as they wrestled and bit through the Crowd. Just as they hustled past a large chest intended for the stowage of life-preservers, Lobster Bob kicked the lid of it open with a bang, and, seizing up the red man, neck and crop, with his huge, tattooed hands, dropped him into it and shut down the lid, which was promptly sat upon by the large, stout, smiling man already favorably spoken of in these pages, who suddenly made his appearance from nowhere in particular. The picture of contentment, he sat there like one who knew how, caressing slowly his large knees with his short, plump hands, until the cries from the chest began to wax feeble, when he slowly arose, vanished, and I never saw him again. The red rowdy was then dragged, half-suffocated, from his imprisonment, and as much life as he ought ever to be intrusted with restored to him by the stout old skipper, who was at hand with a couple of buckets full of cold salt-water, with which he drenched him liberally, as he slunk away. A diversion thus effected, the disturbance was quelled. All was quiet in a short time, and the word was passed to heave the anchor and 'bout ship for home.
On the way back, we took a pleasant course inside the Hook, which brought the charming scenery of the Jersey shore and of Staten Island before us, as a pleasant drop-curtain on the melodrama just closed. The music again struck up, and dancing was resumed with fresh vigor,—the waltzing of all other couples being quite eclipsed by that of Young New York and little Straw-Goods, who had effectually got rid of her tipsy persecutor ever since the ground-swell, and was keeping rather in the background of late, with a sober-minded lady whom she called "aunty." With the exception of the few who took to whiskey and bad company, all appeared contented, and the better for their sea-holiday. The very musicians played with greater spirit than they did before, owing, perhaps, to their remarkable success in the porgy-fishery. One of the horn-players, far too knowing to let his fish out of sight, has propped his music-book up against a pyramid of them, as upon a desk. The good-looking man who plays upon the double-bass is equally prudent with regard to his trophies, which he has hung up around the post on which is pinned the score to which he looks for directions when it becomes necessary to bind together with string-music the pensive interchanges of the sax-horn and bassoon.
And now, as our vessel neared the wharf from which we had started while the sun was yet in the east, I looked forward to see what signs of the times were astir on the forecastle. All had deserted it, and were tending aft, with their tackle, their fish, and their prog-baskets,—all, at least, except Raw Material, of whom we enjoyed now an uninterrupted view, as he sat in his old position, with his head jammed obstinately into the capstan. But how was this?—he was round at the opposite side of it now; and I puzzled myself for a moment, thinking whether this change of bearings could be accounted for by the fact of the boat being headed the other way.
But Young New York, who is far more nautical than I am, and has a big brother in one of the yacht-clubs, derided the idea, and said he must have gone round with the handspikes, when the anchor was hove.
And there he remained, as we went our way,—a modern Spartan slave in a kind of marine pillory,—conveying to the red-legged children of Gotham, as they toddled ashore, a useful lesson on the doubtful relations existing between whiskey and pleasure.