The life of a sailor is brief enough at best. Even with all the care which you can bestow upon his habits, and with all the restraints you can exert upon his headlong career, he soon reaches his goal. You seldom meet with a grayheaded sailor. Long before age can have frosted his locks, the icy hand of death has been laid on his heart. He dies in the midst of his days, and often in his full strength. He perishes like his ship, which the tempest hath cast on the rocks. Could the wave which sepulchres his form be the winding-sheet of his soul, our solicitude for him might be less; but he has a spirit that will sing in worlds of light or wail in regions of wo, when the dirge of the deep sea is over.
Wednesday, Nov. 12. Last evening we had another tropical shower. It fell as if some atmospheric lake had burst its cloudy boundary. In a moment all exposed to it were drenched. It passed, and the moon circled up out of the sea full of mellow light. I love that orb on land, but more at sea. On shore, other objects relieve your solitude, but on the ocean it is all that seems to break the desolation which would else be universal. I have seen sailors sit and look at it by the hour. Few of them understand the laws which regulate its phenomena, but all feel its influence. Nature unrolls her treasures to the simplest of her children.
This morning a fine breeze visited us from the northwest, the first that has cheered us from that quarter. We have been on the starboard tack ever since we left Norfolk. We who occupy the larboard state-rooms, now congratulated ourselves that in the event of a blow, we should have dry quarters, and our starboard companions would take their turn at leaking ports. But this self-gratulation was hardly over, when the wind chopped about to its old quarter, and our exultation, like most exhibitions of selfish delight, proved premature. Our frigate, with a breeze that scarcely crisps the sea, knots her hundred miles a day. This, before steam began to annihilate space, would have been considered very fair travelling. But now it is a tortoise by the side of an antelope. Four bells have struck—my light must be extinguished, and I can either walk the deck or turn in for the night.
Thursday, Nov. 13th. I rise with the sun, and, like that stern old monarch, from a salt bath. Like him, too, I take another on retiring to rest. Here, I suppose, ends the resemblance between us, except that both have some spots. They who go to sea for their health should rise with the sun, bathe in salt water, and inhale the fresh atmosphere an hour before breakfast. They should also bathe before they retire to rest. Salt water, the chafing towel, and fresh air, are the restoratives most to be relied on, and the very restoratives which a lazy invalid will first neglect. Were I to omit these, I should hardly live long enough to reach our next port. The invalid should confine himself to a spare diet, and take no stimulants. His only tonic should be the pure salt atmosphere of the sea. Wine, brandy, and porter are sufficiently injurious on land, but at sea they carry disease and death in their train.
We have had this evening an eclipse of the moon; only a narrow rim of the orb escaped the dark shadow of our earth. Our sailors, not anticipating this eclipse, could not at first account for the disappearing light. They saw the slender spars and tracery of the ship becoming momentarily less distinct and visible, but knew not from whence the shadow fell. A few of them, better versed in lunar observations, explained to the rest the phenomenon. They said the earth had shoved a part of her black hull between us and the moon. But when asked why she had done this, the reason assigned was, that the moon had probably got a little out of her reckoning, and in attempting to tack had missed stays.
Friday, Nov. 14. We have now been fourteen days at sea, and have sailed eighteen hundred miles. A vast sheet of water spreads between us and our homes, but a greater between us and our port of destination. Our fresh provisions still hold out, but the appearance of a junk of corned beef on our table every day indicates the gradual approach of short commons. Still it will be some time before we reach that last dish of gastronomic desperation—lobscouse. We have an experienced caterer, a provident steward, and an ingenious cook. With the three we feel pretty safe. I have been at sea in four or five national ships, and have never found in any, after the second week out, a table so well supplied as ours. Still our variety is effected in a great measure by the ingenuity of our steward and cook.
The culinary art is forced into its highest degree of perfection, and achieves its last triumph at sea. The cook, who, in a Parisian restaurant, can make a palatable soup from the carcass of a crow that has perished of inanition, is entitled to but little praise in comparison with him who can raise a good soup at sea after the third week out. The nautical cook has seemingly nothing left for his pot but the recollections of his coop. Recollections make very good poetry, but they simmer badly into a soup. The attenuation is too fine even for homœopathic gastronomy. It would do, perhaps, for Bishop Berkeley’s ideal world. I rather think the worthy bishop must have formed that theory at sea after the third week out. It certainly suits man in that condition. The unstableness of a thing entitles it to faith.
Saturday, Nov. 15. To-day our ship has been holystoned from stem to stern. A person who has stood in the silent excavations of Herculaneum, and heard the carriages rattling overhead, can have some idea of the sounds which those rumbling stones produce on the decks of a ship. The whole ship is converted into a floating Babel, and worse indeed, unless the strokes of the gravel be comprehended in the vocal jargon of the tower. But we shall have our compensation for this in decks so clean that a handkerchief might be swept over them without soiling its whiteness.
Nothing on board a man-of-war requires such unremitted attention as cleanliness. It puts to the last test the most indomitable purpose. Without it, a ship soon becomes intolerable. Without it, sickness would ensue; some epidemic would sweep half the crew to the grave. And yet nine-tenths of our sailors are so inconsiderate, that if left to themselves they would exercise no precautions on the subject. This renders the most careful supervision of officers indispensable. Negligence in this department soils every laurel he can win on the deck. It is like that louse which Burns saw climbing up a lady’s bonnet in church. This allusion reminds one of an anecdote related of Lord Byron and Lady Blessington. Her ladyship had taken something that the poet had said in high dudgeon, but dismissed it with the fling that she “didn’t care three skips of a louse for his lordship.” To which the sarcastic poet retorted in the couplet—
“I forgive the dear lady what she has said,