This book also contains information relative to the government-officers, the various churches, the telegraph department, &c., of the island; yet, as we are in a hurry to get homeward, we will not tarry for the consideration of further statistics, but return to our ship.
On the afternoon of the 2d inst., having ran close in to land, we were becalmed and in imminent risk of going ashore; but by lowering the boats and strenuously pulling we managed to get the ship’s head pointed seaward. A light breeze springing up, we were soon relieved from our apprehensions. At 6¹⁄₂ o’clock P. M. the captain came off, and immediately the order was given to square away for home. Every one at once turned-to with a will: the yards were manned in a twinkling; studdingsail booms and studdingsail rigging were rigged and rove aloft and alow, until the masts wore, as it were, an entire sheet of canvass from the royal yards to the deck, extending twice or thrice our beam, and assisting to the utmost our expeditious return. But the wind was aft and light, and our ship by no means kept pace with our impatient desires. Yet directly onward she made her way, unmarked by incident, until within a few degrees of the Equator. Here the doldorums (those pests of the homeward-bound!) occasioned a delay which well nigh again exhausted our patience. These doldorums are neither one thing nor the other: they are not positive calms, neither are they gales. For instance, one may wake at sunrise, find a pleasant breeze blowing, the wind fair, sky clear, and not a sign in the horizon on which to base a supposition of change: under this impression he will lounge around, congratulate himself on the ship’s progress, and occupy his mind with thoughts of home; but, pausing, he glances to the sails, and finds them flapping from the scarcity of wind; and awakened from his reverie by the cheerless booming of the canvass, he directs his attention to the horizon, and finds haze or clouds in every quarter, portending squalls, either of rain or wind. A minute later, the flapping sail is hard aback, with a contrary wind; torrents of rain are falling; squall follows squall, in rapid succession, each from a different point—and thus they continue, until, having boxed the compass in the course of an hour, the ship returns to her former position, and lazily drags herself along for awhile, when the same scenes re-occur, and so alternate day after day. For ten days were we in irons, (as seamen term our situation,) during the whole of which time we made no more than ten degrees—an average of two and a half miles per hour: a pace that was far too slow to be easily endured by men who had been for forty-four months past looking forward to this passage with such intense interest. No idea of the uneasiness (I can use no better word) of the crew can be formed by a person who has never witnessed a ship’s company situated precisely as we were. Every mile—every degree of the course was accurately measured and counted. All who were capable might have been seen, with quadrant in hand, taking the sun’s altitude, working up the ship’s time, comparing one day’s run with another, and guessing what the performance of the next twenty-four hours would be; whilst those not possessed of a quadrant watched with peering eyes for the moment that would reveal the result of the operator’s calculations. On turning out, before donning their apparel, the first questions of the watch below, were—how is the wind? how many knots is she going? what is the latitude? what the longitude?—all delivered in a breath. If the answer was, “She is going along some eight or nine knots an hour,” the interrogator took a long inspiration, thus evincing his relief and inward satisfaction, and would then say, “Pull, girls, pull!” But if the ship was plunging, and the spars and rigging creaking from the pressure of their snow-white pinions, he would be delighted; and, jumping on deck to assure himself that everything was drawing, he would chuckle forth, in the height of his glee, “Give it to her, old boy! She is all oak. She knows where she is bound to; so, pack on your tappa—she will hear it!” If some one remarked that she was heeled down very much, and sail was being dragged instead of carried, he was hooted at for a soldier, and sent to the cook to learn seamanship. If the officer of the deck started away or took in any sail, he was maligned for a milksop, and fated to hear lots of grumbling, together with the advice, given to him in an undertone, that he should stay at home, when he got there, and send his big sister to sea to carry sail for him.
To obviate this uneasiness, many plans were resorted to, and the true one was at length hit upon: the infallible one of labor. All hands seemed suddenly transformed into a colony of curiosity-hunters. One would be seen with a box of shells, cleaning them; another with a Madagascar spear, polishing it, so as to be presentable; whilst others had articles of ivory, bone, and wood, and were busily employed in improving their appearance, so as to render them more creditable to the donor. Every man in the ship had more or less of this description of articles; the greater part of which had been constructed aboard from the jaws and teeth of the sperm whales. Our occupation with these things continued not only for hours, but for days, and in some instances whole weeks.
Thus the time glided on, until we found ourselves hurried along by the northeast trades. These delightful winds we encountered when but two degrees to the northward of the line; and during their continuance we had nothing to grumble at, as we had a fair wind and plenty of it. From the testimony of former voyagers, who had run up and down these trades, we expected that we would be favored with their continuance until we should arrive in latitude 23 or 24° north; but in this, like in most of our other pleasant anticipations, we were disappointed. When we reached the fourteenth parallel of north latitude, they had almost ceased; and then, forgetful of their benefits, we grumbled at their scarce more than ephemeral existence. I well remember the expression of one of our crew, delivered with approved bitterness of spirit. The occasion of this was a mid watch at night, when all of the starboard watch were grouped together by the windlass, discussing our experience of the variability of the winds, while destined to some port or other in the course of the voyage. The speaker, having heard the opinions of several others, stepped into the center of the little knot, and, with an emphatic gesture of the hand, said: “Shipmates! it is no use talking: we are fated to meet with nothing but foul winds and head-beat seas until we get home, and then the bad luck that has kept us company for the past forty-four months may leave us. But there is, and has been, a Jonah in the ship the whole voyage, from the time we left New Bedford. The first we saw of it was in the Eliza Carrew’s coming in contact with us; next, sperm whaling off New Holland. When bound to Balli we had a head wind; bound to the Australian Bight we had one of the dirtiest of dirty passages. To New Zealand we made a first-rate passage; but, when there, what was our fortune? To get scarce any oil, and lose one of our best men! Then, bound from there to Hobartown, we had the wind smack in our teeth for two weeks, when, with a favorable breeze, we should have performed the run in three or four days. Our ill-success in whaling to the southward, and on our visit to the Abrolhas’, is too glaring to need particularization. Our passage to Mauritius was but a drawl, from the lightness of the winds. In doubling the Cape we were Jacksoned a week—at the line the same ill-fortune attended us. Now we have lost the northeast trades a week before we ought to. Add to these our other malexperiences, such as men falling from aloft, boats capsized and stoven, a sperm whale’s head lost. And, to crown all, here we are, bound on to the North American coast in the worst month of the year, with an unremunerative voyage. Now, in the name of reason! how any one can expect good luck in the face of this category I cannot understand: as for myself, I cannot.” And, with a gloomy shake of the head, the speaker concluded, folded his arms across his breast, and seemed resigned to the hard fate he had depicted for himself. His manner, however, was such as to convince the most casual observer that his was a spirit to combat manfully whatever further misfortunes might befall us, through accident or any other cause. The whole bearing of the man, in fact, showed a perfect confidence in the ability of himself and his shipmates to resist every tide of evil the great Neptune might send. His enumeration of our ill-successes heretofore made his argument almost unanswerable; but still I essayed to administer some consolation by quoting the old adage, “it is always darkest before day,” and adding that from the fact of our former misadventures we might reasonably look forward for corresponding good ones in the future. Yet I awakened no sympathetic chord in the bosoms of my auditors. My predecessor had something tangible to base his prediction upon: a something, which, through its familiarity to the minds of all, appealed directly to their hearts; and, although I took the other side, I must confess that I myself was almost convinced there was more probability in his than in my theory. I felt, indeed, that our past crosses were sure prestiges of still more to come.
It may be supposed by some that such a conversation and prediction would have a gloomy effect on the minds of persons with such vivid imaginations as seamen; but, fortunately, (or unfortunately, whichever it may be,) in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred neither good nor evil makes any more lasting impression on their minds than water does upon a duck’s back. For the moment, they become absorbed in the topic of that moment; but look at them an instant later, you will see the same careless bearing, and hear the merry jest passed around as gleefully as ever. Verily, there is need of a “sweet little cherub to sit up aloft, and keep up a watch over the life of Jack Tar”; for he will not look out for himself. This very thoughtlessness, however, renders him all the more useful aboard ship. Many times, if he should pause to think of the danger to himself in the performance of a particular duty, his hesitation would bring destruction upon the ship and its inmates. For instance, it is blowing heavily: a topsail is clewed up—the ship will not bear it, and the sail is flapping in a manner which will destroy it in a few minutes, for it is sweeping abaft the yard. (Now this is the only topsail that can be depended upon in case the ship on arriving at the coast should be jammed on a lee-shore: for then nothing could be saved except by its proper management and use.) Jack knows that under precisely these circumstances hundreds of seamen have been torn from the foot-rope while in the line of their duty, and hurled into the sea, when the fury of the elements precluded the possibility of an attempt to save them. Perchance in his last ship such an accident occurred: mayhap his messmate was swept from the same yardarm he himself was on. But he does not stop to think of all this: he springs into the rigging, climbs to the yard, gets a foothold, and (at every step forced to throw the sail over his head) arrives at the earing, when his task becomes comparatively easy. Little by little he gathers up, passing his gasket, and securing the sail, until all is snugly lashed along the yard in such a manner that the wind has no effect upon it. His task now done, he descends to the deck, as if nothing more than the most ordinary occupation had been his; and he is ready and willing to go aloft again, if necessity demands it.
It is ever thus at sea. The seaman’s life, day by day, hour by hour, is exposed to peril, now in one form, now in another: from the heavy sea sweeping the ship, the unruly canvas, the defective spar. The wheel may throw and maim him, a stranded rope precipitate him to the deck; or, in laying out of a tempestuous night upon the jib or flying-jib boom he may miss his footing: he falls into the sea, the ship passes over him!—Jack has furled his last sail, and dies far from home and friends, without a tombstone to mark his resting-place: his body at the mercy of the wave, whilst his spirit, we hope, ascends to a better and happier state of existence, where he anchors in a bright haven of peace, in vivid contrast with his life on earth, or rather on the sea.
God help the sailor! is the prayer of all who wish him well. And God does help him, or else his would indeed be a comfortless existence. The Creator gives him a merry heart, and a brave one too. The former enables him to meet cheerfully the many discomforts incident to his profession, whilst the latter prevents him from perceiving danger and destruction in every blast that sweeps the ocean: together, they incite him to hope almost against hope, and continue his exertions in the storm, until absolute destruction overwhelms him. Who ever heard of a seaman’s giving up in despair, even when the merest thread of hope only remained? None. No, they are manly to the last; and they always have at least the proud satisfaction of having performed their duty, even though their exertions were all in vain. The pleasant poetess, Miss Eliza Cook, has done them but justice, when she says,
“The dark-blue jacket that enfolds the sailor’s manly breast
Bears more of real honor than the star and ermine vest.
The tithe of folly in his head may wake the landsman’s mirth
But Nature proudly owns him as her child of sterling worth.”
Some persons ashore may think that I have allowed my feelings to carry me away, and that in writing of a class of men, endeared to me by association and a participation in the vicissitudes of their everyday life, I have fallen into a rhapsody, or employed rodomontade; whilst not a few readers will think that I have merely blown my own horn. Yet I will appeal for corroboration of all I have written to those who have seen Jack Tar on his proper element: whether, on the sea, he does not display some of the noblest traits of humanity—not merely physical excellencies, but high moral qualities? Whether he is not there the most patient and courageous of human beings? Whether he does not sing the same in storm or calm, and unflinchingly meet all hardships with a cheerful spirit? I feel assured that all who have thus seen him will attest to his good qualities. Ashore he is not the same creature. The only apology I can offer for his excesses here is, that such are naturally prompted by the liberation of his buoyant spirit,—with a hardy frame and hot blood—from a long confinement and abstinence aboard ship. It is from sheer wantonness that he exults in the commission of his thousand-and-one frivolities; but which seldom leads him into the perpetration of any criminal act.
But, let us take a sober second view of this matter, and see whether Jack’s follies—crimes, too, if you please—are altogether of his own immoral brewing. Of course there can be no question of this, if we use the cold-blooded formal argument of the self-sufficient man, which is, that inasmuch as he, like all the rest of mankind, is a free agent, his shortcomings and misdeeds must necessarily be voluntary, and therefore he alone should be held responsible for them. But, I would ask, does not society in a measure assist in his demoralization? Are not its respectable avenues closed to the foremast hand? Fathers and mothers of families, do you, in your philanthropic moods, extend to the seaman the same warm welcome into your families as you do to the landsman? Does he, landing in a strange port, find those who take him into the society of the virtuous, and thus place before him the opportunity of passing his hours rationally, and so endeavor to prevent his becoming the victim of irksome idleness, in whose train there usually is such an execrable brood of ills? No!—I can answer from experience—you do not. In your stead, out of consideration for his hard earnings, the harlot and the publican meet him at every landing, and with Judas-like greetings prevail on him to his destruction.