“And he’s well, I hope?”
“It’s going to be a bad job when old Cap’n Round falls ill. Old Cap’n Round’s one of them gents as never knows what it is to have so much as a spasm; though when the likes of them are took bad, it’s common-loy good-noight,” said he with an emphatic nod.
“I don’t reckon your services will be required,” said I; “but I may be wanting to go ashore after we’ve brought up, and you can keep your eye upon this ship if you like.”
“Thank ye, sir. Loike to see a paper, sir?” and here the man thrust his hand under his jersey and pulled down a tattered newspaper a few weeks old, gloomy with beer stains and thumb marks; but news, even a few weeks old, must needs be very fresh news to me after an absence of two years, during which I had caught but a few idle and ancient whispers of what was happening at home. I thanked the man, put the newspaper in my pocket, meaning to look at it when I should have leisure, and stepped on to the forecastle, where I stood staring about me awaiting orders from the captain.
The scene on the water was very grand. There were, probably, two hundred sail of wind-bound ships at anchor. Every kind of rig, I think, was there, from the tall spars of the British frigate down to the little, squab, apple-bowed, wallowing hoy. I am writing this in the year 1849. A great change in shipping has happened since 1814. You have men-of-war now with funnels and paddle-wheels; steam has shortened the passage to India from four months to two months and a half, which is truly wonderful. Nay, the Atlantic has been crossed in three weeks, and I may yet live to see the day when the run from Liverpool to New York shall not exceed a fortnight. But the change since 1814 is not in steam only. Many are the structural alterations. Ships I will not deny have gained in speed and convenience; but they have lost in beauty. They are no longer romantic, and picturesque, and quaint. No; ships are no longer the gay, the shining, the castellated, the spacious-winged fabrics of my young days.
Could you possess the memory of the scene of Downs, as it showed on that September afternoon from the forecastle of the Royal Brunswicker, you would share in the affectionate enthusiasm, the delight and the regret with which I recur to it. How am I to express the light, the life, the color of the picture; the fiery flashing of glossy, low, black, wet sides, softly stooping upon the silken heave of the sea; the gleam of storied windows in tall sterns; the radiance of giltwork on the quarter galleries of big West and East Indiamen, straining motionless at their hempen cable and lifting star-like trucks to the altitude of the mastheads of a line-of-battle ship! I see again the long, low, piratic-looking schooner. Her brand-new metal sheathing rises like a strong light, flowing upward out of the water on which she rests to within a strake or two of her covering board. I see the handsome brig with a rake of her lower masts aft and topgallant masts stayed into a scarce perceptible curve forward. There is a short grin of guns along the waist and a brilliant brass-piece pivoted on her forecastle; she is a trader bound to the west coast of Africa. She will be making the Middle Passage anon; but she will take care to furnish no warrant for suspicion while she flies the peaceful commercial flag on this side the Guinea parallels. And I see also the snug old snow, of a beam expanded into the proportions of a Dutchman’s stern, huge pieces of fresh beef slung over the taffrail, a boat triced up to the forestay, and a tiny boy swinging, knife in hand, at the mast.
But what I most clearly see is the fine English frigate motionless in the heart of the forest of shipping that stretches away to right and left of her. With what exquisite precision are her yards braced! How admirably furled is every sail, and how finely managed each cone-shaped bunt! There is no superfluous rigging to thicken her gear. Whatever is not wanted is removed. Her long pennant floats languidly down the topgallant mast, and at her gaff-end ripples the flag of Great Britain—the fighting flag of the State; the flag that, by the victory at Trafalgar but a few years since, was hauled to the very masthead of the world, with such stout hearts still left, in this year of God 1814, to guard the hilliards, that one cannot recall their names without a glow of pride coming into the cheek and a deeper beat entering every pulse.
Ah! thought I, as I gazed at the fine frigate, delighting with appreciative nautical eye in the hundred points of exquisite equipment which express the perfect discipline of the sea; admiring the white line of hammocks which crowned the grim, silent, muzzled tier of ordnance, the spot of red that denoted a marine, the agility of some fellows in her forerigging—Heavens! how different from the slow and cumbersome sprawling of the heavily-breeched merchant Jack! Ah! thought I, while I kept my eyes bent in admiration upon the frigate, who would not rather be the first lieutenant of such a craft as that than the first mate of such an old wagon as this? And yet I don’t know, thought I, keeping my eyes fastened upon the frigate. It is good to be a sailor to begin with—best sailor, best man, spite of uniforms and titles and the color of the flag he serves under. And which service produces the best sailor, I wonder? And here I told over to myself a number of names of seamen who had risen to great, and some of them to glorious, eminence in the Royal Navy, all of whom had served in the beginning of their years in the merchant service; and then I also thought to myself, who sees most of the real work—the hard, heavy, perilous work of the ocean—the man-of-warsman or the merchantman? And I could not but smile as I looked from that trim and lovely frigate to our own sea-beaten hooker, and from the few lively hearties of the man-of-war visible upon her decks, to the weather-stained, round-backed men of our crew, who were hanging about waiting for the captain to sing out orders. No, I could not help smiling.
But while I smiled a volley of orders was suddenly fired off by Captain Spalding from the quarter-deck, and in an instant I was singing out too, and the crew were hauling upon the ropes, shortening sail.
We floated to the spot that Spalding had singled out with his eye, the Deal boat towing alongside, with the fellow that had boarded us inside of her, for the captain had promptly motioned him overboard on his stepping aft, and then the anchor was let go, and the sails rolled up. It was just then sunset. The frigate fired a gun; down fluttered her ensign, and a sort of tremble of color seemed to run through the forests of masts as every vessel, big and little, in response to the sullen clap of thunder from the frigate’s side, hauled down her flag. A stark calm had fallen, heavy masses of electric cloud were lifting slowly east and south, but they were to my mind a summer countenance. Methought I had used the sea long enough to know wind by my sight and smell without hearing or feeling it; and I was cocksure that those clouds signified nothing more than a storm or two—as landsmen would call it—a small local matter of lightning and thunder, with no air to notice, and a silent night of stars to follow.