Master Rockafellar's Voyage

by William Clark Russell

“What!” shouted the mate, “with those spectacles on?”

“I didn’t notice the spectacles, sir,” said the man; “I see a figure out on the jibboom, and whilst I was looking the jib-sheet chucked him overboard, and that’s why I sung out.”

The mate stared hard at the man, but seemed to think he was telling the truth, on which he told him to go forward and get on with his work, biting his underlip to conceal an expression of laughter, as he walked towards the wheel.

That evening, in the second dog-watch, there was a fight between the sailor, whose name was Jim Honeyball, and Bill Heenan. Bill had heard that Jim had mistaken him for Old Jacob, and had told the mate so; and thereupon challenged him to stand up like a man. There was a deal of pummeling, much rolling about, encouraging cheers from the sailors, and “language,” as it is called, on the part of the combatants; but neither was much hurt.

Such was the end of the poor monkey; yet he seemed to have found a successor in Bill Heenan, for, to the end of the voyage, the Irishman was always called Old Jacob.

We were talking in the midshipmen’s berth over the loss of the monkey, when Poole, the long midshipman, who was in my watch, spun us the following yarn:—“I made my first voyage,” said he, “in a ship called the Sweepstakes, to Madras, Calcutta, and Hong Kong. On our way home we brought up off Singapore for a day on some business of cargo, of which I forget the nature. I was standing at the gangway, my duty as midshipman being to keep the ship’s side clear of loafers, when I saw a large boat heading for us. She was like one of those surf-boats you see at Madras. There were five fellows rowing her, and one chap steered with a long oar. They were all darkies, naked to the waist. I was struck by the manner in which one of them, as the boat approached, looked over the shoulder at our ship. The others kept their eyes on their oars or gazed over the stern; but this chap stared continuously behind him as the boat advanced; by which I mean that he looked ahead, for of course a fellow rows with his back upon the bow of a boat. They came alongside, and I found that the men had a great number of monkeys to sell. I looked hard at the fellow whose chin had been upon his shoulder as he rowed, and was wondering what on earth sort of native he was, when, on a sudden, I caught sight of his tail! He was a huge ape, of the size of a man—at all events, of the size of his shipmates. He so much resembled the others at a little distance that there was nothing wonderful in my not having distinguished him quickly. He had pulled his oar with fine precision, keeping time like one of the University Eight, and there had been nothing odd about him at all, saving his manner of looking over his shoulder. The others held up monkeys to show us, and, I tell you, I burst into a roar of laughter when I saw this great ape pick up a bit of a marmozette and flourish it up at me as if he would have me buy. In a very little while the ship was full of monkeys. Almost every man amongst us bought one. I chose a pretty little creature that slept in the clews of my hammock all the way home; but he grew so tall and quarrelsome that my mother, when I was absent last year, gave him away to an old gentleman, who shortly afterwards, in the most mysterious manner, disappeared, together with the monkey.”

“Where wath the mythtery?” asked Kennet.

“Well,” said Poole, “the notion was that the monkey had eaten up the old gentleman, dressed himself up in his clothes, and gone to London to consult a solicitor, with a view of contesting the old man’s will, as being next of kin.”

We were gradually now drawing near home. The English Channel was no longer so far off but that we could think of it as something within reach of us. All my clothes had shrunk upon me, whence I might know that I had grown much taller and broader than I was when I left England. My face was dark with weather, the palms of my hands hard as horn with pulling and hauling. I had the deep-sea rolling gait that is peculiar to sailors, and, indeed, I had been transformed during the months I had been away into as thorough a little “shellback” as was ever made of a boy by old ocean. I was wonderfully hearty besides—had the appetite of a wolf and the spirits of a young spaniel. I was equal to doing “my bit” on board ship, whatever might be the job I was set to. I could put as neat a bunt to the furl of the mizzen-royal as any lad aboard, knew how to send the yard down, how to pass an earing—though I was too small, and without sufficient strength, to jockey the yard-arm in reefing—was well acquainted with all the parts of the rigging, and the various uses of the complicated gear; could steer, make knots of twenty different kinds—in short, I had picked up a great deal of sea knowledge of a working sort; but I knew nothing of navigation beyond the art of bringing the sun down to the horizon through a sextant, and working out a simple proposition of latitude, for which I had to thank Mr. Cock; Captain Tempest taught me nothing.

I was very eager to get home; I had never before been so long absent from my parents. I was pining, too, for comforts which when at home I had made nothing of, but which I would now think upon as the highest luxuries. How often when hacking with a black-handled knife at a piece of iron-hard salt junk and rapping the table with a biscuit to free the mouthful of any stray weevil which might be lurking in the honeycombed fragment—how often, I say, has the vision of my father’s table arisen before my eyes: the basin of soup at which I have known myself to sometimes impatiently turn up my nose; the fried sole or delicious morsel of salmon; the roast leg of mutton or sirloin of beef, with its attendant vegetables—things not to be dreamt of at sea—the jam tarts, the apple pies, the custards, not to mention the dessert! Oh, how often has the lump of cold salt fat pork or the mouthful of nauseous soup and bouilli come near to choking me with those thoughts of breakfast, dinner, and supper at home, which the odious nature of the food on our cabin table has excited in my hungry imagination!