He turned to the rude woodcut, and had another long look at it; then, suddenly twisting the sheets up in his hand, he thrust one end into the fire, singing out as he looked around him:
“Anybody want a light?”
This sour seaman was, of course, a very hard and exacting critic, belonging to a class of sailors who, when reading about the sea, should they come across the least oversight on the part of a writer, will fling his book or poem or song out of window, and vote the author a lubber and utterly ignorant of all that concerns the calling. I remember, when I wrote an account of the wreck of the Indian Chief, a sailor gravely told me he was cocksure the whole yarn was an out-and-out lie, because I had made the chief mate escape from the mizzenmast by getting into the maintop by the mizzen-topmast stay. No doubt I should have done better by sending the mate to make his way into the top from the topgallant masthead; but just because my sailor was sure that the mizzen-topmast stay of the Indian Chief set up half-way down the mainmast, he refused to believe the story of the wreck. Yet it is quite possible to read many of our English sea songs with wonder and ridicule without necessarily bringing to them the sourness and severity of judgment I found in the old seaman. The present generation of writers are not worse sinners in respect of accuracy than the past; but I am bound to say that their blunders are to the full as numerous. The production of a sea song is by no means conditional on a man’s having been to sea. The finest marine lyric in this or any other language, “Ye Mariners of England,” was written by a man who had no knowledge whatever of the sailor’s calling. There is nothing false in that glorious poem, no absurd references to bowlines and topsail sheets, and other words of which few landsmen have the least idea of the meaning. But can as much be said of Allan Cunningham’s popular poem, “A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea”? It is just possible that the poet may have used the word “sheet” rightly, and meant the song to refer to a small fore-and-aft vessel that when heavily pressed down might wet her sheets; but Jack, when he hears that ballad, is strongly disposed to believe that the writer thought that a “sheet” was a sail, and this being his suspicion, he could never sing the song with the least relish or enjoyment of even the beautiful air with which the words are associated. By all means let landsmen continue to write sea songs; but if they desire a larger audience than shore-goers for their compositions, if they wish to hear of their verses in the forecastle and learn that they are popular among sailors, let them rigorously avoid all technicalities, all the stupid old clap-trap about cans of grog and “Yeo, heave ho,” and “So ho!” and the like. For a song may be as salt as the sea itself, and yet be as free from the stereotyped nauticalisms as a page of “Hamlet.” Indeed, the real English sailor is not one-third as nautical as he is supposed to be; and the numerous inanities dedicated to his rollicking enjoyments when at sea, his Sues and Nans ashore, are about as true to his real character as the public-house effigy of him, on one leg, in shoes, and round hat at the back of his head, is like the original.
AN HOUR’S ROW.
There is not a more painfully diverting sight in the whole world than that of a cockney with a face as yellow as a London fog, a tall hat at the back of his head, his coloured shirt-sleeves rolled above his elbows, tugging upon the sea at a small pair of oars in a rather heavy wherry. He has no idea of tides, of waves, of winds, or weather. He looks to leeward for squalls, and over the stern for any other news of the sea. The current that dangerously and helplessly sweeps him away from the land delights him by a sense of velocity. The waves which rise and threaten to fill the boat gladden him with the sensation of going “up and down.” I once took the trouble to watch a cockney get into a wherry and row himself out to sea. I kept a very powerful glass bearing upon him, and had his face within reach of my hand, so to speak, when he was two miles off. There was a strong tide setting to the eastward, in which direction lay the North Sea. He went away very fast, and with my eye to the telescope I found myself smiling in sympathy with his radiant enjoyment of the speed at which his boat was going. He did not feather his oars, but rowed with prodigious contortions of his body, carrying his nose aft until I thought he would tumble upon it in the stern sheets, and then lying back at an angle so acute that I was constantly watching for his heels, whilst his oars flourished themselves in the air like a pair of tongs in the hands of a clown. I was sure, by the expression in his face, that he believed it was his fine rowing that made the boat go so fast. He did not know that the tide was helping him at the rate of very nearly three and a half land miles an hour.
At last he thought it was time to turn back. He let go one oar to pull at the other with both hands, and so he got his boat’s head round. He still smiled and looked confident, and rowed unintermittently for about ten minutes, in which time he had gone astern about the sixteenth of a mile. Then he stopped and took a look over the bows. His face was no longer radiant, but, on the contrary, very much puzzled, and even slightly distressed. He rowed hard again, and then stopped and took another look. This time he seemed horribly frightened. Indeed, examined through the telescope, his yellow face was a curious study. The emotions of his soul were finely expressed, and every time he stopped rowing to turn his head and gaze at the land, a fresh passion was depictured on his fog-coloured lineaments. Eventually a couple of boatmen went to succour him, and with much difficulty towed him home. He stepped on shore very defiantly, and, instead of rewarding the boatmen for their services, expressed his gratitude by offering to row either of them for a pound.
It is plain that hardy and dexterous landsmen of this kind must occasionally meet with exciting adventures on the deep. An experience not so commonplace but that another touch or two would have raised it into tragical dignity was encountered not very many days ago by a plain, honest, decently-educated Londoner, a City clerk, aged forty-four, who, being afflicted with the delusion that he could row, put forth in a wherry along with his wife and child. He told me the story, begging me to print it as a warning to others, but at the same time on no account to mention his name nor the port at which he embarked on his disastrous voyage. As nearly as I can remember, this is how his story went.
“I don’t know,” he began, “whether I shall ever live to keep a servant, but it would be more sensible for me to hope I may never live to feel the want of one. Any way, when a man can’t afford to keep a servant, then, if he has a baby it must always go along with the wife; and this being so, when I offered to take my wife out for an hour’s row we were bound to carry the baby with us. The baby was weaned six weeks ago. It’s a small thing to say, but worth taking notice of, as it made our troubles harder, as you’ll hear. I never professed to be an oarsman. I had in my time pulled a pair of sculls on the Thames, and got along middling well—well enough to enable me to say to my wife on this occasion, ‘Look here, Sarah, there’s no need to take a man. A man will be a shilling extra. I don’t say I can feather; and I don’t know, if I were to row with other men, whether I should be able to keep time. But I’m quite competent to pull in a boat by myself.’
“‘Very well, William,’ said she; ‘if you think there’s no danger, an hour on the water will be very enjoyable. But we don’t want more than an hour.’
“‘Certainly not,’ I answered; ‘an hour is eighteenpence.’