“Well, there’s the ship,” he observed, seeing that I was looking at him instead of going on board. “Do you know me now?” with an emphasis on the do. “That’s kind now to acknowledge an old friend. We was raised together, I guess; only you wasn’t weaned till last summer, when the grass was dried up.”
I saw that he was laughing at me; but as I felt that I had been rude in staring at him, I said I begged his pardon, but that he made a mistake in supposing we were acquainted, unless he had visited the south of Ireland, seeing that I had never been out of that part of the country before. This seemed to amuse him mightily, for he gave way to a quiet and very peculiar laugh, which I heard as I passed on towards the ship.
There was a plank placed from the quay to the deck of the ship, and by means of it I stepped on board the Black Swan. No one took any notice of me, so that I had time to look about me. She was a ship of some eight hundred tons burthen, though she was advertised as of twelve hundred. She had a raised poop aft, which I may describe as an additional house above the deck, the doors of which opened on the deck. There was a similar raised place forward, called the topgallant forecastle. Under the latter the seamen and mate lived, while the captain and passengers inhabited the poop. The space between decks was open fore and aft, and fitted up with standing bed-places. This was for the abode of the poorer class of emigrants. The hold, the remaining portion of the ship below the main deck, was filled with cargo and provisions.
All this I discovered afterwards, for at first everything appeared to my sight an inextricable mass of confusion and disorder. After watching for some time, I observed a man whom I concluded was the first mate, by the way he ordered the other people about and the air of authority which he assumed; so at last I mustered courage to go up to him.
“Please, sir,” said I in an unusually humble tone, “are you the first mate of the ship?”
“Well, if I am, and what then?” was his not very courteous answer.
“Why, it’s settled that I’m to go in this ship to learn to be a sailor, so I’ve come on board at once to make myself useful,” I replied.
He eyed me curiously from head to foot as if I was some strange animal, and then burst into a loud laugh. “You learn to be a sailor?—you make yourself useful?—you chaw-bacon. Why, the hay-seed is still sticking in your hair, and the dust ain’t off your shoes yet. What can you do now?” he asked.
I confessed that I knew nothing about a ship, except the machinery of a steamer, which I had examined in my passage across from Dublin; but that I would learn as fast as I could.
“And so you are a young gentleman, are you?” he continued, without attending to my observations. “Sent to sea to learn manners! Well, we’ll soon knock your gentility out of you, let me tell you. Howsomdever, we don’t want no help here, so be off on shore again; and when you meet John Smith, just ask him to take you a walk through the town, and not to bring you back to make yourself useful till the ship’s ready for sea, d’ye hear, or you’ll wish you’d stayed away, that’s all.”