Peter the Whaler

by William Henry Giles Kingston

At daybreak on the next morning all hands were roused out to weigh anchor. The second mate’s rough voice had scarcely done sounding in my ear before I was on deck, and with the rest was running round between the capstan-bars. “Loose the topsails,” next sung out the captain. I sprung aloft to aid in executing the order. Though a young seaman may not have knowledge, he may at all events exhibit activity in obeying orders, and thus gain his superior’s approbation. The anchor was quickly run up to the bows, the topsails were sheeted home, and, with a light breeze from the northward, we stood towards the mouth of the Mississippi.

As we passed close to the spot where, on the previous day, the Foam lay at anchor, I looked for her. She was nowhere to be seen. She must have got under weigh and put to sea at night. “She’s gone, Peter, you observe,” remarked Captain Searle, as some piece of duty called me near him. “I’m glad you are not on board her; and I hope neither you nor I may ever fall in with her again.”

From New Orleans to Belize, at the mouth of the Mississippi, is about one hundred miles; and this distance, with the aid of the current and a favourable breeze, we accomplished by dusk, when we prepared once more to breast old ocean’s waves. These last hundred miles of the father of rivers were very uninteresting, the banks being low, swampy, and dismal in the extreme, pregnant with ague and fevers. Although I rejoiced to be on the free ocean, I yet could scarcely help feeling regret at leaving, probably for ever, the noble stream on whose bosom I had so long floated; on whose swelling and forest-shaded banks I had travelled so far; whom I had seen in its infancy—if an infant it may ever be considered—in its proud manhood, and now at the termination of its mighty course.

These thoughts quickly vanished, however, as I felt the lively vessel lift to the swelling wave, and smelt the salt pure breeze from off the sea. Though the sea-breeze was very reviving after the hot pestilential air of New Orleans, yet as it came directly in our teeth, our captain wished it from some other quarter. We were enabled, however, to work off the shore; and as during the night the land-breeze came pretty strong, by day-break the next morning we were fairly at sea.

Before the sun had got up, the wind had gone down, and it soon became what seamen call a flat calm. The sea, as the hot rays of the sun shone on it, was, as it were, like molten lead; the sails flapped lazily against the mast; the brig’s sides, as she every now and then gave an unwilling roll, threw off with a loud splash the bright drops of water which they lapped up from the imperceptibly heaving bosom of the deep. The hot sun struck down on our heads with terrific force, while the pitch bubbled up out of the seams of the deck; and Bill Tasker, the wit of the crew, declared he could hear it squeak into the bargain. An awning was spread over the deck in some way to shelter us, or we should have been roasted alive. Bill, to prove the excess of the heat, fried a slice of salt junk on a piece of tin, and, peppering it well, declared it was delicious. The only person who seemed not only not to suffer from the heat, but to enjoy it, was the black cook; and he, while not employed in his culinary operations, spent the best part of the day basking on the bowsprit-end.

The crew were engaged in their usual occupations of knotting yarns, making sinnet, etcetera, while the aforesaid Bill Tasker was instructing me—for whom he had taken an especial fancy—in the mysteries of knotting and splicing; but we all of us, in spite of ourselves, went about our work in a listless, careless way, nor had the officers even sufficient energy to make us more lively. Certainly it was hot. There had been no sail in sight that I know of all the day, when, as I by chance happened to cast my eyes over the bulwarks, they fell on the topsails of a schooner, just rising above the line of the horizon.

“A sail on the starboard bow!” I sung out to the man who was nominally keeping a look-out forward. He reported the same to the first mate.

“Where away is she?” I heard the captain inquire, as he came directly afterwards on deck.

“To the southward, sir; she seems to be creeping up towards us with a breeze of some sort or other,” answered Mr Dobree. “Here, lad,” he continued, beckoning to me, “go aloft, and see what you can make of her. Your eyes are as sharp as any on board, if I mistake not, and a little running will do you no harm.”

I was soon at the mast-head, and in two minutes returned, and reported her to be a large topsail schooner, heading north-north-east with the wind about south-east.