His chief-executive and prime minister, Mr. Grafton, was a tall, massive-looking man, of fine personal appearance, something older than his superior. He had made three voyages in the same capacity, being one of those choice mates, who, by some chance, never get command of a ship, perhaps in virtue of a saying much in vogue among shipowners, and in many instances acted upon, "that it is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him master." A man of rather thoughtful cast of mind, of much intelligence, and possessed of an extensive stock of information upon many subjects, with a habit of generalizing and a clearness, of expression which rendered him an agreeable companion to all with whom he came in contact. Though a good whaleman, Grafton was not what is known to the connoisseur as a "fishy man;" he had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many "fishy" young men lifted over his head; but as he was very highly esteemed in his station, and received nearly a captain's pay, he was well contented as he was. He was devotedly attached to his family at home, personated the gentleman in all he said and did, and well sustained the character.
Dunham, the second officer, was a smart young fellow of two-and-twenty, active, strong, and "fishy to the backbone." His chief fault, as an officer, lay in his being an inveterate sleeper; he could never, upon any consideration, keep awake a whole four-hour watch.
The mulatto Johnson had steered a boat with Captain Upton before in the Colossus, and was well known in Nantucket as "a long-dart man." He was somewhat of the Shanghai build—tall and long-shanked, with great strength of limb, and could plug a whale better if four fathoms distant than he could "wood and blackskin." He had an eye like a hawk, and could see a spout as far with his natural optics as most men could through a telescope. He was ignorant of everything out of his own immediate line, and sometimes rather overbearing. He was not disliked, in the main, by the crew, if we except Jeff and the cook, who being old shipmates of his, and themselves of the pure blood, were averse to tolerating anything of a mongrel description, or "milk-and-molasses color," as they termed it. "No compromise" was their platform, on this particular issue.
The cooper of the Arethusa was an important personage, as, indeed, the cooper always is in a whaler. The duties of this functionary are of a peculiar character, and about as independent of all the rest as those of a surgeon in a man-of-war. He is neither officer nor man, strictly speaking, his lay or pay being nearly equal to that of a second mate. He lives aft with the officers, but makes himself at home in all parts of the ship, occupying a sort of neutral ground—a kind of connecting link between republicanism and oligarchy, neither too high nor too low to consort or joke with anybody and everybody. As a general rule, he stands no watch, but does his day's work and sleeps all night, and in many ways evinces consciousness of his own value, and of the indispensable character of his services. For a whaler may, and, in fact, often does, go to sea without a blacksmith or without a carpenter; but the cooper is an essential part of her equipage. An officer or a boatsteerer may, in case of emergency, be created at sea, by promotion; but the cooper is not so easily replaced.
The cooper in question was a stout, grave-looking man of forty or thereabouts, with a shaggy mass of grey hair, and a patriarchally long beard. His mechanical work was of excellent quality, what little he accomplished; for he always worked on the principle of the tortoise in the race—"slow and sure." He scraped indifferently well on the violin, but delighted especially in drawing a longer bow. In virtue of this latter accomplishment, he might have claimed near relationship with a certain gentleman known in classic lore as Thomas Pepper, without having his title questioned for a moment. He always told his yarns as gospel truth, and would back them with any oath, if required.
The two young boatsteerers, Bunker and Fisher, with the Portuguese steward, completed the "afterguard." In the forecastle there was, in addition to the personages already mentioned, the usual variety of character and disposition to be found among a dozen young men, recruited at random in this manner. Now that we were getting initiated to a sea life, we were beginning to have opinions, and to express them, no longer leaving the whole field to Jeff and the sea-lawyer. As for the Nantucket boys, Kelly and Hoeg (or Obed B., as I still persisted in calling him), they made rapid progress in knowledge and confidence. As I have before intimated, these young "natives to the manor born" seemed to look upon this life with the eye of fatalists. It was foreordained that they should be sailors, and nothing in their new way of life seemed to surprise or disturb them for a moment. Everything took place as a matter of course with them. They never seemed to think they could, by any possibility, have followed any other business for a livelihood; and each new event or circumstance of the voyage was merely another link in the chain of their inevitable destiny. They were born to go whaling and a station on the quarterdeck was the goal of their ambition.
They had not been more than a week at sea before they had taken some of the starch out of the sea-lawyer, who had attempted to assert his "rights" by hazing them about, and calling upon them to perform various menial services for him, which he said it was a "boy's place to do."
One morning he ordered Kelly, in a very arbitrary way, to go on deck and bring him down some water, which Kelly flatly refused to do. The sea-lawyer declared he would "make him do it;" and upon Kelly's expressing a doubt as to his ability to perform that feat, he proceeded to enforce his command, vi et armis. But he was met by the boy with a spirit that he had not looked for, and before he could get a good hold upon the youngster, so as to chastise him, as he expected easily to do, he was attacked in the rear by Obed B., who arrived on the field just in time to reinforce his chum and schoolmate. This gave Kelly a chance to rally and assume the offensive; and Burley, who was a most arrant coward, finding himself roughly handled between the two, was fain to call for an armistice. A parley ensued, and the boys gave him to understand that they did not come to sea to be boys, but to make themselves men, and that they would not submit to be bullied by him. And the upshot of the matter was, that the champion of "rights" made rather an ignominious retreat from the field, as compared with the vigor of his first attack. All this was nuts, of course, to the rest of us youngsters, who desired nothing more earnestly than to see the bully humbled a little; while the emotion of Manoel was too powerful to find utterance—in intelligible English. He patted the two boys on the shoulder, in the exuberance of his spirits, while his tongue rattled until I thought all his teeth were loose in the jaws; but to save my life, I could not have told what he was trying to say.
There was plenty of work for all hands on the passage out, as every one will understand who has ever performed a voyage in a new ship. We found our duties very fatiguing, as we were kept at work all day, and had a watch to stand at night. There was all the new rigging to be stretched and set up over and again, in addition to the thousand and one other matters to be attended to, to put everything in trim for whaling against the opening of the campaign. The old salts growled night and day in the forecastle about having no "watch below;" but as we verdant ones had but a vague idea of what they meant by it, we had but little to say about this grievance.