The Bay of Biscay well merits its turbulent character; of this we soon
had ample demonstration, for the _Rottenbeam Castle_ had scarcely
entered within its stormy bounds, when the wind, hitherto moderate,
became rough and boisterous, and in a little time freshened almost to a
gale; the vessel began to pitch and roll—the shrouds cracked—the few
sails set were strained almost to splitting—and mountain seas with wild,
foamy crests ever and anon burst over us, clearing the waist and
forecastle, and making the “good ship” quiver through every plank and
timber. These _sublimities_ were quite new to me, and produced their
usual effects on the unseasoned—an involuntary tribute to Old Ocean—not
a metrical outpouring, but one of a less spiritual quality, on which it
would be superfluous to dilate.
Our first day’s dinner on board, with things in the state I have
described—_i.e._ the _Rottenbeam Castle_ reeling and staggering like a
drunken man—was a most comical affair, and I should have enjoyed it
extremely had my nausea been less. It is true, with some variations, the
scene was afterwards frequently repeated (except when sea-pie was the
order of the day); but then, though I was no longer qualmish, it in turn
had lost the master-charm of novelty. We were summoned to dinner as
usual, on the day in question, by the drummers and fifers—or rather, to
be more respectful, the “Captains Band;” but, from the difficulty of
preserving an equilibrium, these worthies mangled the “Roast Beef of Old
England” most unmercifully. The dapper little steward, with his train of
subordinates, had some difficulty in traversing the deck with their
savoury burthens; unable to march as before, heads erect, like a squad
of recruits, the grand purveyor, with his silver tureen in the van, they
now emerged theatrically from the culinary regions—advancing with slides
and side-steps, like a _corps de ballet_—now a halt, then a simultaneous
run—then balancing on one leg—and finally (hitting the moment of an
equipoise) a dart into the cuddy, where, with some little difficulty,
each contrived to deposit his dish. The passengers, emerging from
various doors and openings, tottering and holding on as best they might,
now made their way to seats, and amidst the most abominable creaking and
groaning that ever saluted my ears the operation of dinner began. In
spite of sand-bags, however, and all other appliances, there was no
restraining the ambulatory freaks of the dishes, and we were scarcely
seated when a tremendous lee-lurch sent a tureen of peasoup souse over
the doctor s kerseymere waistcoat and Brummel tie; and a roast pig, as
if suddenly resuscitated and endued with a spirit of frenzy, darted from
its dish, and, cantering furiously down the whole length of the table,
finally effected a lodgment in Miss Dobbikins’ lap, to the infinite
dismay of that young lady, who uttering a faint shriek, hastily essayed,
with Ensign O’Shaughnessy’s assistance, to divest herself of the
intrusive porker. I, for my part, was nearly overwhelmed by an
involuntary embrace from the charming Miss Olivia; whilst, to add to the
confusion, at this particular moment, Mr. Cadet Grundy, governed rather
by sight than a due consideration of circumstances and the laws of
gravitation, made a desperate lunge at one of the swinging tables, which
he thought was making a most dangerous approach to the perpendicular, in
order to steady it, and the immediate result was, a fearful crash of
glasses and decanters, and a plentiful libation of port and sherry.
“Are ye mod, sir, to do that?” exclaimed the captain, with
ill-suppressed vexation at the destruction of his glasses, and
forgetting his usual urbanity.
“I thought they were slipping off, sir,” said Grundy, with great
humility.
“Ye ha’ slupped them off in gude airnest yeersel, sir,” rejoined Captain
McGuffin, unable, however, to repress a smile, in which all joined, at
the idea of Grundy’s extreme simplicity. “Dinna ye ken, sir, that it’s
the ship, and not the swing-table, that loses its pairpendicular? Here,
steward,” continued he, “clare away these frogments, and put mair
glasses on the table.”
The colloquy ended, there was a further lull, when, heave yo ho! away
went the ship on the other side; purser jammed up against the
bulk-head—rolls—legs and wings—boiled beef, carrots, and potatoes, all
racing, as if to see which would first reach the other side of the
table. At this instant snap went a chair-lashing, and the ex-resident of
Paugulabad was whirled out of the cuddy door, like a thunder-bolt.
“There she goes again!” exclaimed the second mate; “hold on, gentlemen.”
The caution was well-timed, for down she went on the opposite tack; once
more, the recoil brought the colonel back again, with the force of a
battering-ram, attended by an awful smash of the butlers plate-basket,
and other deafening symptoms of reaction. Oh, ’tis brave sport, a
cuddy-dinner in an Indiaman, and your ship rolling gunwales under.
“By the powers, now, but this hates everything entirely,” exclaimed
Ensign Gorman, who, like myself, was a griff, and had never witnessed
anything of the sort before.
“Oh, its nothing at all this—mere child’s play, to what you’ll have
round the Cape,” observed the second mate, grinning with malice
prepense.
“The deuce take you, now, Grinnerson, for a _Jove’s_ comforter,”
rejoined the ensign, laughing; “sure if it’s worse than this, it is
we’ll be sailing bottom upwards, and ateing our males with our heels in
the air.”
“Oh, I assure you, it’s a mere trifle this to the rolling and pitching I
myself have experienced,” said the little colonel, who having recovered
his seat and composure, now put in his oar, unwilling to be silent when
anything wonderful was on the _tapis_. “I remember,” continued the
ex-resident, picking his teeth _nonchalamment_ (he generally picked his
teeth when delivered of a bouncer), “that was—let me see, about the year
1810—shortly after I resigned the residency of Paugulabad—we were off
Cape Lagullas, when our vessel rolled incessantly for a fortnight in the
heaviest sea I ever remember to have seen; we were half our time under
water—a shark actually swam through the cuddy—everything went by the
board—live stock all washed away—couldn’t cook the whole time, but lived
on biscuit, Bologna sausages, Bombay ducks, and so forth. To give you an
idea of it—ladies will excuse me—I actually wore out the seats of two
pair of inexpressibles from the constant friction to which they were
subjected—a sort of perpetual motion—no preserving the same centre of
gravity for a single moment.”
This sally of the colonel’s had an equally disturbing effect on the
gravity of the cuddy party, and all laughed heartily at it.
“You were badly enough off, certainly, colonel,” said our wag, the
second officer (with a sly wink at one of his confederates); “but I
think I can mention a circumstance of the kind still more extraordinary.
When I was last in the China seas, in the _John Tomkins_, she rolled so
prodigiously after a tuffoon, that she actually wore off all the copper
sheathing, and very nearly set the sea on fire by this same friction you
speak of. It’s strange, but as true as what you have just mentioned,
colonel.”
“Sir,” said the colonel, bristling up, for he did not at all relish the
drift of this story, “you are disposed to be pleasant, sir; facetious,
sir; but let me beg in future that you will reserve your jokes for some
one else, and not exhibit your humour at my expense, or it may be
unpleasant to both of us.”
All looked grave—the affair was becoming serious—the colonel was a known
fire-eater, and Grinnerson, who saw he had overshot the mark, seemed a
little disconcerted, but struggled to preserve his composure—it was a
juncture well calculated to test all the powers of impudence and tact of
that very forward gentleman; but, somehow or other, he did back cleverly
out of the scrape, without any additional offence to the colonel’s
dignity, or a farther compromise of his own, and before the cloth was
removed, a magnanimous challenge to Mr. Grinnerson, “to take wine,” came
from the colonel (who at bottom was a very worthy little man, though
addicted, unfortunately, to the Ferdinand Mendez Pinto vein), and
convinced us that happily no other sort of challenge was to be
apprehended. And so ended my first day’s dinner in a high sea in the Bay
of Biscay.
Now had the moon, resplendent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s pure azure shed her sacred light.
In plain prose, it was past seven bells, and I (like Mahomet’s coffin)
was swinging in the steerage, forgetful of all my cares; whether in my
dreams I was wandering once more, as in childhood’s days, by the flowery
margin of the silver Avon, listening to the blackbird’s mellow note from
the hawthorn dell—lightly footing the Spanish dance in Mangeon’s
ball-room at Clifton—or comfortably sipping a cup of bohea in the family
circle at home—I do not now well remember: but whatever was the nature
of those sweet illusions, they were suddenly dispelled, in the dead of
the night, by one of the most fearful agglomerations of stunning sounds
that ever broke the slumbers of a cadet: groaning timbers—hoarse
shouts—smashing crockery—falling knife-boxes—and the loud gurgling
bubble of invading waters—all at once, and with terrible discord, burst
upon my astonished ear. Thinking the ship was scuttling, or, that some
other (to me unknown) marine disaster was befalling her, I sprung up in
a state between sleeping and waking, overbalanced my cot, and was
pitched out head-foremost on the deck. Here a body of water, ancle-deep,
and washing to and fro, lent a startling confirmation to my
apprehensions that the ship was actually _in articulo immersionis_. I
struggled to gain my feet, knocked my naked shins against a box of
saddlery of the major’s, slipped and slid about on the wet and slimy
deck, and finally, my feet flying from under me, came bump down on the
broadest side of my person, with stunning emphasis and effect. Another
effort to gain the erect position was successful, and, determined to
visit the “glimpses of the moon” once more before I became food for
fishes, I hurriedly and instinctively scrambled my way towards the
companion ladder. Scarcely was I in its vicinity, and holding on by a
staunchion, when the vessel gave another profound roll, so deep that the
said ladder, being ill-secured, fell over backwards, saluting the deck
with a tremendous bang, followed by a second crash, and bubbling of
waters effecting a forcible entry. Paralyzed and confounded by this
succession of sounds and disasters, I turned, still groping in the
darkness, to seek some information touching this uproar, from some one
of the neighbouring sleepers. I soon lighted on a hammock, and tracing
the mummy-case affair from the feet upwards my hands rested on a cold
nose, then a rough curly pate surmounting it, whose owner, snoring with
a ten-pig power, would, I verily believe, have slept on had the crash of
doom been around him. “Hollo! here,” said I, giving him a shake. A grunt
and a mumbled execration were all it elicited. I repeated the
experiment, and having produced some symptoms of consciousness, begged
earnestly to know if all I had described was an ordinary occurrence, or
if we were really going to the bottom. I had now fairly roused the
sleeping lion; up he started in a terrible passion; asked me what the
deuce made me bother him with my nonsense at that time of night, and
then, consigning me to a place whence no visitor is permitted to return,
once more addressed himself to his slumbers. This refreshing sample of
nautical philosophy, though rather startling, convinced me that I had
mistaken the extent of the danger; in fact, there was none at all; so
feeling my way back to my cot, I once more, though with becoming
caution, got into it, determined, sink or swim, to have my sleep out. On
rising, disorder and misery, in various shapes, a wet deck and boxes
displaced, met my view; I found my coat and pantaloons pleasantly
saturated with sea-water, which it appeared had entered by an open port
or scuttle, and that my boots had sailed away to some unknown region on
a voyage of discovery. “Oh! why did I ‘list?’” I exclaimed, in the
bitterness of my discomfort; “why did I ever ‘list?’” Ye cadets, attend
to the moral which this narrative conveys, and learn, by my unhappy
example, always to secure your toggery, high and dry, before you turn
in, and to study well the infirmities of that curious pendulum balance,
the cot, lest, like me, ye be suddenly decanted therefrom on the
any-thing-but-downy surface of an oaken deck!
With what feelings of delight does the youth first enter upon the
fairy region of the tropics, a region which Cook and Anson, and the
immortal fictions of St. Pierre and De Foe, have invested in his
estimation with a sweet and imperishable charm! The very air to him
is redolent of a spicy aroma, of a balmy and tranquillizing
influence, whilst delicious but indefinable visions of the scenes he
is about to visit—of palmy groves, and painted birds, and coral
isles “in the deep sea set,” float before him in all those roseate
hues with which the young and excited fancy loves to paint them.
Paul and Virgina—Robinson—Friday—goats—savages and monkeys—ye are
all for ever bound to my heart by the golden links of early
association and acquaintanceship. Happy Juan Fernandez, too!
Atalantis of the wave—Utopia of the roving imagination—how oft have
I longed to abide in ye, and envied Robinson his fate—honest man of
goatskins and unrivalled resources! But one ingredient, a wife, was
wanting to complete your felicity; had you but rescued one of the
Miss Fridays from the culinary fate designed for her brother, and
made her your companion, you would have been the most comfortable
fellow on record.
Griffin as I was I partook strongly of these common but delightful
feelings I have attempted to describe, and in the change of climate and
objects which every week’s sail brought forth, found much to interest
and excite me—the shoal of flying-fish, shooting like a silver shower
from the ocean, and skimming lightly over the crested waves; the gambols
of the porpoise; the capture of a shark; fishing for bonetta off the
bowsprit; a waterspout; speculations on a distant sail; her approach;
the friendly greeting; the first and last!—were all objects and events
pleasing in themselves, but doubly so when viewed in relation to the
general monotony of a life at sea. Nothing, I think, delighted me more
than contemplating the gorgeous sunsets, as we approached the equator.
Here, in England, that luminary is a sickly affair, but particularly so
when viewed through our commonly murky atmosphere, and there may be some
truth in the Italian’s splenetic remark in favour of the superior warmth
of the moon of his own country. But in the fervid regions of the tropics
it is that we see the glorious emblem of creative power in all his pride
and majesty, whether rising in his strength, “robed in flames and amber
light,” ruling in meridian splendour, or sinking slowly to rest on his
ocean couch of gold and crimson, in softened but ineffable refulgence;
it is (but particularly in its parting aspect) an object eminently
calculated to awaken the most elevated thoughts of the Creator’s power,
mingled with a boundless admiration for the beauty of His works. Yes,
neither language, painting, nor poetry, can adequately portray that most
glorious of spectacles—a tropical sunset.
Ensign O’Shaughnessy having sworn “by all the bogs in Kerry,” that he
would put a brace of pistol-balls through Neptune, or Juno, or any “sa
God” of them all, that should dare to lay hands upon him; and a
determination to resist the initiatory process of ducking in
bilge-water, and shaving with a rusty hoop, having manifested itself in
other quarters, Captain McGuffin, glad of a pretext, and really
apprehensive of mischief, had it intimated to the son of Saturn and his
spouse, that their visit in crossing the line would be dispensed with.
In so doing, it appears to me that he exercised a wise discretion;
Neptune’s tomfooleries, at least when carried to their usual extent,
being one of those ridiculous customs “more honoured in the breach than
in the observance;” one which may well be allowed to sleep with “Maid
Marian,” “the Lord of Misrule” and other samples of the “wisdom of our
ancestors,” who were emphatically but “children of a larger growth,” to
whom horse play and “tinsel” were most attractive. On crossing the
equator, however, the old but more harmless joke of exhibiting the
_line_ through a telescope was played off on one greenhorn, sufficiently
soft to admit of its taking effect.
“Do you make it out, Jones?” said Grinnerson, who had got up the scene,
to one of the middys, a youngster intently engaged in reconnoitering
through a glass half as long as himself.
“I think I do, sir,” said Jones, with a difficultly-suppressed grin.
“What is he looking for?” asked the simple victim.
“The Line, to be sure; didn’t I tell you we were to cross it to-day?”
“Oh yes, I remember; I should like amazingly to see it, if you would
oblige me with the telescope.”
“Oh, certainly; Jones, give Mr. Brown the glass.”
The soft man took it, looked, but declared that he saw nought but sky
and sea.
“Here, try mine,” continued the second mate; “’tis a better one than
that you have,” handing him one with a hair or wire across the large end
of it. “Now do you see it?”
“I think I do; oh, yes, most distinctly. And that really is the line?
Bless me, how small it is!”
This was the climax; the middys held their mouths, and sputtering,
tumbled in a body down the ladder to have their laugh out, whilst a
general side-shaking at the griff’s expense took place amongst the
remaining group on the poop.
Well, the stormy dangers of the Cape safely passed, the pleasant isles
of Johanna, sweet as those which Waller sung, duly visited—Dondra
Head—Adam’s Peak—the woody shores of Ceylon here skirted and admired,
those beautiful shores, where
Partout on voit mûrir, partout on voit éclore,
Et les fruits de Pomone et les présents de Flore;
and the “spicy gales” from cinnamon groves duly snuffed up and
appreciated (_entre nous_, a burnt pastile of Mr. Grinnerson’s, and not
Ceylon, furnished the “spicy gales” on this occasion), we found
ourselves at last off the far-famed coast of Coromandel, and fast
approaching our destination.
It is pleasant at certain seasons to glide over the summer seas of these
delightful latitudes, whilst the vessel spreads abroad all her snowy
canvas to arrest every light and vagrant zephyr, to hang over the side,
and whilst the ear is soothed by the lapping ripple of small, crisp
waves, idly breaking on the vessel’s bows as she moves scarce
perceptibly through them, to gaze on the sky and ocean, and indulge in
that half-dreamy listlessness when gentle thoughts unbidden come and go.
How beautiful is the dark blue main, relieved by the milk-white flash of
the seabird’s wing! how picturesque the Indian craft, with their striped
latteen sails, as they creep along those palm-covered coasts, studded
with temples and pagodas! and seaward resting on the far-off horizon,
how lovely the fleecy piles of rose-tinted clouds, seeming to the fancy
the ethereal abodes of pure and happy spirits! There is in the thoughts
to which such scenes give birth a rationality as improving to the heart
as it is remote from a forced and mawkish sentimentality. Such were my
sensations as we crept along the Indian coast, till in a few days the
_Rottenbeam Castle_ came to anchor in the roads of Madras, amidst a
number of men-of-war, Indiamen, Arab grabs, and country coasters.
The first thing we saw, on dropping anchor, was a man-of-war’s boat
pulling for us, which created a considerable sensation amongst the crew,
to whom the prospect of impressment was anything but agreeable. The
boat, manned by a stout crew of slashing young fellows, in straw hats,
and with tattooed arms, was soon alongside, and the lieutenant, with the
air of a monarch, mounted the deck. He was a tall, strapping man, with a
hanger banging against his heels, loose trousers, a tarnished _swab_
(epaulette) on his shoulder, and a glazed cocked-hat stuck rakishly fore
and aft on his head: in my idea, the very _beau idéal_ of a “first
leftenant.”