MORE OF THE DREADFUL SEA.
WITH Thursday morning came an east wind: it was moderate, at first, but
freshened up, and blew positively strong; the sky became heavily
overcast with clouds, the rain fell—so did the mercury in the
barometer—and there was every indication of an easterly gale.
Still, as night came on, and it had not yet amounted to a gale, the ship
was kept running before the wind under her three lower top-sails, and we
made pretty good time toward New York.
I retired that night not quite at ease, but still sufficiently so to
rest well; and as the vessel was kept before the wind all night, and did
not rock much, I didn’t tumble out of my berth, as one may reasonably
expect to do when the vessel rolls heavily.
I am not in the habit of paying any attention to dreams, or of relating
them; but one that visited me that night was so inexpressibly ludicrous,
that I must “out with it.”
I dreamed that I, in company with a very black African, armed with an
axe, was in a deep, thick wood in California, looking for a pole to make
sled-soles of, when a big bear made his appearance, and immediately
“went for” us. The darkey dropped the axe, sprung upon a stump near by,
and squatted on the top of it, trembling with terror; but I, not being
in a condition to retreat with speed, caught up the axe, threw down my
crutch, balanced myself on my foot, and as the bear came on and reared
up to hug me to death, I aimed a blow at his head. But it missed his
head and cut off one of his fore-paws—a bear has _four_ of them, you
know—the blood spurting forth from the stump, in a way that was quite
gratifying to me. He was not placed _hors du combat_, however, but
persisted in his attack on me with extraordinary vigor. I aimed another
blow at the seat of his intellect; but, singularly enough, missed it
again, and cut off the other fore-paw. As I did so, the axe flew from my
hands, and fell at the foot of a big tree, thirty feet distant. The
bear, not yet discomfitted, growled savagely, showed his teeth, and came
dancing at me, holding up his bloody stumps, as though still determined,
even with them, to crush me. Finding myself unarmed, and without so much
leisure time as to pick up my crutch, I turned about and made a hop
toward the stump on which the darkey sat. The bear hopped after me. I
had thought of climbing up on the stump, but the frightened darkey
occupied all the space there; so I just kept on retreating round the
stump, hopping as fast as I could, and close at my heel came the bloody
bear, hopping, too, as fast as _he_ could.
The whole picture, with the scared nigger on the stump in the
center,—his thick lips mumbling unintelligible words of fright, and his
white eyes starting out so that they could have been knocked off with a
club, without touching his flat nose—was so unprecedentedly ludicrous,
that terrified, as I fancied I was, I laughed outright, in the very
midst of my visionary peril; and so awoke.
It was daylight; the roar of the agitated sea struck on my ear; the
waves were dashing over the stern of the ship and rolling over the roof
of the cabin; the winds were howling without; the ship was plunging and
pitching, rising in the misty air and sinking into the depths among the
waves: it was blowing a regular gale. I got up and was making my way
toward the cabin door, when the captain entered.
“Good-morning,” said I. “How are things now?”
“O,” he replied, in a tone of vexation, “about as bad as they can be,
this side of the bottom. We have an easterly gale to contend with, and
the ship is still before the wind. I wanted to run as long as I could,
in order to get out of this cursed Gulf Stream. Now, I am half afraid to
heave the ship to, lest it should strain her. Every thing goes wrong.
This is the most unlucky voyage of my life. I have followed the sea for
twenty years; I have been in innumerable gales; I have had ships burnt
under me; I have been shipwrecked on coasts; I have run upon icebergs,
and been attacked by pirates; but never had such continued ill-luck. I
hoped the other gale would have been enough for one trip. We got out of
that by barely a hair’s-breadth; and now, in our crippled condition,
before we have time to get out of the Gulf Stream, we have a black,
blustering easterly gale rushing upon us. If it lasts as long as the
other, we must either go to the bottom or be driven upon the coast.
Nothing can save us.”
“Too bad,” said I, taking advantage of a momentary lull, to attempt to
walk across the cabin.
But just then the ship gave a fearful lurch, and I was dashed violently
back upon a sofa, striking, upon the back of it, that leader in the
elbow commonly styled the “crazy-bone,” and temporarily, paralyzing my
arm.
“Are you hurt?” asked the captain.
“Only my arm,” I replied, grasping the back of the sofa with my other
hand to keep from rolling off. “Only my arm. It, I am inclined to
believe, is broken.”
“I hope not.”
My arm was so paralyzed that I could not move it for a quarter of a
minute; when, as it began to recover from the benumbing effects of the
shock, it tingled in a way that was agonizing. It was not broken,
however, but badly bruised.
“I think,” said the captain, “you must be the _Jonah_ of this ship. It
is said when ships are unfortunate, that they have a Jonah on board.
Hadn’t we better throw you overboard?”
“If you will insure me a safe voyage to land in a whale’s stomach,” I
replied, “you may do so. If it will take me to New York in three days
and three nights, I think I will reach land much sooner than this leaky
old ship.”
“I don’t know,” he rejoined. “We may reach the nearest point of land
much sooner.”
“Where is that,” I asked.
“The _bottom_.”
The gale did not grow so fierce that day as our north-western gale had
done; but still it was a bigger gale than any man need wish for.
Two of the men were severely injured at the wheel, and had to be
conveyed to the forecastle and stowed away. Moreover, one or two others
had fallen ill, from sheer exhaustion; and as the crew only numbered
twenty-three, including officers, steward, and carpenter, this was a
considerable diminution of force. The ship leaked as badly as ever, and
the pumps had to be kept going continually.
That night, in the midst of the gale, the wind hushed suddenly, as on
the night of the sixteenth, while the sea was running high, and left us
again struggling in a trough of the sea.
“At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are
As human beings’ during civil war.”
However, it was soon blowing again, and the captain, who wanted to get
across the Gulf Stream as soon as possible—for the sea is always more
turbulent there than elsewhere—put the ship before the wind, determined
to run her “as long as she would float.”