COURTESIES AT SEA.
NEXT day, (Sunday,) a fresh north-west breeze blew all day, and we made
but little progress toward New York. The weather was pleasant, and the
ship did not leak so much as before. The sailors were busy all day,
repairing the damages, as best they could, securing the rigging and so
forth; the carpenter nailed some boards on the almost bare framework of
the bulwarks, made another inspection of the hold, and got some of the
leaks stopped: especially did he secure one of the stern planks, that
was so loose that a man might have pulled it off with his hands.
On Monday morning, the sea was perfectly calm. Not the slightest breeze
stirred, the surface of the water was glassy, and scarcely any swell was
perceptible. [They have _swells_ at sea, as well as on land.]
By and by, as we laid perfectly motionless, we saw a steamer coming from
the southward, and the captain ran up his “ensign,” as a signal that he
wanted to communicate with her. It was the _Moro Castle_, from Havana
for New York. As she passed astern of us, within half a cable’s length,
Captain Collins called out:
“This is the BREWSTER, leaking badly and returning in distress! Please
report me in New York!”
“Ay, ay,” replied the captain of the steamer, as she rushed by.
On Monday evening, a stiff north-west breeze sprung up again, as though
determined to keep us away from New York harbor; and it lasted a whole
week.
On Thursday, the twenty-eighth, after we had been tacking about for
three days without gaining much distance, a pilot-boat came dancing out
to us, over the rough waves, and a pilot left her in a yawl and came
aboard the BREWSTER.
“HAVE YOU ANY NEWSPAPERS?” was the question the captain and I asked him,
in a breath, as he came up over the bulwark.
I shall never forget the anxiety and impatience with which we asked this
question. We had been absent from the world, as it were, about three
weeks: and so full of terror and danger had the period been that it
seemed like a moderate life-time. I almost fancied that my country might
have undergone a revolution during my absence, and that I might find it
necessary, on going ashore, to bend my solitary knee to a crowned
monarch. However, I saw no indications of any such state of things, in
the _World_, _Herald_ and _Times_ with which the pilot responded to our
earnest inquiries. Things seemed to be going on about as usual in
Gotham, and the remainder of the United States: the markets appeared to
be good; whisky, cotton and iron were quoted at fair figures: while the
usual healthy number of fires, accidents and murders were reported in
the proper columns.
On Monday morning, the first day of April, having been all this time
beating about in front of the harbor, we found ourselves becalmed again,
about seventy miles from New York. The sky was heavily clouded, a dull,
damp, misty rain fell, and the barometer was low. Every thing augured
ugly weather. Soundings were taken, which indicated that we were in
fifty fathoms water. Other sails could be seen on all sides.
By and by, we saw a small side-wheel steamer coming toward us, from the
direction of the harbor; whereupon the captain said to the pilot:
“Don’t you think that’s a steamer coming to take us in tow?”
“It looks very like it,” was the reply.
The captain then called the carpenter and instructed him to remove from
the stern of the ship the board on which the name BREWSTER was painted.
“What is that for, Captain?” I asked.
“Don’t you know?” he replied.
“No.”
“How dull you are,” said he.
“You would be dull, too,” I retorted, “if you had never been out of
sight of land but three or four times in your life. But, tell me—what is
it for?”
“Why, you see, we have already been reported in distress; and if that
fellow coming should recognize us, he would ask a thousand or fifteen
hundred dollars to tow us in.”
“Ah?” said I, somewhat enlightened. “Is that their style?”
“Yes, indeed: let them get a fellow in a tight place once, as we are
now, and they’ll pile it on—no telling how high.—Hurry, carpenter.”
The steamer reached us at last, crossed our stern, and with a graceful
curve, came round on our port side, within hailing distance.
“Good morning,” said the captain of the little steamer—the WM.
FLETCHER—who stood in the pilot-house.
“Good morning,” returned Captain Collins.
“Where are you from?” asked the steamer captain, looking curiously at
the blank place where the BREWSTER’S name ought to have been.
“San Francisco,” responded Captain Collins.
“What vessel?”
This was a stunner, and Collins, after hesitating a moment, pretended
not to have heard, and said:
“How do the Highlands bear from here?”
“About north-west,” was the response. “What ves——”
“What will you charge to tow me in?” interrupted Captain Collins.
“Three hundred dollars,” was the prompt reply.
“O, nonsense,” rejoined Collins. “That’s too much. That’s all they
charge when the harbor is full of ice.”
“Our regular price,” said the other.
“O, no, captain,” said Collins; “come, be reasonable. I’ll give you a
hundred and fifty.”
“Couldn’t do it, really.”
“Well,” rejoined Collins, “I think we will have a favorable wind soon,
and I can get in without being towed.”
“Yes,” retorted the other, ironically; “quite likely. If you have no
barometer on board, I’ll lend you one. The mercury has gone clean down
out of sight, and we’re going to have a deuce of a blow. I’ll venture it
will be a nor’-wester, too.”
“Pooh! No danger. I’ll sail in.”
“All right,” said the steamer captain. “Now that I come to think, I’m
sorry I made so good an offer. I begin to believe you have an
underwriter’s job of it. You haven’t been to San Francisco.”
“I’ll give you two hundred dollars,” said Collins, without paying any
attention to the other’s last remark.
“No, not a cent lower than three hundred. I wouldn’t do it for that, if
I had not already offered to. I’ll swear, I believe that is the
BREWSTER! We heard of it.”
“The what?” said Collins.
“The BREWSTER. Come, isn’t it now? Captain Adams, of the _Moro Castle_,
reported her returning in distress.”
“What do I know of the _Blueskin_? I never heard of such a ship.—Come,
I’ll give you two hundred and fifty.”
“No, three hundred; not a cent less. I’ll put you alongside the pier for
that.”
“O, you’re a hard one! Well, you can tow us in, and I’ll lick you the
first time I catch you in New York. Mind, now, you are to take the ship
to the pier whenever I want you to. I will anchor in the harbor to-day.”
“All right; I’ll stick to that.”
“Well, Mr. Gorham, give him our hawser.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
The hawser is a very thick, heavy line, used for towing or making a ship
fast; and one end of this rope the sailors gladly threw over to the
steamer, while the other was made fast to the capstan on the forecastle
deck.
We arrived in the harbor about four o’clock that afternoon, and had just
cast anchor when we were visited with a rough north-west gale. But we
did not care now, we were safe.
We anchored near Hart’s Island, and I got on the little steamer, with
Captain Collins, and went up to the city. We landed at the foot of
Catharine street, and my glad heart never before bounded as it did when,
after the perils of the past three weeks, I stepped upon _terra firma_
once more. I felt that I wouldn’t care if somebody would knock a hole in
the bottom of the nasty old sea and let all the salty water run out. It
isn’t of any use, anyhow, only to raise sharks, and whales, and
mermaids, and porpoises, and sea-horses, and sea-serpents, and such like
hideous creatures, to float iron-clads and drown people; and for idiots
that never saw it to write pretty verses about. I am not habitually a
fighting man; on the contrary, quite a peaceably-disposed citizen of the
United States; but if I ever come across the cuss that wrote,
“A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep;
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep,”
I’ll lick him or he’ll lick me!