THE WESTERN ISLANDS.--"YARNS" AND ANECDOTES.
On the eighteenth day out from Nantucket, the high peak of Pico was
visible from the masthead, and having a fair breeze, we were lying off
and on at the port of Fayal the same afternoon. The captain, with the
starboard boat's crew, went ashore, and the ship made short boards
to await his return, the Pandora and two whaleships from New Bedford
in company. Two more ships were at anchor having taken some oil on
the outward passage and put in to land it to be shipped home. Several
Portuguese boats came alongside, of the most clumsy and primitive
construction imaginable, characteristic of a people who are a couple
of centuries behind the times. The boatmen appeared to be, "like
Captain Copperthorne's crew, all officers," and jabbered and shouted
all at once, in most admirable discord, and at such a furious rate that
I found myself wondering whether they really could understand each
other or not, and certainly never contemplated the possibility of any
American having the remotest idea what they were talking about. But I
found that Mr. Grafton could converse with them quite fluently whenever
he could make himself heard in the din and confusion. These boats
brought a few inferior oranges, sour enough to make a pig squeal (if
he would touch them at all, which of course he wouldn't, if a sensible
pig), with some miniature cheeses, which, with a little more drying,
might have been made available as sheaves for small blocks without much
alteration in size, form or consistency of material. These they either
sold for money or bartered for various articles of ship's provisions,
and were perfect Jews at a bargain.
Just before sundown a large launch, deeply loaded, was seen coming
out, with a rag hoisted on a pole as a signal. This launch was of even
more primitive appearance than the smaller ones. She might have been
the longboat of one of Vasco de Gama's fleet, of four centuries ago;
at any rate, if his ship had any longboats, they were exactly of this
model. We stood well in to meet her, and wearing off shore with the
maintopsail aback, took her alongside. Her cargo of potatoes, onions
and live stock was to be taken on board and stowed away, and, as the
captain arrived soon afterwards, with his boat laden to the gunwale
streak with vegetables, it was quite dark before she was again in her
place on the cranes, and sail made on the ship.
Among the live stock brought on board was a handsome little boy, who
was to help the steward in the cabin, much to the enhancement of that
functionary's importance, as he could now attend to many calls by
deputy which before he was compelled to answer in person; and would
also have some one to lay all little mishaps to, such as dishes broken
and lamps untrimmed.
The Pandora braced full about the same time as the Arethusa, but it
was soon apparent that she could not compete in sailing qualities with
the new ship, and she gradually dropped astern. The breeze was light
from the north-west, with fine weather, and we now had leisure to get
supper, and to listen, to the yarns of those who had been ashore.
Manoel and Antone had seen their relatives and friends--meeting them
after years of absence, to part again in an hour or two--and had found
time to visit the priest and get full absolution, balancing the account
up to date, and opening a new page, ready to run up another score.
Farrell, a young Irishman who pulled the captain's bow oar, had become
considerably elevated by imbibing too much sour wine and aguardiente,
and was full of stories of his own prowess in knocking over a
"Portinghee" who had dared to remonstrate against his kissing a pretty,
black-eyed girl, his sister, he supposed; for, like a true Milesian, he
had been the hero of a drinking bout, a love intrigue and a knockdown
row, all within half an hour after he landed.
"I jist took him a nate clip betwane the eyes," said Farrell, "and laid
him out foreninst the door of his shanty. Thin you see, five or six
murtherin' Portinguese pitched intil me, and was afther carryin' me
off, body and sowl, to the lock-up; but the ould man interfared, and
settled it somehow. Afther he'd paid me fine, he tould me I'd betther
go down to the boat, and not lave her again. So I went and got int'l
her and shoved her off the length of her _tather_, and there was a
crowd of the nagurs jabberin' and squintin' at me wid their corkindile
eyes; but I knowed I was in sanctyeary thin. I'd half a bottle of that
blackguard potteen what they call _dent_, so I jist sot and looked at
'em back again, and dhrank their healths. I suppose the ould man'll be
chargin' me the fine on the ship's books."
"Yes, you can bet high on that," said Jeff, "and the interest, too."
"Yes," said the sea-lawyer, "but you needn't be fool enough to pay it.
If every man stood up for his rights, they wouldn't gouge him in that
style. A man can't go ashore and drink a drop, and have a bit of a
time--and that's what he goes ashore for, of course--but he must have
a long bill of calaboose fees tacked to his account; and that d--d
twenty-five per cent added on. If they charge it to _me_, they'll never
get it, that's all. I know what they've got a right to do."
"I don't know nothin' about the rights," said Jeff, "but I know the old
man will charge it to you, and make you pay it, too."
"Well, you'll see," said Burley. "I'll have my rights."
"What are you blowing about your rights?" put in the cooper, who had
just come forward with his pipe freshly loaded, an indication that
some ridiculous lie was also charged and ready to be fired with the
tobacco. "You've got no rights. The rights are all in one end of the
ship, and the wrongs in the other. Why, when I was out in the old
Deucalion," pausing to clear his pipe, and thereby fixing the attention
of all his auditors, "we had a black fellow called Sam. He had a head
harder than Rock Redonda. We used to put pieces of tobacco on top of
the windlass-bitts, and then let him butt the bitts till he brought
the tobacco down and put it in his pocket. He would let a man split a
serving mallet on his head any time, for a drink of grog. But most of
the serving mallets were soft wood or ash, made out of old oar looms,
so they'd split quite easily. Well, I come it over him once. I was to
give him a whole bottle of liquor to stand up under any _wooden_ mallet
that I chose to use. I had a _white oak_ one down in my chest, and I
brought it up and struck him about ten blows as tight as I could spring
before I shivered it. The darkey stood his ground like a rock, and won
the bottle of liquor, and drank it, too. His skull wasn't hurt a bit,
but his eyes were knocked all asquint, and he never got 'em straight
afterwards!"
"Here, Cooper, take my hat. It's the only one I've got, but you've
earned it," said Jeff.
"No, no," said the indignant disciple of Pepper. "I don't want your
old jug. Maybe you think I'm romancing, but I'm just telling you the
plain truth. But you've put me out, and I haven't finished my story.
The point I was going to illustrate was, that the rights were all in
one end of the ship, and the wrongs in the other. Well, on the passage
home, one day we were reefing the maintopsail, and this black Sam fell
on the yard, and went smack through the bottom of the waist boat, head
first, overboard. We lowered a boat and managed to save him. _He_
wasn't much hurt, but the _boat_ was ruined. She was a boat that we
had bought out of an English colonial whaler, and was built of that
sweet-scented yellow wood that grows in Van Diemen's land. You've seen
it, Jeff, and you know just how brittle it is. Well, when Sam's head
struck in the bottom of the boat, the splits flew in all directions,
just like throwing a stone in the middle of a pane of glass. So the
boat was past all repairing. Well, when we got home, would you believe
it? Old Captain Harper had charged Sam sixty dollars, the whole value
of a new boat, and Sam had to pay it out of his voyage! He made
inquiries, and found it would be cheaper to pay the bill than to stand
a lawsuit about it."
"O, I've heard that story, or something like it, in Nantucket," said
the boy Kelly.
"Yes, so have I," said Obed B.
"But you boys never believed it was true, did you?" asked the cooper.
"No, of course not," protested both the boys at once.
"You may do so hereafter," said the cooper, gravely. "You may say that
you had it from an eye-witness." And having finished his yarns for the
night, he went puffing away aft, leaving all hands staring at each
other in blank astonishment.
"That be hanged for a yarn," growled Burley, after he was gone. "Even
if it had been true, the man needn't have paid a cent, if he had stood
up for his rights."
"Well, dere, it aint no use to talk any after dat story," said the
cook, with a meditative shake of the head, "We's heard enough. I guess
Cooper can take de belt."
It was my trick at the wheel from nine to eleven, and when I went aft,
I found the captain still on deck, leaning over the companionway on
our side, with "Father Grafton," as we had fallen into the habit of
calling him, on the other; and I am afraid I did not steer the ship
so accurately as I might have done under other circumstances. Their
conversation, however, served to distract their attention from my
shortcomings, as well as to distract mine from the proper management of
the helm.
"I was thinking," said the mate, reflectively, as he looked at the
high peak looming astern, "one can hardly believe that the Portuguese
were once a great maritime nation, taking the lead in navigation and
discovery. I was thinking, too, that it must have required some pluck
and nerve to make the voyages that they used to make, with no more
tools than they had to work with. Just imagine, now, we are steering
south-west from these islands, with no chart of the sea ahead of us,
and no nautical instrument better than a rude cross-staff to get a
latitude with, in a vessel not as big as one of our sloop-rigged
coasters, and not decked over at that. And the island astern of us is,
so far as we know, the very _Ultima Thule_ of western discovery."
"It is just like you, Mr. Grafton, to be thinking of those things,"
returned the captain. "Yes, it's true, as you say, there must have been
anxious hearts and vigilant eyes on board of those little caravels.
And yet there was a romantic excitement about those voyages, too, that
I think would have been fascinating to me, if I had lived in that
age. I have often thought I should have enjoyed a voyage like that of
Columbus, or perhaps better, with the ships and facilities of a later
period, say those of Anson or Cook. But we were born too late for that,
Mr. Grafton; the work is nearly all done for us."
"Yes, sir," replied the mate, "and we are obliged to complain, like
Alexander of Macedon, that there are no more worlds to discover. I
cannot help wishing, every voyage that I visit these Azores, that
they belonged to some more liberal and progressive people than the
Portuguese. With their position and climate, they might be a station of
some importance, if in different hands."
"Yes, I have often thought the same thing; for, however enterprising
the Portuguese might have been in the days of De Gama and Columbus,
it must be admitted they have made no progress since, but rather gone
astern. Well, we have had a fine day for our work, Mr. Grafton, and we
have got recruits enough to carry us round Cape Horn, I think, without
fear of the scurvy. I am rather disappointed in one respect," continued
Captain Upton. "I had hoped to have taken some oil on the passage, to
send home from here. I have been lucky enough, every voyage before
this, to get a whale or two near these islands."
"The Pandora has got nothing yet," said Father Grafton, "by the looks
of the paint in her waist."
"No," replied the captain, "but she has seen whales twice on the
passage, and has been fast, and had a boat stove. I saw Captain Worth
ashore."
"I have a presentiment," said the mate, "that we shall get a whale yet
before we get far from the islands. We shall hardly run Pico out of
sight between now and morning, with this little breeze, and we have a
promise of a fine whaling day to-morrow."
"The voyage that I was mate of the Colossus," said the captain, "we
took two large whales at one fare--more to the westward. We had Flores
and Corvo both in sight when we were cutting them. It came on very
rugged weather, and we had a hard time saving them. We muckled them
after a fashion, but I suppose we lost thirty or forty barrels of oil
on the two, and the deficiency, of course, was mostly on the head
matter. I know that the oil we shipped home did not bring full price,
because there was not the full proportion of head. Ever since that, I
always meant to _make_ the full proportion, anyhow," said the captain,
with a sly laugh.
"Yes, sir," said Father Grafton. "I don't blame you for that, but
it wont do to smuggle too much. Now, when I was on my first voyage,
with Hosea Coffin, he used to pile it on rather too steep. He wasn't
satisfied with one third head: he was famous for working in the core
of the hump, and other fat parts with it; and if we came out with an
ullage cask of head on the stowdown, he'd be sure to fill it up with
body oil, and scratch a big H. on it. So that we had a large quantity
of head oil, but the quality wasn't well up to the standard. Well,
when he was going out in the same ship next voyage, 'Cousin Ephraim,'
the old Quaker owner, said to him:
"'Hosea, there's one thing I'd advise thee not to do, this voyage.'
"'What's that?' asked Captain Coffin.
"'I think,' said Cousin Ephraim, in his sly, chuckling way, 'thee'd
better not cut off thy whale's heads abaft the hump!'"
They both laughed so heartily at this story that I had a quiet laugh,
too, in sympathy with them, though I did not then appreciate the point
of it as well as I afterwards did.
"There's a deal of sly fun in some of those old Quakers," said Captain
Upton. "I recollect when I went down to ship in the Poor Richard, as
boatsteerer, 'Uncle Peleg' offered me the eightieth lay, but I struck
for the seventieth. I knew I could get it in another ship, though
I rather preferred to go in this one for the same lay. So I was as
independent as a woodsawyer's clerk, and wouldn't budge tack nor sheet.
After chaffering for some time, Uncle Peleg began to scratch the sand
with his ivory-headed cane, in a meditative way. Said he:
"'James I want thee to go in the ship, and I will give thee--'
Here he marked a 7 in the sand, and then slowly carried his cane round
in a circle, and resting the point of it, looked in my face.
"'Yes,' said I, 'I'll go for that.'
"But as I spoke, with a slight movement of the wrist he finished the
last figure, by swinging a tangent to the circle. As I looked down
again, it read 79.
"'No,' said I, indignantly, 'I'll see you hanged first!'
"'James, James,' said Uncle Peleg, 'don't lose thy temper. Thee shall
go in the Poor Richard, and,'--nudging me in the ribs,'we'll have no
_tail_ to the matter at all.'
"'All right,' I answered. He rubbed it out again with his foot.
"'Now,' said he, 'come right up to the store and put thy name down.
Thee must go in the ship; but really, James, I didn't think thee would
ask me such a lay as that. Thee needn't tell the other boatsteerers
what thee gets.'"
Father Grafton shook his sides with merriment at this anecdote, and the
captain now rose to go below.
"Well, Blacksmith," said he, "you are making rather a crooked wake. If
you don't keep her straighter, the Pandora will overhaul us. Well, what
do you think of these Portuguese?"
"I didn't go ashore, sir," answered I. "I only saw the boatmen that
came off, and I thought they had all broken out of a lunatic asylum."
"I don't wonder at that," he said. "They were all talkers and no
listeners. But did you notice any of them with a finger cut off?"
"Yes, sir, I saw two, and I thought it a little remarkable; and now I
remember, our Antone has lost his, too."
"Yes," said he, "about every third man has his forefinger amputated.
That's to escape military service, by disabling themselves from pulling
a trigger. You see there's a certain proportion of them conscripted
every year, and sent off to Portugal to serve in the army."
"Do you mean, sir," I asked, "that they cut the forefinger off, or have
it cut off, designedly?"
"Certainly," said the captain. "I suppose the treatment is not very
good in their army, and there is not much to excite patriotic feeling,
as they seldom do any fighting except among themselves; so these young
'Guese will make a sacrifice of a finger to escape service. But I
wonder that they are allowed to escape in that way. In the English or
French service, they would be held; and if they couldn't fire a musket,
they would have to serve as pioneers or something else. That is, if it
was known that they maimed themselves intentionally. But it is time
to go below," said he abruptly. "I have strong hopes of seeing whales
to-morrow, and I will give five dollars to the man that 'raises' a
large whale; that is, if we get him."
"But how large a one?" I asked.
"Say over fifty barrels. I will give five dollars bounty for fifty
barrels of oil. Pass the word among all hands, when the watch is
called. Good-night, Mr. Grafton. Let her go south-by-west through the
night."
"South-by-west, sir," answered Father Grafton. "Good-night."