THE MIDNIGHT LOOK-OUT FORWARD.—A STORMY NIGHT.—THE COMEDY IN
THE CABIN.
PAST Midnight. I have been up and watching forward for more than an
hour, roused from my berth by the cry of ice. A large ship, with a cloud
of sail, passed just across our head, bound for Old England. “That’s a
happy fellow,” says the man at the helm; “past the dangers of the St.
Lawrence and the Straits, and fairly out to sea.” The wind is rising,
and promises a rough time. “There is something,” I said to myself, as I
leaned, and looked over the bow, “there is something in all this,
familiar as it is to many, very grand and awful, as we rise upon the
black seas, and plunge into the darkness, rushing on our gloomy, strange
way. We seem to be above the very ‘blackness of darkness,’ and riding
upon the bosom of the night. The sounding foam, sweeping forward from
beneath our bows, looks like a cloud of supernatural brightness, its
whiteness filled, as it is, with the fire and electric scintillations of
the sea. One could easily imagine himself sailing on the breeze through
the night, with sparks of lightning and a cloud at his vessel’s bow.”
The wind freshens to a gale nearly, and all hands are called on deck. We
are rolling in a most uncomfortable manner, and I have retreated to my
cabin, and will creep back to my berth.
THURSDAY NOON, _July 7_. A few scrawls of the pencil will serve to give
an outline of our experience for the last twelve hours. A dense fog,
high wind and a heavy swell. As a matter of course, our little ship has
been in great commotion, and we, miserably sea-sick, regardless of
breakfast, absent from the cold, wet deck, and rolled up below, dull and
speechless in bed. We have been gradually creeping up into the world, of
late, sipping a little coffee and nibbling at crackers. We are off Cape
St. Louis, the most eastern land of the continent. The few turns on deck
have sufficiently electrified the brain to enable me to get on thus far
with my notes, and to venture upon a short description of a cabin-scene,
at a very late hour last night.
Three sides of our cabin, a room some ten feet by twelve, and barely six
feet under the beams, are taken up by four roughly-made berths; one on
each side, and two extending crosswise, with a space between them,
fitted up with shelves, and used for the flour-barrel, and as a
cupboard. Beneath the berths are trunks, tubs, bags, boxes and bundles,
most of our choicest stores. From the centre, and close upon the steep,
obtrusive stairs, covered with a glossy oil-cloth, of a cloudy brown and
yellow, our table looks round placidly upon this domestic scene, so
indicative of refreshment and repose. With this little sketch of our
sea-apartment, the stage upon which was enacted our last night’s brief
play, I will undertake its description, promising a brevity that rather
suggests, than paints it.
After the midnight look-out forward for ice, and the retreat to the
cabin, I soon joined in the general doze, rather suffered than enjoyed.
In the uproar above, sharp voices and the rush of footsteps over the
deck, occasionally stamping almost in our very faces, we were too
frequently called back to full consciousness, to escape away into any
thing better than the merest snatch of a dream. In my own case, the
stomach, as usual, indulged itself in taking the measure of those
motions, so disastrous to its peace and equipose; those rollings,
risings, sinkings, divings, flings and swings, in which there is the
sense of falling, and of vibrations smooth and oily. Where one’s mind’s
eye is perpetually looking down in upon the poor remains of his late
departed dinner, there is no possibility for the outer eye to sink into
any true and honest slumber. The shut lid is a falsehood. It is not
sleep. The live, wakeful eye is under it, looking up against the skinny
veil. Occasionally the veil is lifted just to let the dark out;
occasionally the dumb blackness falls in upon the retina like a stifling
dust, and dims it, for a moment, to a doze. But the fire of wakefulness
soon flashes up from the cells of the brain, and throws out the sleepy
darkness, as the volcanic crater throws out its smoke and ashes.
Through some marine manœuvre, thought necessary by the master spirit on
deck, and which could be explained by a single nautical word, if I only
knew what the word is, we began to roll and plunge in a manner
sufficiently violent and frightful to startle from its staid quiet
almost every movable in the cabin. Out shot trunks and boxes—off slid
cups and plates with a smash—back and forth, in one rough scramble with
the luggage, trundled the table, followed by the nimble chairs. At this
rate of going on, our valuables would soon mix in one common wreck.
Determining to interfere, I sprang into the unruly confusion, and
succeeded in lighting a candle just in time to join in the
rough-and-tumble, at the risk of ribs and limbs, and the object of
mingled merriment and alarm to the more prudent spectators. Botswood, an
experienced voyager, shouted me back to my berth instantly, if I would
not have my bones broken at the next heavy lurch of the vessel. I was
beginning to feel the force of the counsel, when another roll, almost
down upon the beam-ends, overturned the butter-tub and a box of
loaf-sugar, and brought their contents loose upon the field of action.
They divided themselves between the legs of the table and the
individual, and so, candle in hand and adorned in modest white, he sat
flat down upon the floor among them, at once their companion in trouble
and their protector. The marble-white sugar and the yellow butter, our
luxuries and indispensable necessaries, there they were, on the common
floor, and disposed for once to join in a low frolic with plebeian boots
and shoes and scullion trumpery. With an earnest resolve to prevent all
improprieties of the kind, one hand grasped, knuckle deep, the golden
mellow mass, of the size of a good Yankee pumpkin, and held on, while
the other was busy in restoring, by the rapid handful, the sugar to the
safety of its box. The candle, in the mean time, encouraged by the peals
of laughter in the galleries, slid back and forth in the most trifling
manner possible. When we tipped one way, then I sat on a steep
hill-side, looking down toward the painter, roaring in his happy valley:
away slid the candle in her tin slippers, and away the barefooted butter
wanted to roll after, encouraged to indulge in the foolish caper by a
saucy trunk jumping down from behind. When we tipped the other way, then
I sat on the same hill-side, legs up, looking up, an unsatisfactory
position: back slid the candle, followed by a charge of sharp-pointed
baggage, and off started the butter with the best intentions toward the
tub, waiting prostrate and with open arms. Notwithstanding the
repetition and sameness of this performance, the beholders applauded
with the same heartiness, as if each change back and forth was a novel
and original exhibition. What heightened the effect of the scene, and
gave it a suspicion of the tragic, was a keg of gunpowder, which
evinced, by several demonstrations of discontent in the dark corner
where it tumbled about, a disposition to come out and join the candle.
By a happy lull, not unusual in the very midst of these cabin confusions
during a brush at sea, the powder did not enter, and I was enabled to
pitch the butter into the tub, and finally myself, after some few
preliminaries with a towel, into my berth, where, in the course of the
small remnant of the night, I fell into some broken slumbers.