SAN DIEGO AGAIN--A DESCENT--HURRIED DEPARTURE--A NEW SHIPMATE
Sunday, Oct. 11th. Set sail this morning for the leeward; passed
within sight of San Pedro, and, to our great joy, did not come to
anchor, but kept directly on to San Diego, where we arrived and moored
ship on.
Thursday, Oct. 15th. Found here the Italian ship La Rosa, from the
windward, which reported the brig Pilgrim at San Francisco, all well.
Everything was as quiet here as usual. We discharged our hides, horns,
and tallow, and were ready to sail again on the following Sunday. I
went ashore to my old quarters, and found the gang at the hide-house
going on in the even tenor of their way, and spent an hour or two,
after dark, at the oven, taking a whiff with my old Kanaka friends, who
really seemed glad to see me again, and saluted me as the Aikane of the
Kanakas. I was grieved to find that my poor dog Bravo was dead. He
had sickened and died suddenly, the very day after I sailed in the
Alert.
Sunday was again, as usual, our sailing day, and we got under weigh
with a stiff breeze, which reminded us that it was the latter part of
the autumn, and time to expect south-easters once more. We beat up
against a strong head wind, under reefed top-sails, as far as San Juan,
where we came to anchor nearly three miles from the shore, with
slip-ropes on our cables, in the old south-easter style of last winter.
On the passage up, we had an old sea captain on board, who had married
and settled in California, and had not been on salt water for more than
fifteen years. He was astonished at the changes and improvements that
had been made in ships, and still more at the manner in which we
carried sail; for he was really a little frightened; and said that
while we had top-gallant sails on, he should have been under reefed
topsails. The working of the ship, and her progress to windward, seemed
to delight him, for he said she went to windward as though she were
kedging.
Tuesday, Oct. 20th. Having got everything ready, we set the agent
ashore, who went up to the mission to hasten down the hides for the
next morning. This night we had the strictest orders to look out for
south-easters; and the long, low clouds seemed rather threatening. But
the night passed over without any trouble, and early the next morning,
we hove out the long-boat and pinnace, lowered away the quarter-boats,
and went ashore to bring off our hides. Here we were again, in this
romantic spot; a perpendicular hill, twice the height of the ship's
mast-head, with a single circuitous path to the top, and long sand
beach at its base, with the swell of the whole Pacific breaking high
upon it, and our hides ranged in piles on the overhanging summit. The
captain sent me, who was the only one of the crew that had ever been
there before, to the top, to count the hides and pitch them down.
There I stood again, as six months before, throwing off the hides, and
watching them, pitching and scaling, to the bottom, while the men,
dwarfed by the distance, were walking to and fro on the beach, carrying
the hides, as they picked them up, to the distant boats, upon the tops
of their heads. Two or three boat-loads were sent off, until, at last,
all were thrown down, and the boats nearly loaded again; when we were
delayed by a dozen or twenty hides which had lodged in the recesses of
the hill, and which we could not reach by any missiles, as the general
line of the side was exactly perpendicular, and these places were caved
in, and could not be seen or reached from the top. As hides are worth
in Boston twelve and a half cents a pound, and the captain's commission
was two per cent, he determined not to give them up; and sent on board
for a pair of top-gallant studding-sail halyards, and requested some
one of the crew to go to the top, and come down by the halyards. The
older sailors said the boys, who were light and active, ought to go,
while the boys thought that strength and experience were necessary.
Seeing the dilemma, and feeling myself to be near the medium of these
requisites, I offered my services, and went up, with one man to tend
the rope, and prepared for the descent.
We found a stake fastened strongly into the ground, and apparently
capable of holding my weight, to which we made one end of the halyards
well fast, and taking the coil, threw it over the brink. The end, we
saw, just reached to a landing-place, from which the descent to the
beach was easy. Having nothing on but shirt, trowsers, and hat, the
common sea-rig of warm weather, I had no stripping to do, and began my
descent, by taking hold of the rope in each hand, and slipping down,
sometimes with hands and feet round the rope, and sometimes breasting
off with one hand and foot against the precipice, and holding on to the
rope with the other. In this way I descended until I came to a place
which shelved in, and in which the hides were lodged. Keeping hold of
the rope with one hand, I scrambled in, and by the other hand and feet
succeeded in dislodging all the hides, and continued on my way. Just
below this place, the precipice projected again, and going over the
projection, I could see nothing below me but the sea and the rocks upon
which it broke, and a few gulls flying in mid-air. I got down in
safety, pretty well covered with dirt; and for my pains was told, "What
a d--d fool you were to risk your life for a half a dozen hides!"
While we were carrying the hides to the boat, I perceived, what I had
been too busy to observe before, that heavy black clouds were rolling
up from seaward, a strong swell heaving in, and every sign of a
south-easter. The captain hurried everything. The hides were pitched
into the boats; and, with some difficulty, and by wading nearly up to
our armpits, we got the boats through the surf, and began pulling
aboard. Our gig's crew towed the pinnace astern of the gig, and the
launch was towed by six men in the jolly-boat. The ship was lying
three miles off, pitching at her anchor, and the farther we pulled, the
heavier grew the swell. Our boat stood nearly up and down several
times; the pinnace parted her towline, and we expected every moment to
see the launch swamped. We at length got alongside, our boats half
full of water; and now came the greatest difficulty of all,--unloading
the boats, in a heavy sea, which pitched them about so that it was
almost impossible to stand in them; raising them sometimes even with
the rail, and again dropping them below the bends. With great
difficulty, we got all the hides aboard and stowed under hatches, the
yard and stay tackles hooked on, and the launch and pinnace hoisted,
checked, and griped. The quarter-boats were then hoisted up, and we
began heaving in on the chain. Getting the anchor was no easy work in
such a sea, but as we were not coming back to this port, the captain
determined not to slip. The ship's head pitched into the sea, and the
water rushed through the hawse-holes, and the chain surged so as almost
to unship the barrel of the windlass. "Hove short, sir!" said the
mate. "Aye, aye! Weather-bit your chain and loose the topsails! Make
sail on her, men--with a will!" A few moments served to loose the
topsails, which were furled with reefs, to sheet them home, and hoist
them up. "Bear a hand!" was the order of the day; and every one saw
the necessity of it, for the gale was already upon us. The ship broke
out her own anchor, which we catted and fished, after a fashion, and
stood off from the lee-shore against a heavy head sea, under reefed
topsails, fore-topmast staysail and spanker. The fore course was given
to her, which helped her a little; but as she hardly held her own
against the sea which was settling her leeward--"Board the main tack!"
shouted the captain; when the tack was carried forward and taken to the
windlass, and all hands called to the handspikes. The great sail
bellied out horizontally as though it would lift up the main stay; the
blocks rattled and flew about; but the force of machinery was too much
for her. "Heave ho! Heave and pawl! Yo, heave, hearty, ho!" and, in
time with the song, by the force of twenty strong arms, the windlass
came slowly round, pawl after pawl, and the weather clew of the sail
was brought down to the waterways. The starboard watch hauled aft the
sheet, and the ship tore through the water like a mad horse, quivering
and shaking at every joint, and dashing from its head the foam, which
flew off at every blow, yards and yards to leeward. A half hour of
such sailing served our turn, when the clews of the sail were hauled
up, the sail furled, and the ship, eased of her press, went more
quietly on her way. Soon after, the foresail was reefed, and we
mizen-top men were sent up to take another reef in the mizen topsail.
This was the first time I had taken a weather earing, and I felt not a
little proud to sit, astride of the weather yard-arm, pass the earing,
and sing out "Haul out to leeward!" From this time until we got to
Boston, the mate never suffered any one but our own gang to go upon the
mizen topsail yard, either for reefing or furling, and the young
English lad and myself generally took the earings between us.
Having cleared the point and got well out to sea, we squared away the
yards, made more sail, and stood on, nearly before the wind, for San
Pedro. It blew strong, with some rain, nearly all night, but fell calm
toward morning, and the gale having gone over, we came-to,--
Thursday, Oct. 22d, at San Pedro, in the old south-easter berth, a
league from shore, with a slip-rope on the cable, reefs in the
topsails, and rope-yarns for gaskets. Here we lay ten days, with the
usual boating, hide-carrying, rolling of cargo up the steep hill,
walking barefooted over stones, and getting drenched in salt water.
The third day after our arrival, the Rosa came in from San Juan, where
she went the day after the south-easter. Her crew said it was as
smooth as a mill-pond, after the gale, and she took off nearly a
thousand hides, which had been brought down for us, and which we lost
in consequence of the south-easter. This mortified us; not only that
an Italian ship should have got to windward of us in the trade, but
because every thousand hides went toward completing the forty thousand
which we were to collect before we could say good-by to California.
While lying here, we shipped one new hand, an Englishman, of about two
or three and twenty, who was quite an acquisition, as he proved to be a
good sailor, could sing tolerably, and, what was of more importance to
me, had a good education, and a somewhat remarkable history. He called
himself George P. Marsh; professed to have been at sea from a small
boy, and to have served his time in the smuggling trade between Germany
and the coasts of France and England. Thus he accounted for his
knowledge of the French language, which he spoke and read as well as he
did English; but his cutter education would not account for his
English, which was far too good to have been learned in a smuggler; for
he wrote an uncommonly handsome hand, spoke with great correctness, and
frequently, when in private talk with me, quoted from books, and showed
a knowledge of the customs of society, and particularly of the
formalities of the various English courts of law, and of Parliament,
which surprised me. Still, he would give no other account of himself
than that he was educated in a smuggler. A man whom we afterwards fell
in with, who had been a shipmate of George's a few years before, said
that he heard at the boarding-house from which they shipped, that
George had been at college, (probably a naval one, as he knew no Latin
or Greek,) where he learned French and mathematics. He was by no means
the man by nature that Harris was. Harris had made everything of his
mind and character in spite of obstacles; while this man had evidently
been born in a different rank, and educated early in life accordingly,
but had been a vagabond, and done nothing for himself since. What had
been given to him by others, was all that made him to differ from those
about him; while Harris had made himself what he was. Neither had
George the character, strength of mind, acuteness, or memory of Harris;
yet there was about him the remains of a pretty good education, which
enabled him to talk perhaps beyond his brains, and a high spirit and
sense of honor, which years of a dog's life had not broken. After he
had been a little while on board, we learned from him his remarkable
history, for the last two years, which we afterwards heard confirmed in
such a manner, as put the truth of it beyond a doubt.
He sailed from New York in the year 1833, if I mistake not, before the
mast, in the brig Lascar, for Canton. She was sold in the East Indies,
and he shipped at Manilla, in a small schooner, bound on a trading
voyage among the Ladrone and Pelew Islands. On one of the latter
islands, their schooner was wrecked on a reef, and they were attacked
by the natives, and, after a desperate resistance, in which all their
number except the captain, George, and a boy, were killed or drowned,
they surrendered, and were carried bound, in a canoe, to a neighboring
island. In about a month after this, an opportunity occurred by which
one of their number might get away. I have forgotten the
circumstances, but only one could go, and they yielded to the captain,
upon his promising to send them aid if he escaped. He was successful
in his attempt; got on board an American vessel, went back to Manilla,
and thence to America, without making any effort for their rescue, or
indeed, as George afterwards discovered, without even mentioning their
case to any one in Manilla. The boy that was with George died, and he
being alone, and there being no chance for his escape, the natives soon
treated him with kindness, and even with attention. They painted him,
tattooed his body, (for he would never consent to be marked in the face
or hands,) gave him two or three wives; and, in fact, made quite a pet
of him. In this way, he lived for thirteen months, in a fine climate,
with a plenty to eat, half naked, and nothing to do. He soon, however,
became tired, and went round the island, on different pretences, to
look out for a sail. One day, he was out fishing in a small canoe with
another man, when he saw a large sail to the windward, about a league
and a half off, passing abreast of the island and standing westward.
With some difficulty, he persuaded the islander to go off with him to
the ship, promising to return with a good supply of rum and tobacco.
These articles, which the islanders had got a taste of from American
traders, were too strong a temptation for the fellow, and he consented.
They paddled off in the track of the ship, and lay-to until she came
down to them. George stepped on board the ship, nearly naked, painted
from head to foot, and in no way distinguishable from his companion
until he began to speak. Upon this, the people on board were not a
little astonished; and, having learned his story, the captain had him
washed and clothed, and sending away the poor astonished native with a
knife or two and some tobacco and calico, took George with him on the
voyage. This was the ship Cabot, of New York, Captain Low. She was
bound to Manilla, from across the Pacific, and George did seaman's duty
in her until her arrival in Manilla, when he left her, and shipped in a
brig bound to the Sandwich Islands. From Oahu, he came, in the British
brig Clementine, to Monterey, as second officer, where, having some
difficulty with the captain, he left her, and coming down the coast,
joined us at San Pedro. Nearly six months after this, among some
papers we received by an arrival from Boston, we found a letter from
Captain Low, of the Cabot, published immediately upon his arrival at
New York, and giving all the particulars just as we had them from
George. The letter was published for the information of the friends of
George, and Captain Low added, that he left him at Manilia to go to
Oahu, and he had heard nothing of him since.
George had an interesting journal of his adventures in the Pelew
Islands, which he had written out at length, in a handsome hand, and in
correct English.