One morning toward the end of June in the year 1872 I was on the
wharf at the foot of Hamilton Street, where I was most apt to be. My
father and a gang of ship carpenters were busy at the bottom of a
ship that was hove down there, and they were working on float stages
along her side. I have forgotten the name of the ship. It was yet
early, for in those days carpenters went to work at seven and stopped
at six or thereabouts, and no man that I ever knew of the old class
of artisans would leave his hammer in the air, but he would work a
few minutes more, if that was necessary to finish what he was at, and
they were a contented, happy lot—superior men, as a rule.
The merry sound of the mauls was not merry to my ears, for I was
restless and discontented, I remember, although there was nothing
that should have made me so. But I was just through school, and
although my father and my mother had said nothing about my getting
to work, and my father had done nothing about it—fathers were apt to
do something about it in those days, getting their sons apprenticed
to whatever trade seemed good to them, without much regard to the
preference of the sons—although my father had done nothing about
it, I say, I knew that I was expected to get to work with no more
delay than was reasonable. Both my father and my mother were wise
people, and they wanted me to have time and opportunity to look about
me and decide for myself what I preferred to do, for my decision
would involve my whole life, very probably, and greatly affect my
happiness. When I had decided, I knew that I could depend upon my
father to help me to the best of his ability; and that would be
considerable, for my father {10} was a man of some influence in his
way, and especially in his trade. He had already helped my older
brother Tom, who had chosen my father’s trade, a choice which greatly
pleased my father at the time. Tom was at his ship carpentering then
on one of the stages with the men, and he had served three years of
his apprenticeship. My younger brother, Joshua, was already planning
to go into the same trade, but my father was rather lukewarm about
it. He did not say why, but I can guess now that he was beginning to
see that it was a trade that was doomed to extinction.
Joshua had two years more at school, and before the two years were
up he had changed his mind. He became a machinist, and went into
structural steel work, and then into building steel ships. In 1917
both of my brothers were busy: Tom, at sixty-three, turning out
wooden ships at Bath as fast as he could get the timber and men to
put them together, and Joshua, at fifty-seven, turning out steel
ships with a tremendous clatter in a sort of gigantic boiler-works.
I could not stand Josh’s shipyard, while I enjoyed being in Tom’s.
I enjoyed it better than Tom enjoyed having me there, for they were
very busy, but the men were all old men and they could not be driven
beyond a certain pace; but they came to the yard at four o’clock of a
summer morning.
On that morning in June, 1872, I was making my choice, although I was
not aware of it, but knew only that I felt discontented and uneasy
and rather wanted to fight somebody. If Jimmy Appleby had been there
I should probably have fought him—we fought often, without rancor,
and without a decision—and the whole course of my life would have
been changed. But Jimmy’s father had put him to work, and he was not
there, and there was nothing for me to do but to wander about the
wharf, watching the men swinging their mauls; and I could not see
much of that, except at the bow and the stern, for the {11} vessel
was hove down over the wharf, and her hull hid them. From the other
side of the dock I should have had a fine view, but I saw it so often
that I did not care much for it, and I suppose I did not think of it,
being taken up with my restless state of mind, which impelled me to
and fro. It sent me to the end of the wharf, where I stood upon the
stringpiece and looked down into the water just below. It was of an
unhealthy, greenish cast, not like the green of the sea. It looked
filthy, but I saw an immense school of little fish nosing around the
piles of the wharf.
A whaler was at one of the Fairhaven wharves, and a number of other
boats were scattered along the water-front, most of them small. I
was about to look farther down toward the ferry slip and railroad
station, but there lay a whaler in the stream, all ready to start;
probably waiting for some of her crew, or for her captain to get his
papers at the Custom House. I knew the vessel. It was the Clearchus.
She had been fitting for some time, at the wharf next above the one
I was on, and I had watched the caulkers, the carpenters and the
riggers busy at her, each in their turn. The desire must have been
conceived and born and got well grown without my being aware of it
until that minute, but I knew it then. I looked at her lying there
on the water that was ruffled under a southwest breeze, some great
pennant flying at her masthead—I suppose it had her name on it, or
the name of her owners, for I know it was white with a blue border
and some blue letters in the centre—and there was not wind enough
to keep it out straight enough for me to read the letters, but it
would roll up and fall nearly straight down, and then unroll lazily
and whip out to its length for just an instant, and drop and roll
up again before I could make out a single one. She must have been
waiting for her crew, for I saw only two men aboard of her, and
they were doing nothing, but leaned upon the rail, which was at the
height of their shoulders. {12}
I had among my most treasured possessions two little books, in
paper-covered boards, “The Eventful History of the Mutiny of the
Bounty” and “Lives and Voyages of Early Navigators, with a History
of the Bucaniers.” They could not be called new books even then,
in 1872, for they were published by the Harpers in 1832 and 1833.
They are beside me at this moment, the paper-covered boards torn and
stained, and the pages dirty and much thumbed. Some of that thumbing
had already been done, for I had found the tales of adventure in the
books absorbingly interesting. No doubt I was thinking, as I gazed
at the Clearchus over the smiling waters of the harbor, of that huge
black savage of the Patagones who came capering and singing down to
the shore to greet Magellan, his face painted red and yellow; or of
Otaheite and its middle-aged queen—if that is what she was—a chiefess
separated from her husband, and languishing for Wallis. Although
of course I knew better, I always thought of those coasts and seas
as they were in the times of Magellan and Wallis. I had an intense
desire to visit them. But I have no clear recollection of what I was
thinking of. I must have given a thought to Jimmy Appleby. I know
that I stayed there, wandering impatiently to and fro, or standing at
the stringpiece watching the Clearchus, waiting for twelve o’clock
and praying that her captain might have trouble in filling his crew
at the last minute.
[Illustration: FITTING OUT]
The Vineyard boat went curving out in a wide sweep, another came in;
a tugboat pursued its leisurely way across the harbor, and I held my
breath in fear lest it should be bound for the Clearchus—with her
crew of two; a lightship began to warp into the next dock above,
preparatory to heaving down for repairs; the Custom House boat
started out with an inspector to meet a ship that had been sighted
down the bay; two catboats started from Al Soule’s for the same
purpose; riggers and {13} stevedores were busy on a whaleship in
the dock next below, getting her spars up and bending on sails; the
leisurely activities of New Bedford Harbor of nearly fifty years ago
went on; the sun was warm and the wind light, and the smell of tar
and sperm oil was heavy on the air, but in the lee of the hill the
oil smell overpowered everything else. I liked that sickish smell
of crude sperm oil. I like it yet. With that smell in my nostrils
I have but to close my eyes and I see the warm, sunny harbor, some
whaler lying in the stream ready to sail, the fluorescent green of
the water in the dock—its peculiar color due to a mixture of oil and
sewage—some other whaler lying at the wharf with her sails hanging
limp from her yards, perhaps a vessel hove down at the other side of
the wharf, and I heard the sound of mallets and the laughter and the
talk of men on the still air.
Fifty years ago I was actually hearing these things, waiting
impatiently for twelve o’clock. But I waited, for I wanted to speak
to my father alone. At last I heard the bell in the Stone Church
tower sound noon, but the sound of the mauls did not stop at once,
but one after another; then a few strokes of a single beetle, and I
heard it laid down. The men had already begun to come up. My father
was the last, and I watched him with some pride, a big, brawny,
smiling man. I wished I were big and brawny and smiling, like him.
And he saw me standing there, and smiled more than ever, a personal
smile and tender in a way.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, Timmie,” he said. “You here
yet? I thought you would have gone home long ago. Dinner ’ll be
waiting. What is it, boy? Walk along with me and tell me. I can see
it ’s something bothering you.”
My brother Tom had started walking with us, but we were too slow for
him, and he had run ahead. It was Big Tim and Little Tim. My father
was always known as Big Tim. {14}
I did not know how to begin, so I said nothing, but I struggled.
My father saw the struggle. He smiled again. “Out with it, Timmie,”
he said.
I raised my eyes slowly, and I am afraid that tears were in them.
“I want to go whaling, father,” I blurted out.
His smile faded swiftly. “Do you?” he said. “Do you? I hoped it
would n’t be that. It begins to look—or it has been looking for some
time as if the whaling business would die out. It won’t be a good
business for some time, if it does n’t go from bad to worse. Have you
thought of that, Timmie?”
I shook my head. “I want to go whaling,” I said again.
He laughed, and then he sighed. “It ’s a bad business for your
mother and me,” he said, “to have our boy starting out on a voyage
at fifteen for three or four years. But if you will you will, and
I ’d better see about getting you a berth.” He turned and looked at
the ship in the dock below. “There ’s a vessel the riggers should
be through with soon. She should sail in a couple o’ weeks or
thereabouts. I might get you in there. What do you say, Timmie?”
“Where is she going, father?”
“Well,” he answered slowly, “it ’s always hard to tell where
a whaler ’s going. Wherever whales promise. But we braced and
strengthened her for Ar’tic work. She ’s a good vessel now, Timmie,
and thoroughly braced. I think likely she ’ll round the Horn, and
make the Ar’tic next season. If she has luck in the South Seas she
may hang over there another winter, and not try the Ar’tic until the
next year. But the Ar’tic ’s where she ’s going sooner or later.”
“I don’t want to go to the Ar’tic, father. Where ’s the Clearchus
going?”
My father looked around in surprise. {15}
“The Clearchus!” he exclaimed. “Why she ’s in the stream. Her
crew ’ll be aboard in an hour or two. Cap’n Nelson expects to sail
to-day.”
“But where ’s she _going_?”
“Going sperm whaling, Hatteras, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean,
probably, and South Seas. I don’t know, and I don’t suppose Cap’n
Nelson knows. She is n’t going to the Ar’tic, that ’s sure.”
“If her crew is n’t aboard pretty soon,” I objected, “she can’t sail
to-day.”
“Well, no,” my father said, “probably won’t. Could of course, if he
wanted to, but ’t is n’t likely. Might go below and anchor, but what
are you up to, Timmie? Going on the Clearchus?” And my father smiled
as he asked the question, as though it were absurd.
“I ’d like to, father,” I said. “I want to go on a ship that ’s going
sperm whaling in the warm oceans; to the South Seas. I—I ’ve always
wanted to see the South Seas.”
My father smiled again. “ ‘Always’ is a long word, Timmie. How long
does it stand for? And as for seeing an ocean—why, one ocean ’s much
like another—except the Ar’tic. You might think you were out on the
bay with Jimmie. And a couple of hours’ notice is n’t much for your
mother and me, is it, now?—going off for three or four years?”
“No-o, I suppose not. But I did n’t know what I wanted until I saw
the Clearchus out there. I know now. And I ’ll come back, father. Of
course I hate to leave you and mother—”
My father laughed at that.
“Yes,” he said, “you seem to. But never mind, Timmie, I know how
you feel. Perhaps it ’s just as well. We shan’t have the month of
dreading it, and it ’ll be over before we know it. I ’ll do the best
I can for you, but I can’t promise. Nelson may be having trouble of
some {16} kind. I ’ll just drop in at the Custom House on the chance
of finding him there, and if he is n’t we ’ll run over to Wing’s to
see what they can tell us. But you must n’t fret if it can’t be done.”
I almost danced with joy, and I promised not to fret. I knew that I
should not fret at a thing that could not be done. I have never done
that. I do the most and the best that I can, and am quite cheerful
over the outcome. I was always the same; and what better can a man do
than his best, and accept the result with a cheerful heart? But if
we had made no attempt to find the captain I should have fretted at
having left something undone and possibly lost a chance that I might
have had.
We had been walking slowly up William Street as we talked, and it was
abreast of Eggers’s little gunshop—where I had been used to go for
my supply of fishlines and hooks—that my father virtually gave his
consent and told me not to fret. The steep, short slope of Johnnycake
Hill was just at our left—the Bourne Whaling Museum is now at the top
of it—and the Custom House was but a few steps away, on the upper
corner of the next street. I broke away and ran, looking back at my
father with an ecstatic smile.
My father laughed again. “Hold on, Timmie,” he called. “Where ’you
going?”
“Custom House,” I called back. “Cap’n Nelson might get away.”
So I ran, leaving my father laughing, and I waited impatiently for a
few seconds beside one of the huge Doric columns supporting the roof
of the portico of that ancient pile of granite. It always seemed to
me as old as the Pyramids. The Post-office then occupied the first
floor, but there was nobody passing either in or out at that time,
and my father joined me beside the Doric column. I remember that the
broad stone steps seemed not a whit too solid and strong for his
massive frame as he came up. {17}
He said nothing, but chuckled as he and I entered together that
empty, echoing room, and made for the stairs. It was—and is yet, I
suppose—a curved staircase of stone, and never failed to excite my
wonder that it stood and performed its function, for the granite
steps were without visible means of support at their outer ends. I
always mounted it with trepidation, half expecting that it would give
way beneath me and precipitate me into the echoing abyss below. The
stone steps were somewhat worn by the feet of many captains, and my
own feet had contributed.
We entered, and saw a long mahogany counter surmounted by a glass
fence, behind which a man was writing, standing at the counter. He
had a long, pointed beard, sprinkled with gray. He seemed to be alone
in that spacious room. He was the Deputy Collector.
We started along beside the counter, which seemed endless, and my
father was just opening the gate when suddenly we heard the sound of
voices, as if a door had been opened. The voices stopped, and a man
stumped toward us vigorously. I should say now that he was a youngish
man, but then I thought him very old. He was about forty, with a
close-clipped brown beard growing nearly up to his eyes, which were
gray and piercing, looking out from between half-closed lids. Those
eyes gave the impression of being at a great distance, and there
was a spark of light in them so that they always made me think of a
lighthouse with its cone of light. Even now I never see a lighthouse
at a distance of three or four miles that I do not think of Captain
Nelson’s eyes.
“Hello, Tim,” he said, with no apparent intention of stopping.
But my father blocked the gateway. He was a good head taller than
Captain Nelson.
“I ’d like to have a word with you, Cap’n, if you have time. I won’t
keep you long. Don’t you want a boy?” {18}
“A boy? One of your boys? This the one?” He took me by the arm and
made me face him. I was smiling nervously. “You want to go whaling?”
“Yes, sir,” I said as steadily as I could. “That is, I want to go if
you ’re going to the South Seas.”
Captain Nelson laughed. “No Ar’tic in yours, eh? What you want to
go to the South Seas for? We don’t lie ’round under palm trees and
eat breadfruit and watch the surf breaking on coral sands, like the
pictures in your geography books. What ’you been getting hold of?”
I squirmed and got very red, and stammered and said nothing.
Captain Nelson laughed again, and gave me a little shake and let me
go.
“Well, Tim, no need to ask about any of your boys. You recommend him,
I suppose?”
“I do, Cap’n. I ’m sorry he ’s taken with whaling, and that ’s the
truth; and it ’s rather sudden, for he ’s only told me within the
last half-hour, and his mother and I will hate to have him go off for
three or four years. But if that ’s what he wants I ’d better help
than try to hinder him.”
Captain Nelson nodded. “May be five years, Tim. No knowing.” He
turned suddenly to me. “What ’s your name?”
“Tim, sir.”
“Well, little Tim, I guess we can find room for you. May not get the
crew in time to sail to-night. Probably won’t. But you ’d better be
on hand and keep an eye out for us. Bright and early in the morning,
anyway.”
He nodded again, got his clearance papers, and stumped out. I stared
stupidly after him.
My father sighed. “Well, Timmie, that was soon done. We ’ll be late
for dinner. Come along.”
And I said nothing, but pegged along beside him down the echoing
stone stairs, my elation rapidly oozing out at {19} my finger-tips.
I was beginning to think of the other side of it—his side and my
mother’s—and to be more than half sorry for my haste; but what is
done is done. Boys—and girls too—are thoughtlessly cruel, fortunately
for them and the world.
I could not eat much dinner, but went off to my room to pack a few
things, among them my two precious books. It was not a large bundle
that I tied up. My father must have told my mother as soon as I had
gone, for she came up to my room as I was tying up my bundle. She had
been crying, and tears were yet in her eyes, but she smiled divinely
as she stood in my doorway.
“Well, Timmie, darling,” she said gently, “so you ’re going to leave
us. Four years is a long, long time to look forward to without you.
I had hope that you would choose something else. But if you had to
choose this it ’s better to have it soon over, and not to have a
month of dreading it. And I ’ll say nothing but God bless you and God
keep you, my precious!” She sat on the bed. “Come here, darling boy,
and let me have one hug and a kiss to remember.”
So I went, and I threw my arms around her neck, and I hid my face.
We stayed so for a long time, she rocking back and forth, hugging me
hard, and whispering to me.
{20}