A King For A Comrade
At the time I now write of, we must have been something more than sixty
degrees to the west of the Gallipagos. And having attained a desirable
longitude, we were standing northward for our arctic destination:
around us one wide sea.
But due west, though distant a thousand miles, stretched north and
south an almost endless Archipelago, here and there inhabited, but
little known; and mostly unfrequented, even by whalemen, who go almost
every where. Beginning at the southerly termination of this great
chain, it comprises the islands loosely known as Ellice’s group; then,
the Kingsmill isles; then, the Radack and Mulgrave clusters. These
islands had been represented to me as mostly of coral formation, low
and fertile, and abounding in a variety of fruits. The language of the
people was said to be very similar to that or the Navigator’s islands,
from which, their ancestors are supposed to have emigrated.
And thus much being said, all has been related that I then knew of the
islands in question. Enough, however, that they existed at all; and
that our path thereto lay over a pleasant sea, and before a reliable
Trade-wind. The distance, though great, was merely an extension of
water; so much blankness to be sailed over; and in a craft, too, that
properly managed has been known to outlive great ships in a gale. For
this much is true of a whale-boat, the cunningest thing in its way ever
fabricated by man.
Upon one of the Kingsmill islands, then, I determined to plant my foot,
come what come would. And I was equally determined that one of the
ship’s boats should float me thither. But I had no idea of being
without a companion. It would be a weary watch to keep all by myself,
with naught but the horizon in sight.
Now, among the crew was a fine old seaman, one Jarl; how old, no one
could tell, not even himself. Forecastle chronology is ever vague and
defective. “Man and boy,” said honest Jarl, “I have lived ever since I
can remember.” And truly, who may call to mind when he was not? To
ourselves, we all seem coeval with creation. Whence it comes, that it
is so hard to die, ere the world itself is departed.
Jarl hailed from the isle of Skye, one of the constellated Hebrides.
Hence, they often called him the Skyeman. And though he was far from
being piratical of soul, he was yet an old Norseman to behold. His
hands were brawny as the paws of a bear; his voice hoarse as a storm
roaring round the old peak of Mull; and his long yellow hair waved
round his head like a sunset. My life for it, Jarl, thy ancestors were
Vikings, who many a time sailed over the salt German sea and the
Baltic; who wedded their Brynhildas in Jutland; and are now quaffing
mead in the halls of Valhalla, and beating time with their cans to the
hymns of the Scalds. Ah! how the old Sagas run through me!
Yet Jarl, the descendant of heroes and kings, was a lone, friendless
mariner on the main, only true to his origin in the sea-life that he
led. But so it has been, and forever will be. What yeoman shall swear
that he is not descended from Alfred? what dunce, that he is not sprung
of old Homer? King Noah, God bless him! fathered us all. Then hold up
your heads, oh ye Helots, blood potential flows through your veins. All
of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels
for cousins; since in antediluvian days, the sons of God did verily wed
with our mothers, the irresistible daughters of Eve. Thus all
generations are blended: and heaven and earth of one kin: the
hierarchies of seraphs in the uttermost skies; the thrones and
principalities in the zodiac; the shades that roam throughout space;
the nations and families, flocks and folds of the earth; one and all,
brothers in essence—oh, be we then brothers indeed! All things form but
one whole; the universe a Judea, and God Jehovah its head. Then no more
let us start with affright. In a theocracy, what is to fear? Let us
compose ourselves to death as fagged horsemen sleep in the saddle. Let
us welcome even ghosts when they rise. Away with our stares and
grimaces. The New Zealander’s tattooing is not a prodigy; nor the
Chinaman’s ways an enigma. No custom is strange; no creed is absurd; no
foe, but who will in the end prove a friend. In heaven, at last, our
good, old, white-haired father Adam will greet all alike, and sociality
forever prevail. Christian shall join hands between Gentile and Jew;
grim Dante forget his Infernos, and shake sides with fat Rabelais; and
monk Luther, over a flagon of old nectar, talk over old times with Pope
Leo. Then, shall we sit by the sages, who of yore gave laws to the
Medes and Persians in the sun; by the cavalry captains in Perseus, who
cried, “To horse!” when waked by their Last Trump sounding to the
charge; by the old hunters, who eternities ago, hunted the moose in
Orion; by the minstrels, who sang in the Milky Way when Jesus our
Saviour was born. Then shall we list to no shallow gossip of Magellans
and Drakes; but give ear to the voyagers who have circumnavigated the
Ecliptic; who rounded the Polar Star as Cape Horn. Then shall the
Stagirite and Kant be forgotten, and another folio than theirs be
turned over for wisdom; even the folio now spread with horoscopes as
yet undeciphered, the heaven of heavens on high.
Now, in old Jarl’s lingo there was never an idiom. Your aboriginal tar
is too much of a cosmopolitan for that. Long companionship with seamen
of all tribes: Manilla-men, Anglo-Saxons, Cholos, Lascars, and Danes,
wear away in good time all mother-tongue stammerings. You sink your
clan; down goes your nation; you speak a world’s language, jovially
jabbering in the Lingua-Franca of the forecastle.
True to his calling, the Skyeman was very illiterate; witless of
Salamanca, Heidelberg, or Brazen-Nose; in Delhi, had never turned over
the books of the Brahmins. For geography, in which sailors should be
adepts, since they are forever turning over and over the great globe of
globes, poor Jarl was deplorably lacking. According to his view of the
matter, this terraqueous world had been formed in the manner of a tart;
the land being a mere marginal crust, within which rolled the watery
world proper. Such seemed my good Viking’s theory of cosmography. As
for other worlds, he weened not of them; yet full as much as
Chrysostom.
Ah, Jarl! an honest, earnest Wight; so true and simple, that the secret
operations of thy soul were more inscrutable than the subtle workings
of Spinoza’s.
Thus much be said of the Skyeman; for he was exceedingly taciturn, and
but seldom will speak for himself.
Now, higher sympathies apart, for Jarl I had a wonderful liking; for he
loved me; from the first had cleaved to me.
It is sometimes the case, that an old mariner like him will conceive a
very strong attachment for some young sailor, his shipmate; an
attachment so devoted, as to be wholly inexplicable, unless originating
in that heart-loneliness which overtakes most seamen as they grow aged;
impelling them to fasten upon some chance object of regard. But however
it was, my Viking, thy unbidden affection was the noblest homage ever
paid me. And frankly, I am more inclined to think well of myself, as in
some way deserving thy devotion, than from the rounded compliments of
more cultivated minds.
Now, at sea, and in the fellowship of sailors, all men appear as they
are. No school like a ship for studying human nature. The contact of
one man with another is too near and constant to favor deceit. You wear
your character as loosely as your flowing trowsers. Vain all endeavors
to assume qualities not yours; or to conceal those you possess.
Incognitos, however desirable, are out of the question. And thus aboard
of all ships in which I have sailed, I have invariably been known by a
sort of thawing-room title. Not,—let me hurry to say,—that I put hand
in tar bucket with a squeamish air, or ascended the rigging with a
Chesterfieldian mince. No, no, I was never better than my vocation; and
mine have been many. I showed as brown a chest, and as hard a hand, as
the tarriest tar of them all. And never did shipmate of mine upbraid me
with a genteel disinclination to duty, though it carried me to truck of
main-mast, or jib-boom-end, in the most wolfish blast that ever howled.
Whence then, this annoying appellation? for annoying it most assuredly
was. It was because of something in me that could not be hidden;
stealing out in an occasional polysyllable; an otherwise
incomprehensible deliberation in dining; remote, unguarded allusions to
Belles-Lettres affairs; and other trifles superfluous to mention.
But suffice it to say, that it had gone abroad among the Arcturion’s
crew, that at some indefinite period of my career, I had been a “nob.”
But Jarl seemed to go further. He must have taken me for one of the
House of Hanover in disguise; or, haply, for bonneted Charles Edward
the Pretender, who, like the Wandering Jew, may yet be a vagrant. At
any rate, his loyalty was extreme. Unsolicited, he was my laundress and
tailor; a most expert one, too; and when at meal-times my turn came
round to look out at the mast-head, or stand at the wheel, he catered
for me among the “kids” in the forecastle with unwearied assiduity.
Many’s the good lump of “duff” for which I was indebted to my good
Viking’s good care of me. And like Sesostris I was served by a monarch.
Yet in some degree the obligation was mutual. For be it known that, in
sea-parlance, we were _chummies._
Now this _chummying_ among sailors is like the brotherhood subsisting
between a brace of collegians (chums) rooming together. It is a
Fidus-Achates-ship, a league of offense and defense, a copartnership of
chests and toilets, a bond of love and good feeling, and a mutual
championship of the absent one. True, my nautical reminiscenses remind
me of sundry lazy, ne’er-do-well, unprofitable, and abominable
chummies; chummies, who at meal times were last at the “kids,” when
their unfortunate partners were high upon the spars; chummies, who
affected awkwardness at the needle, and conscientious scruples about
dabbling in the suds; so that chummy the simple was made to do all the
work of the firm, while chummy the cunning played the sleeping partner
in his hammock. Out upon such chummies!
But I appeal to thee, honest Jarl, if I was ever chummy the cunning.
Never mind if thou didst fabricate my tarpaulins; and with Samaritan
charity bind up the rents, and pour needle and thread into the
frightful gashes that agonized my hapless nether integuments, which
thou calledst “ducks;”—Didst thou not expressly declare, that all these
things, and more, thou wouldst do for me, despite my own quaint
thimble, fashioned from the ivory tusk of a whale? Nay; could I even
wrest from thy willful hands my very shirt, when once thou hadst it
steaming in an unsavory pickle in thy capacious vat, a decapitated
cask? Full well thou knowest, Jarl, that these things are true; and I
am bound to say it, to disclaim any lurking desire to reap advantage
from thy great good nature.
Now my Viking for me, thought I, when I cast about for a comrade; and
my Viking alone.