Sunday, October 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, October 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 way
with a stiff breeze, which reminded us that it was the latter part
of the autumn, and time to expect southeasters once more. We beat
up against a strong head wind, under reefed topsails, 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 southeaster 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 surprised 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, October 20th. Having got everything ready, we set the
agent ashore, who went up to the Mission to hurry down the hides
for the next morning. This night we had the strictest orders to
look out for southeasters; 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 bank, 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 one 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
halyard 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,
trousers, 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
with both hands, 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 aid of my feet and the other hand
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
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 southeaster. 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 tow-line,
and we expected every moment to see the launch swamped. At length
we got alongside, our boats half full of water; and now came the
greatest trouble 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, chocked,
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 were soon
close-hauled, under reefed sails, standing off from the lee shore
and rocks against a heavy head sea. The fore course was given to
her, which helped her a little; but as she hardly held her own
against the sea, which was setting her to 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 water-ways. 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 her head the foam, which
flew off at each 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 mizzen-top men were sent up to take another reef in the mizzen
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 mizzen topsail yard, either for
reefing or furling, and the young English lad and I 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 blown itself
out, we came-to,--
Thursday, October 22d, at San Pedro, in the old southeaster 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 southeaster. 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 southeaster. 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 towards 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
six-and-twenty years, who was 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 a
college (probably a naval one, as he knew no Latin or Greek),
where he learned French and mathematics. He was not 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.
Neither had George the character, strength of mind, or memory of
Harris; yet there was about him the remains of a pretty good
education, which enabled him to talk quite up to his brains, and a
high spirit and amenability to the point 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 adventures of the last two years,
which we afterwards heard confirmed in such a manner as put the
truth of them 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 gave way 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 a pet of him. In this way he lived for thirteen months, in a
delicious climate, with 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 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 in which the ship was bound, 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, 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 Manilla 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.[1]
[1] In the spring of 1841, a sea-faring man called at my rooms, in
Boston and said he wished to see me, as he knew something about a
man I had spoken of in my book. He then told me that he was second
mate of the bark Mary Frazer, which sailed from Batavia in company
with the Cabot, bound to Manilla, that when off the Pelew Islands
they fell in with a canoe with two natives on board, who told them
that there was an American ship ahead, out of sight, and that they
had put a white man on board of her. The bark gave the canoe a tow
for a short distance. When the Mary Frazer arrived at Manilla, they
found the Cabot there; and my informant said that George came on
board several times, and told the same story that I had given of
him in this book. He said the name of George's schooner was the
Dash, and that she was wrecked, and attacked by the natives, as
George had told me.
This man, whose name was Beauchamp, was second mate of the Mary
Frazer when she took the missionaries to Oahu. He became religious
during the passage, and joined the mission church at Oahu upon his
arrival. When I saw him, he was master of a bark.