In a few weeks we had run through every variety of climate, and at
the end of February, while our friends at home were still shivering
in great-coats and cloaks, or rubbing their hands over coal fires, we
were basking beneath the sky of June. I had thrown off, one by one,
my outer garments, within which I had shrunk (the effects of long
sickness and starvation) like a silkworm in its cocoon; and now, like
the same insect, I came out light and airy, in a summer suit of bright
calico and nankeen.
There is something very pleasant in thus anticipating summer, in
forestalling the all too-punctual sun returning leisurely from the
south, and in bartering a certain quantity of snow and ice for the
unadulterated sunshine of the tropics. Yet I could not help thinking
that we were intruders, interlopers, in thus presuming to thrust
ourselves where we had no right, and to snatch her bounty from the
liberal hand of nature, instead of waiting patiently, like good
children, till it was our turn to be served. The baffling winds that
opposed our progress into those golden gardens of the Hesperides,
seemed to favour this idea,--for many days we were unable to head our
course, and were compelled to sail in an easterly direction, and even
north of east. It was little consolation to a landsman, naturally
credulous as he is in all matters pertaining to "sea-ography," to be
told that we were thus making the necessary Easting, and that at sea
it is especially true that the longest way round is the nearest way
home; nor could I bring myself to believe, when the ship's head was
turned towards Europe, that we were actually taking the shortest cut
to Cape Horn. Under the most favourable conditions, the Leucothea was
a dull sailor, a broken down, superannuated cart-horse, jogging along
"the right butter-woman's rank to market," which, in this case, was so
distant, that we sometimes doubted whether we should ever get there at
all.
This was rendered more tolerable, however, by the delicious breeze,
that flowing from the coast of Africa, was tempered by the wide extent
of water that lay between.
"With such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer'd with the grateful smell old ocean smiles."
The last expression is peculiarly significant. Here was indeed the
many-millioned smile of ocean. It seemed impossible that this amiable
monster should be the same we had so lately seen swelling with rage,
and threatening our instant destruction. But the naked ocean, even
when in good humour, is after all a tiresome companion. I had formed
my ideas of a sea-voyage almost entirely from Irving's description of
his voyage to Europe. I remembered reading, in my younger days, of
the many hours of delightful revery in which he had indulged, and of
the amusements he derived from watching the unwieldly monsters of the
deep in their uncouth gambols. It seemed to my boyish fancy as if the
shark, the whale, the porpoise and the dolphin, and perhaps, even the
veritable sea-serpent himself, had come at his bidding, as the beasts
came to Adam in Paradise. But either these noble personages are less
accommodating since his time, or are unwilling to pay their respects
to any less distinguished visitors. Their privacy has been so often
invaded by troops of cockney tourists, that it has now become almost
impossible to obtain an introduction.
But if these dwellers beneath the surface, these aborigines of the
ocean, indigenous, if we may so say, to the soil, failed to gratify
our curiosity, or to answer our extravagant expectations, this was
far from being the case with the comparatively alien but dominant
race of man's introduction. A ship at sea is as different from the
same ship lying at a wharf, as the lion of the desert from the
cringing brute of a menagerie; I no longer wondered that such should
seem to the ignorant savage, beholding them for the first time,
living and intelligent creatures, tamed and subjected to the service
of a superior race of beings, nor did the ancient fable of their
transformation into sea-nymphs seem altogether incredible.
We spoke several ships at this time, bound in different directions.
Such an event never failed to produce the most intense excitement,
and a feverish anxiety to know the name of the vessel, where she was
from, and whither she was bound. To compare great things with small,
it was as if two worlds should cross each other's path in the heavens,
and should "heave to" a moment in their breathless career to hold
brief converse on their state and destiny. It would be an interesting
question what matters should be introduced at so august a meeting;
though it were much to be feared, that in their anxiety to touch upon
none but the most important, the precious, irrecoverable moment would
be altogether lost.
In the present instance, however, the question and answer are both
ready beforehand; and even the order of precedence is determined by
some freemasonary of the high seas, the mystery of which I did not
unravel. A few moments are commonly sufficient for the purpose; the
captain, who has the first words, pours through his trumpet a hoarse
bellow that would be quite unintelligible if its purport were not
already known,--the other courteously replies,--the flags are run
up and down, to take the place of that head and hand shaking that
attends the meeting of two magnates on land, and away go the obedient
vessels, to meet, perhaps, no more during their whole career.
When three weeks out, we spoke an English ship from Madras, which thus
became exalted, in our imaginations, to a place of vast importance.
She sent her boat to obtain a supply of fuel; and we regarded the crew
with almost as much interest as if they had belonged to a different
planet. Charley Bainbridge, who was always on the look-out for such
opportunities, slid down into the boat, and presently returned with
some article he had found in her bottom, mysteriously guarded in his
breeches pocket. On being pressed to exhibit his treasure, he steadily
refused till after the boat had gone; when he drew forth a pebble,
which he said came from Madras, and being obtained in that odd way,
would make a very handsome addition to his cabinet.
A yet more lively interest was awakened by our meeting, soon after,
a ship bound from Calcutta to Boston. She had been in sight all the
afternoon, and, in compliance with our invitation to speak, altered
her course sufficiently to come up with us just after dusk. A lantern
was suspended at our poop, and guided by its light, which seemed quite
absorbed by the immense darkness, she came cautiously feeling her way
along, till, suddenly shooting into our little illuminated horizon,
she hove to and waited to know our pleasure. All the while our ship
was silent as the grave, but more than a hundred pair of eyes were
peeping through the blanket of the night, as if, though the frailest
and softest things, they would really tear it into shreds. We had no
sooner, however, learned the destination of the stranger than our
decks swarmed with sudden life. As a delay of even a few minutes is
regarded as a serious inconvenience, especially by your fast-sailing
Indiaman, there was little time to prepare our letters, but most
on board, in expectation of such an opportunity, had everything in
readiness; and the boat was hardly lowered before the mail-bag
was thrown into it. When our visitor had filled her sails, and her
tall shadow had merged in the surrounding blackness, a feeling of
loneliness settled down upon us, that we had not known since leaving
home. In a few weeks she would be in Boston; while, at the same time,
we should be off the stormy Cape. It seemed like severing the last tie
that bound us to home; as if we had now really begun to slide down the
backside of the world, without any possibility of ever climbing up
again.
We had now become somewhat accustomed to the dull routine of a long
voyage. Sunrise, commonly flat and insipid, even on land, had here the
superadded monotony of life at sea. The sun came bouncing out of bed,
without a rag of a cloud about him, as if in a great hurry to find out
whether we were just where he left us the night before. Soon after we
began, one by one, to drop down from our berths; and having drawn on
our pantaloons, we shuffled along, towel and wash-bowl in hand, to
the waist of the ship, where we were used to perform our ablutions.
A fireman's bucket attached to a stout rope had been considerately
provided for the use of one hundred passengers; or, to speak more
accurately, for the use of the cooks, the passengers having the
benefit of it only by sufferance of those sooty dignities.
In warm weather, and quiet seas, drawing water was no great hardship;
but when the seas and the latitudes both ran high, and the ship was
rolling and pitching at such a rate that it was no easy matter to
stand upright,--I could not help thinking that the old nursery ballad
What! cry to be washed?
Not love to be clean?
was not after all quite so orthodox in its irony as I had supposed.
Leaning over the bulwarks, with feet well braced against the slippery
deck, his hair in his eyes, and the crook of his elbow nervously
hooking the rigging, the unlucky ablutor picks up the "superior
accommodation," and throws it over the gunwale into the sea. This is a
simple and facile operation; there is no need of plumping the bucket
up and down in order to fill it, the swift current has already done
that for you, and has at once drawn out the whole length of the rope,
while the bucket, with open mouth, seems ready to burst, like the frog
in the fable, in the vain attempt to swallow the whole ocean. But to
regain possession, or as Dan Carpenter, one of our Vermonters, had it,
"revocare bucketum, hoc labor, hoc opus est."
This important duty being at length accomplished, we proceeded, in
fine weather, to promenade the deck till breakfast. The forenoon was
occupied in a great variety of ways. Some disinterested and inquiring
individuals kept a constant look-out for sails, sharks, and whales,
in order to gratify the universal craving for novelty and excitement.
These were the newsmongers and express agents of our little community.
A shark could not show his dorsal fin within a cable's length of
the ship,--a whale could not wag his tail or blow his nose within
five miles,--and a sail could not steal into the wide horizon of the
masthead, without being at once detected by half a dozen curious eyes,
and straightway reported to all below. Various groups on deck were
occupied in reading, talking, and smoking, or in games of chance or
skill. A few bolder spirits had even the hardihood to attempt "Spanish
without a Master," but they got no farther than the story of the
three travellers, and the ominous moral, "Desgraciado el que aspira a
riquezas,"--miserable is he who aspires after riches.