Few if any need to be informed that the mizzen mast is the hindmost
of the three masts of a ship. The mizzen mast of the Golden Fleece
is a solid stick, but the foremast and mainmast are built. In this
section of the country it is not always easy to find trees large,
tall, straight enough for the foremast and mainmast of a large ship. A
smaller one will answer for a mizzen mast. The foremast and mainmast
are specimens of ingenious mechanical work, eight or nine pieces in
each of them making a circumference of sixty-two inches. Iron bands
gird these heavy staves, which are grooved and jointed together. There
are five hoops of broad iron, five feet apart. The mainmast being in
the centre of the ship is continually scraped, oiled, and varnished.
The iron hoops are painted vermilion, which sets off the color of the
spruce wood. It is pleasant to look on the manufactured masts which
show what human skill can do; for example, a mainmast that can support
those immense yards which when lowered to the deck you can scarcely
believe are each of them itself less than a mast, for it supports a
huge weight of canvas stretched upon it.
The mainmast holds up a top mast also with its yards and sails, a
top-gallant mast with yards and sails, the royal, and sometimes a sky
sail. Then the foremast also, which bears the same burden and is also
a manufactured thing; as you think of it, a hundred feet ahead of you,
pioneering your way and taking the first brunt of the sea, you cannot
help regarding it as the most heroic of the three masts. Inspiring as
the sight of these always is, I cannot withhold from the mizzen mast
peculiar attachment. As already stated, one end of the hammock is
fastened to it, the other end to the rail; on one side or the other
there is almost always a shade from the spanker, a principal fore and
aft sail which swings from it.
Lying here about Thanksgiving time I was musing on the mizzen mast,
when I fell asleep, but my musing continued. The mizzen mast, once
a live tree, seemed now to be a living person; it appeared to be
soliloquizing, though now and then it seemed to be addressing an
audience, and again it was whispering to me. I fancied it saying thus:--
“I was once a shoot which a fox could tread down; then a sapling. I
grew on the side of a hill in the Aroostook region. The Indian names
of my native lakes and rivers have been for so long a time disused
that I cannot now distinguish between the Chern-quas-a-ban-to-cook,
the Ah-mo-gen-ga-mook and “the far-winding Skoo-doo-wab-skook-sis.”
Once these names were familiar to me. Now I wander with you who sail
with us in the wilderness of ocean. You sympathize with me, perhaps,
in my exile from the stillness of nature. You are tempted to fancy
me contrasting my rough life with the silence in which I grew. Years
passed over me and my kindred in the untrodden forest; what ornithology
I might describe; what songs I might recite; tell what eagles visited
my top; what rare plumage is remembered as having showed itself in my
foliage. Squirrels gambolled on my limbs, woodpeckers ransacked my
sides for their prey. Many a woodbine has climbed into me, lived its
short life, and turned crimson under the first touch of frost.
One day men came beneath me with axes, measured my girth, looked up to
my top. Great was my fall. I lay on the ground, my top was brought to a
level with my root. I became a mere trunk, was borne to the shipyard,
my foot set in the hold of this ship then new, and soon I was made
ready for my vesture of canvas in place of buds and blossoms; I began a
new life among the winds on the seas. Now I am sailing about the world;
I have been many times round Cape Horn, am familiar with the lightnings
off the River Plate, have compared the gales around the Cape of Good
Hope with those of the Horn; know the latitudes where the trade winds
begin and where they cease. I am a favorite resort of passengers in a
sailing ship. I stand aloof from the main deck where work is all the
time going on and there is much passing to and fro. The house,” (here
it seemed to be addressing an audience) “which is the raised covering
of the cabin, is there, extending perhaps one third the whole length
of the ship, affording on its top a place for promenading. From me
swings the spanker, a large fore and aft sail, helping the wind to
balance the ship and much of the time throwing a shade; and there is
almost always a current of air stirring beneath it. Under me and in the
spanker’s shade the passengers spend a large part of every pleasant day
reading, writing, conversing, enjoying the ocean scenes. Every pleasant
evening is sure to gather them under me. My length runs down through
the forward cabin where I am cased in. There the preacher or reader
stands, with a congregation of about thirty. I am therefore a witness
of a large part of a passenger’s experience at sea. His impressions and
reflections, his reading, his writing, his conversation, his journal,
may properly be dated under me.
It might be supposed” (here it seemed to relapse into soliloquy,) “that
the shipbuilder had ideality playing about him when he placed me, a
tree of the wood, in the most interesting position, to be a centre of
social life, a shelter to meditative hours, identifying myself with the
choicest moments of sea life, retaining a magnetism which memory is
destined to feel in coming years. Such is my origin and early history,
and such the associations, in memory, with the mast under which most of
the impressions to be recorded here, no doubt, by one of our passengers
will be received. If his readers (should he have any) shall be so happy
as to find themselves under a mizzen mast at sea, let it shed the
healing, healthful influence on them which seem to be descending on the
sleeper under my shade.”
This last remark, seeming to be such a personal allusion to myself, had
the effect to startle me, and I roused myself, surprised at having been
asleep, and I looked up to the mizzen mast to see who was speaking.
It was the mate who that moment was saying, “Set the crojick;”[1]
whereupon four sailors came to the belaying-pins where my hammock swung
and began to loosen the buntlines. I went below to prepare myself for
the Thanksgiving dinner.