One who had been several years before the mast and afterwards
successively third, second, first mate, lately said to me, “When a
young man, standing on the top gallant forecastle, leaning against the
forestay, in a foggy day or dark night, the ship rushing into the dark
unknown beyond, I sometimes thought, What if there should be an end
to the sea, a precipice over which we should plunge, an undiscovered
continent against which we should run! How did Columbus feel on his
first voyage in a fog or in darkness? What a picture of life, its
unknown future! so little the sailor knows what may be ahead of the
ship; but the captain, confident in his chart, compass and reckoning,
knows the way that he takes.”
I have been much affected by what the young sailor told me of his
first months before the mast; how he parted with members of his family
circle, the ship just taken in tow by the tug, the last line which
held them to the shore cast off, he standing with his arm on the rail,
his head on his hand, looking at those he loved best on earth, and
thinking what scenes he should pass through in the sixteen months
before he should see them, if ever, again; when he was roused from his
reverie by the mate’s calling to him, “Boy, what are you standing there
for? go forward and tie up those cabbages.” He saw one of his family
waving a handkerchief to him; but he was ashamed to be seen answering
it; the hour of sentiment had passed; he must go and tie up the
cabbages. The first few nights at sea the profane, vile talk of some of
the sailors at night used to keep him awake, astonished and terrified.
He used to say to himself, “My God! have I come to this? Did I once have
a christian home? Why did I leave it? The physician said that I must
go to sea, but he could not have known what life in a forecastle is.
An old sailor said to me, ‘Boy, do you know that you stepped into hell
afloat, when you came here?’ Soon I managed to stop up my ears when I
turned in, so as not to hear the dreadful talk.”
I said to him, “How did you help using their language and practising
their wicked ways?”
He replied, “So far from corrupting me you will think it strange,
perhaps, if I say that it made me more pure. I left off some things
which I used to practise without compunction. But the behavior of
the men showed me what I should become, if I practised any kind of
wickedness. When I heard the men swear and talk ribaldry, I repeated
passages of Scripture as fast as I could, said all the hymns I could
remember, and I knew a good many. My sister once promised me a half
dollar if I would learn the Wesminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism;
I said it to her, and she gave me the money, and I used to say that
Catechism over and over in bed; Effectual Calling, Justification by
faith, and, What is required, and What is forbidden in each of the
commandments, used to be to me in that forecastle like a cloth dipped
in some aromatic liquid and pressed to my face.”
I told the young man that if he would write and publish his experience
he might find, by the good that he would do, why providence led him
into that bitter experience in the forecastle.
“I often think,” said he, “of those words: ‘His way is in the sea,’ for
I am sure it has been so with me.”
The recollection of this narrative was forced upon me in looking
into the fog as I lay in the knightheads and looked over and watched
the cutwater breaking the way for the ship. But it grew cold, and I
retreated to the stove.
We had a lively time in the middle of the night. The jib could not
stand the gale, part of it was blown to tatters, much of it was blown
away. It is a three-cornered sail, sixty feet in its extreme length.
The men said that the noise of the wind among the loose sails was as
though the forward part of the ship was breaking up. The watch below
had turned in half an hour before, but now all hands were ordered on
deck. Twenty-four men were on the main yard taking in the sail. It
makes a landsman dizzy to see them standing aloft on a foot rope, the
wind filling the sail and keeping it stiffly bent from them; yet they
must clutch it, bring it in against the wind, holding on by the little
slack which they must contrive to gather, their feet meanwhile with
nothing under them but a rope. I could liken the noise of the wind and
the roar of the sea only to the noise made by an express train when you
are standing on a platform at a railway station. The sound sleep into
which I fell was not disturbed by this uproar, but it yielded to so
slight a cause as the dropping of water upon my bed. The hot weather of
previous weeks had made the chinks open, and now the rain had found its
way through the deck. There was no more sleep in the premises for that
night. An alarm of fire is hardly less effectual in its power to wake
you than the slow, measured, dripping water. The captain brought his
india rubber coat, spread it over the bed, and made a place for a pool,
which in the morning was filled, the tenant having been obliged to beat
a retreat for the remainder of the night to a cabin sofa.
Dec. 26. We are almost round the Cape. From Lat. 50° South in the
Atlantic to 50° South in the Pacific is called “round the Cape.” We are
getting into the longitude of Boston, 71° W., so that time with us will
be the same as with those at home, for a while.