The crowd was decidedly a heterogeneous one on the edge of which I stood
at eight o'clock, A.M., one scorching July morning, under an awning at
the end of a rickety pier, waiting for the excursion-steamer which was
to convey us to the distant sand-banks over which the clear waters lap,
away down below the green-sloped highlands of Neversink,--sea-shoal
banks, from which silvery fishes were warning us off with their waving
fins.
Now the crowd, being a heterogeneous one, as I have said, had the vulgar
element pervading it to a dominant extent. It consisted mainly of such
"common people," indeed, that no person of exquisite refinement would
have thought of feeling his way through it, unless his hands were
protected by what Aminadab Sleek calls "little goat-gloves." And
yet there is another style of mitten, a large, unshapely, bloated
knuckle-fender, stuffed with curled hair, that might be far more
appropriate to the operation of shouldering in among such "muscular
Christians" as the majority around, on the occasion to which I refer.
In the resorts to which habitual tipplers have recourse for consolation
of the spirituous kind, a cheap variety is usually on hand to meet
exigencies,--the exigency of a commercial crisis, for instance, when the
last lonely dime of the drinker is painfully extracted from the pocket,
to be replaced by seven inconsiderable cents. This abomination is termed
"all sorts" by the publican and his indispensable sinner. It is the
accumulation of the drainage of innumerable gone drinks,--fancy and
otherwise. The exquisite in the "little goat-gloves" would not hob-nob
with me in that execrable beverage; no more would I with him; and yet
one of its components may be the aristocratic Champagne. In the social
elements of a water-excursion-party may be found the "all sorts" of a
particular kind of city-life,--the good of it and the bad of it, with
a dash of something that is very low. But I am going to talk about the
thing as I found it,--the rough side of the social mill-stone; and,
seeing that I have suffered nothing by contact with it, I suppose no
harm will come to such as listen to the little I have got to say on the
subject.
A benevolent desire to launch far and wide the already well-spread
reputation of the New York rowdy impels the present writer to declare
his conviction, that, should Physiology offer a premium for the
production of a perfect and unmitigated specimen of _polisson_,
Experience would seek for it among the choice representatives of the
class in question,--ay, and find it, too. Nor would the ardor of search
be chilled by the suggestion of scarcity conveyed in the practical
sarcasm of the sly old cynic, when he scorched human nature with a horn
lantern by instituting a search with it on the sun-bright highways for
an unauthenticated type of man. And yet the rowdy, like many another
ugly and repulsive thing, may have his use. In the East Indies, it is
customary to keep a live turtle in the wayside water-tanks which are so
precious in that thirsty land, the movements of the animal, as well as
the industry with which it devours all noxious particles which chance
may have conveyed into the waters, serving to keep them in a condition
of purity and health. The rowdy is the turtle in the tank,--so far,
at least, as being an ugly beast to look at and a great promoter of
commotion,--by which latter service he keeps the community alive to
the presence of impure particles in the social element, if he does not
assist in getting rid of them. An alligator in an aquarium might furnish
a better comparison for him in other respects.
Of this class there are many branches; but the one with which I have to
deal at present is to be studied to most advantage by visiting some pier
of the great river-frontage of New York, to which excursion-boats rush
emulously at appointed hours, crossing and jostling each other with
proper respect for their individual rights as free commoners of
the well-tilled waters. Here, as, with audacious disregard of the
chance-medley of smashed guards and obliterated paddle-boxes, the great
water-wagons graze wheels upon the ripple-paved turnpike of the river,
the steamboat-runner, squalidly red from the effects of last night's
carouse, and reeking sensibly of the alcoholic "morning call," may be
recognized by the native manner in which he makes the pier peculiarly
his own,--by the inflammatory character--which unremitting dissipation
has imparted to the inhaling apparatus of his unclassical features,--by
the filthy splendor of his linen, which a low-buttoning waistcoat,
gorgeous and dirty likewise, unbosoms disadvantageously to the gaze of
the beholder,--by the invariable "diamond" pin, of gift-book style, with
which the juncture of the first-mentioned integument is effected, if
not adorned,--and, above all, by the massive guards and guy-chains with
which his watch is hitched on to the belaying arrangements of Chatham
Street garments, the original texture and tint of which have long been
superseded by predominant grease. Hand and elbow with the professional
city-rowdy the steamboat-runner is ever to be found: at the cribs, where
the second-rate men of the "fancy" hold their secret meetings; clinging
about the doors of the Court of Sessions, where, as eavesdroppers,--for
they are known to the door-keeper, and rejected from the friendship of
that stern officer,--they strive, with ear at keyhole, to catch a word
or two which may give them a clue to the probable fate of "Jim," who
is in the dock there, on his trial for homicide or some such light
peccadillo; loitering round the dog-pit institutions, where
the quadrupeds look so amazingly like men and the men like
quadrupeds,--especially in that one where the eye of taste may be
gratified by the supernatural symmetry of the stuffed bull-terriers in
glass cases, the enormity of which specimens is accounted for by the
gentlemanly proprietor, who tells us that "the man as stuffed 'em never
stuffed anythink else afore, only howls."
I suppose it must have been the tacit acknowledgment of some superiority
by me inappreciable, that accorded to one individual of the small
assemblage of roughs under notice a decidedly influential position among
the congenial spirits hovering around. The superior blanchness of this
person's linen would seem to indicate that his association with mere
runners was but occasional and for commercial ends. Also might that
conclusion have been deduced from the immaculacy of his cream-white
Panama hat. That was a jaunty article, with upturned brim, the pride
of which was discernible in the very simplicity with which it sat,
unadulterated by band or trimmings, upon the closely cropped,
mole-colored head of the wearer. Thirty dollars, at least, must have
been its marketable value. Instead of being fitted with chain-tackle,
the watch of this superior person maintained its connection with the
open air by means of a broad watered ribbon plummeted straight down his
leg with a seal hardly inferior in size to a deep-sea lead. This daring
recurrence to first principles is much to be observed, of late, among
the choice spirits of the so-called "sporting" fraternity of New York.
This man, as I supposed, and as I subsequently heard from my friend
Locus, of the police, who came upon the pier, was not a runner now, but
had risen from that respectable rank by large exercise of the virtues so
intimately associated with it. In attributing an exalted position to him
I was right. He was the keeper of a house of entertainment for emigrants
in one of the down-town tributaries to Broadway, where tickets could
also be had for California and most other parts of the world, at an
advance of not more than one-third on the rates charged at the regular
steamboat-offices. Considering the respectability of this person's
occupation, I was surprised when Locus referred to him, familiarly, as
"Flashy Joe," adding that he was widely known, if not respected, and
that he would, probably, be entitled some day to have his portrait
placed in a gallery of which he, Locus, knew, but into which my
aesthetic researches have not hitherto led me.
There was another noticeable character in the rough part of the
heterogeneous crowd. This man, while on a footing of the greatest
intimacy with the runners, was far inferior to them in the matter
of dress. Locus, in reply to my queries, informed me that he was a
professional oyster-opener; but, judging from his appearance in general,
I should have guessed that he was a professional oyster-catcher also,--a
human dredge, employed chiefly at the bottom of the sea. A perfect
Hercules in build, "Lobster Bob," as Locus called him, made his
appearance on the wharf with two enormous creels of oysters, one
balanced on each hip, with the careless ease of unconscious strength,
His costume consisted solely of a ragged blue cotton shirt and trousers,
immense knobby cowskin boots white with age, and a mouldy drab felt hat.
The button-less blue shirt flapped widely open from his brawny chest;
and his shirt-sleeves, rolled up to the shoulder, gave full display to a
pair of arms of a mould not usually to be found outside the prize-ring,
and but seldom within the sanctuary of that magic circle. As if in
compensation for the merely nominal allowance of costume tolerated by
this crustacean professor, his chest and arms were entirely covered with
a wild arabesque of tattoo-work, in blue and red. Many and original
artists must have been employed in the embellishment of Robert's tawny
hide. The one to whose sense of the fitness of things was intrusted
the illustration of his right arm had seized boldly upon the oval
protuberance of the biceps, a few skilfully disposed dots and dashes
upon which had converted it into a face which was no bad reproduction of
Bob's own. On the broad flexors of his sun-bronzed fore-arm there blazed
a grand device which might have puzzled a whole college of heralds to
interpret,--a combination of eagles and banners and shields, coruscating
with stars and radiant with stripes. But more suggestive than any of
these shams was the stern reality of a purple scar which ran round the
back of his neck, from ear to ear. More than one man must have been
hurt, when that scar was made.
Notwithstanding the bull-dog projection of this formidable giant's lower
jaw, there sometimes beamed on his face that good-natured expression
often observable in men whose unusual muscular development places them
on a footing of physical superiority to those with whom they shoulder
along the road of life. When the runners "chaffed" him, nevertheless,
it was in a mild way, and with manifest respect for his muscle,--a
sentiment in no way diminished when he suddenly clutched one of the
least cautious among them by the nape of the neck, and held him out at
arm's-length, for some seconds, over the drowny water that kept lazily
licking at the green moss on the old stakes of the rickety pier.
Even unto the Prince of Darkness, saith proverbial philosophy, let us
concede his due. If, then, a single ray of good illuminates at some
happy moment the dark spirit of these roughs, let it be recorded with
that bare, unfledged truth which is so much better a bird than uncandor
with the finest of feathers upon him.
Feeling his way into the circle with a stick, there came a poor blind
man, of diminutive stature, squeezing beneath his left arm a suffocating
accordion, which, every now and then, as he stumbled against the uneven
planks of the wharf, gave a querulous squeak, doleful in its cadence as
the feeble quavers evoked by Mr. William Davidge, comedian, from
the asthmatic clarionet of Jem Bags, in the farce of the "Wandering
Minstrel."
"Come, b'hoys!" cried Lobster Bob, "let's have a squeeze of music from
Billy, afore the boat comes up"; and, plumping down one of his creels in
the middle of the crowd, he lifted up the musician, and seated him upon
the rough, cold oysters,--a throne fitter, certainly, for a follower of
Neptune than a votary of Apollo. One of the roughs danced an ungraceful
measure to the music of the accordion, mimicking, as he did so, the
queer contortions into which the musician twisted his features in
perfect harmony with his woful strains. All of them were gentle to the
blind man, though, as if his darkness had brought to them a ray of
light; and presently one of them takes off the musician's cap, drops
into it a silver dime, and goes the rounds of the throng with many
jocose appeals in favor of the owner, to whom he presently returns it
in a condition of silver lining analogous to, but more substantial than
that of the poet's cloud.
But now the poor music of the accordion was quite extinguished by the
bellowing of the brazen horns of the "cotillon band" on the deck of our
expected steamer, as she rounded to from the upper piers at which she
had been taking in excursionists. This caused a stir in the crowd under
the awning, many of whom were fathers of families taking their wives and
children out for a rare holiday. The smallest babies had not been left
at home, but were there in all their primary scarletude, set off by the
whitest of lace-frilled caps trimmed with the bluest of ribbons. And now
came the time for these small choristers to take up the "wondrous tale";
for the big horns had ceased to wrangle, and the crushing and rushing of
the crowd woke up infancy to a sense of its wrongs and a consciousness
of the necessity for action.
There were some nice-looking girls around, neatly dressed, too, though
by no means in their Sunday-best; for _la petite New-Yorkaise_ is aware
of the mishaps to be encountered by those who venture far out to sea in
ships. They had sweethearts with them, for the most part, or brothers,
or cousins, mayhap: but they were sadly neglected by these protectors,
as we stood under the awning on the pier; for the male mind was full of
fishing, and the male hands were employed in making up tackle with a
most unscientific kind of skill.
And now the final rush came, as the steamer made fast alongside the
outermost of the boats already lying at the pier, across the decks of
which our heterogeneous crowd began to make its way with as little
scrambling as possible, on account of the petticoat-hoops, which
are capital monitors in a turmoil. Women swayed their babies like
balancing-poles, as they tottered along the gangway-plank. Men tried to
secure themselves from being brushed into eternity by the powerful sweep
of skirts. My own personal reminiscence of this transit from the wharf
to the gallant bark of our choice is melancholy and vague, being marked
chiefly to memory by the complicated curse bestowed upon me by a hideous
old Irish-woman, whose oranges I accidentally upset in the crowd, and by
whom I was subsequently derided with buffo song and scurrilous dance as
long as the steamer remained within hearing and sight.
Away we are steaming down the bay, at last, a motley party of men,
women, and children of all sizes and sorts: husbands, wives, milliners
and their lovers; young men who have brought no young women with them,
because they have come for fishing and fishing only; and advanced
fathers, who, making a virtue of having brought out wife and child for
a holiday, now leave them a good deal to take care of themselves, and
devote all their energies to being pleasant as remotely from them as
circumstances will allow. Roughs, to the number of a dozen or so, mostly
steamboat-runners and their congeners, are of the party, headed by
Flashy Joe. Lobster Bob has set up his oyster-plank in a central
situation. Venders of unfresh-looking refreshments have established
themselves on board; and the bar-keeper, near the forecastle, is
preparing himself for the worst.
By-and-by I noticed a good-looking specimen of Young New York on board,
and was introduced to him by a cigar. He was a handsome boy, with dark,
oval face, and Arabian eyes. The silky black line that just marked the
curve of his upper lip gave promise of a splendid moustache; his closely
crisped black hair was but just visible below the rim of his jaunty
straw hat, the band of which was a tasselled cord of crimson silk; while
his lithe figure was suggested rather than displayed by the waving lines
of his loose brown jacket with tapering _gigot_ sleeves. His low-cut
shirt-collar and narrow silken neck-tie were in the style called
"English," as quite decidedly, also, were his cross-barred trousers of
balloony build; nor, although thus flinging himself for diversion into
the vortex of the lower crowd, had he foregone the luxury of tan-colored
kid gloves and patent-leather shoes. He was a bright boy, and precocious
as a lady-killer; for, already, before we had left far behind us the
pleasant slopes of Bay Ridge, with its peeping villa-parapets of
brown and white, and its umbrageous masses of chromatic green, he
had evidently engaged the affections of an _espiègle_ little
straw-bonnet-maker, who did her hair something like his own, in a
close-curled crop, and had her pretty little person safely shut up in a
high-necked dress.
That young lady had a suitor with her, who was clearly not a sweetheart,
however, by a good deal, but merely a follower tolerated for the day,
and on the score of convenience only. He was a tall, gaunt, pale young
man, with long hands and feet, slouching shoulders and narrow chest,
and a strange, indescribable nullity of expression dwelling upon his
features. He did not appear to be encouraged much by little Straw-Goods,
whose mind was probably occupied with prospective possibilities of being
led out to the festive dance by Young New York. Altogether, he was an
unsatisfactory-looking young man, his unfinished look reminding one of
raw material, though it would have been hard to say for what.
But the band had now ceased mellowing out the favorite medley which
begins with "Casta Diva" and runs over into the lovely cadences of
"Gentle Annie"; and the abrupt transition from that mournful strain to a
light cotillon air warned four hundred holiday-people that the festive
dance was about to begin on the wide floor between the engine-room and
the saloon. Cotillons are a leading pastime among the people; and as the
water was pretty smooth down the bay, and a splendid breeze rushed aft
between-decks, many laughing girls and well-dressed matronly women now
made their appearance on the floor. Dancing without noise is a luxury as
yet uncalled for. Dancers must have music, we know,--and what is
music, but wild noise caught and trained? But these cotillons were
unnecessarily boisterous, on account of the roughs, who, looked upon as
outsiders by the better-behaved portion of the throng, got up a wild
war-step of their own on the skirts of the legitimate dance, dishonestly
appropriating to their coarse movements the music intended for it
alone, as they stamped and shouted, and wheeled round with a ludicrous
affectation of grace, in the space between the dancers and the bulkheads
of the deck. One of these roughs, a drunken, young fellow of wiry build,
whose hair, face, eyes, nose, ears, and hands were all of the color of
tomato-catchup, might have made an excellent low comedian, had destiny
led him upon the "boards." He had just been complaining to his
companions that his hand had been refused for the dance by a girl at
whom he pointed the red finger of wrath,--a pale, but very interesting
seamstress, who was whirling about with a much decenter young man than
the red one is ever likely to be. And then he nobly took his revenge
by the clever, but unprincipled way in which he caricatured the rather
remarkable dancing of the young man who was the object of his hate, and
whose style of movement it would not be consistent with this writer's
duty to deny was amenable to severity, and must, in any society, have
subjected him who indulged in it to the scorn of the flouter and the
contempt of all high-minded men.
All through the dance, it was a thing to be remembered, how superior in
deportment the women were to the men. Probably it was from a natural
instinct for grace, and abhorrence of the ludicrous, that they merely
skimmed through the figures, without any of the demonstrations displayed
by their beaux. It was pleasant to look at the nice little straw-goods
damsel with the boyish hair, and to mark the contrast between her kitten
glidings and the premeditated atrocities of Raw Material, as he wove and
unwove his ungainly legs before her, in a manner appalling to witness.
She had only a common palm-leaf fan, I remarked,--worth, probably, about
two cents. But Young New York, as he waited patiently for the deadly
ocean-malady to fall upon Raw Material, who was unquestionably a subject
for it, and was drinking, besides, drew tightly up his tan-colored
gloves, and, twirling with finger and thumb the air just about where
it must some day be displaced by the future tendrils of the coming
moustache, affirmed upon oath his intention of presenting her with a fan
more worthy of her well-kept little hand, ere kind Fortune could have
time to drop another excursion-ticket into her work-basket.
Should the solemn question arise as to how I knew that one of these
young women was in the straw-bonnet line, another a milliner, a third
a dress-maker, and so forth, I will answer it by stating that the left
forefinger of the seamstress, long since vulcanized into a little
file, furnishes the infallible sign which indicates the class. To the
practised eye, the varieties are known by many a token: by the smart
little close-grained cereal bonnet which little Straw-Goods put away
before she came into the dance; by the spicy creation of silk and
ribbons which roosts demurely, like a cedar-bird, on the back hair of
the pale girl, who is a milliner; by the superior manner in which the
hoops are disguised in the structure surrounding that blonde young wife
with the pink baby, who is a dressmaker. Let the lofty read studiously
the signs that in the heavens are portentous of storm or of shine; I,
who am of commoner clay, must content myself with deciphering those that
are of earth.
But a "sea-change" was upon us. Last night there was a tornado of
rain and thunder and wind, and the effects of the latter were now
perceptible, as we began to rock through the ground-swell off Sandy
Hook, and down past the twin light-houses on the high, sunny ridges
of Neversink. The music ceased, the dancers deserted the 'tween-decks
floor, and, as the rocking of the boat increased, there arose in the
direction of the ladies' cabin audible suggestions of woe.
And now the twin beacon-towers of Neversink were far, far behind, having
taken a position with regard to us which may be described, in military
phrase, as an _échelon_ movement upon our flank, and we went surging
through a fleet of little green fishing-boats, manned each by a single
fisherman in a red shirt, whose two horny hands appeared to be a couple
too few for the hauling in of the violet and silver _porgies_, with
which the well of his little green craft was alive and flapping. In the
middle of this fleet we rounded to, the anchor was let go, and we were
hard and fast upon the Fishing-Banks.
The first thing done, on these excursions, by those who come to
fish,--which includes nearly all the men,--is to establish a claim
somewhere along the railing of the steamer, by attaching to it a strong
whip-cord fishing-line, with a leaden sinker and hook of moderate
size,--the latter lashed on, in most instances, with a disregard for art
which must be intensely disgusting to any man whose piscatorial memories
are associated with the wily salmon and the epicurean trout. Triangular
tin boxes are brought along by the fishermen to hold their bait, which
consists of soft clams, liberally sprinkled with salt to keep them in a
wholesome condition for the afternoon take. Attaching a line to any
part of the rail or combings, or to any projecting point of the boat,
establishes the _droit de pêche_ at that particular spot,--a right
respected with such rigorous etiquette, that the owner may then go his
way with confidence, to inspect the resources of the bar, or join the
gay throng of dancers between-decks.
There must be something singularly fascinating in this curious pastime
of fishing with a hand-line from the jumping-off places of a steamboat
or pier. Doubtless it is from a defective sympathetic organization
that the writer of these pages does not himself "seem to see it."
Nevertheless, I look upon the illusion with a respect almost bordering
upon fear, although not quite in that spirit of veneration which moves
illogical savages to fall down and worship the stranger lunatic whom
chance has led to their odorous residences. Dwelling one summer on the
New Jersey shore, I used to loiter, day after day, upon a deserted
wharf, at the end of which was ever to be seen a broad-beamed fisherman,
sitting upon an uncomfortably wooden chair, from which he dabbled
perpetually with his whip-cord line in the shallow water that washed the
slimy face-timbers of the wharf. There he sat, day after day, and
all day, and, for aught I know, all through the summer-night, a
big-timbered, sea-worthy man, reading contentedly a daily paper of local
growth, and pulling up never a better bit of sea-luck than the puny,
mean-spirited fishling called by unscientific persons the _burgall_.
I would at any time have freely given ten cents for the privilege of
overhauling old broad-beam's carpet-bag, which he always placed before
him on the string-piece, with a view, I suppose, of frustrating anything
like a guerrilla plunder-movement upon his widely extended rear. Ay,
there must be something strangely entrancing in dragging the shoal
waters with a hand-line, for unsuspicious, easily duped members of the
acanthopterygian tribe of fishes,--under which alarming denomination
come, I believe, nearly all the finny fellows to be met with on these
sand-banks, from the bluefish to the burgall. Only think how stuck up
they would be above the lowly mollusks of the same waters, if they
knew themselves as Acanthopterygii, and were aware that their
great-grandfather was an Acanthopteryx before them, and so away back in
the age of waters that once were over all! "Very ancient and fish-like"
is their genealogy, to be sure!
In the far-away days, when Neversink _was_, but the twin beacon-towers
that now watch upon its heights were _not_,--when Sandy Hook was a hook
only, and not a telegraph-station, from which the first glimpse of an
inward-bound argosy is winked by lightning right in at the window of the
down-town office where Mercator sits jingling the coins in his trousers'
pockets,--in those days, the only excursion-boats that rocked upon the
ground-swell over the pale, sandy reaches of the Fishing-Banks were the
tiny barklets that shot out on calm days from the sweeping coves, with
their tawny tarred-and-feathered crews: for of such grotesque result of
the decorative art of Lynch doth ever remind me the noble Indian warrior
in his plumes and paint. Unfitted, by the circumscribed character of
their sea-craft, their tackle, and their skill, for pushing their
enterprise out into the deeper water, where the shark might haply say to
the horse-mackerel,--"Come, old horse, let you and me hook ourselves on,
and take these foolish tawny fellows and their brown cockle-shell down
into the under-tow,"--they supplied their primitive wants by enticing
from the shallows the beautiful, sunny-scaled shoal-fish, well named by
ichthyologists _Argyrops_, the "silver-eyed." But the poor Indian,
who knew no Greek,--poor old savage, lament for him with a scholarly
_eheu!_--called this shiner of the sea, in his own barbarous lingo,
_Scuppaug_. Can any master of Indian dialects tell us whether that word,
too, means "him of the silver eye"? If it does, revoke, O student, your
shrill _eheu_ for the Greekless and untrousered savage of the canoe,
suppress your feelings, and go steadily into rhabdomancy with several
divining-rods, in search of the Pierian spring which must surely exist
somewhere among the guttural districts of the Ojibbeway tongue.
And here there is diversion for philologist as well as fisherman; for
while the latter is catching the fish, the former may seize on the fact,
that in this word, _Scuppaug_, is to be found the origin of the two
separate names by which Argyrops, the silver-eyed, is miscalled in local
vernacular. True to the national proclivity for clipping names, the
fishermen of Rhode Island appeal to him by the first syllable only of
his Indian one,--for in the waters thereabout he is talked of by the
familiar abbreviation, _Scup._ But to the excursionists and fishermen of
New York he is known only as _Porgy,_ or _Paugie_, a form as obviously
derived from the last syllable of his Indian name as the emphatic
"siree" of our greatest orators is from the modest monosyllable "sir."
_Porgy_ seems to be the accepted form of the word; but letters of the
old, unphonetic kind are poor guides to pronunciation. And a beautiful,
clean-scaled fish is Porgy,--whose _g_, by-the-by, as I learned from a
funny man in the heterogeneous crowd, is pronounced "hard, as in 'git
eowt.'" A lovely fish is he, as he comes dripping up the side of the
vessel from his briny pastures. Silver is the pervading gleam of his
oval form; but while he is yet wet and fresh, the silver is flushed with
a chromatic radiance of gold, and violet, and pale metallic green, all
blending and harmonizing like the mother-o'-pearl lustre in some rare
sea-shell. The true value of this fish is not of a commercial kind,
for he cannot be deemed particularly exquisite in a gastronomic sense;
neither is he staple as a provision of food. His virtue lies in the
inducement offered to him by the citizen of moderate means, who, for
a trifling outlay, can secure for himself and family the invigorating
influence of the salt sea-breezes, by having a run down outside the Hook
any fine day in summer, with an object. The average weight of the porgy
of these banks may be set down at about a pound.
Five minutes after we came to anchor, there must have been at least two
hundred and fifty whip-cord lines stretching out into the three-fathom
water from every available rail and fender of the old boat. Most of the
men had brought their tackle with them, and their tin canisters of bait.
To those who had not, the articles were ready at hand; for speculators
had mingled in the crowd, one of whom affixed his "shingle" to a post
between-decks, setting forth,--"Fishing-Lines and Hooks, with Sinkers
and Bait,"--the latter consisting of clams in the shell, contained in
a barrel big enough for the supply of the whole flotilla of green boats
and red shirts, which still hung around us like swallows in the wake of
an osprey. Two or three of our excursionists--men, perhaps, whose
minds indulged in dear memories of a brook that babbles by a mill--had
fishing-rods with them, and made great ado with scientific lunges and
casts, producing much discord, indeed, by flicking away wildly outside
their proper sea-limits. Most industrious among the hand-fishers I
remarked a small, spare man, who, under the careful supervision of a
buxom young wife in a "loud" tartan silk, baited no hook nor broke water
with his lead until he had first folded and put carefully away between
the handle and lid of the family prog-basket his tight little black
frock-coat, and passed his small legs through the tough creases of a
pair of stout blue "Denim" overalls. These, pulled up to his neck, and
hitched on there with shoulder-straps, served for waistcoat and trousers
and all, imparting to him the cool atmospheric effect so much admired in
that curious picture of Gainsborough's, known to connoisseurs as "The
Blue Boy." Then he fished the waters with a will; and it was but a
scurvy remark of Flashy Joe, who said that "it was about an even chance
whether he took porgy or porgy took _him_." But it seems to me that this
unskilled labor of fishing from a steamboat must be epidemic, if not
contagious; for even Young New York, who in the early forenoon doubted
visibly his discretion at having got himself into such an ugly scrape as
an "excursion-spree," put off his delicate gloves, and set to hauling,
hand over hand, as if for a bet.
But I believe I have committed a breach of etiquette in giving
precedence to Scuppaug over the skipper, a very large and thoroughly
pickled old man, who now bustled deliberately about the decks, with as
few clothes on his broad back and stern-post legs as were consistent
with decorum and with the requirements of those by-laws of society which
extend even to Sandy Hook and the rest of the Jerseys, as well as to the
fishing-banks that shoal out from the same. Strictly speaking, this old
man of our part of the sea was not the captain of the boat, but the
pilot, who takes command of her when she abandons her proper line on
the rivers, and ventures to that "far Cathay" of city-navigators
indefinitely spoken of as "outside the Hook." The smooth-water captain
of the steamer, who was nobody to talk of now, was a slim, pale young
man, in a black dresscoat, tall, silky hat, and shoes of a material
which has long years ago been patented, on account of its matchless
ability to shine. This commander remained permanently within the
"office," where he was probably very poorly by himself during all this
"high old time." The stout old pilot was the real skipper; and now that
the vessel had come to anchor, he turned from his lighter duties to the
grave pastime of the day, and fished earnestly through a large hole in
the paddlebox,--the porgies that came to his allurements arriving at
their destination by a series of flapping manoeuvres from blade to blade
of the wheel. For so burly a man, and one with such a chest for the
stowage of sea-breezes and monsoons, the skipper was provided with a
wonderfully small voice, suggesting, as he lectured upon sea-fishing to
the novices who were getting into "snarls" with their tackle hard by
where he sat, the circumstance of a tree-toad discoursing from the
hollow of a brave old oak.
"If you want to ketch good fish," said he, sententiously, to Young New
York, whose hook persisted in baiting itself with his thumb,--"if you
want to ketch reel snorters, you must have a heavy line, heavy lead, and
gimp tackle. Then take your own time, haul in, hand over hand, and no
matter what the heft, you'll be sure to fetch him."
Young New York produced from his breast-pocket the blue enamelled case
in which reposed his ivory tablets, and, seating himself upon the
chain-box, wrote down with golden pencil the dictum of the sage.
Notwithstanding the storm of yesterday, from which the discontented
foreboded a stampede of the fish to deeper waters, porgies to an
extraordinary amount were soon heaped on the decks, at the feet of each
fisherman, the more careful of whom put them into baskets or barrels.
But in general they were thrown carelessly on the deck, with a string
passed through their gills to keep them from straying out of their
proper lots. When these bright fishes are lying the deck, it is curious
to watch them flushing and gasping there, with that singular, dubious
expression of mouth peculiar to fishes out of water, as if more struck
by the absence of that element than by their novel position among the
accessories of dry life. Now and then a blackfish was hauled in,--an
event greeted with a loud cheer from all parts of the boat. When a very
large one was announced, people came rushing from all quarters to see
it; but the greatest tribute to largeness in a fish that I remember
anywhere to have seen was the altered expression on the face of a baby
some six months old, whose features settled permanently down into the
collapse of imbecility, from the moment of the arrival on the upper deck
of a blackfish two feet long.
By this time the scene on the forecastle was quite a picture of the
Dutch school. Grouped everywhere among the fish and fishers were
matronly women and unbonneted damsels, most of them with handkerchiefs
tied upon their heads; for they had got over their sea-sickness, now,
and were coming by twos and threes from the saloon, to breathe a little
fresh air and look on at the sport. One pretty, Jewish-looking girl,
wrapped in a red and white shawl, was sitting on the big anchor near
the bows, and three or four others looked quite picturesque, as they
reclined on the heavy coils of the great cable. More central to the
picture than was at all advantageous to it sat our friend Raw Material,
with his head jammed recklessly into the capstan, abandoning himself
to his misery. For the inevitable malady had fallen upon him among the
first; and as he sat there, helpless and without hope, upon one of
those life-preserving stools that remind one, by their shape, of the
"properties" of Saturn in the mythology of old, he looked like Languor
on an hour-glass, timing the duration of Woe. All along the bulwarks
on both sides of the boat, men and boys were crowding upon each other,
casting out and hauling in their lines with unflagging spirit. Slim
city-children, blistered wholesomely as to their legs, from knee to
ankle, by the sun and the salt air, harnessed themselves to little heaps
of fish, and were driven about the upper deck in various fashionable
styles, including four-in-hand and tandem, by other slim city-children,
whose lower extremities had been treated in the same beneficial manner
by the same eminent physicians. The musicians had laid away their
cornopeans and other cunningly twisted horns upon the broad disk of the
big drum, in a dark alcove between-decks, and were fishing savagely in
German and broken English, according to the nationality with which their
affairs happened to get entangled. Even the colored _chef de cuisine_,
a muscular mulatto, with a beard of a rash disposition, coming out on
wrong parts of his face in little eruptive pustules of black wool,
sported his lines out of the galley-airholes, and his porgies were
simmering in the pan while their memories were yet green in the
submarine parishes from which they came. Have these finny creatures
their full revenge upon fishermankind, when a smack sinks foundered into
the swallowing deep? Do the midnight revellers in the sea-caverns
call out in broad Scuppaug to the attendant mermaid for a "half-dozen
large-sized jolterheads on the half monkey-jacket?" To these queries I
hope that Poetical Justice, if still living, will forward a reply at
her earliest convenience. Porgy now began to pervade the air with an
astringent perfume of the sea: none of your Fulton Market smells of
stagnating fish, but a clean, wholesome, coralline odor, such as we
may imagine supplied to the Peris "beneath the dark sea" by the scaly
fellows in the toilet line down there, who are likely to keep it for
sale in conch-shells,--quarts and pints. Porgy prevailed to that extent,
in fact, that it came to be talked of, by-and-by, as a circulating
medium; and a hard-fisted mechanic averred his intention of compensating
his landlady for his board with porgy, for the week that was passing
away.
For some time, luck appeared to favor the starboard side of the boat,
at which the take was much greater than at the other. Hence, discontent
began to crawl in at the port-gangways, and the fishermen on that
side were gradually edging over to the other, to look for a chance of
stealing in their lines clandestinely between the ranks. This led to
an interchange of bad compliments, as well as to a very perceptible
slanting of the deck, and the captain piped out to the hands to shift
the chain-box. And by this action was resolved for me a riddle with
regard to the properties and uses of a prematurely stout man of fabulous
girth, who had been dimly revealed to me, once or twice in the course
of the voyage, through some long vista of the 'tween-decks, but seemed
always to melt into air,--or, more probably, oil,--upon any advance
being made to a closer inspection. Now, as a couple of the deck-hands
hauled and howled unsuccessfully at the unwieldy chain-box, this
mysterious person suddenly appeared, as if spirited up, and, throwing
himself stomach on to the loaded vehicle, shot across with it to the
other side of the deck with wonderful velocity, retiring, then, with a
gliding movement, so as to preserve the rectitude of the deck, which
now seemed inclined to slope rather too much the other way. I will not
undertake to say, for certain, that the stout man was paid for doing
this; but, as his hands were small and remarkably white, indications
that he toiled not with _them_, and as he made his appearance on deck
only when movable ballast was wanted, I am bound to suppose that he
secured a living by sitting heavily and throwing himself on for weight,
in circumstances under which such actions command a standard value.
Three hours having gone by since we came to anchor, the healthful toil
of fishing in the salt sea produced its natural result,--a ravenous
appetite for food and drink; and a common consent to partake of
refreshments now began to develop itself. The wives had much to do with
this, as they detailed themselves along the railings, influencing
their husbands with hints about the hamper and flask. For most of the
family-people had brought their provisions with them; and, in many
cases, the basket was flanked by a stone jar which looked as if it might
contain lager-beer,--as, in several instances, it did. Where there were
many small children in a party, however, I noticed that the beverage
obtained from the jar was milk,--real Orange County cow-produce, let us
hope, and none of that sickly town-abomination, the vending of which
ought to be made by our legislators a felony, at least. Ham-sandwiches,
greatly enhanced in flavor by the circumstance of their outer surfaces
being impressed with a reverse of yesterday's news, from the contact of
the pieces of newspaper in which they were wrapped up, formed the staple
of the feast. Large bowls of the various, seasonable berries were also
in request; and all the shady places of the ship were soon occupied by
families, who distributed themselves in independent groups, as people
do in the sylvan localities dedicated to picnics. All were hungry and
happy, all better in mind and body,--illustrating the wise providence of
the instinct that whispers to the over-wrought artisan and bids him go
sometimes forth on a summer's day to the woods and waters,--a move which
the marine character of the subject impels me to speak of nautically,
but reverently, as taking himself and family into the graving-dock of
Nature, for the necessary repairs.
Some of the girls now stole slyly about among the lines, and popped the
baits timidly into the blue water. The pale seamstress, who has quite
a rose-flush on her cheek now, has hooked a good-sized porgy, and her
screams in this terrible predicament have brought several smart young
men to her rescue. Another girl, pretty and well-dressed,--in the
glove-making line, as I guess from the family she is with, all of
whom, from paterfamilias to baby, are begloved in a manner entirely
irrespective of expense,--is kneeling pensively on the stern-benches
of the upper deck, paying out the line with confidence in herself, but
evidently hoping for masculine assistance in the process of hauling it
in.
And where were our dear friends, the roughs, all this time? and how came
it that they were so quiet? They have been asleep,--snoring off the
effects of last night's diversions, and fortifying their constitutions
against the influences to come. Ever since the music ceased playing,
these fellows have been rolled away, singly or in heaps, in crooked
corners, into which they seem to fit naturally. But now they began to
rally, waking up and stretching themselves and yawning,--the last two
actions appearing to be the leading operations of a rowdy's toilet; and,
gathering round Lobster Bob, who has been steadily employed in opening
oysters for all who have a midsummer faith in those mollusks, they
commenced rapidly swallowing great quantities of the various kinds,
which they seasoned to an alarming extent with coarse black pepper
and brownish salt. The fierce thirst, which, with these men, is not a
consequence, because it is a thing that was and is and ever will be, was
brought vividly to their minds by this unnecessary adstimulation; and
now the bar-keeper, whose lager-beer was wellnigh exhausted, from its
connection with ham-sandwiches, had enough to do to furnish them with
whiskey, of which stimulant there was but too large a supply on hand.
The consequence of this was soon apparent in the ugly hilarity with
which the rowdies entered upon the enjoyment of the afternoon. First, in
spite of the remonstrances of the Teuton whose proper chattel it was,
they seized upon the large drum, with which they made an astounding din
in the public promenades of the vessel, abetted, I am sorry to say, by
some who ought to have known better,--and did, probably, before the
whiskey had curdled their wits. In this proceeding, as in all their
movements, they were marshalled by Flashy Joe, whose comparatively
spruce appearance, when he came on board in the morning, had been a good
deal deteriorated by broken slumbers in places not remote from coals,
and by the subsequent course of drinks. Quiet people were beginning to
express some dissatisfaction with the noise made by these fellows, who,
however, kept pretty much by themselves, as yet, and had got only to the
musical stage of the proceedings, chorusing with unearthly yells a song
contributed to the harmony of the afternoon by the first ruffian, the
burden of which ran,--
"When this old hat was ny-oo, my boys,
When this old hat was ny-oo-ooo!"
No voice in this chorus dwelt more decidedly by itself than the shrill
one belonging to the small, spare man already spoken of as having a
buxom young wife and blue cotton overalls. During his wife's adjournment
to the ladies' cabin, this person, I am obliged to record, had become
boisterously drunk,--a condition in which the contradictory elements
that make up the characters of most men are generally developed to an
instructive extent. In his first paroxysm, the fighting man within him
was all aroused, as is generally the case with diminutive men, when
under the influence of drink. Already he had tucked his sleeves up to
fight a large German musician, who could have put him into the bell of
his brass-horn and played him out, without much trouble. But the song
pacified him; and, with a misty sense of his importance in a convivial
point of view, on account of the manner in which he had acquitted
himself in the chorus, he now essayed a higher flight, and treated the
party to a new version of "The Pope," oddly condensed into one verse, as
follows:--
"The Pope, he leads a happy life,
He fears no married care nor strife,
His wives are many as be will:
I would the Sultan's place, then, fill!"
At this moment the buxom young wife descended suddenly from the upper
deck by the forecastle-ladder, like Nemesis from a thunder-cloud, and,
seizing upon the small warbler, to whom she administered a preliminary
shake which must have sadly changed the current of his ideas, drove him
ignominiously before her toward the stern of the vessel, rapping him
occasionally about the ears with the hard end of her fan, to keep him on
a straight course. Persons who traced the matter farther said that he
was driven all the way to the upper deck, pushed with gentle violence
into a state-room, the door locked upon him, and the key pocketed by the
lady, who said triumphantly, as she walked away,--"That's the Sultan's
place for _him_, I guess!" The moral to this little episode is but
a horn-book one, and without any pretension to didactic force: That
respectable citizens, like the small, spare man, would do well, on
excursion-trips or elsewhere, to avoid whiskey and black-guards; and
that wives might be saved a deal of trouble by keeping their eyes
permanently on their husbands, when the latter are of uncertain ways.
This little domestic drama had hardly been played out, when a more
serious one--almost a tragedy--was enacted on the forecastle. It
originated in the misconduct of the red man, who, seized with a desire
to catch porgies, went a short way to work for tackle, by snatching away
the line of a peaceable, but stout Frenchman, who was paralyzed for a
moment by the novelty of the thing, but, immediately recovering himself,
expressed his dissent by smashing an earthen-ware dish, containing a
great mess of raw clams for bait, upon the head of the red man, as he
stooped over the railing to fish. This led to a general fight, in which
blood flowed freely, and the roughs were getting rather the upper-hand.
Knives were drawn by some of the Germans and others in self-defence,
and great consternation reigned in the afterpart of the boat and
the neighborhood of the ladies' cabin. Then the slim captain of the
boat--the one in the black dress-coat--hurriedly whispered something to
Lobster Bob, who rushed away aft, where the fight was now agglomerating,
headed by the red man and Flashy Joe, both covered with blood, and
looking like demons, as they wrestled and bit through the Crowd. Just
as they hustled past a large chest intended for the stowage of
life-preservers, Lobster Bob kicked the lid of it open with a bang, and,
seizing up the red man, neck and crop, with his huge, tattooed hands,
dropped him into it and shut down the lid, which was promptly sat upon
by the large, stout, smiling man already favorably spoken of in these
pages, who suddenly made his appearance from nowhere in particular. The
picture of contentment, he sat there like one who knew how, caressing
slowly his large knees with his short, plump hands, until the cries from
the chest began to wax feeble, when he slowly arose, vanished, and I
never saw him again. The red rowdy was then dragged, half-suffocated,
from his imprisonment, and as much life as he ought ever to be intrusted
with restored to him by the stout old skipper, who was at hand with a
couple of buckets full of cold salt-water, with which he drenched him
liberally, as he slunk away. A diversion thus effected, the disturbance
was quelled. All was quiet in a short time, and the word was passed to
heave the anchor and 'bout ship for home.
On the way back, we took a pleasant course inside the Hook, which
brought the charming scenery of the Jersey shore and of Staten Island
before us, as a pleasant drop-curtain on the melodrama just closed. The
music again struck up, and dancing was resumed with fresh vigor,--the
waltzing of all other couples being quite eclipsed by that of Young New
York and little Straw-Goods, who had effectually got rid of her tipsy
persecutor ever since the ground-swell, and was keeping rather in the
background of late, with a sober-minded lady whom she called "aunty."
With the exception of the few who took to whiskey and bad company, all
appeared contented, and the better for their sea-holiday. The very
musicians played with greater spirit than they did before, owing,
perhaps, to their remarkable success in the porgy-fishery. One of the
horn-players, far too knowing to let his fish out of sight, has propped
his music-book up against a pyramid of them, as upon a desk. The
good-looking man who plays upon the double-bass is equally prudent with
regard to his trophies, which he has hung up around the post on which
is pinned the score to which he looks for directions when it becomes
necessary to bind together with string-music the pensive interchanges of
the sax-horn and bassoon.
And now, as our vessel neared the wharf from which we had started while
the sun was yet in the east, I looked forward to see what signs of
the times were astir on the forecastle. All had deserted it, and
were tending aft, with their tackle, their fish, and their
prog-baskets,--all, at least, except Raw Material, of whom we enjoyed
now an uninterrupted view, as he sat in his old position, with his head
jammed obstinately into the capstan. But how was this?--he was round at
the opposite side of it now; and I puzzled myself for a moment, thinking
whether this change of bearings could be accounted for by the fact of
the boat being headed the other way.
But Young New York, who is far more nautical than I am, and has a big
brother in one of the yacht-clubs, derided the idea, and said he must
have gone round with the handspikes, when the anchor was hove.
And there he remained, as we went our way,--a modern Spartan slave in a
kind of marine pillory,--conveying to the red-legged children of Gotham,
as they toddled ashore, a useful lesson on the doubtful relations
existing between whiskey and pleasure.