CHAPTER II. REDBURN’S DEPARTURE FROM HOME
CHAPTER III. HE ARRIVES IN TOWN
CHAPTER IV. HOW HE DISPOSED OF HIS FOWLING-PIECE
CHAPTER V. HE PURCHASES HIS SEA-WARDROBE, AND ON A DISMAL RAINY DAY PICKS UP HIS BOARD AND LODGING ALONG THE WHARVES
CHAPTER VI. HE IS INITIATED IN THE BUSINESS OF CLEANING OUT THE PIG-PEN, AND SLUSHING DOWN THE TOP-MAST
CHAPTER VII. HE GETS TO SEA AND FEELS VERY BAD
CHAPTER VIII. HE IS PUT INTO THE LARBOARD WATCH; GETS SEA-SICK; AND RELATES SOME OTHER OF HIS EXPERIENCES
CHAPTER IX. THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
CHAPTER X. HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN
CHAPTER XI. HE HELPS WASH THE DECKS, AND THEN GOES TO BREAKFAST
CHAPTER XII. HE GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF ONE OF HIS SHIPMATES CALLED JACKSON
CHAPTER XIII. HE HAS A FINE DAY AT SEA, BEGINS TO LIKE IT; BUT CHANGES HIS MIND
CHAPTER XIV. HE CONTEMPLATES MAKING A SOCIAL CALL ON THE CAPTAIN IN HIS CABIN
CHAPTER XV. THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
CHAPTER XVI. AT DEAD OF NIGHT HE IS SENT UP TO LOOSE THE MAIN-SKYSAIL
CHAPTER XVII. THE COOK AND STEWARD
CHAPTER XVIII. HE ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE HIS MIND; AND TELLS OF ONE BLUNT AND HIS DREAM BOOK
CHAPTER XIX. A NARROW ESCAPE
CHAPTER XX. IN A FOG HE IS SET TO WORK AS A BELL-TOLLER, AND BEHOLDS A HERD OF OCEAN-ELEPHANTS
CHAPTER XXI. A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN
CHAPTER XXII. THE HIGHLANDER PASSES A WRECK
CHAPTER XXIII. AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
CHAPTER XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO’s MONKEY
CHAPTER XXV. QUARTER-DECK FURNITURE
CHAPTER XXVI. A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES
CHAPTER XXVII. HE GETS A PEEP AT IRELAND, AND AT LAST ARRIVES AT LIVERPOOL
CHAPTER XXVIII. HE GOES TO SUPPER AT THE SIGN OF THE BALTIMORE CLIPPER
CHAPTER XXIX. REDBURN DEFERENTIALLY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE PROSPECTS OF SAILORS
CHAPTER XXX. REDBURN GROWS INTOLERABLY FLAT AND STUPID OVER SOME OUTLANDISH OLD GUIDE-BOOKS
CHAPTER XXXI. WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE TOWN
CHAPTER XXXII. THE DOCKS
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SALT-DROGHERS, AND GERMAN EMIGRANT SHIPS
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY
CHAPTER XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL
CHAPTER XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE
CHAPTER XXXVII. WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT’S-HEY
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS
CHAPTER XXXIX. THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN
CHAPTER XL. PLACARDS, BRASS-JEWELERS, TRUCK-HORSES, AND STEAMERS
CHAPTER XLI. REDBURN ROVES ABOUT HTHER AND THITHER
CHAPTER XLII. HIS ADVENTURE WITH THE CROSS OLD GENTLEMAN
CHAPTER XLIII. HE TAKES A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE INTO THE COUNTRY; AND MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THREE ADORABLE CHARMERS
CHAPTER XLIV. REDBURN INTRODUCES MASTER HARRY BOLTON TO THE FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION OF THE READER
CHAPTER XLV. HARRY BOLTON KIDNAPS REDBURN, AND CARRIES HIM OFF TO LONDON
CHAPTER XLVI. A MYSTERIOUS NIGHT IN LONDON
CHAPTER XLVII. HOMEWARD BOUND
CHAPTER XLVIII. A LIVING CORPSE
CHAPTER XLIX. CARLO
CHAPTER L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA
CHAPTER LI. THE EMIGRANTS
CHAPTER LII. THE EMIGRANTS’ KITCHEN
CHAPTER LIII. THE HORATII AND CURIATII
CHAPTER LIV. SOME SUPERIOR OLD NAIL-ROD AND PIG-TAIL
CHAPTER LV. DRAWING NIGH TO THE LAST SCENE IN JACKSON’S CAREER
CHAPTER LVI. UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNION
CHAPTER LVII. ALMOST A FAMINE
CHAPTER LVIII. THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
CHAPTER LIX. THE LAST END OF JACKSON
CHAPTER LX. HOME AT LAST
CHAPTER LXI. REDBURN AND HARRY, ARM IN ARM, IN HARBOR
CHAPTER LXII. THE LAST THAT WAS EVER HEARD OF HARRY BOLTON
CHAPTER I.
HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN’S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM
“Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
shooting-jacket of mine along; it’s just the thing—take it, it will
_save_ the expense of another. You see, it’s quite warm; fine long
skirts, stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets.”
Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
brother to me, upon the _eve_ of my departure for the seaport.
“And, Wellingborough,” he added, “since we are both short of money, and
you want an outfit, and I _Have_ none to _give,_ you may as well take
my fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can
get.—Nay, take it; it’s of no use to me now; I can’t find it in powder
any more.”
I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New
York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
devoured such announcements as the following:
FOR BREMEN.
_The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed
her cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of
May.
For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip.
_
To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like
this, suggested volumes of thought.
A _brig!_ The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn
craft, with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
_Coppered and copper-fastened!_ That fairly smelt of the salt water!
How different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted,
green-and-white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river
before our house on the bank.
_Nearly completed her cargo!_ How momentous the announcement;
suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins,
and filling me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber,
with which my river experience was familiar.
_Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May-and_ the newspaper bore date the
fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what
an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon
so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
prospective announcements.
_For freight or passage apply on board!_ Think of going on board a
coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking passage for Bremen! And
who could be going to Bremen? No one but foreigners, doubtless; men of
dark complexions and jet-black whiskers, who talked French.
_Coenties Slip._ Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be
lying there. Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of
grim-looking warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled
roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned
coffeehouses, also, much abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt
sea-captains going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about
Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a
large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
remembered the _yo heave ho!_ of the sailors, as they just showed their
woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of
their crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.
Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer
in Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the
well-remembered sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell
my brother and me of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the
masts bending like twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about
going up into the ball of St. Paul’s in London. Indeed, during my early
life, most of my thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but
with fine old lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long,
narrow, crooked streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange
houses. And especially I tried hard to think how such places must look
of rainy days and Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have
rainy days and Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the
boys went to school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt
collars turned over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their
papas allowed them to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much
disliked, for boots looked so manly.
As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
countries; with what reverence and wonder people would regard me, if I
had just returned from the coast of Africa or New Zealand; how dark and
romantic my sunburnt cheeks would look; how I would bring home with me
foreign clothes of a rich fabric and princely make, and wear them up
and down the streets, and how grocers’ boys would turn back their heads
to look at me, as I went by. For I very well remembered staring at a
man myself, who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church,
as the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange
adventures there, all of which with my own eyes I had read in the book
which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover.
“See what big eyes he has,” whispered my aunt, “they got so big,
because when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at
once caught sight of a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it.”
Upon this, I stared at him till I thought his eyes were really of an
uncommon size, and stuck out from his head like those of a lobster. I
am sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was
out, I wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home.
But she said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never
saw this wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and
several times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown
still larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon
foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes.
We had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought
from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood
grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they
could be doing with themselves now.
Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
father’s, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
dining-room.
Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
to think a piece of it might taste good.
The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of
a great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three
boats sailing after it as fast as they could fly.
Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old
brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,
with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass
doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had
been printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine
library edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded
backs; and many a time I gazed at the word _“London”_ on the
title-page. And there was a copy of D’Alembert in French, and I
wondered what a great man I would be, if by foreign travel I should
ever be able to read straight along without stopping, out of that book,
which now was a riddle to every one in the house but my father, whom I
so much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a servant we
had.
That servant, too, I used to gaze at with wonder; for in answer to my
incredulous cross-questions, he had over and over again assured me,
that he had really been born in Paris. But this I never entirely
believed; for it seemed so hard to comprehend, how a man who had been
born in a foreign country, could be dwelling with me in our house in
America.
As years passed on, this continual dwelling upon foreign associations,
bred in me a vague prophetic thought, that I was fated, one day or
other, to be a great voyager; and that just as my father used to
entertain strange gentlemen over their wine after dinner, I would
hereafter be telling my own adventures to an eager auditory. And I have
no doubt that this presentiment had something to do with bringing about
my subsequent rovings.
But that which perhaps more than any thing else, converted my vague
dreamings and longings into a definite purpose of seeking my fortune on
the sea, was an old-fashioned glass ship, about eighteen inches long,
and of French manufacture, which my father, some thirty years before,
had brought home from Hamburg as a present to a great-uncle of mine:
Senator Wellingborough, who had died a member of Congress in the days
of the old Constitution, and after whom I had the honor of being named.
Upon the decease of the Senator, the ship was returned to the donor.
It was kept in a square glass case, which was regularly dusted by one
of my sisters every morning, and stood on a little claw-footed Dutch
tea-table in one corner of the sitting-room. This ship, after being the
admiration of my father’s visitors in the capital, became the wonder
and delight of all the people of the village where we now resided, many
of whom used to call upon my mother, for no other purpose than to see
the ship. And well did it repay the long and curious examinations which
they were accustomed to give it.
In the first place, every bit of it was glass, and that was a great
wonder of itself; because the masts, yards, and ropes were made to
resemble exactly the corresponding parts of a real vessel that could go
to sea. She carried two tiers of black guns all along her two decks;
and often I used to try to peep in at the portholes, to see what else
was inside; but the holes were so small, and it looked so very dark
indoors, that I could discover little or nothing; though, when I was
very little, I made no doubt, that if I could but once pry open the
hull, and break the glass all to pieces, I would infallibly light upon
something wonderful, perhaps some gold guineas, of which I have always
been in want, ever since I could remember. And often I used to feel a
sort of insane desire to be the death of the glass ship, case, and all,
in order to come at the plunder; and one day, throwing out some hint of
the kind to my sisters, they ran to my mother in a great clamor; and
after that, the ship was placed on the mantel-piece for a time, beyond
my reach, and until I should recover my reason.
I do not know how to account for this temporary madness of mine, unless
it was, that I had been reading in a story-book about Captain Kidd’s
ship, that lay somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson near the
Highlands, full of gold as it could be; and that a company of men were
trying to dive down and get the treasure out of the hold, which no one
had ever thought of doing before, though there she had lain for almost
a hundred years.
Not to speak of the tall masts, and yards, and rigging of this famous
ship, among whose mazes of spun-glass I used to rove in imagination,
till I grew dizzy at the main-truck, I will only make mention of the
people on board of her. They, too, were all of glass, as beautiful
little glass sailors as any body ever saw, with hats and shoes on, just
like living men, and curious blue jackets with a sort of ruffle round
the bottom. Four or five of these sailors were very nimble little
chaps, and were mounting up the rigging with very long strides; but for
all that, they never gained a single inch in the year, as I can take my
oath.
Another sailor was sitting astride of the spanker-boom, with his arms
over his head, but I never could find out what that was for; a second
was in the fore-top, with a coil of glass rigging over his shoulder;
the cook, with a glass ax, was splitting wood near the fore-hatch; the
steward, in a glass apron, was hurrying toward the cabin with a plate
of glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at
him; while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the
quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his
head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.
The name of this curious ship was _La Reine,_ or The Queen, which was
painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of
glass dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.
And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of
whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,
and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment,
till I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest
danger in the world.
A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.
So much for _La Reine._ We have her yet in the house, but many of her
glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,—but I will
not have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a
cocked-hat, lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a
calamitous sea under the bows—but I will not have him put on his legs
again, till I get on my own; for between him and me there is a secret
sympathy; and my sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch
the very day I left home to go to sea on this _my first voyage._