THE SAILORS BECOMING A LITTLE SOCIAL, REDBURN CONVERSES WITH THEM
The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was very
pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From being rather
cloudy, it became a soft moonlight; and the stars peeped out, plain
enough to count one by one; and there was a fine steady breeze; and it
was not very cold; and we were going through the water almost as smooth
as a sled sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind held
so steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling ropes,
and scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.
The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck, with a
lighted long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of a torch; and spoke but
few words to us the whole watch. He must have had a good deal of
thinking to attend to, which in truth is the case with most seamen the
first night out of port, especially when they have thrown away their
money in foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain. For
when ashore, many of these sea-officers are as wild and reckless in
their way, as the sailors they command.
While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading up and down, the
mate suddenly stopped and gave an order, and the men sprang to obey it.
It was not much, only something about hoisting one of the sails a
little higher up on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began
pulling upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song with no
words to it, only a strange musical rise and fall of notes. In the dark
night, and far out upon the lonely sea, it sounded wild enough, and
made me feel as I had sometimes felt, when in a twilight room a cousin
of mine, with black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the
piano. I almost looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit
afraid. But I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors never
touched a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike
up, and the pulling, whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting
forward very well, the mate would always say, _“Come, men, can’t any of
you sing? Sing now, and raise the dead.”_ And then some one of them
would begin, and if every man’s arms were as much relieved as mine by
the song, and he could pull as much better as I did, with such a
cheering accompaniment, I am sure the song was well worth the breath
expended on it. It is a great thing in a sailor to know how to sing
well, for he gets a great name by it from the officers, and a good deal
of popularity among his shipmates. Some sea-captains, before shipping a
man, always ask him whether he can sing out at a rope.
During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on the windlass
and told long stories of their adventures by sea and land, and talked
about Gibraltar, and Canton, and Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you
and I would about Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost
was a volume of Voyages and Travels round the World. And what most
struck me was that like books of voyages they often contradicted each
other, and would fall into long and violent disputes about who was
keeping the Foul Anchor tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether
the King of Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the
bar-maid of a particular house in Hamburg had black eyes or blue eyes;
with many other mooted points of that sort.
At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his
chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind,
to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle
ashore; and also by way of _tapering off,_ as I mentioned a little
while ago. But I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to
sea with them, instead of spirits and cigars.
Ned, for that was the man’s name, split open the box with a blow of his
fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter
at a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the
Temperance Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did
afterward upon the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I
declined; with a good deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that
the cigars were real genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he
said, and had them made there under his own eye. According to his
account, he was very particular about his cigars and other things, and
never made any importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a
voyage himself direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be
had that he wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama
for his hats, to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to
Calcutta for his cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to
say, no doubt he would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his
halter; the wit of which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that
the Russian hemp is the best; though that is not wit which needs
explaining.
By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength,
united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard
biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck
before the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my sickness,
and finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and nothing
on earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that they were a
pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their swearing and
another ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had misconceived
their true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a
parcel of wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe
affliction to associate with them.
Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but
more with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and
kind dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had
made outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved
wickedness for the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in
Paradise, if they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had
once heard in a church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called
them strayed lambs from the fold, and compared them to poor lost
children, babes in the wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors’ Magazine,
with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious
seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for
their latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good
sailors among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on
deck apart from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them:
so I did not disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at
discovering that he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by
his side.
I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a while, the men
went into one corner, where the chief mate could not see them, to take
a “swig at the halyards,” as they called it; and this swigging at the
halyards it was, that enabled them “to taper off” handsomely, and no
doubt it was this, too, that had something to do with making them so
pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so pleasant and
sociable afterward, and never treated me so kindly as they did then.
Yet this might have been owing to my being something of a stranger to
them, then; and our being just out of port. But that very night they
turned about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.
I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting, and how
friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort of compassion for
them, grounded on their sad conditions as amiable outcasts; and feeling
so warm an interest in them, and being full of pity, and being truly
desirous of benefiting them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew
they were but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether he
was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was ashore, or
dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen lying off the dock in the
East River at New York; and whether he would think it too much of a
liberty, if I asked him, if he had any good books in his chest. He
stared a little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment to be filled with a
certain involuntary respect for me, and answered, that he had been to
church once, some ten or twelve years before, in London, and on a
week-day had helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery, from
the North River; and that was the only time he had seen it. For his
books, he said he did not know what I meant by good books; but if I
wanted the Newgate Calendar, and Pirate’s Own, he could lend them to
me.
When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing so plainly
his ignorance and absence of proper views of religion, I pitied him
more and more, and contrasting my own situation with his, I was
grateful that I was different from him; and I thought how pleasant it
was, to feel wiser and better than he could feel; though I was willing
to confess to myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors,
so much as my education, which I had received from others, that had
made me the upright and sensible boy I at that time thought myself to
be. And it was now, that I began to feel a good degree of complacency
and satisfaction in surveying my own character; for, before this, I had
previously associated with persons of a very discreet life, so that
there was little opportunity to magnify myself, by comparing myself
with my neighbors.
Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way might sit uneasily
upon this sailor, I thought it would soften the matter down by giving
him a chance to show his own superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I
was far from being vain and conceited.
Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was rung on the
quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and that as soon as it was heard,
some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the
forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the man
astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his—tit for tat,—I
inquired of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant;
and whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down
to the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every
little while would not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant
dreams; and in asking these questions I was particular to address him
in a civil and condescending way, so as to show him very plainly that I
did not deem myself one whit better than he was, that is, taking all
things together, and not going into particulars. But to my great
surprise and mortification, he in the rudest land of manner laughed
aloud in my face, and called me a “Jimmy Dux,” though that was not my
real name, and he must have known it; and also the “son of a farmer,”
though as I have previously related, my father was a great merchant and
French importer in Broad-street in New York. And then he began to laugh
and joke about me, with the other sailors, till they all got round me,
and if I had not felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt
very much like a fool. But my being so angry prevented me from feeling
foolish, which is very lucky for people in a passion.