HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND HE BECOMES
MISERABLE AND FORLORN
While the scene last described was going on, we were all startled by a
horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle; and all at once some one
came rushing up the scuttle in his shirt, clutching something in his
hand, and trembling and shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that
I thought one of the sailors must be murdered below.
But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood aghast at the sight,
and almost before we knew what it was, the shrieking man jumped over
the bows into the sea, and we saw him no more. Then there was a great
uproar; the sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell out his orders
about the sails and yards; and we all went to pulling and hauling the
ropes, till at last the ship lay almost still on the water. Then they
loosed a boat, which kept pulling round the ship for more than an hour,
but they never caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of
the sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled into
his bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain till now. He must have
suddenly waked up, I suppose, raging mad with the delirium tremens, as
the chief mate called it, and finding himself in a strange silent
place, and knowing not how he had got there, he rushed on deck, and so,
in a fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully solemn
and almost awful effect upon me. I would have given the whole world,
and the sun and moon, and all the stars in heaven, if they had been
mine, had I been safe back at Mr. Jones’, or still better, in my home
on the Hudson River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and railed at
the folly which had sent me to sea, sore against the advice of my best
friends, that is to say, my mother and sisters.
Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never see your home any
more. And in this melancholy mood I went below, when the watch had
expired, which happened soon after. But to my terror, I found that the
suicide had been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in. The thought of
lying down there now, seemed too horrible to me, and what made it
worse, was the way in which the sailors spoke of my being frightened.
And they took this opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked life I
had entered upon, and how that such things happened frequently at sea,
and they were used to it. But I did not believe this; for when the
suicide came rushing and shrieking up the scuttle, they looked as
frightened as I did; and besides that, and what makes their being
frightened still plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any
presence of mind, they could have prevented his plunging overboard,
since he brushed right by them. However, they lay in their bunks
smoking, and kept talking on some time in this strain, and advising me
as soon as ever I got home to pin my ears back, so as not to hold the
wind, and sail straight away into the interior of the country, and
never stop until deep in the bush, far off from the least running
brook, never mind how shallow, and out of sight of even the smallest
puddle of rainwater.
This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
hardships of a sailor’s life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew
that I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of
it. And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in
me, but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They
asked me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the
bread out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman’s
place; and asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since
I was a gentleman with white hands; and if I ever _should_ be, they
would like nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a
mutiny. And one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a
good deal more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him
ever after, for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he
would be the death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging
near _him,_ he would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he
swore too, with an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was
so unforeseen; and then I could not believe that they meant what they
said, or that they could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I
help seeing, that the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless
boy, on the very first night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of
almost any enormity. I loathed, detested, and hated them with all that
was left of my bursting heart and soul, and I thought myself the most
forlorn and miserable wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man,
thought I, if to be a boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and
wept, and my heart cracked within me, but all the time I defied them
through my teeth, and dared them to do their worst.
At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship’s bows,
and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.