THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE
And now that I have been speaking of the captain’s old clothes, I may
as well speak of mine.
It was very early in the month of June that we sailed; and I had
greatly rejoiced that it was that time of the year; for it would be
warm and pleasant upon the ocean, I thought; and my voyage would be
like a summer excursion to the sea shore, for the benefit of the salt
water, and a change of scene and society.
So I had not given myself much concern about what I should wear; and
deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide myself with a great outfit of
pilot-cloth jackets, and browsers, and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin
suits, and sea-boots, and many other things, which old seamen carry in
their chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money to buy
them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition to the clothes I had
brought from home, I had only bought a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and
a belt and knife, as I have previously related, which gave me a sea
outfit, something like the Texan rangers’, whose uniform, they say,
consists of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my shore clothing, or
_“long togs,”_ as the sailors call them, were but ill adapted to the
life I now led. When I went aloft, at my yard-arm gymnastics, my
pantaloons were all the time ripping and splitting in every direction,
particularly about the seat, owing to their not being cut
sailor-fashion, with low waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So
that I was often placed in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the
rigging, sometimes in plain sight of the cabin, with my table linen
exposed in the most inelegant and ungentlemanly manner possible.
And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the pair I most
prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and remarkable looking pair.
I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a little fat man,
very thin in the legs, and who used to say he imported the latest
fashions direct from Paris; though all the fashion plates in his shop
were very dirty with fly-marks.
Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and while he had them
in hand, I used to call and see him two or three times a day to try
them on, and hurry him forward; for he was an old man with large round
spectacles, and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and besides that,
he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered with his business;
for he took several pinches for every stitch, and would sit snuffing
and blowing his nose over my pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted
with him. Now, this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it, and bade him
have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the foot, to button up with
a row of six brass bell buttons; for a grown-up cousin of mine, who was
a great sportsman, used to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made
precisely in that way.
And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the sailors made a great
deal of fun of them, and were all the time calling on each other to
“twig” them; and they would ask me to lend them a button or two, by way
of a joke; and then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were a very
genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion, and copied
from my cousin’s, who was a young man of fortune and drove a tilbury.
When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I did my best to
mend and patch them; but not being much of a sempstress, the more I
patched the more they parted; because I put my patches on, without
heeding the joints of the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the
more, and put them out of temper.
Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new when I left home.
They had been my Sunday boots, and fitted me to a charm. I never had
had a pair of boots that I liked better; I used to turn my toes out
when I walked in them, unless it was night time, when no one could see
me, and I had something else to think of; and I used to keep looking at
them during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a
word, they were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted
them the more for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high
heels, which were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several
times came near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them
shrink in such a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the
instep; and I was obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very
heart. The legs were quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees,
and the edges were mounted with red morocco. The sailors used to call
them my _“gaff-topsail-boots.”_ And sometimes they used to call me
“Boots,” and sometimes “Buttons,” on account of the ornaments on my
pantaloons and shooting-jacket.
At last, I took their advice, and _“razeed”_ them, as they phrased it.
That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off the heels to the bare
soles; which, however, did not much improve them, for it made my feet
feel flat as flounders, and besides, brought me down in the world, and
made me slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I
wore straps on the ice.
As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and therefore proved
a real sham and shave; it leaked like an old shingle roof; and in a
rain storm, kept my hair wet and disagreeable. Besides, from lying down
on deck in it, during the night watches, it got bruised and battered,
and lost all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every way.
But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which was made of
moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and smaller, particularly after a
rain, until at last I thought it would completely exhale, and leave
nothing but the bare seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became
unspeakably unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather, crossing
the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I had to keep warm during
the night, was to pull on my waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap
the shooting-jacket over all. This made it pinch me under the arms, and
it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and used to incommode
my arms seriously when I was pulling the ropes; so much so, that the
mate asked me once if I had the cramp.
I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar
kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought
of them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was
obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship
pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like
an Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree like a
crucifix.
I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools; never dreaming,
that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor was something like
going to a boarding-school, where you must furnish your own spoon and
knife, fork, and napkin. But at length, I was so happy as to barter
with a steerage passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon
iron pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I used to
present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee and tea. It gave
me a good deal of trouble, though, to keep it clean, being much
disposed to rust; and the hooks sometimes scratched my face when I was
drinking; and it was unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts
were deprived of all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a
labor to me. And I was forced to use the same pot for my bean-soup,
three times a week, which imparted to it a bad flavor for coffee.
I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for my improvidence
and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing
calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable.
In time, my wretched “long togs” began to drop off my back, and I
looked like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the
wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home
would have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged
myself in my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that
degradation and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it a
galling mockery, when I remembered that my sisters had promised to tell
all inquiring friends, that Wellingborough had gone _“abroad”_ just as
if I was visiting Europe on a tour with my tutor, as poor simple Mr.
Jones had hinted to the captain.
Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook me, there
were several little incidents that made me forget myself in the
contemplation of the strange and to me most wonderful sights of the
sea.
And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of wild romance, as a
view of the first vessel we spoke. It was of a clear sunny afternoon,
and she came bearing down upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her
sails spread wide. She came very near, and passed under our stern; and
as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore and aft; and I
saw the strange sailors grouped upon the forecastle, and the cook
looking out of his cook-house with a ladle in his hand, and the captain
in a green jacket sitting on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.
And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all
these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into
the sea-air from the cook’s funnel as if it were a chimney in a city;
and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst
of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.
Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted white castle
in the middle, which looked foreign enough, and made me stare all the
harder.
Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and was lounging in
an elegant attitude on the poop, now put his high polished brass
trumpet to his mouth, and said in a very rude voice for conversation,
_“Where from?”_
To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish Dutch
gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the ship belonged to
Hamburg, as her flag denoted.
_Hamburg!_
Bless my soul! and here I am on the great Atlantic Ocean, actually
beholding a ship from Holland! It was passing strange. In my intervals
of leisure from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
quite a little speck in the distance.
I could not but be struck with the manner of the two sea-captains
during their brief interview. Seated at their ease on their respective
“poops” toward the stern of their ships, while the sailors were obeying
their behests; they touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments,
and drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen accosting
each other on an airing in the Desert. To them, I suppose, the great
Atlantic Ocean was a puddle.