As for my name, it is Daal, Van Daal; and if there be any of my kinsfolk
going about saying that they have the right to put a "Van" before their
name, and that they come of the Van Daals, who were a great family in
the seventeenth century, and one of whom was boatswain of Admiral Van
Tromp's flag-ship, all I can answer is that they say the thing that is
not; and that people who say such things deserve to be beaten by the
beadle all up and down the United Provinces. When I was a little boy,
and went to school to the Reverend Pastor Slagkop, there was a boy named
Vries--Lucas Vries--who did nothing but eat gingerbread and tell lies.
Well, what became of him? He was hanged before he was thirty--hanged at
the yard-arm of a Dutch seventy-four at Batavia for piracy, mutiny, and
murder: to which shameful end he had clearly been brought by eating
gingerbread and telling fibs. Mind this, you little Dutch boys, and
keep your tongues between your teeth and your stuyvers in your pockets,
when you pass the cake shops, if you wish to escape the fate of Lucas
Vries.
And yet I dare say that--ah! so many years ago--I was as fond of
gingerbread as most yunkers of my age, and that I did not always tell
the strict truth either to my parents at home, or to the Reverend Pastor
Slagkop at school (he was a red-headed man who always hit you with his
left hand, and he had but one eye, which glared viciously upon you while
he beat you). But now that I am old, it is clear that I have a right to
give good advice to the young: even to the warning them not to be guilty
of the transgressions of which I may have been guilty ever so many years
ago; because I have seen so much of the world, and have passed through
so many dangers and trials, and have _not_ been hanged. And this has
always been my motto. When you are young, practise just as much or as
little as you are able; but never forget to preach, whenever you can get
anybody to listen to you. To yourself, you may do no good; but you may
be, often, of considerable service to other people. A guide-post on the
dyke of a canal is of some use, although it never goes to the place the
way to which it points out.
That which is now the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Heaven preserve the
King thereof, and the Crown Prince, and all their wives and families,
and may they live long and prosper: such is the hope of Jan Daal, who
drinks all their good healths in a tumbler of Schiedam) was in old times
known (as you ought to be well aware, little boys) as the Republic, of
the United Provinces; and there was no King--only a kind of ornamental
figurehead, not very richly gilt, who was a Prince of the House of
Orange, and was called the Stadtholder: the real governors and
administrators of the Confederation being certain grand gentlemen called
Their High Mightinesses. And very high and mighty airs did they give
themselves; and very long robes, and very large periwigs, as flowing as
a ship's mainsail, did they wear, so I have heard my old father say many
a time, ever so many years ago. Mynheer Van Bloomersdaal, in his
"Pictures of the Glories of Holland"--how I hated that book when I had
to learn a page of it, every day, by heart, and how I love it, now that
nobody can compel me to remember even a line of it; but I do so for my
own pleasure,--Mynheer Van Bloomersdaal, I say, has told us that the
United Provinces are seven in number, and consist of Holland Proper,
with Gueldres, Zealand, Friesland, Utrecht, Groningen, and Over-Yssel.
By the deep, seven. Always be sure that you are right in your
soundings; and take care to put fresh tallow in your lead, to make sure
what bottom you are steering to.
I think that I must have been born some time toward the end of the last
century, or the beginning of the present one, in the great city of
Amsterdam, which, after all, has the greatest right to be called the
capital of Holland; for The Hague, where the King lives and the Chambers
meet, is, though a mighty fine place, only a big village, and a village
is not a city any more than a treykschuyt is a three-decker, or a
boatswain an admiral. At the same time, mind you, if I was put on my
oath before a court-martial, I would not undertake to swear that I may
not have been born at Rotterdam, at Dordrecht, at Leyden, at Delft, or
even at The Hague itself; for, you see, my father was a peddler, and was
continually wandering up and down the country (or rather the canals, for
he mostly travelled by treykschuyt), selling all kinds of small matters
to whomsoever would buy, that he might keep his wife and small children
in bread, cheese, and salt herrings: which were pretty well all we had
to live upon. But what does it matter where a fellow was born? The
great thing is to be born at all, and to take care to keep your watch,
and to turn cheerfully out of your bunk when the hands are turned up to
reef topsails in a gale.
I know that, when I first began to remember anything, we were living in
the city of Amsterdam, and in the very middle of the Jews' quarter,
which I shall always bear in mind as having five distinct and permanent
smells--one of tobacco, one of Schiedam, one of red herrings, one of
bilge-water, one of cheese, and one of Jews. At Cologne, on the Rhine,
they say there are seventy smells, all as distinct from one another as
the different ropes of a ship; but I have not travelled much on the
Rhine, and know much more about Canton than of Cologne. Although we
lived among the Jews, my father was no Israelite:--far from it. He was
a good Protestant of the Calvinistic persuasion; and, in the way of
business, sold many footwarmers (little boxes of wood and wire, to hold
charcoal embers), for the churches. He chose to live among the Jews,
because their quarter was a cheap one; and he could pick up the things
he wanted more easily there than anywhere else; and, besides, Jews, for
all the hard things that may be said about them, are not a bad sort of
people to do business with. They are hard upon sailors, it is true, in
the way of cheating them; yet they will always let a poor tar have a
little money when he wants any; and they are always good for a bite of
biscuit, a cut of salt junk, and a rummer of Schiedam. I wish I could
say the same of all the Christians I could name, who are by no means bad
hands at cheating you, and then turn you out of doors, hungry and
thirsty, and without a shoe to your foot. I don't say that a Jew won't
swindle you out of your shoes, and your stockings, too, in the way of
business; but he will always give you credit for a new set of slops, and
this I have often said to our pursers aboard. Note this: that pursers
are the biggest thieves that ever deserved to be flogged, pickled,
tarred, keel-hauled, and then hanged.
I had six brothers and sisters--so we might have called ourselves the
Seven United Daals if we had had the wit to do so. There was Adrian,
the eldest. He was a clever yunker, and was bound 'prentice to a
clock-maker. He went to England, and I have sometimes heard made a
great deal of money there; but he never sent us any of it--and what is
the good of having a rich brother if he doesn't let you share in his pay
and prize-money? My messmates always shared in my rhino when I had any;
and if your brother is not your messmate I should like to know who is.
Another of my brothers, too, the second, Hendrik by name, did very well
in life; for being very quick at figures and ready with his pen, old Mr
Jacob Jacobson, the Israelitish money-changer, took a fancy to him and
made him his clerk. He went away when he grew up, and for many long
years I heard nothing about him; but it chanced once that, being at New
York, to which port I had shipped from Macao, I had a draft for a
hundred and fifty dollars to get cashed; and the draft was on a firm of
bankers who had their shop down by the Bowling Green, by the name of Van
Daal, Peanut, and McCute. The "Daal" struck me for a moment; but seeing
the "Van" before it I concluded that the name could not belong to any of
my folk, and took no more notice of it. I presented my bit of writing
at the counter, and the paymaster's clerk--a chap with a copper shovel
in his flipper, as if he kept gold and silver by the shovelful in the
hold--he gives me back the pay-note, and he says, "Sign your name here,
my man." So I sign my name "Jan Daal, mariner." So he takes it into a
little caboose behind the counter; and by-and-by out comes a short fat
man with big whiskers, dressed as fine as a supercargo going out to
dinner with his owner, and with a great watch-chain and seals, and his
fingers all over diamond rings. "You have an odd name, my friend," he
says, looking at me very hard. "It is Jan Daal," I says, "and it is
that which was given to me at the church font." He reddened a little at
this, and goes on, "What church?" "Saint Niklas," I reply, "in the good
city of Amsterdam, so I have heard my mother (rest her soul) say." "And
I, too," he begins again, reddening more than ever, "was christened at
the Oude Sant Niklas Kerke; and I am of the Daals of Amsterdam, and I am
your brother Hendrik." On this he embraced me; and I went along with
him to the caboose behind the shop; and he gave me crackers and cheese,
and a dram of Schiedam, and a pipe of tobacco to smoke. We had a long
talk about old times, and he told me how well he had got on in the
world, and what great bankers he and his partners, Peanut and McCute
(one a Scotchman, t'other a Yankee, and both a match for all the
Jacobsons that ever cheated you out of ten stuyvers in the guilder)
were; but when I told him that I had met with no very great luck in
life, and that the hundred and fifty dollars I was going to draw was all
the money I had in the world, he did not seem quite so fond of me as
before. "And what do you call yourself Van Daal, brother of mine, for,"
says I. "It's not fair sailing. There are no more Vans in our family
than in a brood of Mother Cary's chickens." At this he looks very high
and mighty, and talks about different positions in society, and industry
and integrity, and all the rest of it. "If that's the course you mean
to steer, brother," says I, "I wish you the middle of the stream, and a
clear course, and a very good morning; only take you good care that you
don't run foul of some bigger craft than yourself that's really called
Van, and will run you down and send you to the bottom with all hands."
I was always a crusty old fellow, I dare say; but I like neither ships
nor skippers that give themselves names that don't belong to them. If a
ship's name is the _Mary Jane_, let her sail as the _Mary Jane_, and not
as the _Highflier_. If she changes her name, ten to one there's
something the matter with her. So I went back to the office, and says I
to the clerk, "Now, old Nipcheese,"--I called him "Nipcheese," for he
looked like a kind of purser--"I want my hundred and fifty dollars--and
that's what's the matter with me!" He paid me, looking as sour as
lime-juice that has been kept too long, and deducting (the stingy old
screw!) four and a half per cent, for "commission;" and I went away, and
spent my money like a gentleman, mostly in the grog-shops down by
Greenwich Street. You may be sure that when it was all gone I didn't go
for any more to my high and mighty brother, Mynheer Van Daal. No, no; I
went down to the wharf, and shipped on board a brigantine bound for New
Orleans. I heard afterward that my brother the banker, with his
messmates, Peanut the Yankee and McCute the Scotchman, all went to Davy
Jones's locker--that is to say, they were bankrupt, and paid nobody.
Now, I should like to know which of us was in the right? If I
squandered my hundred and fifty dollars (less the four and a half per
cent, for commission--and be hanged to that mouldy old Nipcheese, with
his copper shovel!), it was, at least, my own cash, and I had worked
hard for it; but here were my fine banker-brother and his partners, who
go and spend a lot of money--more than I ever heard of--that belonged to
other people!
I was the third son. There was a fourth, called Cornelius, but he died
when he was a baby. Then came three girls--Betje, Lotje, and Barbet.
Lotje was a steady girl, who married a ship chandler at Rotterdam. He
died poor, however, and left her with a lot of children. I am very fond
of the yunkers, and try to be as kind to them (although I am such a
crusty old fellow) as I can. Betje was a pretty girl, but too flighty,
and a great deal too fond of dancing at kermesses. She died before she
was eighteen of a consumption which was brought on, I fancy, more by her
going out in silk stockings and thin shoes to dance at a kermesse at the
Loost Gardens of the Three Herrings at Scheveningen, than by anything
else. For ours is a damp country, where there is more mud than solid
earth, and more water than either; and you should take care to go as
thickly shod as you can. But in winter time all is hard and firm; and
with a good pair of skates to your heels, a good pipe of tobacco in your
mouth (though I like a quid better), and a good flask of Schiedam in
your pocket, there's no fear of your catching cold. Unfortunately, my
poor Lotje could not smoke, and liked sweetmeats better than schnapps;
and so, with the aid of those confounded silk stockings and
dancing-pumps, she must needs die, and be buried in the graveyard of the
Oude Sant Niklas Kerke. It nearly broke my poor mother's heart, and my
father's, too; although he was somewhat of a hard man, whose heart took
a good deal of breaking. But now that I am an old, old man, I often
think over my pipe (I smoke at night instead of chewing) and my grog,
about pretty Lotje, with her fair hair curled up under a scalp of gilt
plating, and her great blue eyes,--of her plump white arms, and her trim
little feet, which she was all too fond, poor lass! of rigging up in
silk stockings and pumps. But I should never have a word to say against
kermesses, quotha! for I must, in time, have danced away some thousands
of dollars to the sound of a fiddle, and with a buxom jungvrauw for my
partner, in pretty nearly all the grog-shops at pretty nearly every port
on the map. For it was always my motto that when a man's heels feel
light he should forthwith begin to foot it in a hornpipe; and when he
feels thirsty, and has any rhino in his looker, he should pipe all hands
for grog. This, the wiseacres will tell me, is the way to ruin one's
health, and die poor; but I am very old, and if I had any riches I
couldn't take them away with me to Fiddler's Green, could I? Say!
My youngest sister, Barbet, was not pretty, but she was very kind, and
good, and quiet, and although she had been brought up in the very
strictest principles of Protestantism (that is to say, she used to get a
sound whipping, as all of us did, if she went to sleep in church or
forgot the text of the sermon), she took it into her head, when she grew
up, to turn Romanist, and became a nun. She went away to a convent at
Lille, in French Flanders (which, like Belgium, ought to belong to the
Dutch), and we heard no more of her--only once, many years ago--when,
for once in my life, I had made a little noise in the world by saving
some poor fellow from drowning in a shipwreck, which led to the Minister
of Marine sending me a gold medal and a purse full of guilders, and my
name being published in the printed logs--I mean the newspapers--my poor
sister Barbet (she had changed her name to Sister Veronica, I think, but
that is all ship-shape in a nunnery) sent me a beautiful letter, saying
that she always prayed for me, and enclosing me a pretty little image of
Sant Niklas, worked in coloured wools, on a bit of canvas. I was glad
to hear from my sister Barbet, and to hear that Oude Sant Niklas was a
Catholic as well as a Protestant saint (as a good ship, you see, is as
tight a craft under one flag as under another); and I wore the image,
and wear it now, next my heart, as a charm against drowning, instead of
the child's caul which I bought when I was young in High Street,
Wapping, England. It cost me ten pounds, but the dealer took it out
half in "swop;" that is to say, I gave him two pounds in silver, two
Spanish doubloons, a five-pound note, a green parrot, that swore quite
beautifully, a coral necklace, and a lot of uncut jewels, I picked up in
the Black Town at Calcutta, and that must have come to about the value
of ten pounds, I reckon.
[It would seem that the dealer in High Street, Wapping, got slightly the
better of honest Jan Daal in this transaction. But business is
business. Ed.]
You may wonder, when I have told you of the humble way of business in
which my father was, of the number of yunkers he had to keep, and all
out of the slender profits of a peddler's pack, and of the poor way we
lived, that we went to church, or to school, at all. But my dad was a
highly respectable man, who never drank more schnapps than was good for
him, except when he had the ague, which was about once every spring and
autumn, and once in the winter, with, perhaps, a touch of it in the
middle of the summer; and my mother was a notable housewife, who
scrubbed her three rooms and her seven children, her pots and pans, and
her chairs and tables, all day, and, on Saturdays, nearly all night,
long. It is fortunate for such things as pots and pans, and chairs and
tables, that they haven't any human feelings--at least, I never _heard_
a table talk, although I have read in the newspapers of their spinning
precious long yarns for fools and madmen to listen to (but what can you
expect from newspapers but lies?)--or they would have squalled for
certain, as we used to do under our mother's never-ending scrubbing and
scouring. When the soap got into our eyes, we used to halloa, and then
she used to dry our tears with a rough towel--I mean a towel made of a
bunch of twigs, tied together at one end with some string. My mother
was the most excellent woman that ever lived; but she had a strange idea
in her head that all children wanted physic, and that the very bast
doctor's stuff in the world was a birch rod, and plenty of it. Perhaps
my physickings did me no harm; at least, they prepared me for the
precious allowances of kicks, cuffs, and ropes-endings I got when I went
to sea.
I went to sea, because, when I was about ten years old, my father
thought that I had had enough schooling. _I_ thought that I had had
enough to last me for a lifetime; for the Reverend Pastor Slagkop had a
monstrous heavy hand; but at least he had taught me to read and write,
and to cast accounts--and that it was about time for me to set about
earning my own livelihood, which my elder brothers were already doing.
I was quite of his way of thinking, for I was a hard-working boy, and
was tired of eating the bread of idleness; only my dad and I didn't
exactly agree as to the precise manner by which I should earn a living.
He wanted me to wander with him, mostly by treykschuyt, or canal-boat,
up and down the United Provinces, helping him to carry his pack, and
trying to sell the clocks, watches, cutlery, spoons, hats, caps, laces,
stockings, gloves, and garters, in which, and a hundred things besides,
he traded. But I didn't like the peddler business. I was never a good
hand at making a bargain, and when I had to sell things, I was just as
bad a salesman. I let the customers beat me down; and then my father,
who was a just man, but dreadfully severe, beat _me_. Besides, to make
a good peddler, you must tell no end of lies, and the telling of lies
(although sailors are often said to spin yarns as tough as the chairs
and tables pretend to do) was never in my line. Again, although I was
of a roving disposition, and delighted in change, my native country had
no charms for me. At the seaports, where there were big ships, I was as
pleased as Punch; but, inland, the country seemed to me to be always the
same--flat, marshy, and stupid, with the same canals, the same
canal-boats, the same windmills, the same cows, the same farmhouses, the
same church steeples, the same dykes, the same dams, and the same people
smoking the same pipes, or sliding to market in winter time, when the
canals were frozen, on the same skates. To make an end of it, a
peddler's life was to me only one degree above that of a beggar; for you
had to be always asking somebody to buy your goods; and I have always
hated to ask favours of people. I told my father so; but he would not
hear of my turning to any trade, and there being no help for it, I had
to help him at peddlering for a good two years, although I fancy that he
lost more money than he gained by my lending him a hand. But, when I
was twelve years of age, and feeling stouter and stronger--and I was
taller for my age than most Dutch boys are--I told my father flatly that
I had had enough of peddlering, and that if he did not let me try to
find some other calling, I would run away. He told me, for an
ungrateful young hound as I was, that I might run away to Old Nick if I
chose--not the Sant Niklas of the Oude Kerke, but a very different kind
of customer. "Thank you, father," said I, beginning to tie up my few
things in a bundle. "Stop," says he. "Here's five guilders for you. I
don't want you to starve for the first few days, while you are seeking
for work, graceless young calf as you are!"--"Thank you, father, again,"
I says, pocketing both the guilders and the compliment. "And stop
again, my man," he says; "and take this along with you, with my
blessing, for your impudence!" With this, he seizes me by the collar,
gets my head between his legs, and, with the big leathern strap he used
to bind his pack with, he gives me the soundest thrashing I ever had in
my life. That's the way to harden boys! It was in the middle of
January, and pretty sharp weather, when we had this explanation. It was
at our home at Amsterdam; and my good mother sat crying bitterly in a
corner, with my little sisters clinging to her, and squalling; but as I
walked out of the house forever, I felt as hot all through me as though
it had been the middle of July.
I walked from Amsterdam to Rotterdam steadily, bent upon going to sea.
Of course, I had never as yet made a voyage, even in a fishing-boat; but
I had been up and down all the canals in Holland ever since I was a
child; and I fancied that the ocean was only a very large canal, and
that a sea-going ship was only a very big treykschuyt. In a large port
like Rotterdam I thought that there would be no difficulty in finding a
craft, the skipper of which would give me a berth aboard; and, indeed,
throughout a very long life I have usually found that it does not matter
a stuyver how poor, ignorant, and friendless a boy may be, there is
always room for him at sea, if he sets his mind steadily on finding a
ship. Mind, I don't say that he won't be the better sailor for the
book-learning he may have been lucky enough to pick up. I never
despised book-learning, although no great scholar myself; but a boy
should learn to use his hands as well as his eyes. He should have a
trade, never mind what it is; but it must be a trade that he can earn
pay, and lay a little prize-money by, now and then; and a scholar
without a trade is but a poor fellow. He may turn parson, or
schoolmaster, to be sure; but it would be a mighty queer ship, I reckon,
aboard which the captain was a parson, and the bo'sun a schoolmaster,
and the crew a pack of loblolly-boys, with their brains full of
book-learning, and nothing else.
I wasn't so very quick, though, as I thought, in my boyish foolishness,
that I should be, in finding a ship at Rotterdam. Indeed, when I got
down to the Boompjes, and boarded the craft lying at anchor there, I
think I must have tried five-and-twenty before I could find a skipper
who would as much as look at me, much less offer me a berth. "If you
please, do you want a boy?" was my invariable question. Some of the
skippers said that they had more boys than they knew what to do with;
others, that boys were more trouble than they were worth, which worth
did not amount to the salt they ate. Off the poop of one ship I was
kicked by a skipper, who had had too much Schiedam for breakfast; from
the gangway of another I was shoved ashore by a quartermaster, who
didn't like boys; one bo'sun's mate gave me a starting with a
rope's-end, as he swore that I had come aboard to steal something; and
another pulled my ears quite good-naturedly (although he made my ears
very sore), and told me to go back to school, and mind my book, and that
a sailor's life was too rough for me. There was one captain--he was in
the China trade--who said that he would take me as a 'prentice if my
father would pay a hundred and fifty guilders for my indentures; and
another, who offered to ship me as cook's mate; but I knew nothing about
cooking, and had to tell him so, with tears in my eyes. I was nearly
reduced to despair, when one skipper--he was only the master of a
galliot, trading between Rotterdam and Yarmouth, in England--seeing that
I was a stout, bright-eyed lad, likely to be a strong haul on a rope,
and a good hand at a winch or a windlass, told me that he would take me
on first for one voyage, and see what wages I was worth when we came
back again. He advanced me a guilder or two, to buy some sea-going
things; so that, with the trifle my father had given me, when he
dismissed me with his blessing and a thrashing, I did not go to sea
absolutely penniless.
I have been at sea sixty years; yet well do I recollect the first day
that I shipped on board the galliot _Jungvrauw_, at Rotterdam, bound for
Great Yarmouth, England. When I got on board the vessel was just
wearing out of port, and, thinking that about the best thing I could do
was to begin to make myself useful at once, I tailed on to a rope that
some of the crew were hauling in; and the next thing I began to learn
was to coil a rope. There's only two ways to do it--a right one and a
wrong one. The right way is to coil it the way the sun goes round. And
then I learned that about the surest manner in which a young sailor can
get a knowledge of his trade is to watch how his shipmates set about
doing their work. He may be laughed at, grumbled at, or sworn at, but
at last he'll learn his duty, and that's something.
If I were to tell you all the wonderful things that have happened to me,
man and boy, as carpenter, bo'sun, third mate, second mate, and first
mate--I never had the luck to rise to be a skipper--I am afraid that you
wouldn't believe half the yarns I could spin for you. I've been in both
the Indies, and in both the Americas, and in our own Dutch Colony of
Java, and in China and Japan (where the Dutch used to have a mighty fine
factory) over and over again. I've been in action; and was wounded once
by a musket-ball, which passed right through the nape of my neck. I've
been a prisoner of war, and I was once nearly taken by a Sallee rover.
I've had to fight with the Dutch for the French, and with the French
against the Dutch, and with the Dutch for the English. I've had the
yellow fever over and over again. I've had my leg half bitten off by a
shark; and if anybody tells you that a shark won't eat niggers, tell
him, with my compliments, that he doesn't know what he's talking about,
for I saw a shark bite a nigger that had fallen overboard, right in two,
in the harbour of Havana. I don't say that the shark doesn't like white
flesh best. The black man, perhaps, he locks upon as mess beef, not
very prime; but the white man he considers as pork or veal, and the
nicer of the two. At all events he'll eat nigger if he's hungry, and a
shark's always hungry.
Perhaps the strangest thing that ever happened to me in the coarse of
all my voyages was in connection with a lot of swallows, and I'll wind
up my yarn with this one, first because it's short, and next because I
think it's got something that's pretty about it, and will please the
yunkers and the vrauws; and, old man-like, I always like to please
_them_. It was about thirty years ago, and in the middle of September,
that I signed articles at Liverpool as second mate of a brig bound to
Marseilles, Barcelona, in Spain, Gibraltar (_that_ belongs to the
Englanders), Oran, and Algiers. The middle of September mind. The name
of the brig was the _Granite_, and the skipper, Captain Marbles, a
Yorkshireman, was about the hardest commander I ever sailed under. He
never swore at the men,--that they wouldn't have much minded; but he was
always turning up the hands for punishment; and punishment in the
merchant service, thirty years ago, was little less severe than it was
in the navy. Indeed, it was often more unjust, and more cruel; for when
a merchant skipper flogged a man he was generally drunk, or in a
fearfully bad temper; whereas on board a man-o'-war a sailor was never
punished in cold blood, and had at least some show of a trial. I must
do Captain Marbles the credit to say that he was never half seas over;
but on the other hand he was always in a bad temper. On me he dared not
lay a finger, for I was an officer, and I would have knocked him down
with a marlinspike had he struck me; but he led the foremast-men and the
boys, of whom we had at least half a dozen aboard--principally, I fancy,
because the Captain liked to torture boys--a terrible life. Well, we
had discharged cargo at Marseilles, and taken in more at Barcelona. We
had put in at Gibraltar, and after clearing out from the Rock were
shaping our course with a pretty fair wind for Gran, when, one evening--
now what in the world do you think happened?
The swallow, you know, is a bird that, like our stork, cannot abide the
cold. He is glad enough to come and see us in summer, when the leaves
are green, and the sun shines brightly; but so soon as ever the weather
begins to grow chilly, off goes Mr Swallow to the Pyramids of Egypt, or
the Desert of Sahara, or some nice, warm, comfortable place of that
kind. He generally arrives in our latitudes about the second week in
April; and he cuts his stick again for hot winter quarters toward the
end of September. I've heard book-learned gentlemen say that the birds
almost always fly in a line, directly north and south, influenced, no
doubt, by the magnetic current which flows forever and ever in that
direction. Well, on the afternoon to which my yarn relates, our course
was due south, and, just before sunset, we saw a vast space of the sky
astern absolutely darkened by the largest flight of birds I ever saw,
winging their way together. As a rule, I've been told, the swallows
don't migrate in large flocks, but in small families. This, however,
must have been an exception to the rule, for they appeared absolutely to
number thousands; and what should they do when they neared us but settle
down in their thousands on the masts and rigging of the brig _Granite_.
They were tired, poor things, no doubt, with long flying; and I have
been told that it is a common custom for them to rest themselves on the
riggings of ships. But there were so many of them this time that the
very deck was covered with them, and vast numbers more fluttered below,
into the forecastle and the captain's cabin. The skipper ordered the
hatches to be battened down, and all was made snug for the night. In
the morning the birds on the deck and the rigging were gone, but we had
still hundreds of swallows in the hold and in the cabin, and the noise
the poor creatures made to be let out was most pitiable--indeed, it was
simply heartrending. It was like the cry of children. It sounded like,
"For God's sake, let us go free!" Captain Marbles--I have said so
before--was a hard man, but he could not stand the agonised twittering
of the wretched little birds; and as he ordered me to have the hatches
opened, I noticed that there were two great tears coursing down his
stern, weather-beaten cheeks. He had, for the first time in his life,
perhaps, become acquainted with a certain blessed thing called PITY.
Nor did we fail to notice afterward that he was not half so hard on the
boys we had aboard. Perhaps he remembered the cry of the swallows.
That's my yarn. There's nothing very grand about it; but, at least,
it's true. As true, I mean, as old sailors' yarns usually are.
"Gone!" cried the doctor, as the Dutchman, a minute before solid in
appearance, suddenly collapsed into air and moisture, which directly
became ice. "If I hadn't been so polite I might have stopped him. I
suppose the effort of telling their histories exhausts them."
"Well, sir, it's jolly interesting!" said Bostock.
"Yes, my man," said the doctor; "but there's no science in it. What is
there in his talk about how he came here, or for me to report to the
learned societies?"
"Can't say, I'm sure, sir," I said; "only, the discoveries."
"Yes, that will do, Captain. But come, let's find another?"
We all set to eagerly, for the men now thoroughly enjoyed the task. The
stories we heard enlivened the tedium, and the men, far from being
afraid now, went heartily into the search.
"Shouldn't wonder if we found a nigger friz-up here, mates," said Binny
Scudds.
"Or a Chine-hee," said one of the men.
"Well, all I can say," exclaimed Bostock, "is this here, _I_ don't want
to be made into a scientific speciment."
"Here y'are!" shouted one of the men. "Here's one on 'em!"
"Get out!" said Binny Scudds, who had run to the face of a perpendicular
mass of ice, where the man stood with his pick. "That ain't one!"
"Tell yer it is," said the man. "That's the 'airs of his 'ead sticking
out;" and he pointed to what appeared to be dark threads in the white,
opaque ice.
"Tell you, he wouldn't be standing up," said Binny Scudds.
"Why not, if he was frozen so, my men?" said the doctor. "Yes; that's a
specimen. This ice has been heaved up."
"Shall we fetch him out with powder," said Bostock.
"Dear me, no!" said the doctor. "Look! that ice is laminated. Try
driving in wedges."
Three of the men climbed onto the top, and began driving in wedges, when
the ice split open evenly, leaving the figure of what appeared to be a
swarthy-looking Frenchman, exposed as to the face; but he was held in
tightly to the lower half of the icy case, by his long hair.
"Blest if he don't look jest like a walnut with one shell off!" growled
Scudds; but he was silent directly, for the Frenchman opened his eyes,
stared at us, smiled, and opened his lips.
"Yes; thank you much, comrades. You have saved me. I did not thus
expect, when we went drift, drift, drift north, in the little vessel,
with the rats; but listen, you shall hear. I am a man of wonderful
adventure. You take me for a ghost?"
Bostock nodded.
"Brave lads! brave lads!" said the Frenchman; "but it is not that I am.
I have been taken for a ghost before, and prove to my good friends that
I am not. I prove to you I am not; but a good, sound, safe, French
_matelot_!--sailor, you call it."
"I should like to hear you," said Binny Scudds, in a hoarse growl.
"You shall, my friend, who has helped to save me."
"Let it be scientific, my friend," said the doctor.
"It shall, sir--it shall," said the Frenchman.