3. CHAPTER III.
FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE JULIA.
Owing to the absence of any thing like regular discipline,
the vessel was in a state of the greatest uproar. The captain,
having for some time past been more or less confined to the
cabin from sickness, was seldom seen. The mate, however,
was as hearty as a young lion, and ran about the decks making
himself heard at all hours. Bembo, the New Zealand harpooner,
held little intercourse with any body but the mate, who
could talk to him freely in his own lingo. Part of his time he
spent out on the bowsprit, fishing for albicores with a bone
hook; and occasionally he waked all hands up of a dark
night dancing some cannibal fandango all by himself on the
forecastle. But, upon the whole, he was remarkably quiet,
though something in his eye showed he was far from being
harmless.
Doctor Long Ghost, having sent in a written resignation as
the ship's doctor, gave himself out as a passenger for Sydney,
and took the world quite easy. As for the crew, those who
were sick seemed marvelously contented for men in their condition;
and the rest, not displeased with the general license,
gave themselves little thought of the morrow.
The Julia's provisions were very poor. When opened, the
barrels of pork looked as if preserved in iron rust, and diffused
an odor like a stale ragout. The beef was worse yet; a mahogany-colored
fibrous substance, so tough and tasteless, that I
almost believed the cook's story of a horse's hoof with the shoe
on having been fished up out of the pickle of one of the casks.
Nor was the biscuit much better; nearly all of it was broken
into hard, little gunflints, honey-combed through and through,
as if the worms usually infesting this article in long tropical
voyages, had, in boring after nutriment, come out at the antipodes
without finding any thing.
Of what sailors call “small stores,” we had but little. “Tea,”
however, we had in abundance; though, I dare say, the Hong
merchants never had the shipping of it. Beside this, every
other day we had what English seamen call “shot soup”—
great round peas, polishing themselves like pebbles by rolling
about in tepid water.
It was afterward told me, that all our provisions had been
purchased by the owners at an auction sale of condemned navy
stores in Sydney.
But notwithstanding the wateriness of the first course of
soup, and the saline flavor of the beef and pork, a sailor
might have made a satisfactory meal aboard of the Julia had
there been any side dishes—a potato or two, a yam, or a
plantain. But there was nothing of the kind. Still, there was
something else, which, in the estimation of the men, made
up for all deficiencies; and that was the regular allowance of
Pisco.
It may seem strange, that in such a state of affairs the captain
should be willing to keep the sea with his ship. But the
truth was, that by lying in harbor, he ran the risk of losing
the remainder of his men by desertion; and as it was, he still
feared that, in some outlandish bay or other, he might one day
find his anchor down, and no crew to weigh it.
With judicious officers the most unruly seamen can at sea be
kept in some sort of subjection; but once get them within a cable's
length of the land, and it is hard restraining them. It is
for this reason, that many South Sea whalemen do not come to
an anchor for eighteen or twenty months on a stretch. When
fresh provisions are needed, they run for the nearest land—
heave to eight or ten miles off, and send a boat ashore to
trade. The crews manning vessels like these are for the
most part villains of all nations and dyes; picked up in the lawless
ports of the Spanish Main, and among the savages of the
islands. Like galley-slaves, they are only to be governed by
scourges and chains. Their officers go among them with dirk
and pistol—concealed, but ready at a grasp.
Not a few of our own crew were men of this stamp; but,
riotous at times as they were, the bluff, drunken energies of
Jermin were just the thing to hold them in some sort of noisy
subjection. Upon an emergency, lie flew in among them,
showering his kicks and cuffs right and left, and "creating a
sensation" in every direction. And as hinted before, they
bore this knock-down authority with great good-humor. A
sober, discreet, dignified officer could have done nothing with
them; such a set would have thrown him and his dignity overboard.
Matters being thus, there was nothing for the ship but to
keep the sea. Nor was the captain without hope that the invalid
portion of his crew, as well as himself, would soon recover;
and then there was no telling what luck in the fishery might
yet be in store for us. At any rate, at the time of my coming
aboard, the report was, that Captain Guy was resolved upon
retrieving the past, and filling the vessel with oil in the shortest
space possible.
With this intention, we were now shaping our course for
Hytyhoo, a village on the island of St. Christina—one of the
Marquesas, and so named by Mendanna—for the purpose of
obtaining eight seamen, who, some weeks before, had stepped
ashore there from the Julia. It was supposed that, by this
time, they must have recreated themselves sufficiently, and
would be glad to return to their duty.
So to Hytyhoo, with all our canvas spread, and coquetting
with the warm, breezy Trades we bowled along; gliding up
and down the long, slow swells, the bonettas and albicores frolicking
round us.
