12. CHAPTER XII.
DEATH AND BURIAL OF TWO OF THE CREW.
The mirthfulness, which, at times, reigned among us, was in
strange and shocking contrast with the situation of some of the
invalids. Thus, at least, did it seem to me, though not to others.
But an event occurred about this period, which, in removing
by far the most pitiable cases of suffering, tended to make less
grating to my feelings the subsequent conduct of the crew.
We had been at sea about twenty days, when two of the
sick who had rapidly grown worse, died one night within an
hour of each other.
One occupied a bunk right next to mine, and for several
days had not risen from it. During this period he was often
delirious, starting up and glaring around him, and sometimes
wildly tossing his arms.
On the night of his decease, I retired shortly after the middle
watch began, and waking from a vague dream of horrors, felt
something clammy resting on me. It was the sick man's hand.
Two or three times during the evening previous, he had thrust
it into my bunk, and I had quietly removed it; but now I
started and flung it from me. The arm fell stark and stiff, and
I knew that he was dead.
Waking the men, the corpse was immediately rolled up in
the strips of blanketing upon which it lay, and carried on deck.
The mate was then called, and preparations made for an instantaneous
burial. Laying the body out on the forehatch, it was
stitched up in one of the hammocks, some “kentlege” being
placed at the feet instead of shot. This done, it was borne to
the gangway, and placed on a plank laid across the bulwarks.
Two men supported the inside end. By way of solemnity, the
ship's headway was then stopped by hauling aback the main-top-sail.
The mate, who was far from being sober, then staggered up,
and holding on to a shroud, gave the word. As the plank
tipped, the body slid off slowly, and fell with a splash into the
sea. A bubble or two, and nothing more was seen.
“Brace forward!” The main-yard swung round to its
place, and the ship glided on, while the corpse, perhaps, was
still sinking.
We had tossed a shipmate to the sharks, but no one would
have thought it, to have gone among the crew immediately
after. The dead man had been a churlish, unsocial fellow,
while alive, and no favorite; and now that he was no more,
little thought was bestowed upon him. All that was said, was
concerning the disposal of his chest, which, having been always
kept locked, was supposed to contain money. Some one volunteered
to break it open, and distribute its contents, clothing
and all, before the captain should demand it.
While myself and others were endeavoring to dissuade them
from this, all started at a cry from the forecastle. There could
be no one there but two of the sick, unable to crawl on deck.
We went below, and found one of them dying on a chest. He
had fallen out of his hammock in a fit, and was insensible. The
eyes were open and fixed, and his breath coming and going
convulsively. The men shrunk from him; but the doctor,
taking his hand, held it a few moments in his, and suddenly
letting it fall, exclaimed, “He's gone!” The body was instantly
borne up the ladder.
Another hammock was soon prepared, and the dead sailor
stitched up as before. Some additional ceremony, however,
was now insisted upon, and a Bible was called for. But none
was to be had, not even a Prayer Book. When this was
made known, Antone, a Portuguese, from the Cape-de-Verd
Islands, stepped up, muttered something over the corpse of his
countryman, and, with his finger, described upon the back of
the hammock the figure of a large cross; whereupon it received
the dead-lanch.
These two men both perished from the proverbial indiscretions
of seamen, heightened by circumstances apparent; but
had either of them been ashore under proper treatment, he
would, in all human probability, have recovered.
Behold here the fate of a sailor! They give him the last toss,
and no one asks whose child he was.
For the rest of that night there was no more sleep. Many
stayed on deck until broad morning, relating to each other those
marvelous tales of the sea which the occasion was calculated
to call forth. Little as I believed in such things, I could not
listen to some of these stories unaffected. Above all was I
struck by one of the carpenter's.
On a voyage to India, they had a fever aboard, which carried
off nearly half the crew in the space of a few days. After this
the men never went aloft in the night-time, except in couples.
When top-sails were to be reefed, phantoms were seen at the
yard-arm ends; and in tacking ship, voices called aloud from
the tops. The carpenter himself, going with another man to
furl the main-top-gallant-sail in a squall, was nearly pushed
from the rigging by an unseen hand; and his shipmate swore
that a wet hammock was flirted in his face.
Stories like these were related as gospel truths, by those
who declared themselves eye-witnesses.
It is a circumstance not generally known, perhaps, that,
among ignorant seamen, Finlanders, or Finns, as they are more
commonly called, are regarded with peculiar superstition. For
some reason or other, which I never could get at, they are supposed
to possess the gift of second sight, and the power to
wreak supernatural vengeance upon those who offend them.
On this account they have great influence among sailors, and
two or three with whom I have sailed at different times, were
persons well calculated to produce this sort of impression, at
least upon minds disposed to believe in such things.
Now, we had one of these sea-prophets aboard; an old,
yellow-haired fellow, who always wore a rude seal-skin cap
of his own make, and carried his tobacco in a large pouch
made of the same stuff. Van, as we called him, was a quiet,
inoffensive man, to look at, and, among such a set, his occasional
peculiarities had hitherto passed for nothing. At this
time, however, he came out with a prediction, which was none
the less remarkable from its absolute fulfillment, though not
exactly in the spirit in which it was given out.
The night of the burial he laid his hand on the old horse-shoe
nailed as a charm to the foremast, and solemnly told us
that, in less than three weeks, not one quarter of our number
would remain aboard the ship—by that time they would have
left her forever.
Some laughed; Flash Jack called him an old fool; but
among the men generally it produced a marked effect. For
several days a degree of quiet reigned among us, and allusions
of such a kind were made to recent events, as could be attributed
to no other cause than the Finn's omen.
For my own part, what had lately come to pass was not
without its influence. It forcibly brought to mind our really
critical condition. Doctor Long Ghost, too, frequently revealed
his apprehensions, and once assured me that he would give
much to be safely landed upon any island around us.
Where we were, exactly, no one but the mate seemed to
know, nor whither we were going. The captain—a mere cipher
—was an invalid in his cabin; to say nothing more of so many
of his men languishing in the forecastle.
Our keeping the sea under these circumstances, a matter
strange enough at first, now seemed wholly unwarranted; and
added to all, was the thought, that our fate was absolutely in
the hand of the reckless Jermin. Were any thing to happen to
him, we would be left without a navigator, for, according to
Jermin himself, he had, from the commencement of the voyage,
always kept the ship's reckoning, the captain's nautical knowledge
being insufficient.
But considerations like these, strange as it may seem, seldom
or never occurred to the crew. They were alive only to superstitious
fears; and when, in apparent contradiction to the Finn's
prophecy, the sick men rallied a little, they began to recover
their former spirits, and the recollection of what had occurred
insensibly faded from their minds. In a week's time, the unworthiness
of Little Jule, as a sea vessel, always a subject of
jest, now became more so than ever. In the forecastle, Flash
Jack, with his knife, often dug into the dank, rotten planks
ribbed between us and death, and flung away the splinters
with some sea joke.
As to the remaining invalids, they were hardly ill enough to
occasion any serious apprehension, at least for the present, in
the breasts of such thoughtless beings as themselves. And
even those who suffered the most, studiously refrained from
any expression of pain.
The truth is, that among sailors as a class, sickness at sea is
so heartily detested, and the sick so little cared for, that the
greatest invalid generally strives to mask his sufferings. He
has given no sympathy to others, and he expects none in return.
Their conduct, in this respect, so opposed to their
generous-hearted behavior ashore, painfully affects the landsman
on his first intercourse with them as a sailor.
Sometimes, but seldom, our invalids inveighed against their
being kept at sea, where they could be of no service, when
they ought to be ashore and in the way of recovery. But—
“Oh! cheer up—cheer up, my hearties!”—the mate would
say. And after this fashion he put a stop to their murmurings.
But there was one circumstance, to which heretofore I have
but barely alluded, that tended more than any thing else to
reconcile many to their situation. This was the receiving
regularly, twice every day, a certain portion of Pisco, which
was served out at the capstan, by the steward, in little tin
measures called “tots.”
The lively affection seamen have for strong drink is well
known; but in the South Seas, where it is so seldom to be
had, a thorough-bred sailor deems scarcely any price too dear
which will purchase his darling “tot.” Nowadays, American
whalemen in the Pacific never think of carrying spirits as a
ration; and aboard of most of them, it is never served out
even in times of the greatest hardships. All Sydney whalemen,
however, still cling to the old custom, and carry it as a
part of the regular supplies for the voyage.
In port, the allowance of Pisco was suspended; with a view,
undoubtedly, of heightening the attractions of being out of
sight of land.
Now, owing to the absence of proper discipline, our sick,
in addition to what they took medicinally, often came in for
their respective “tots” convivially; and, added to all this, the
evening of the last day of the week was always celebrated by
what is styled on board of English vessels, “The Saturday-night
bottles.” Two of these were sent down into the forecastle,
just after dark; one for the starboard watch, and the
other for the larboard.
By prescription, the oldest seamen in each claims the treat
as his, and, accordingly, pours out the good cheer and passes
it round like a lord doing the honors of his table. But the
Saturday-night bottles were not all. The carpenter and
cooper, in sea parlance, Chips and Bungs, who were the
“Cods,” or leaders of the forecastle, in some way or other,
managed to obtain an extra supply, which perpetually kept
them in fine after-dinner spirits, and, moreover, disposed them
to look favorably upon a state of affairs like the present.
But where were the sperm whales all this time? In good
sooth, it made little matter where they were, since we were in
no condition to capture them. About this time, indeed, the
men came down from the mast-heads, where, until now, they
had kept up the form of relieving each other every two hours.
They swore they would go there no more. Upon this, the
mate carelessly observed, that they would soon be where lookouts
were entirely unnecessary, the whales he had in his eye
(though Flash Jack said they were all in his) being so tame,
that they made a practice of coming round ships, and scratching
their backs against them.
Thus went the world of waters with us, some four weeks or
more after leaving Hannamanoo.
