14. CHAPTER XIV.
While gliding along on our way, I can not well omit some
account of a poor devil we had among us, who went by the
name of Rope Yarn, or Ropey.
He was a nondescript who had joined the ship as a landsman.
Being so excessively timid and awkward, it was thought useless
to try and make a sailor of him; so he was translated into
the cabin as steward; the man previously filling that post, a
good seaman, going among the crew and taking his place. But
poor Ropey proved quite as clumsy among the crockery as
in the rigging; and one day when the ship was pitching,
having stumbled into the cabin with a wooden tureen of
soup, he scalded the officers so that they didn't get over it in
a week. Upon which, he was dismissed, and returned to the
forecastle.
Now, nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy,
good-for-nothing land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of compassion
for him. Yet, useless as such a character may be in
many respects, a ship's company is by no means disposed to let
him reap any benefit from his deficiencies. Regarded in the
light of a mechanical power, whenever there is any plain, hard
work to be done, he is put to it like a lever; every one giving
him a pry.
Then, again, he is set about all the vilest work. Is there a
heavy job at tarring to be done, he is pitched neck and shoulders
into a tar-barrel, and set to work at it. Moreover, he is
made to fetch and carry like a dog. Like as not, if the mate
sends him after his quadrant, on the way he is met by the captain,
who orders him to pick some oakum; and while he is
hunting up a bit of rope, a sailor comes along and wants to
know what the deuse he's after, and bids him be off to the forecastle.
“Obey the last order,” is a precept inviolable at sea. So the
land-lubber, afraid to refuse to do any thing, rushes about distracted,
and does nothing: in the end receiving a shower of
kicks and cuffs from all quarters.
Added to his other hardships, he is seldom permitted to open
his mouth unless spoken to; and then, he might better keep
silent. Alas for him! if he should happen to be any thing of
a droll; for in an evil hour should he perpetrate a joke, he
would never know the last of it.
The witticisms of others, however, upon himself, must be received
in the greatest good-humor.
Woe be unto him, if at meal-times he so much as look sideways
at the beef-kid before the rest are helped.
Then he is obliged to plead guilty to every piece of mischief
which the real perpetrator refuses to acknowledge; thus taking
the place of that sneaking rascal, nobody, ashore. In short,
there is no end to his tribulations.
The land-lubber's spirits often sink, and the first result of his
being moody and miserable, is naturally enough an utter neglect
of his toilet.
The sailors perhaps ought to make allowances; but heartless
as they are, they do not. No sooner is his cleanliness questioned,
than they rise upon him like a mob of the Middle Ages
upon a Jew; drag him into the lee-scuppers, and strip him to
the buff. In vain he bawls for mercy; in vain calls upon the
captain to save him.
Alas! I say again, for the land-lubber at sea. He is the
veriest wretch the watery world over. And such was Rope
Yarn; of all land-lubbers, the most lubberly and the most miserable.
A forlorn, stunted, hook-visaged mortal he was too;
one of those, whom you know at a glance to have been tried
hard and long in the furnace of affliction. His face was an
absolute puzzle; though sharp and sallow, it had neither the
wrinkles of age nor the smoothness of youth; so that for the
soul of me, I could hardly tell whether he was twenty-five or
fifty.
But to his history. In his better days, it seems he had been
a journeyman baker in London, somewhere about Holborn;
and on Sundays wore a blue coat and metal buttons, and spent
his afternoons in a tavern, smoking his pipe and drinking his
ale like a free and easy journeyman baker that he was. But
this did not last long; for an intermeddling old fool was the
ruin of him. He was told that London might do very well for
elderly gentlemen and invalids; but for a lad of spirit, Australia
was the Land of Promise. In a dark day Ropey wound up his
affairs and embarked.
Arriving in Sydney with a small capital, and after a while
waxing snug and comfortable by dint of hard kneading, he took
unto himself a wife; and so far as she was concerned, might
then have gone into the country and retired; for she effectually
did his business. In short, the lady worked him woe in heart
and pocket; and in the end, ran off with his till and his foreman.
Ropey went to the sign of the Pipe and Tankard; got
fuddled; and over his fifth pot meditated suicide—an intention
carried out; for the next day he shipped as landsman aboard
the Julia, South Seaman.
The ex-baker would have fared far better, had it not been
for his heart, which was soft and underdone. A kind word
made a fool of him; and hence most of the scrapes he got into.
Two or three wags, aware of his infirmity, used to “draw him
out” in conversation, whenever the most crabbed and choleric
old seamen were present.
To give an instance. The watch below, just waked from
their sleep, are all at breakfast; and Ropey, in one corner, is
disconsolately partaking of its delicacies. Now, sailors newly
waked are no cherubs; and therefore not a word is spoken,
every body munching his biscuit, grim and unshaven. At this
juncture an affable-looking scamp—Flash Jack—crosses the
forecastle, tin can in hand, and seats himself beside the land-lubber.
“Hard fare this, Ropey,” he begins; “hard enough, too, for
them that's known better and lived in Lun'nun. I say now,
Ropey, s'posing you were back to Holborn this morning, what
would you have for breakfast, eh?”
“Have for breakfast!” cried Ropey, in a rapture. “Don't
speak of it!”
“What ails that fellow?” here growled an old sea-bear, turning
round savagely.
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” said Jack; and then, leaning over to
Rope Yarn, he bade him go on, but speak lower.
“Well, then,” said he, in a smugged tone, his eyes lighting
up like two lanterns, “well, then, I'd go to Mother Moll's that
makes the great muffins: I'd go there, you know, and cock my
foot on the 'ob, and call for a noggin o' somethink to begin
with.”
“And what then, Ropey?”
“Why then, Flashy,” continued the poor victim, unconsciously
warming with his theme; “why then, I'd draw my chair up
and call for Betty, the gal wot tends to customers. Betty, my
dear, says I, you looks charmin' this mornin'; give me a nice
rasher of bacon and h'eggs Betty my love; and I wants a pint
of h'ale, and three nice h'ot muffins and butter—and a slice of
Cheshire; and Betty, I wants—”
“A shark-steak, and be hanged to you!” roared Black Dan,
with an oath. Whereupon, dragged over the chests, the
ill-starred fellow is pummeled on deck.
I always made a point of befriending poor Ropey when I
could; and, for this reason, was a great favorite of his.
