Redburn, his first voyage :: :: University of Virginia Library

What is to come now, thought I; but I soon found out.
It seemed we were going to be divided into watches. The
chief mate began by selecting a stout good-looking sailor for
his watch; and then the second mate's turn came to choose,
and he also chose a stout good-looking sailor. But it was
not me;—no; and I noticed, as they went on choosing, one
after the other in regular rotation, that both of the mates
never so much as looked at me, but kept going round among
the rest, peering into their faces, for it was dusk, and telling
them not to hide themselves away so in their jackets. But
the sailors, especially the stout good-looking ones, seemed to
make a point of lounging as much out of the way as possible,
and slouching their hats over their eyes; and although it
may only be a fancy of mine, I certainly thought that they
affected a sort of lordly indifference as to whose watch they
were going to be in; and did not think it worth while to
look any way anxious about the matter. And the very men
who, a few minutes before, had showed the most alacrity and
promptitude in jumping into the rigging and running aloft at
the word of command, now lounged against the bulwarks
the most lazily; as if they were quite sure, that by this
time the officers must know who the best men were, and
they valued themselves well enough to be willing to put the
officers to the trouble of searching them out; for if they
were worth having, they were worth seeking.

At last they were all chosen but me; and it was the
chief mate's next turn to choose; though there could be
little choosing in my case, since I was a thirteener, and
must, whether or no, go over to the next column, like the
odd figure you carry along when you do a sum in addition.

“Well, Buttons,” said the chief mate, “I thought I'd
got rid of you. And as it is, Mr. Rigs,” he added, speaking
to the second mate, “I guess you had better take him into
your watch;—there, I'll let you have him, and then you'll
be one stronger than me.”

“No, I thank you,” said Mr. Rigs.

“You had better,” said the chief mate—“see, he's not a
bad looking chap—he's a little green, to be sure, but you
were so once yourself, you know, Rigs.”

“No, I thank you,” said the second mate again. “Take
him yourself—he's yours by good rights—I don't want
him.” And so they put me in the chief mate's division,
that is the larboard watch.

While this scene was going on, I felt shabby enough;
there I stood, just like a silly sheep, over whom two butchers
are bargaining. Nothing that had yet happened so forcibly
reminded me of where I was, and what I had come to. I
was very glad when they sent us forward again.

As we were going forward, the second mate called one of
the sailors by name:—“You, Bill?” and Bill answered,
“Sir?” just as if the second mate was a born gentleman.
It surprised me not a little, to see a man in such a shabby,
shaggy old jacket addressed so respectfully; but I had been
quite as much surprised when I heard the chief mate call
him Mr. Rigs during the scene on the quarter-deck; as if
this Mr. Rigs was a great merchant living in a marble
house in Lafayette Place. But I was not very long in finding
out, that at sea all officers are Misters, and would take
it for an insult if any seaman presumed to omit calling them
so. And it is also one of their rights and privileges to be
called sir when addressed—Yes, sir; No, sir; Ay, ay,

sir: and they are as particular about being sirred as so
many knights and baronets; though their titles are not hereditary,
as is the case with the Sir Johns and Sir Joshuas
in England. But so far as the second mate is concerned,
his titles are the only dignities he enjoys; for, upon the
whole, he leads a puppyish life indeed. He is not deemed
company at any time for the captain, though the chief mate
occasionally is, at least deck-company, though not in the
cabin; and besides this, the second mate has to breakfast,
lunch, dine, and sup off the leavings of the cabin table, and
even the steward, who is accountable to nobody but the
captain, sometimes treats him cavalierly; and he has to run
aloft when topsails are reefed; and put his hand a good way
down into the tar-bucket; and keep the key of the boat-swain's
locker, and fetch and carry balls of marline and
seizing-stuff for the sailors when at work in the rigging;
besides doing many other things, which a true-born baronet
of any spirit would rather die and give up his title than
stand.

Having been divided into watches we were sent to supper;
but I could not eat any thing except a little biscuit,
though I should have liked to have some good tea; but as
I had no pot to get it in, and was rather nervous about
asking the rough sailors to let me drink out of theirs; I was
obliged to go without a sip. I thought of going to the
black cook and begging a tin cup; but he looked so cross
and ugly then, that the sight of him almost frightened the
idea out of me.

When supper was over, for they never talk about going
to tea aboard of a ship, the watch to which I belonged was
called on deck; and we were told it was for us to stand
the first night watch, that is, from eight o'clock till midnight.

I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the
stomach, as if matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt
strange and giddy about the head; and so I made no doubt

that this was the beginning of that dreadful thing, the sea-sickness.
Feeling worse and worse, I told one of the sailors
how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses
very civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would
go below and spend the night in my bunk. But he only
laughed at me, and said something about my mother not
being aware of my being out; which enraged me not a little,
that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly, should dare
to take such a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort
of blasphemy, and it seemed like dragging out the best and
most cherished secrets of my soul, for at that time the name
of mother was the center of all my heart's finest feelings, which
ere that, I had learned to keep secret, deep down in my being.

But I did not outwardly resent the sailor's words, for
that would have only made the matter worse.

Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very
white skin where the sun had not burnt it, and handsome
blue eyes placed wide apart in his head, and a broad good-humored
face, and plenty of curly flaxen hair. He was
not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great
way between his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of
lady's sailor, for in his broken English he was always talking
about the nice ladies of his acquaintance in Stockholm
and Copenhagen and a place he called the Hook, which at
first I fancied must be the place where lived the hook-nosed
men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that
came along. He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he
knew he was a good-looking fellow. He had on a new blue
woolen Havre frock, with a new silk handkerchief round his
neck, passed through one of the vertebral bones of a shark,
highly polished and carved. His trowsers were of clear
white duck, and he sported a handsome pair of pumps, and
a tarpaulin hat bright as a looking-glass, with a long black
ribbon streaming behind, and getting entangled every now
and then in the rigging; and he had gold anchors in his

ears, and a silver ring on one of his fingers, which was
very much worn and bent from pulling ropes and other
work on board ship. I thought he might better have left
his jewelry at home.

It was a long time before I could believe that this man
was really from Greenland, though he looked strange enough
to me, then, to have come from the moon; and he was full
of stories about that distant country; how they passed
the winters there; and how bitter cold it was; and how
he used to go to bed and sleep twelve hours, and get
up again and run about, and go to bed again, and get up
again—there was no telling how many times, and all in one
night; for in the winter time in his country, he said, the
nights were so many weeks long, that a Greenland baby
was sometimes three months old, before it could properly be
said to be a day old.

I had seen mention made of such things before, in books
of voyages; but that was only reading about them, just as
you read the Arabian Nights, which no one ever believes;
for somehow, when I read about these wonderful countries, I
never used really to believe what I read, but only thought
it very strange, and a good deal too strange to be altogether
true; though I never thought the men who wrote the book
meant to tell lies. But I don't know exactly how to explain
what I mean; but this much I will say, that I never
believed in Greenland till I saw this Greenlander. And at
first, hearing him talk about Greenland, only made me still
more incredulous. For what business had a man from
Greenland to be in my company? Why was he not at
home among the icebergs; and how could he stand a warm
summer's sun, and not be melted away? Besides, instead
of icicles, there were ear-rings hanging from his ears; and
he did not wear bear-skins, and keep his hands in a huge
muff; things, which I could not help connecting with Greenland
and all Greenlanders.

But I was telling about my being sea-sick and wanting

to retire for the night. This Greenlander seeing I was ill,
volunteered to turn doctor and cure me; so going down into
the forecastle, he came back with a brown jug, like a molasses
jug, and a little tin cannikin, and as soon as the brown
jug got near my nose, I needed no telling what was in it,
for it smelt like a still-house, and sure enough proved to be
full of Jamaica spirits.

“Now, Buttons,” said he, “one little dose of this will be
better for you than a whole night's sleep; there, take that
now, and then eat seven or eight biscuits, and you'll feel as
strong as the mainmast.”

But I felt very little like doing as I was bid, for I had
some scruples about drinking spirits; and to tell the plain
truth, for I am not ashamed of it, I was a member of a
society in the village where my mother lived, called the
Juvenile Total Abstinence Association, of which my friend,
Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer, and
kept the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him.
There was three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last
time he brought in his accounts, on a May day, when we
had a meeting in a grove on the river-bank. Tom was a
very honest treasurer, and never spent the Society's money
for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy, whom
I much loved. But I must not talk about Tom now.

When the Greenlander came to me with his jug of medicine,
I thanked him as well as I could; for just then I was
leaning with my mouth over the side, feeling ready to die;
but I managed to tell him I was under a solemn obligation
never to drink spirits upon any consideration whatever;
though, as I had a sort of presentiment that the spirits
would now, for once in my life, do me good, I began to feel
sorry, that when I signed the pledge of abstinence, I had
not taken care to insert a little clause, allowing me to drink
spirits in case of sea-sickness. And I would advise temperance
people to attend to this matter in future; and then if
they come to go to sea, there will be no need of breaking

their pledges, which I am truly sorry to say was the case
with me. And a hard thing it was, too, thus to break a
vow before unbroken; especially as the Jamaica tasted any
thing but agreeable, and indeed burnt my mouth so, that I
did not relish my meals for some time after. Even when I
had become quite well and strong again, I wondered how
the sailors could really like such stuff; but many of them
had a jug of it, besides the Greenlander, which they brought
along to sea with them, to taper off with, as they called it.
But this tapering off did not last very long, for the Jamaica
was all gone on the second day, and the jugs were tossed
overboard. I wonder where they are now?

But to tell the truth, I found, in spite of its sharp taste,
the spirits I drank was just the thing I needed; but I suppose,
if I could have had a cup of nice hot coffee, it would
have done quite as well, and perhaps much better. But
that was not to be had at that time of night, or, indeed, at
any other time; for the thing they called coffee, which was
given to us every morning at breakfast, was the most curious
tasting drink I ever drank, and tasted as little like coffee, as
it did like lemonade; though, to be sure, it was generally as
cold as lemonade, and I used to think the cook had an ice-house,
and dropt ice into his coffee. But what was more
curious still, was the different quality and taste of it on different
mornings. Sometimes it tasted fishy, as if it was a
decoction of Dutch herrings; and then it would taste very
salt, as if some old horse, or sea-beef, had been boiled in it;
and then again it would taste a sort of cheesy, as if the
captain had sent his cheese-parings forward to make our
coffee of; and yet another time it would have such a very
bad flavor, that I was almost ready to think some old stocking-heels
had been boiled in it. What under heaven it was
made of, that it had so many different bad flavors, always
remained a mystery; for when at work at his vocation, our
old cook used to keep himself close shut up in his caboose, a
little cook-house, and never told any of his secrets.

Though a very serious character, as I shall hereafter
show, he was for all that, and perhaps for that identical
reason, a very suspicious looking sort of a cook, that I don't
believe would ever succeed in getting the cooking at Delmonico's
in New York. It was well for him that he was a
black cook, for I have no doubt his color kept us from seeing
his dirty face; I never saw him wash but once, and that
was at one of his own soup pots one dark night when he
thought no one saw him. What induced him to be washing
his face then, I never could find out; but I suppose he
must have suddenly waked up, after dreaming about some
real estate on his cheeks. As for his coffee, notwithstanding
the disagreeableness of its flavor, I always used to have a
strange curiosity every morning, to see what new taste it
was going to have; and though, sure enough, I never missed
making a new discovery, and adding another taste to my
palate, I never found that there was any change in the badness
of the beverage, which always seemed the same in that
respect as before.

It may well be believed, then, that now when I was sea-sick,
a cup of such coffee as our old cook made would have
done me no good, if indeed it would not have come near
making an end of me. And bad as it was, and since it
was not to be had at that time of night, as I said before,
I think I was excusable in taking something else in place of
it, as I did; and under the circumstances, it would be unhandsome
of them, if my fellow-members of the Temperance
Society should reproach me for breaking my bond, which I
would not have done except in case of necessity. But the
evil effect of breaking one's bond upon any occasion whatever,
was witnessed in the present case; for it insidiously
opened the way to subsequent breaches of it, which though
very slight, yet carried no apology with them.