University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

The latter part of this first long watch that we stood was
very pleasant, so far as the weather was concerned. From
being rather cloudy, it became a soft moonlight; and the stars
peeped out, plain enough to count one by one; and there
was a fine steady breeze; and it was not very cold; and
we were going through the water almost as smooth as a sled
sliding down hill. And what was still better, the wind
held so steady, that there was little running aloft, little pulling
ropes, and scarcely any thing disagreeable of that kind.

The chief mate kept walking up and down the quarter-deck,
with a lighted long-nine cigar in his mouth by way of
a torch; and spoke but few words to us the whole watch.
He must have had a good deal of thinking to attend to,
which in truth is the case with most seamen the first night
out of port, especially when they have thrown away their
money in foolish dissipation, and got very sick into the bargain.
For when ashore, many of these sea-officers are as
wild and reckless in their way, as the sailors they command.

While I stood watching the red cigar-end promenading
up and down, the mate suddenly stopped and gave an order,
and the men sprang to obey it. It was not much, only
something about hoisting one of the sails a little higher up
on the mast. The men took hold of the rope, and began
pulling upon it; the foremost man of all setting up a song
with no words to it, only a strange musical rise and fall of
notes. In the dark night, and far out upon the lonely sea,
it sounded wild enough, and made me feel as I had sometimes

felt, when in a twilight room a cousin of mine, with
black eyes, used to play some old German airs on the piano.
I almost looked round for goblins, and felt just a little bit
afraid. But I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors
never touched a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one
happened to strike up, and the pulling, whatever it might
be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the mate
would always say, “Come, men, can't any of you sing?
Sing now, and raise the dead.” And then some one of
them would begin, and if every man's arms were as much
relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull as much
better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am
sure the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It
is a great thing in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he
gets a great name by it from the officers, and a good deal of
popularity among his shipmates. Some sea-captains, before
shipping a man, always ask him whether he can sing out at
a rope.

During the greater part of the watch, the sailors sat on
the windlass and told long stories of their adventures by sea
and land, and talked about Gibralter, and Canton, and
Valparaiso, and Bombay, just as you and I would about
Peck Slip and the Bowery. Every man of them almost
was a volume of Voyages and Travels round the World.
And what most struck me was that like books of voyages
they often contradicted each other, and would fall into long
and violent disputes about who was keeping the Foul Anchor
tavern in Portsmouth at such a time; or whether the King
of Canton lived or did not live in Persia; or whether the
bar-maid of a particular house in Hamburg had black eyes
or blue eyes; with many other mooted points of that sort.

At last one of them went below and brought up a box of
cigars from his chest, for some sailors always provide little
delicacies of that kind, to break off the first shock of the salt
water after laying idle ashore; and also by way of tapering
off, as I mentioned a little while ago. But I wondered that

they never carried any pies and tarts to sea with them,
instead of spirits and cigars.

Ned, for that was the man's name, split open the box
with a blow of his fist, and then handed it round along the
windlass, just like a waiter at a party, every one helping
himself. But I was a member of an Anti-Smoking Society
that had been organized in our village by the Principal of
the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the Temperance
Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I
did afterward upon the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding
I declined; with a good deal of unnecessary
swearing, Ned assured me that the cigars were real genuine
Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he said, and had
them made there under his own eye. According to his
account, he was very particular about his cigars and other
things, and never made any importations, for they were
unsafe; but always made a voyage himself direct to the
place where any foreign thing was to be had that he wanted.
He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama for his
hats, to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to Calcutta
for his cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch
used to say, no doubt he would at last have occasion to go
to Russia for his halter; the wit of which saying was presumed
to be in the fact, that the Russian hemp is the best;
though that is not wit which needs explaining.

By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting
strength, united with the cool air of the sea to give me
an appetite for our hard biscuit; and also by dint of walking
briskly up and down the deck before the windlass, I had
now recovered in good part from my sickness, and finding
the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and
nothing on earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to
think that they were a pretty good set of fellows after all,
barring their swearing and another ugly way of talking they
had; and I thought I had misconceived their true characters;

for at the outset I had deemed them such a parcel of
wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe affliction
to associate with them.

Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient
love; but more with an eye of pity and compassion, as men
of naturally gentle and kind dispositions, whom only hardships,
and neglect, and ill-usage had made outcasts from
good society; and not as villains who loved wickedness for
the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in
Paradise, if they ever got there. And I called to mind a
sermon I had once heard in a church in behalf of sailors,
when the preacher called them strayed lambs from the fold,
and compared them to poor lost children, babes in the wood,
orphans without fathers or mothers.

And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the
Sailors' Magazine, with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted
on the back, about pious seamen who never swore, and paid
over all their wages to the poor heathen in India; and how
that when they were too old to go to sea, these pious old
sailors found a delightful home for life in the Hospital, where
they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for their
latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such
good sailors among my ship-mates; and observing that one
of them laid on deck apart from the rest, I thought to be
sure he must be one of them: so I did not disturb his devotions:
but I was afterward shocked at discovering that he
was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by his
side.

I forgot to mention by the way, that every once in a
while, the men went into one corner, where the chief mate
could not see them, to take a “swig at the halyards,” as
they called it; and this swigging at the halyards it was, that
enabled them “to taper off” handsomely, and no doubt it
was this, too, that had something to do with making them
so pleasant and sociable that night, for they were seldom so
pleasant and sociable afterward, and never treated me so

kindly as they did then. Yet this might have been owing
to my being something of a stranger to them, then; and our
being just out of port. But that very night they turned
about, and taught me a bitter lesson; but all in good time.

I have said, that seeing how agreeable they were getting,
and how friendly their manner was, I began to feel a sort
of compassion for them, grounded on their sad conditions as
amiable outcasts; and feeling so warm an interest in them,
and being full of pity, and being truly desirous of benefiting
them to the best of my poor powers, for I knew they were
but poor indeed, I made bold to ask one of them, whether
he was ever in the habit of going to church, when he was
ashore, or dropping in at the Floating Chapel I had seen
lying off the dock in the East River at New York; and
whether he would think it too much of a liberty, if I asked
him, if he had any good books in his chest. He stared a
little at first, but marking what good language I used, seeing
my civil bearing toward him, he seemed for a moment
to be filled with a certain involuntary respect for me, and
answered, that he had been to church once, some ten or
twelve years before, in London, and on a week-day had
helped to move the Floating Chapel round the Battery,
from the North River; and that was the only time he had
seen it. For his books, he said he did not know what I
meant by good books; but if I wanted the Newgate Calendar,
and Pirate's Own, he could lend them to me.

When I heard this poor sailor talk in this manner, showing
so plainly his ignorance and absence of proper views of
religion, I pitied him more and more, and contrasting my
own situation with his, I was grateful that I was different
from him; and I thought how pleasant it was, to feel wiser
and better than he could feel; though I was willing to confess
to myself, that it was not altogether my own good endeavors,
so much as my education, which I had received
from others, that had made me the upright and sensible boy
I at that time thought myself to be. And it was now,

that I began to feel a good degree of complacency and satisfaction
in surveying my own character; for, before this, I
had previously associated with persons of a very discreet
life, so that there was little opportunity to magnify myself,
by comparing myself with my neighbors.

Thinking that my superiority to him in a moral way
might sit uneasily upon this sailor, I thought it would soften
the matter down by giving him a chance to show his own
superiority to me, in a minor thing; for I was far from
being vain and conceited.

Having observed that at certain intervals a little bell was
rung on the quarter-deck by the man at the wheel; and
that as soon as it was heard, some one of the sailors forward
struck a large bell which hung on the forecastle; and having
observed that how many times soever the man astern
rang his bell, the man forward struck his—tit for tat,—I
inquired of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing
meant; and whether, as the big bell hung right over
the scuttle that went down to the place where the watch
below were sleeping, such a ringing every little while would
not tend to disturb them and beget unpleasant dreams; and
in asking these questions I was particular to address him in
a civil and condescending way, so as to show him very
plainly that I did not deem myself one whit better than he
was, that is, taking all things together, and not going into
particulars. But to my great surprise and mortification, he
in the rudest kind of manner laughed aloud in my face, and
called me a “Jimmy Dux,” though that was not my real
name, and he must have known it; and also the “son of a
farmer,” though as I have previously related, my father was a
great merchant and French importer in Broad-street in New
York. And then he began to laugh and joke about me, with
the other sailors, till they all got round me, and if I had not
felt so terribly angry, I should certainly have felt very much
like a fool. But my being so angry prevented me from
feeling foolish, which is very lucky for people in a passion.