10. CHAPTER X.
HE IS VERY MUCH FRIGHTENED; THE SAILORS ABUSE HIM; AND
HE BECOMES MISERABLE AND FORLORN.
While the scene last described was going on, we were
all startled by a horrid groaning noise down in the forecastle;
and all at once some one came rushing up the scuttle in his
shirt, clutching something in his hand, and trembling and
shrieking in the most frightful manner, so that I thought
one of the sailors must be murdered below.
But it all passed in a moment; and while we stood
aghast at the sight, and almost before we knew what it was,
the shrieking man jumped over the bows into the sea, and
we saw him no more. Then there was a great uproar; the
sailors came running up on deck; and the chief mate ran
forward, and learning what had happened, began to yell
out his orders about the sails and yards; and we all went to
pulling and hauling the ropes, till at last the ship lay almost
still on the water. Then they loosed a boat, which kept
pulling round the ship for more than an hour, but they never
caught sight of the man. It seemed that he was one of the
sailors who had been brought aboard dead drunk, and tumbled
into his bunk by his landlord; and there he had lain
till now. He must have suddenly waked up, I suppose,
raging mad with the delirium tremens, as the chief mate
called it, and finding himself in a strange silent place, and
knowing not how he had got there, he had rushed on deck,
and so, in a fit of frenzy, put an end to himself.
This event, happening at the dead of night, had a wonderfully
solemn and almost awful effect upon me. I would
have given the whole world, and the sun and moon, and all
the stars in heaven, if they had been mine, had I been safe
back at Mr. Jones', or still better, in my home on the
Hudson River. I thought it an ill-omened voyage, and
railed at the folly which had sent me to sea, sore against
the advice of my best friends, that is to say, my mother and
sisters.
Alas! poor Wellingborough, thought I, you will never
see your home any more. And in this melancholy mood I
went below, when the watch had expired, which happened
soon after. But to my terror, I found that the suicide had
been occupying the very bunk which I had appropriated to
myself, and there was no other place for me to sleep in.
The thought of lying down there now, seemed too horrible
to me, and what made it worse, was the way in which the
sailors spoke of my being frightened. And they took this
opportunity to tell me what a hard and wicked life I had
entered upon, and how that such things happened frequently
at sea, and they were used to it. But I did not believe this;
for when the suicide came rushing and shrieking up the scuttle,
they looked as frightened as I did; and besides that,
and what makes their being frightened still plainer, is the
fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they could
have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed
right by them. However, they lay in their bunks smoking,
and kept talking on some time in this strain, and advising
me as soon as ever I got home to pin my ears back, so as
not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into the interior
of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush,
far off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow,
and out of sight of even the smallest puddle of rainwater.
This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it
was so true and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so
false-hearted and insincere; but for all that, in spite of the
sickness at my heart, it made me mad, and stung me to the
quick, that they should speak of me as a poor trembling
coward, who could never be brought to endure the hardships
of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that
I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling
me of it. And they did not say I was cowardly, because
they perceived it in me, but because they merely supposed I
must be, judging, no doubt, from their own secret thoughts
about themselves; for I felt sure that the suicide frightened
them very badly. And at last, being provoked to desperation
by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I
might better have kept silent; for they now all united to
abuse me. They asked me what business I, a boy like me,
had to go to sea, and take the bread out of the mouth of
honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's place; and asked
me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I
was a gentleman with white hands; and if I ever
should
be, they would like nothing better than to ship aboard my
vessel and stir up a mutiny. And one of them, whose
name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal more
to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him ever
after, for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he
would be the death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in
the rigging near
him, he would make nothing of pitching
me overboard; and that he swore too, with an oath. At
first, all this nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and
then I could not believe that they meant what they said, or
that they could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how
could I help seeing, that the men who could thus talk to a
poor, friendless boy, on the very first night of his voyage to
sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I loathed,
detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting
heart and soul, and I thought myself the most forlorn
and miserable wretch that ever breathed. May I never be
a man, thought I, if to be a boy is to be such a wretch.
And I wailed and wept, and my heart cracked within me,
but all the time I defied them through my teeth, and dared
them to do their worst.
At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving
me awake, seated on a chest with my face bent over my
knees between my hands. And there I sat, till at length
the dull beating against the ship's bows, and the silence
around, soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
