University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

While we sat eating our beef and biscuit, two of the
men got into a dispute, about who had been sea-faring the
longest; when Jackson, who had mixed the burgoo, called
upon them in a loud voice to cease their clamor, for he would
decide the matter for them. Of this sailor, I shall have
something more to say, as I get on with my narrative; so,
I will here try to describe him a little.

Did you ever see a man, with his hair shaved off, and
just recovered from the yellow fever? Well, just such a
looking man was this sailor. He was as yellow as gamboge,
had no more whisker on his cheek, than I have on my elbows.
His hair had fallen out, and left him very bald, except in
the nape of his neck, and just behind the ears, where it was
stuck over with short little tufts, and looked like a worn-out
shoe-brush. His nose had broken down in the middle, and
he squinted with one eye, and did not look very straight out
of the other. He dressed a good deal like a Bowery boy;
for he despised the ordinary sailor-rig; wearing a pair of
great over-all blue trowsers, fastened with suspenders, and
three red woolen shirts, one over the other; for he was subject
to the rheumatism, and was not in good health, he said;
and he had a large white wool hat, with a broad rolling
brim. He was a native of New York city, and had a good
deal to say about highbinders, and rowdies, whom he denounced
as only good for the gallows; but I thought he
looked a good deal like a highbinder himself.

His name, as I have said, was Jackson; and he told us,

he was a near relation of General Jackson of New Orleans,
and swore terribly, if any one ventured to question what he
asserted on that head. In fact he was a great bully, and
being the best seaman on board, and very overbearing every
way, all the men were afraid of him, and durst not contradict
him, or cross his path in any thing. And what made
this more wonderful was, that he was the weakest man,
bodily, of the whole crew; and I have no doubt that young
and small as I was then, compared to what I am now, I
could have thrown him down. But he had such an over-awing
way with him; such a deal of brass and impudence,
such an unflinching face, and withal was such a hideous
looking mortal, that Satan himself would have run from
him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was
by nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without
education; and understood human nature to a kink, and
well knew whom he had to deal with; and then, one glance
of his squinting eye, was as good as a knock-down, for it was
the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that I ever saw
lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it
must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate,
I would defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold,
and snaky, and deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I
would give much to forget that I have ever seen it; for it
haunts me to this day.

It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for
he had no beard, and no wrinkles, except small crows-feet
about the eyes. He might have seen thirty, or perhaps
fifty years. But according to his own account, he had been
to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he first went
as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta.
And according to his own account, too, he had passed
through every kind of dissipation and abandonment in the
worst parts of the world. He had served in Portuguese
slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a diabolical relish
used to tell of the middle-passage, where the slaves were

stowed, heel and point, like logs, and the suffocated and
dead were unmanaeled, and weeded out from the living every
morning, before washing down the decks; how he had been
in a slaving schooner, which being chased by an English
cruiser off Cape Verde, received three shots in her hull,
which raked through and through a whole file of slaves, that
were chained.

He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when
his ship lost a man every few days, and how they went
reeling ashore with the body, and got still more intoxicated
by way of precaution against the plague. He would talk
of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk
of sailors being poisoned at Canton with drugged “shampoo,”
for the sake of their money; and of the Malay ruffians, who
stopped ships in the straits of Gaspar, and always saved the
captain for the last, so as to make him point out where the
most valuable goods were stored.

His whole talk was of this kind; full of piracies, plagues
and poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in
his own individual career, which were almost incredible,
from the consideration that few men could have plunged into
such infamous vices, and clung to them so long, without
paying the death-penalty.

But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of
these things, and the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand;
like that of King Antiochus of Syria, who died a worse death,
history says, than if he had been stung out of the world by
wasps and hornets.

Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and
dregs of a man; he was thin as a shadow; nothing but
skin and bones; and sometimes used to complain, that it
hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I sometimes fancied,
it was the consciousness of his miserable, broken-down
condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in consequence
of his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye

me with such malevolence as he did. For I was young
and handsome, at least my mother so thought me, and as
soon as I became a little used to the sea, and shook off my
low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my
cheeks, and, spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty;
whereas he was being consumed by an incurable malady,
that was eating up his vitals, and was more fit for a hospital
than a ship.

As I am sometimes by nature inclined to indulge in unauthorized
surmisings about the thoughts going on with regard
to me, in the people I meet; especially if I have reason
to think they dislike me; I will not put it down for a certainty
that what I suspected concerning this Jackson relative
to his thoughts of me, was really the truth. But only state
my honest opinion, and how it struck me at the time; and
even now, I think I was not wrong. And indeed, unless it
was so, how could I account to myself, for the shudder that
would run through me, when I caught this man gazing at
me, as I often did; for he was apt to be dumb at times,
and would sit with his eyes fixed, and his teeth set, like a
man in the moody madness.

I well remember the first time I saw him, and how I
was startled at his eye, which was even then fixed upon me.
He was standing at the ship's helm, being the first man that
got there, when a steersman was called for by the pilot; for
this Jackson was always on the alert for easy duties, and
used to plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming
them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in
poor health, he was very swift on the legs; at least when
a good place was to be jumped to; though that might only
have been a sort of spasmodic exertion under strong inducements,
which every one knows the greatest invalids will
sometimes show.

And though the sailors were always very bitter against
any thing like sogering, as they called it; that is, any thing
that savored of a desire to get rid of downright hard work;

yet, I observed that, though this Jackson was a notorious
old soger the whole voyage (I mean, in all things not perilous
to do, from which he was far from hanging back), and in
truth was a great veteran that way, and one who must have
passed unhurt through many campaigns; yet, they never
presumed to call him to account in any way; or to let him
so much as think, what they thought of his conduct. But I
often heard them call him many hard names behind his back;
and sometimes, too, when, perhaps, they had just been tenderly
inquiring after his health before his face. They all stood
in mortal fear of him; and cringed and fawned about him
like so many spaniels; and used to rub his back, after he
was undressed and lying in his bunk; and used to run up
on deck to the cook-house, to warm some cold coffee for
him; and used to fill his pipe, and give him chews of tobacco,
and mend his jackets and trowsers; and used to
watch, and tend, and nurse him every way. And all the
time, he would sit scowling on them, and found fault with
what they did; and I noticed, that those who did the most
for him, and cringed the most before him, were the very
ones he most abused; while two or three who held more
aloof, he treated with a little consideration.

It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole
ship's company submit so to the whims of one poor miserable
man like Jackson. I only know that so it was; but
I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye in his head,
or had had a different face from what he did have, they
would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished
me, to see that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust
and good-humored young man from Belfast in Ireland, was
a person of no mark or influence among the crew; but on
the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon, and made
a butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually
being abused and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to
hate him cordially, because of his great strength and fine
person, and particularly because of his red cheeks.

But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for
an able-seaman, was not much of a sailor; and that always
lowers a man in the eyes of a ship's company; I mean,
when he ships for an able-seaman, but is not able to do the
duty of one. For sailors are of three classes—able-seamen,
ordinary-seamen, and boys; and they receive different wages
according to their rank. Generally, a ship's company of
twelve men will only have five or six able seamen, who if
they prove to understand their duty every way (and that is
no small matter either, as I shall hereafter show, perhaps),
are looked up to, and thought much of by the ordinary-seamen
and boys, who reverence their very pea-jackets, and lay
up their sayings in their hearts.

But you must not think from this, that persons called boys
aboard merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure,
I myself was called a boy, and a boy I was. No. In
merchant-ships, a boy means a green-hand, a landsman on
his first voyage. And never mind if he is old enough to be
a grandfather, he is still called a boy; and boys' work is put
upon him.

But I am straying off from what I was going to say about
Jackson's putting an end to the dispute between the two
sailors in the forecastle after breakfast. After they had been
disputing some time about who had been to sea the longest,
Jackson told them to stop talking; and then bade one of
them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor's age
just like a horse's—by his teeth. So the man laughed, and
opened his mouth; and Jackson made him step out under
the scuttle, where the light came down from deck; and
then made him throw his head back, while he looked into
it, and probed a little with his jack-knife, like a baboon peering
into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just as
if I had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making
signs to cut his throat, and he all the while sitting stock
still, with the lather on, to be shaved. For I watched Jackson's
eye and saw it snapping, and a sort of going in and out,

very quick, as if it were something like a forked tongue; and
somehow, I felt as if he were longing to kill the man; but
at last he grew more composed, and after concluding his examination,
said, that the first man was the oldest sailor, for
the ends of his teeth were the evenest and most worn down;
which, he said, arose from eating so much hard sea-biscuit;
and this was the reason he could tell a sailor's age like a
horse's.

At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other,
as much as to say—come, boys, let's laugh; and they did
laugh; and declared it was a rare joke.

This was always the way with them. They made a
point of shouting out, whenever Jackson said any thing with
a grin; that being the sign to them that he himself thought
it funny; though I heard many good jokes from others pass
off without a smile; and once Jackson himself (for, to tell
the truth, he sometimes had a comical way with him, that
is, when his back did not ache) told a truly funny story, but
with a grave face; when, not knowing how he meant it,
whether for a laugh or otherwise, they all sat still, waiting
what to do, and looking perplexed enough; till at last Jackson
roared out upon them for a parcel of fools and idiots;
and told them to their beards, how it was; that he had purposely
put on his grave face, to see whether they would not
look grave, too; even when he was telling something that
ought to split their sides. And with that, he flouted, and
jeered at them, and laughed them all to scorn; and broke
out in such a rage, that his lips began to glue together at
the corners with a fine white foam.

He seemed to be full of hatred and gall against every
thing and every body in the world; as if all the world was
one person, and had done him some dreadful harm, that was
rankling and festering in his heart. Sometimes I thought
he was really crazy; and often felt so frightened at him,
that I thought of going to the captain about it, and telling
him Jackson ought to be confined, lest he should do some

terrible thing at last. But upon second thoughts, I always
gave it up; for the captain would only have called me a
fool, and sent me forward again.

But you must not think that all the sailors were alike in
abasing themselves before this man. No: there were three
or four who used to stand up sometimes against him; and
when he was absent at the wheel, would plot against him
among the other sailors, and tell them what a shame and
ignominy it was, that such a poor miserable wretch should
be such a tyrant over much better men than himself. And
they begged and conjured them as men, to put up with it no
longer, but the very next time, that Jackson presumed to
play the dictator, that they should all withstand him, and
let him know his place. Two or three times nearly all
hands agreed to it, with the exception of those who used to
slink off during such discussions; and swore that they would
not any more submit to be ruled by Jackson. But when
the time came to make good their oaths, they were mum
again, and let every thing go on the old way; so that those
who had put them up to it, had to bear all the brunt of
Jackson's wrath by themselves. And though these last
would stick up a little at first, and even mutter something
about a fight to Jackson; yet in the end, finding themselves
unbefriended by the rest, they would gradually become silent,
and leave the field to the tyrant, who would then fly out
worse than ever, and dare them to do their worst, and jeer
at them for white-livered poltroons, who did not have a
mouthful of heart in them. At such times, there were no
bounds to his contempt; and indeed, all the time he seemed
to have even more contempt than hatred, for every body and
every thing.

As for me, I was but a boy; and at any time aboard ship,
a boy is expected to keep quiet, do what he is bid, never presume
to interfere, and seldom to talk, unless spoken to. For
merchant sailors have a great idea of their dignity, and superiority
to greenhorns and landsmen, who know nothing

about a ship; and they seem to think, that an able seaman
is a great man; at least a much greater man than a little
boy. And the able seamen in the Highlander had such
grand notions about their seamanship, that I almost thought
that able seamen received diplomas, like those given at colleges;
and were made a sort A.M.'s, or Masters of Arts.

But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say,
and well knew that my best plan was to get along peaceably
with every body, and indeed endure a good deal before showing
fight, yet I could not avoid Jackson's evil eye, nor escape
his bitter enmity. And his being my foe, set many of the
rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak out for
me before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of
Ishmael in the ship, without a single friend or companion;
and I began to feel a hatred growing up in me against the
whole crew—so much so, that I prayed against it, that it
might not master my heart completely, and so make a fiend
of me, something like Jackson.