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

It was a very bright day. The sky and water were both
of the same deep hue; and the air felt warm and sunny; so
that we threw off our jackets. I could hardly believe that
I was sailing in the same ship I had been in during the night,
when every thing had been so lonely and dim; and I could
hardly imagine that this was the same ocean, now so beautiful
and blue, that during part of the night-watch had rolled
along so black and forbidding.

There were little traces of sunny clouds all over the heavens;
and little fleeces of foam all over the sea; and the ship
made a strange, musical noise under her bows, as she glided
along, with her sails all still. It seemed a pity to go to
work at such a time; and if we could only have sat in the
windlass again; or if they would have let me go out on the
bowsprit, and lay down between the man-ropes there, and
look over at the fish in the water, and think of home, I should
have been almost happy for a time.

I had now completely got over my sea-sickness, and felt
very well; at least in my body, though my heart was far
from feeling right; so that I could now look around me, and
make observations.

And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to
behold and wonder at; to me, who was on my first voyage.
What most amazed me was the sight of the great ocean

itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round us, on both
sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen but
water—water—water; not a single glimpse of green shore,
not the smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never
did I realize till now what the ocean was: how grand and
majestic, how solitary, and boundless, and beautiful and blue;
for that day it gave no tokens of squalls or hurricanes, such
as I had heard my father tell of; nor could I imagine, how
any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be lashed
into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and
great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.

As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help
calling to mind my little brother's face, when he was sleeping
an infant in the cradle. It had just such a happy, careless,
innocent look; and every happy little wave seemed
gamboling about like a thoughtless little kid in a pasture;
and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it
wanted to be patted and caressed. They seemed all live
things with hearts in them, that could feel; and I almost
felt grieved, as we sailed in among them, scattering them
under our broad bows in sun-flakes, and riding over them
like a great elephant among lambs.

But what seemed perhaps the most strange to me of all,
was a certain wonderful rising and falling of the sea; I do
not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide heaving
and swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something
I can not very well describe; but I know very well
what it was, and how it affected me. It made me almost
dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes off it,
it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.

I felt as if in a dream all the time; and when I could
shut the ship out, almost thought I was in some new, fairy
world, and expected to hear myself called to, out of the clear
blue air, or from the depths of the deep blue sea. But I
did not have much leisure to indulge in such thoughts; for
the men were now getting some stun'-sails ready to hoist

aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and
these stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such
times, away out beyond the ends of the yards, where they
overhang the wide water, like the wings of a great bird.

For my own part, I could do but little to help the rest,
not knowing the name of any thing, or the proper way to
go about aught. Besides, I felt very dreamy, as I said before;
and did not exactly know where, or what I was; every
thing was so strange and new.

While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the
deck, and the sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting
them ready to hoist, the mate ordered me to do a great
many simple things, none of which could I comprehend,
owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing me
stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at
me, and call me all manner of names, and the sailors would
laugh and wink to each other, but durst not go farther than
that, for fear of the mate, who in his own presence would
not let any body laugh at me but himself.

However, I tried to wake up as much as I could, and
keep from dreaming with my eyes open; and being, at bottom,
a smart, apt lad, at last I managed to learn a thing
or two, so that I did not appear so much like a fool as at
first.

People who have never gone to sea for the first time as
sailors, can not imagine how puzzling and confounding it is.
It must be like going into a barbarous country, where they
speak a strange dialect, and dress in strange clothes, and
live in strange houses. For sailors have their own names,
even for things that are familiar ashore; and if you call a
thing by its shore name, you are laughed at for an ignoramus
and a land-lubber. This first day I speak of, the mate
having ordered me to draw some water, I asked him where
I was to get the pail; when I thought I had committed
some dreadful crime; for he flew into a great passion, and
said they never had any pails at sea, and then I learned that

they were always called buckets. And once I was talking
about sticking a little wooden peg into a bucket to stop a
leak, when he flew out again, and said there were no pegs
at sea, only plugs. And just so it was with every thing
else.

But besides all this, there is such an infinite number of
totally new names of new things to learn, that at first it
seemed impossible for me to master them all. If you have
ever seen a ship, you must have remarked what a thicket
of ropes there are; and how they all seemed mixed and
entangled together like a great skein of yarn. Now the
very smallest of these ropes has its own proper name, and
many of them are very lengthy, like the names of young
royal princes, such as the starboard-main-top-gallant-bow-line,
or the larboard-fore-top-sail-clue-line.

I think it would not be a bad plan to have a grand new
naming of a ship's ropes, as I have read, they once had a
simplifying of the classes of plants in Botany. It is really
wonderful how many names there are in the world. There
is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists give
to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is
something like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging,
and the sinews the small running ropes, that manage
all the motions.

I wonder whether mankind could not get along without
all these names, which keep increasing every day, and hour,
and moment; till at last the very air will be full of them;
and even in a great plain, men will be breathing each other's
breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they use, that
consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas. But
people seem to have a great love for names; for to know a
great many names, seems to look like knowing a good many
things; though I should not be surprised, if there were a
great many more names, than things in the world. But I
must quit this rambling, and return to my story.

At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards;

and as soon as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound
like a horse, and the breeze blowing more and more, she
went plunging along, shaking off the foam from her bows,
like foam from a bridle-bit. Every mast and timber seemed
to have a pulse in it that was beating with life and joy; and
I felt a wild exulting in my own heart, and felt as if I would
be glad to bound along so round the world.

Then was I first conscious of a wonderful thing in me,
that responded to all the wild commotion of the outer world;
and went reeling on and on with the planets in their orbits,
and was lost in one delirious throb at the center of the All.
A wild bubbling and bursting was at my heart, as if a hidden
spring had just gushed out there; and my blood ran
tingling along my frame, like mountain brooks in spring
freshets.

Yes! yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea
life, this briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts,
and you breathe the very breath that the great whales respire!
Let me roll around the globe, let me rock upon the
sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an eternal
breeze astern, and an endless sea before!

But how soon these raptures abated, when after a brief
idle interval, we were again set to work, and I had a vile
commission to clean out the chicken coops, and make up the
beds of the pigs in the long-boat.

Miserable dog's life is this of the sea! commanded like a
slave, and set to work like an ass! vulgar and brutal men
lording it over me, as if I were an African in Alabama.
Yes, yes, blow on, ye breezes, and make a speedy end to this
abominable voyage!