15. CHAPTER XV.
THE MELANCHOLY STATE OF HIS WARDROBE.
And now that I have been speaking of the captain's old
clothes, I may as well speak of mine.
It was very early in the month of June that we sailed;
and I had greatly rejoiced that it was that time of the year;
for it would be warm and pleasant upon the ocean, I thought;
and my voyage would be like a summer excursion to the
sea shore, for the benefit of the salt water, and a change
of scene and society.
So I had not given myself much concern about what I
should wear; and deemed it wholly unnecessary to provide
myself with a great outfit of pilot-cloth jackets, and trowsers,
and Guernsey frocks, and oil-skin suits, and sea-boots,
and many other things, which old seamen carry in their
chests. But one reason was, that I did not have the money
to buy them with, even if I had wanted to. So in addition
to the clothes I had brought from home, I had only bought
a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and a belt and knife, as I have
previously related, which gave me a sea outfit, something
like the Texian rangers', whose uniform, they say, consists
of a shirt collar and a pair of spurs.
But I was not many days at sea, when I found that my
shore clothing, or “long togs,” as the sailors call them, were
but ill adapted to the life I now led. When I went aloft,
at my yard-arm gymnastics, my pantaloons were all the time
ripping and splitting in every direction, particularly about
the seat, owing to their not being cut sailor-fashion, with low
waistbands, and to wear without suspenders. So that I was
often placed in most unpleasant predicaments, straddling the
rigging, sometimes in plain sight of the cabin, with my table
linen exposed in the most inelegant and ungentlemanly manner
possible.
And worse than all, my best pair of pantaloons, and the
pair I most prided myself upon, was a very conspicuous and
remarkable looking pair.
I had had them made to order by our village tailor, a
little fat man, very thin in the legs, and who used to say he
imported the latest fashions direct from Paris; though all the
fashion plates in his shop were very dirty with fly-marks.
Well, this tailor made the pantaloons I speak of, and
while he had them in hand, I used to call and see him
two or three times a day to try them on, and hurry him forward;
for he was an old man with large round spectacles,
and could not see very well, and had no one to help him but
a sick wife, with five grandchildren to take care of; and
besides that, he was such a great snuff-taker, that it interfered
with his business; for he took several pinches for every
stitch, and would sit snuffling and blowing his nose over my
pantaloons, till I used to get disgusted with him. Now,
this old tailor had shown me the pattern, after which he
intended to make my pantaloons; but I improved upon it,
and bade him have a slit on the outside of each leg, at the
foot, to button up with a row of six brass bell buttons; for
a grown-up cousin of mine, who was a great sportsman, used
to wear a beautiful pair of pantaloons, made precisely in that
way.
And these were the very pair I now had at sea; the
sailors made a great deal of fun of them, and were all the
time calling on each other to “twig” them; and they would
ask me to lend them a button or two, by way of a joke; and
then they would ask me if I was not a soldier. Showing
very plainly that they had no idea that my pantaloons were
a very genteel pair, made in the height of the sporting fashion,
and copied from my cousin's, who was a young man of
fortune and drove a tilbury.
When my pantaloons ripped and tore, as I have said, I
did my best to mend and patch them; but not being much
of a sempstress, the more I patched the more they parted;
because I put my patches on, without heeding the joints of
the legs, which only irritated my poor pants the more, and
put them out of temper.
Nor must I forget my boots, which were almost new
when I left home. They had been my Sunday boots, and
fitted me to a charm. I never had had a pair of boots that I
liked better; I used to turn my toes out when I walked in
them, unless it was night time, when no one could see me,
and I had something else to think of; and I used to keep
looking at them during church; so that I lost a good deal
of the sermon. In a word, they were a beautiful pair of
boots. But all this only unfitted them the more for sea-service;
as I soon discovered. They had very high heels,
which were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and
several times came near pitching me overboard; and the
salt water made them shrink in such a manner, that they
pinched me terribly about the instep; and I was obliged to
gash them cruelly, which went to my very heart. The legs
were quite long, coming a good way up toward my knees,
and the edges were mounted with red morocco. The sailors
used to call them my “gaff-topsail-boots.” And sometimes
they used to call me “Boots,” and sometimes “Buttons,”
on account of the ornaments on my pantaloons and shooting-jacket.
At last, I took their advice, and “razeed” them, as they
phrased it. That is, I amputated the legs, and shaved off
the heels to the bare soles; which, however, did not much
improve them, for it made my feet feel flat as flounders,
and besides, brought me down in the world, and made me
slip and slide about the decks, as I used to at home, when I
wore straps on the ice.
As for my tarpaulin hat, it was a very cheap one; and
therefore proved a real sham and shave; it leaked like an
old shingle roof; and in a rain storm, kept my hair wet and
disagreeable. Besides, from lying down on deck in it, during
the night watches, it got bruised and battered, and lost
all its beauty; so that it was unprofitable every way.
But I had almost forgotten my shooting-jacket, which
was made of moleskin. Every day, it grew smaller and
smaller, particularly after a rain, until at last I thought it
would completely exhale, and leave nothing but the bare
seams, by way of a skeleton, on my back. It became unspeakably
unpleasant, when we got into rather cold weather,
crossing the Banks of Newfoundland, when the only way I
had to keep warm during the night, was to pull on my
waistcoat and my roundabout, and then clap the shooting-jacket
over all. This made it pinch me under the arms,
and it vexed, irritated, and tormented me every way; and
used to incommode my arms seriously when I was pulling
the ropes; so much so, that the mate asked me once if I
had the cramp.
I may as well here glance at some trials and tribulations
of a similar kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any
sort; for the thought of them had never entered my mind
before going to sea; so that I was obliged to sleep on the
bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship pitched violently,
and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like
an Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a tree
like a crucifix.
I have already mentioned my total want of table-tools;
never dreaming, that, in this respect, going to sea as a sailor
was something like going to a boarding-school, where you
must furnish your own spoon and knife, fork, and napkin.
But at length, I was so happy as to barter with a steerage
passenger a silk handkerchief of mine for a half-gallon iron
pot, with hooks to it, to hang on a grate; and this pot I
used to present at the cook-house for my allowance of coffee
and tea. It gave me a good deal of trouble, though, to keep
it clean, being much disposed to rust; and the hooks sometimes
scratched my face when I was drinking; and it was
unusually large and heavy; so that my breakfasts were deprived
of all ease and satisfaction, and became a toil and a
labor to me. And I was forced to use the same pot for my
bean-soup, three times a week, which imparted to it a bad
flavor for coffee.
I can not tell how I really suffered in many ways for
my improvidence and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill
provided with every thing calculated to make my situation
at all comfortable, or even tolerable. In time, my wretched
“long togs” began to drop off my back, and I looked
like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags
and the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought
what my friends at home would have said, if they could
but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in my miserable
shooting-jacket, when I considered that that degradation
and shame never could overtake me; yet, I thought it
a galling mockery, when I remembered that my sisters had
promised to tell all inquiring friends, that Wellingborough
had gone “abroad;” just as if I was visiting Europe on a
tour with my tutor, as poor simple Mr. Jones had hinted to
the captain.
Still, in spite of the melancholy which sometimes overtook
me, there were several little incidents that made me
forget myself in the contemplation of the strange and to me
most wonderful sights of the sea.
And perhaps nothing struck into me such a feeling of
wild romance, as a view of the first vessel we spoke. It
was of a clear sunny afternoon, and she came bearing down
upon us, a most beautiful sight, with all her sails spread
wide. She came very near, and passed under our stern;
and as she leaned over to the breeze, showed her decks fore
and aft; and I saw the strange sailors grouped upon the
forecastle, and the cook looking out of his cook-house with a
ladle in his hand, and the captain in a green jacket sitting
on the taffrail with a speaking-trumpet.
And here, had this vessel come out of the infinite blue
ocean, with all these human beings on board, and the smoke
tranquilly mounting up into the sea-air from the cook's funnel
as if it were a chimney in a city; and every thing looking
so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst of what
to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.
Hoisted at her mizzen-peak was a red flag, with a turreted
white castle in the middle, which looked foreign enough,
and made me stare all the harder.
Our captain, who had put on another hat and coat, and
was lounging in an elegant attitude on the poop, now put
his high polished brass trumpet to his mouth, and said in a
very rude voice for conversation, “Where from?”
To which the other captain rejoined with some outlandish
Dutch gibberish, of which we could only make out, that the
ship belonged to Hamburg, as her flag denoted.
Hamburg! Bless my soul! and here I am on the
great Atlantic Ocean, actually beholding a ship from Holland!
It was passing strange. In my intervals of leisure
from other duties, I followed the strange ship till she was
quite a little speck in the distance.
I could not but be struck with the manner of the two
sea-captains during their brief interview. Seated at their
ease on their respective “poops” toward the stern of their
ships, while the sailors were obeying their behests; they
touched hats to each other, exchanged compliments, and
drove on, with all the indifference of two Arab horsemen
accosting each other on an airing in the Desert. To them,
I suppose, the great Atlantic Ocean was a puddle.
