21. CHAPTER XXI.
A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN.
The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding
chapter was the bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who
hitherto had been quite silent and reserved, as if from some
conscious inferiority, though he had shipped as an ordinary
seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed his duty very
well.
When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind
of whales they were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively,
and after garnering in their ignorance, all at once
broke out, and astonished every body by his intimate acquaintance
with the monsters.
“They ar'n't sperm whales,” said Larry, “their spouts
ar'n't bushy enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they
wouldn't stay up so long; they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they
ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't Fin-backs, for you won't
catch a Fin-back so near a ship; they ar'n't Greenland
whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell
ye, men, them's Crinkum-crankum whales.”
“And what are them?” said a sailor.
“Why, them is whales that can't be cotched.”
Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to
the sea in a whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many
times; no one but Jackson ventured to dispute his opinion;
and even Jackson did not press him very hard. And ever
after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning all
strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage;
for whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the
deep than any other class of seamen.
This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service,
and that was the reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved;
since he well knew that merchant seamen generally
affect a certain superiority to “blubber-boilers,” as they contemptuously
style those who hunt the leviathan. But Larry
turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well understood
his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump
to an order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he
might otherwise have encountered.
He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat
slanting forward over the bridge of his nose, with his eyes
cast down, and seemed always examining your boots, when
speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk about the wild
places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of Madagascar,
where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people
in that remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with
a sentimental distaste for civilized society. When opportunity
offered, he never omitted extolling the delights of the
free and easy Indian Ocean.
“Why,” said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual,
“in Madagasky there, they don't wear any togs at all, nothing
but a bowline round the midships; they don't have no
dinners, but keeps a dinin' all day off fat pigs and dogs; they
don't go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin' all the time;
and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they
make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of 'baccy, too, I
tell ye. Fine country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!”
To tell the truth, this Larry dealt in some illiberal insinuations
against civilization.
“And what's the use of bein' snivelized?” said he to
me one night during our watch on deck; “snivelized chaps
only learns the way to take on 'bout life, and snivel. You
don't see any Methodist chaps feelin' dreadful about their
souls; you don't see any darned beggars and pesky constables
in
Madagasky, I tell ye; and none o' them kings there gets
their big toes pinched by the gout. Blast Ameriky, I say.”
Indeed, this Larry was rather cutting in his innuendoes.
“Are you now, Buttons, any better off for bein' snivelized?”
coming close up to me and eying the wreck of my
gaff-topsail-boots very steadfastly. “No; you a'rn't a bit—
but you're a good deal worse for it, Buttons. I tell ye, ye
wouldn't have been to sea here, leadin' this dog's life, if you
hadn't been snivelized—that's the cause why, now. Snivelization
has been the ruin on ye; and it's spiled me complete;
I might have been a great man in Madagasky; it's too
darned bad! Blast Ameriky, I say.” And in bitter grief
at the social blight upon his whole past present, and future,
Larry turned away, pulling his hat still lower down over the
bridge of his nose.
In strong contrast to Larry, was a young man-of-war's
man we had, who went by the name of “Gun-Deck,” from
his always talking of sailor life in the navy. He was a
little fellow with a small face and a prodigious mop of brown
hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide,
braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he
particularly prided himself upon his feet, which were quite
small; and when we washed down decks of a morning,
never mind how chilly it might be, he always took off his
boots, and went paddling about like a duck, turning out his
pretty toes to show his charming feet.
He had served in the armed steamers during the Seminole
War in Florida, and had a good deal to say about sailing
up the rivers there, through the everglades, and popping off
Indians on the banks. I remember his telling a story about
a party being discovered at quite a distance from them; but
one of the savages was made very conspicuous by a pewter
plate, which he wore round his neck, and which glittered in
the sun. This plate proved his death; for, according to
Gun-Deck, he himself shot it through the middle, and the
ball entered the wearer's heart. It was a rat-killing war,
he said.
Gun-Deck had touched at Cadiz: had been to Gibralter;
and ashore at Marseilles. He had sunned himself in the
Bay of Naples: eaten figs and oranges in Messina; and
cheerfully lost one of his hearts at Malta, among the ladies
there. And about all these things, he talked like a romantic
man-of-war's man, who had seen the civilized world, and
loved it; found it good, and a comfortable place to live in.
So he and Larry never could agree in their respective views
of civilization, and of savagery, of the Mediterranean and
Madagasky.
