24. CHAPTER XXIV.
HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT
JAGO'S MONKEY.
But we have not got to Liverpool yet; though, as there
is little more to be said concerning the passage out, the
Highlander may as well make sail and get there as soon as
possible. The brief interval will perhaps be profitably employed
in relating what progress I made in learning the
duties of a sailor.
After my heroic feat in loosing the main-skysail, the mate
entertained good hopes of my becoming a rare mariner. In
the fullness of his heart, he ordered me to turn over the
superintendence of the chicken-coop to the Lancashire boy;
which I did, very willingly. After that, I took care to
show the utmost alacrity in running aloft, which by this
time became mere fun for me; and nothing delighted me
more than to sit on one of the topsail-yards, for hours together,
helping Max or the Greenlander as they worked at
the rigging.
At sea, the sailors are continually engaged in “parcelling,”
“serving,” and in a thousand ways ornamenting and
repairing the numberless shrouds and stays; mending sails,
or turning one side of the deck into a rope-walk, where they
manufacture a clumsy sort of twine, called spun-yarn.
This is spun with a winch; and many an hour the Lancashire
boy had to play the part of an engine, and contribute
the motive power. For material, they use odds and ends
of old rigging called “junk,” the yarns of which are picked
to pieces, and then twisted into new combinations, something
as most books are manufactured.
This “junk” is bought at the junk shops along the
wharves; outlandish looking dens, generally subterranean,
full of old iron, old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated
tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in
tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum. They
look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for
sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with
keels and cordage, swept ashore in a gale.
Yes, I was now as nimble as a monkey in the rigging,
and at the cry of “tumble up there, my hearties, and take
in sail,” I was among the first ground-and-lofty tumblers,
that sprang aloft at the word.
But the first time we reefed top-sails of a dark night, and
I found myself hanging over the yard with eleven others,
the ship plunging and rearing like a mad horse, till I felt
like being jerked off the spar; then, indeed, I thought of a
feather-bed at home, and hung on with tooth and nail; with
no chance for snoring. But a few repetitions, soon made
me used to it; and before long, I tied my reef-point as
quickly and expertly as the best of them; never making
what they call a “granny-knot,” and slipt down on deck
by the bare stays, instead of the shrouds. It is surprising,
how soon a boy overcomes his timidity about going aloft.
For my own part, my nerves became as steady as the earth's
diameter, and I felt as fearless on the royal yard, as Sam
Patch on the cliff of Niagara. To my amazement, also, I
found, that running up the rigging at sea, especially during
a squall, was much easier than while lying in port. For as
you always go up on the windward side, and the ship leans
over, it makes more of a stairs of the rigging; whereas, in
harbor, it is almost straight up and down.
Besides, the pitching and rolling only imparts a pleasant
sort of vitality to the vessel; so that the difference in being
aloft in a ship at sea, and a ship in harbor, is pretty much
the same, as riding a real live horse and a wooden one.
And even if the live charger should pitch you over his head,
that would be much more satisfactory, than an inglorious
fall from the other.
I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and
royals in a hard blow; which duty required two hands on
the yard.
There was a wild delirium about it; a fine rushing of
the blood about the heart; and a glad, thrilling, and throbbing
of the whole system, to find yourself tossed up at every
pitch into the clouds of a stormy sky, and hovering like a
judgment angel between heaven and earth; both hands free,
with one foot in the rigging, and one somewhere behind you
in the air. The sail would fill out like a balloon, with a
report like a small cannon, and then collapse and sink away
into a handful. And the feeling of mastering the rebellious
canvas, and tying it down like a slave to the spar, and
binding it over and over with the gasket, had a touch of
pride and power in it, such as young King Richard must
have felt, when he trampled down the insurgents of Wat
Tyler.
As for steering, they never would let me go to the helm,
except during a calm, when I and the figure-head on the
bow were about equally employed.
By the way, that figure-head was a passenger I forgot to
make mention of before.
He was a gallant six-footer of a Highlander “in full fig,”
with bright tartans, bare knees, barred leggings, and blue
bonnet and the most vermilion of cheeks. He was game to
his wooden marrow, and stood up to it through thick and
thin; one foot a little advanced, and his right arm stretched
forward, daring on the waves. In a gale of wind it was
glorious to watch him standing at his post like a hero, and
plunging up and down the watery Highlands and Lowlands,
as the ship went foaming on her way. He was a veteran
with many wounds of many sea-fights; and when he got to
Liverpool a figure-head-builder there, amputated his left leg,
and gave him another wooden one, which I am sorry to say,
did not fit him very well, for ever after he looked as if he
limped. Then this figure-head-surgeon gave him another
nose, and touched up one eye, and repaired a rent in his
tartans. After that the painter came and made his toilet
all over again; giving him a new suit throughout, with a
plaid of a beautiful pattern.
I do not know what has become of Donald now, but I
hope he is safe and snug with a handsome pension in the
“Sailors'-Snug-Harbor” on Staten Island.
The reason why they gave me such a slender chance of
learning to steer was this. I was quite young and raw, and
steering a ship is a great art, upon which much depends;
especially the making a short passage; for if the helmsman
be a clumsy, careless fellow, or ignorant of his duty, he keeps
the ship going about in a melancholy state of indecision as to
its precise destination; so that on a voyage to Liverpool, it
may be pointing one while for Gibralter, then for Rotterdam,
and now for John o' Groat's; all of which is worse than
wasted time. Whereas, a true steersman keeps her to her
work night and day; and tries to make a bee-line from port
to port.
Then, in a sudden squall, inattention, or want of quickness
at the helm, might make the ship “lurch to”—or “bring
her by the lee.” And what those things are, the cabin passengers
would never find out, when they found themselves
going down, down, down, and bidding good-by forever to the
moon and stars.
And they little think, many of them, fine gentlemen and
ladies that they are, what an important personage, and how
much to be had in reverence, is the rough fellow in the pea-jacket,
whom they see standing at the wheel, now cocking
his eye aloft, and then peeping at the compass, or looking
out to windward.
Why, that fellow has all your lives and eternities in his
hand; and with one small and almost imperceptible motion
of a spoke, in a gale of wind, might give a vast deal of work
to surrogates and lawyers, in proving last wills and testaments.
Ay, you may well stare at him now. He does not look
much like a man who might play into the hands of an heir--at-law,
does he? Yet such is the case. Watch him close,
therefore; take him down into your state-room occasionally
after a stormy watch, and make a friend of him. A glass
of cordial will do it.
And if you or your heirs are interested with the under-writers,
then also have an eye on him. And if you remark,
that of the crew, all the men who come to the helm are
careless, or inefficient; and if you observe the captain scolding
them often, and crying out: “Luff, you rascal; she's
falling off!” or, “Keep her steady, you scoundrel, you're
boxing the compass!” then hurry down to your state-room,
and if you have not yet made a will, get out your stationery
and go at it; and when it is done, seal it up in a bottle,
like Columbus' log, and it may possibly drift ashore, when
you are drowned in the next gale of wind.
