University of Virginia Library

50. CHAPTER L.

As yet I have said nothing about how my friend, Harry,
got along as a sailor.

Poor Harry! a feeling of sadness, never to be comforted,
comes over me, even now when I think of you. For this
voyage that you went, but carried you part of the way to
that ocean grave, which has buried you up with your secrets,
and whither no mourning pilgrimage can be made.

But why this gloom at the thought of the dead? And
why should we not be glad? Is it, that we ever think of
them as departed from all joy? Is it, that we believe that
indeed they are dead? They revisit us not, the departed;
their voices no more ring in the air; summer may come, but
it is winter with them; and even in our own limbs we feel not
the sap that every spring renews the green life of the trees.

But Harry! you live over again, as I recall your image
before me. I see you, plain and palpable as in life; and can
make your existence obvious to others. Is he, then, dead,
of whom this may be said?

But Harry! you are mixed with a thousand strange forms,
the centaurs of fancy; half real and human, half wild and
grotesque. Divine imaginings, like gods, come down to the
groves of our Thessalies, and there, in the embrace of wild,
dryad reminiscences, beget the beings that astonish the world.

But Harry! though your image now roams in my Thessaly
groves, it is the same as of old; and among the droves
of mixed beings and centaurs, you show like a zebra, banding
with elks.

And indeed, in his striped Guernsey frock, dark glossy

skin and hair, Harry Bolton, mingling with the Highlander's
crew, looked not unlike the soft, silken quadruped-creole, that,
pursued by wild Bushmen, bounds through Caffrarian woods.

How they hunted you, Harry, my zebra! those ocean
barbarians, those unimpressible, uncivilized sailors of ours!
How they pursued you from bowsprit to mainmast, and
started you out of your every retreat!

Before the day of our sailing, it was known to the seamen
that the girlish youth, whom they daily saw near the sign
of the Clipper in Union-street, would form one of their homeward-bound
crew. Accordingly, they cast upon him many
a critical glance; but were not long in concluding that
Harry would prove no very great accession to their strength;
that the hoist of so tender an arm would not tell many hundred-weight
on the maintop-sail halyards. Therefore they
disliked him before they became acquainted with him; and
such dislikes, as every one knows, are the most inveterate,
and liable to increase. But even sailors are not blind to the
sacredness that hallows a stranger; and for a time, abstaining
from rudeness, they only maintained toward my friend a
cold and unsympathizing civility.

As for Harry, at first the novelty of the scene filled up
his mind; and the thought of being bound for a distant
land, carried with it, as with every one, a buoyant feeling
of undefinable expectation. And though his money was
now gone again, all but a sovereign or two, yet that troubled
him but little, in the first flush of being at sea.

But I was surprised, that one who had certainly seen
much of life, should evince such an incredible ignorance of
what was wholly inadmissible in a person situated as he
was. But perhaps his familiarity with lofty life, only the
less qualified him for understanding the other extreme. Will
you believe me, this Bury blade once came on deck in a
brocaded dressing-gown, embroidered slippers, and tasseled
smoking-cap, to stand his morning watch.

As soon as I beheld him thus arrayed, a suspicion, which

had previously crossed my mind, again recurred, and I almost
vowed to myself that, spite his protestations, Harry Bolton
never could have been at sea before, even as a Guinea-pig
in an Indiaman; for the slightest acquaintance with the
sea-life and sailors, should have prevented him, it would
seem, from enacting this folly.

“Who's that Chinese mandarin?” cried the mate, who
had made voyages to Canton. “Look you, my fine fellow,
douse that mainsail now, and furl it in a trice.”

“Sir?” said Harry, starting back. “Is not this the
morning watch, and is not mine a morning gown?”

But though, in my refined friend's estimation, nothing
could be more appropriate; in the mate's, it was the most
monstrous of incongruities; and the offensive gown and cap
were removed.

“It is too bad!” exclaimed Harry to me; “I meant to
lounge away the watch in that gown until coffee time;—
and I suppose your Hottentot of a mate won't permit a gentleman
to smoke his Turkish pipe of a morning; but by gad,
I'll wear straps to my pantaloons to spite him!”

Oh! that was the rock on which you split, poor Harry!
Incensed at the want of polite refinement in the mates and
crew, Harry, in a pet and pique, only determined to provoke
them the more; and the storm of indignation he raised very
soon overwhelmed him.

The sailors took a special spite to his chest, a large mahogany
one, which he had had made to order at a furniture
warehouse. It was ornamented with brass screw-heads,
and other devices; and was well filled with those articles
of the wardrobe in which Harry had sported through a
London season; for the various vests and pantaloons he had
sold in Liverpool, when in want of money, had not materially
lessened his extensive stock.

It was curious to listen to the various hints and opinings
thrown out by the sailors at the occasional glimpses they
had of this collection of silks, velvets, broadcloths, and satins.

I do not know exactly what they thought Harry had been;
but they seemed unanimous in believing that, by abandoning
his country, Harry had left more room for the gamblers.
Jackson even asked him to lift up the lower hem of his
trowsers, to test the color of his calves.

It is a noteworthy circumstance, that whenever a slender
made youth, of easy manners and polite address, happens to
form one of a ship's company, the sailors almost invariably
impute his sea-going to an irresistible necessity of decamping
from terra-firma in order to evade the constables.

These white-fingered gentry must be light-fingered too,
they say to themselves, or they would not be after putting
their hands into our tar. What else can bring them to sea?

Cogent and conclusive this; and thus Harry, from the
very beginning, was put down for a very equivocal character.

Sometimes, however, they only made sport of his appearance;
especially one evening, when his monkey jacket being
wet through, he was obliged to mount one of his swallow-tailed
coats. They said he carried two mizen-peaks at his
stern; declared he was a broken-down quill-driver, or a foot-man
to a Portuguese running barber, or some old maid's
tobacco-boy. As for the captain, it had become all the same
to Harry as if there were no gentlemanly and complaisant
Captain Riga on board. For to his no small astonishment,
—but just as I had predicted,—Captain Riga never noticed
him now, but left the business of indoctrinating him into the
little experiences of a greenhorn's career solely in the hands
of his officers and crew.

But the worst was to come. For the first few days, whenever
there was any running aloft to be done, I noticed that
Harry was indefatigable in coiling away the slack of the
rigging about decks; ignoring the fact that his shipmates
were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands of
the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail,
that is, pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the
sail up on the yard aloft, Harry would always manage to get

near the belaying-pin, so that when the time came for two
of us to spring into the rigging, he would be inordinately
fidgety in making fast the clew-lines, and would be so absorbed
in that occupation, and would so elaborate the hitchings
round the pin, that it was quite impossible for him, after
doing so much, to mount over the bulwarks before his comrades
had got there. However, after securing the clew-lines
beyond a possibility of their getting loose, Harry would always
make a feint of starting in a prodigious hurry for the
shrouds; but suddenly looking up, and seeing others in advance,
would retreat, apparently quite chagrined that he
had been cut off from the opportunity of signalizing his
activity.

At this I was surprised, and spoke to my friend; when
the alarming fact was confessed, that he had made a private
trial of it, and it never would do: he could not go aloft;
his nerves would not hear of it.

“Then, Harry,” said I, “better you had never been born.
Do you know what it is that you are coming to? Did you
not tell me that you made no doubt you would acquit yourself
well in the rigging? Did you not say that you had
been two voyages to Bombay? Harry, you were mad to
ship. But you only imagine it: try again; and my word
for it, you will very soon find yourself as much at home
among the spars as a bird in a tree.”

But he could not be induced to try it over again; the fact
was, his nerves could not stand it; in the course of his
courtly career, he had drunk too much strong Mocha coffee
and gunpowder tea, and had smoked altogether too many
Havannas.

At last, as I had repeatedly warned him, the mate singled
him out one morning, and commanded him to mount to the
main-truck, and unreeve the short signal halyards.

“Sir?” said Harry, aghast.

“Away you go!” said the mate, snatching a whip's end.

“Don't strike me!” screamed Harry, drawing himself up.

“Take that, and along with you,” cried the mate, laying
the rope once across his back, but lightly.

“By heaven!” cried Harry, wincing—not with the blow,
but the insult: and then making a dash at the mate, who,
holding out his long arm, kept him lazily at bay, and laughed
at him, till, had I not feared a broken head, I should infallibly
have pitched my boy's bulk into the officer.

“Captain Riga!” cried Harry.

“Don't call upon him,” said the mate; “he's asleep, and
won't wake up till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up
you go!” he added, flourishing the rope's end.

Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance
of terrible indignation and agony; and then settling his eye
on me, and seeing there no hope, but even an admonition of
obedience, as his only resource, he made one bound into the
rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice. I thought
a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a
little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump
overboard; for I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing
such things at sea, and being lost forever. But no; he
stopped short, and looked down from the top. Fatal glance!
it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and clutch
the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze
the tar out of the ropes.

“Up you go, sir.”

But Harry said nothing.

“You Max,” cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, “spring
after him, and help him; you understand?”

Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought
his red head with a bump against the base of Harry's back.
Needs must when the devil drives; and higher and higher,
with Max bumping him at every step, went my unfortunate
friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin signal
halyards—hardly bigger than common twine—were flying in
the wind.

“Unreeve!” cried the mate.

I saw Harry's arm stretched out—his legs seemed shaking
in the rigging, even to us, down on deck; and at last, thank
heaven! the deed was done.

He came down pale as death, with bloodshot eyes, and
every limb quivering. From that moment he never put foot
in rattlin; never mounted above the bulwarks; and for the
residue of the voyage, at least, became an altered person.

At the time, he went to the mate—since he could not
get speech of the captain—and conjured him to intercede
with Riga, that his name might be stricken off from the list
of the ship's company, so that he might make the voyage as
a steerage passenger; for which privilege, he bound himself
to pay, as soon as he could dispose of some things of his in
New York, over and above the ordinary passage-money.
But the mate gave him a blunt denial; and a look of wonder
at his effrontery. Once a sailor on board a ship, and
always a sailor for that voyage, at least; for within so brief
a period, no officer can bear to associate on terms of any
thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered about
at his pleasure.

Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do
what he pleased, but go aloft again he could not, and would
not. He would do any thing else but that.

This affair sealed Harry's fate on board of the Highlander;
the crew now reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes
and jeers, and he led a miserable life indeed.

Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating
effect of finding one's self, for the first time, at the beck of
illiterate sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait
about you, but your ignorance of every thing connected with
the sea-life that you lead, and the duties you are constantly
called upon to perform. In such a sphere, and under such
circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon would be sea-clowns
and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed
and kicked without remorse. In more than one instance I
have seen the truth of this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved

no exception. And from the circumstances which exempted
me from experiencing the bitterest of these evils, I only the
more felt for one who, from a strange constitutional nervousness,
before unknown even to himself, was become as a hunted
hare to the merciless crew.

But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy
of appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable
flashes of a spirit not easily tamed—how was it,
that he could now yield himself up to the almost passive reception
of contumely and contempt? Perhaps his spirit, for the
time, had been broken. But I will not undertake to explain;
we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and there are
passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the
common tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory
of themselves, that only He who made us can expound them.