57. CHAPTER LVII.
“Mammy! mammy! come and see the sailors eating out
of little troughs, just like our pigs at home.” Thus exclaimed
one of the steerage children, who at dinner-time
was peeping down into the forecastle, where the crew were
assembled, helping themselves from the “kids,” which, indeed,
resemble hog-troughs not a little.
“Pigs, is it?” coughed Jackson, from his bunk, where he
sat presiding over the banquet, but not partaking, like a devil
who had lost his appetite by chewing sulphur.—“Pigs, is
it?—and the day is close by, ye spalpeens, when you'll want
to be after taking a sup at our troughs!”
This malicious prophecy proved true.
As day followed day without glimpse of shore or reef, and
head winds drove the ship back, as hounds a deer; the improvidence
and shortsightedness of the passengers in the
steerage, with regard to their outfits for the voyage, began
to be followed by the inevitable results.
Many of them at last went aft to the mate, saying that
they had nothing to eat, their provisions were expended, and
they must be supplied from the ship's stores, or starve.
This was told to the captain, who was obliged to issue a
ukase from the cabin, that every steerage passenger, whose
destitution was demonstrable, should be given one sea-biscuit
and two potatoes a day; a sort of substitute for a muffin and
a brace of poached eggs.
But this scanty ration was quite insufficient to satisfy
their hunger: hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a
healthy adult. The consequence was, that all day long,
and all through the night, scores of the emigrants went
about the decks, seeking what they might devour. They
plundered the chicken-coop; and disguising the fowls, cooked
them at the public galley. They made inroads upon the
pig-pen in the boat, and carried off a promising young shoat:
him they devoured raw, not venturing to make an incognito
of his carcass; they prowled about the cook's caboose, till he
threatened them with a ladle of scalding water; they waylaid
the steward on his regular excursions from the cook to
the cabin; they hung round the forecastle, to rob the bread-barge;
they beset the sailors, like beggars in the streets,
craving a mouthful in the name of the Church.
At length, to such excesses were they driven, that the
Grand Russian, Captain Riga, issued another ukase, and to
this effect: Whatsoever emigrant is found guilty of stealing,
the same shall be tied into the rigging and flogged.
Upon this, there were secret movements in the steerage,
which almost alarmed me for the safety of the ship; but
nothing serious took place, after all; and they even acquiesced
in, or did not resent, a singular punishment which the
captain caused to be inflicted upon a culprit of their clan, as
a substitute for a flogging. For no doubt he thought that
such rigorous discipline as that might exasperate five hundred
emigrants into an insurrection.
A head was fitted to one of the large deck-tubs—the half of
a cask; and into this head a hole was cut; also, two smaller
holes in the bottom of the tub. The head—divided in the
middle, across the diameter of the orifice—was now fitted
round the culprit's neck; and he was forthwith coopered up
into the tub, which rested on his shoulders, while his legs
protruded through the holes in the bottom.
It was a burden to carry; but the man could walk with
it; and so ridiculous was his appearance, that spite of the
indignity, he himself laughed with the rest at the figure he
cut.
“Now, Pat, my boy,” said the mate, “fill that big wooden
belly of yours, if you can.”
Compassionating his situation, our old “doctor” used to
give him alms of food, placing it upon the cask-head before
him; till at last, when the time for deliverance came, Pat
protested against mercy, and would fain have continued
playing Diogenes in the tub for the rest of this starving
voyage.
