17. CHAPTER XVII.
AWAY! SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH CUTTERS, AWAY!
It was the morning succeeding one of these general quarters
that we picked up a life-buoy, descried floating by.
It was a circular mass of cork, about eight inches thick and
four feet in diameter, covered with tarred canvas. All round
its circumference there trailed a number of knotted ropes'-ends,
terminating in fanciful Turks' heads. These were the lifelines,
for the drowning to clutch. Inserted into the middle of
the cork was an upright, carved pole, somewhat shorter than
a pike-staff. The whole buoy was embossed with barnacles,
and its sides festooned with sea-weed. Dolphins were sporting
and flashing around it, and one white bird was hovering
over the top of the pole. Long ago, this thing must have
been thrown overboard to save some poor wretch, who must
have been drowned; while even the life-buoy itself had drifted
away out of sight.
The forecastle-men fished it up from the bows, and the seamen
thronged round it.
“Bad luck! bad luck!” cried the Captain of the Head;
“we'll number one less before long.”
The ship's cooper strolled by: he, to whose department it
belongs to see that the ship's life-buoys are kept in good order.
In men-of-war, night and day, week in and week out, two
life-buoys are kept depending from the stern; and two men,
with hatchets in their hands, pace up and down, ready at the
first cry to cut the cord and drop the buoys overboard. Every
two hours they are regularly relieved, like sentinels on guard.
No similar precautions are adopted in the merchant or whaling
service.
Thus deeply solicitous to preserve human life are the reg
ulations of men-of-war; and seldom has there been a better
illustration of this solicitude than at the battle of Trafalgar,
when, after “several thousand” French seamen had been destroyed,
according to Lord Collingwood, and, by the official
returns, sixteen hundred and ninety Englishmen were killed
or wounded, the Captains of the surviving ships ordered the
life-buoy sentries from their death-dealing guns to their vigilant
posts, as officers of the Humane Society.
“There, Bungs!” cried Scrimmage, a sheet-anchor-man,[1]
“there's a good pattern for you; make us a brace of life-buoys
like that; something that will save a man, and not fill and
sink under him, as those leaky quarter-casks of yours will the
first time there's occasion to drop 'em. I came near pitching
off the bowsprit the other day; and, when I scrambled inboard
again, I went aft to get a squint at 'em. Why, Bungs,
they are all open between the staves. Shame on you! Suppose
you yourself should fall overboard, and find yourself going
down with buoys under you of your own making—what
then?”
“I never go aloft, and don't intend to fall overboard,” replied
Bungs.
“Don't believe it!” cried the sheet-anchor-man; “you
lopers that live about the decks here are nearer the bottom of
the sea than the light hand that looses the main-royal. Mind
your eye, Bungs—mind your eye!”
“I will,” retorted Bungs; “and you mind yours!”
Next day, just at dawn, I was startled from my hammock
by the cry of “All hands about ship and shorten sail!”
Springing up the ladders, I found that an unknown man had
fallen overboard from the chains; and darting a glance toward
the poop, perceived, from their gestures, that the life-sentries
there had cut away the buoys.
It was blowing a fresh breeze; the frigate was going fast
through the water. But the one thousand arms of five hundred
men soon tossed her about on the other tack, and checked
her further headway.
“Do you see him?” shouted the officer of the watch through
his trumpet, hailing the main-mast-head. “Man or buoy, do
you see either?”
“See nothing, sir,” was the reply.
“Clear away the cutters!” was the next order. “Bugler!
call away the second, third, and fourth cutters' crews. Hands
by the tackles!”
In less than three minutes the three boats were down.
More hands were wanted in one of them, and, among others,
I jumped in to make up the deficiency.
“Now, men, give way! and each man look out along his
oar, and look sharp!” cried the officer of our boat. For a
time, in perfect silence, we slid up and down the great seething
swells of the sea, but saw nothing.
“There, it's no use,” cried the officer; “he's gone, whoever
he is. Pull away, men—pull away! they'll be recalling
us soon.”
“Let him drown!” cried the strokesman; “he's spoiled my
watch below for me.”
“Who the devil is he?” cried another.
“He's one who'll never have a coffin!” replied a third.
“No, no! they'll never sing out, `All hands bury the dead!'
for him, my hearties!” cried a fourth.
“Silence,” said the officer, “and look along your oars.”
But the sixteen oarsmen still continued their talk; and, after
pulling about for two or three hours, we spied the recall-signal
at the frigate's fore-t'-gallant-mast-head, and returned on
board, having seen no sign even of the life-buoys.
The boats were hoisted up, the yards braced forward, and
away we bowled—one man less.
“Muster all hands!” was now the order; when, upon calling
the roll, the cooper was the only man missing.
“I told you so, men,” cried the Captain of the Head; “I
said we would lose a man before long.”
“Bungs, is it?” cried Scrimmage, the sheet-anchor-man;
“I told him his buoys wouldn't save a drowning man; and
now he has proved it!”
