29. CHAPTER XXIX.
Though leaving the Cape behind us, the severe cold still
continued, and one of its worst consequences was the almost
incurable drowsiness induced thereby during the long night-watches.
All along the decks, huddled between the guns,
stretched out on the carronade slides, and in every accessible
nook and corner, you would see the sailors wrapped in their
monkey jackets, in a state of half-conscious torpidity, lying
still and freezing alive, without the power to rise and shake
themselves.
“Up—up, you lazy dogs!” our good-natured Third Lieutenant,
a Virginian, would cry, rapping them with his speaking
trumpet. “Get up, and stir about.”
But in vain. They would rise for an instant, and as soon
as his back was turned, down they would drop, as if shot
through the heart.
Often I have lain thus, when the fact, that if I laid much
longer I would actually freeze to death, would come over me
with such overpowering force as to break the icy spell, and
starting to my feet, I would endeavor to go through the combined
manual and pedal exercise to restore the circulation.
The first fling of my benumbed arm generally struck me in
the face, instead of smiting my chest, its true destination.
But in these cases one's muscles have their own way.
In exercising my other extremities, I was obliged to hold on
to something, and leap with both feet; for my limbs seemed
as destitute of joints as a pair of canvass pants spread to dry,
and frozen stiff.
When an order was given to haul the braces—which required
the strength of the entire watch, some two hundred
men—a spectator would have supposed that all hands had received
a stroke of the palsy. Roused from their state of enchantment,
they came halting and limping across the decks,
falling against each other, and, for a few moments, almost unable
to handle the ropes. The slightest exertion seemed intolerable;
and frequently a body of eighty or a hundred men,
summoned to brace the main-yard, would hang over the rope
for several minutes, waiting for some active fellow to pick it
up and put it into their hands. Even then, it was some time
before they were able to do any thing. They made all the
motions usual in hauling a rope, but it was a long time before
the yard budged an inch. It was to no purpose that the officers
swore at them, or sent the midshipmen among them to
find out who those “
horse-marines” and “
sogers” were. The
sailors were so enveloped in monkey jackets, that in the dark
night there was no telling one from the other.
“Here, you, sir!” cries little Mr. Pert, eagerly catching
hold of the skirts of an old sea-dog, and trying to turn him
round, so as to peer under his tarpaulin. “Who are you,
sir? What's your name?”
“Find out, Milk-and-Water,” was the impertinent rejoinder.
“Blast you! you old rascal; I'll have you licked for that!
Tell me his name, some of you!” turning round to the bystanders.
“Gammon!” cries a voice at a distance.
“Hang me, but I know you, sir! and here's at you!” and,
so saying, Mr. Pert drops the impenetrable unknown, and
makes into the crowd after the bodiless voice. But the attempt
to find an owner for that voice is quite as idle as the
effort to discover the contents of the monkey jacket.
And here sorrowful mention must be made of something
which, during this state of affairs, most sorely afflicted me.
Most monkey jackets are of a dark hue; mine, as I have fifty
times repeated, and say again, was white. And thus, in those
long, dark nights, when it was my quarter-watch on deck, and
not in the top, and others went skulking and “sogering” about
the decks, secure from detection—their identity undiscoverable
—my own hapless jacket forever proclaimed the name of its
wearer. It gave me many a hard job, which otherwise I
should have escaped. When an officer wanted a man for
any particular duty—running aloft, say, to communicate some
slight order to the captains of the tops—how easy, in that
mob of incognitoes, to individualize “
that white jacket,” and
dispatch him on the errand. Then, it would never do for me
to hang back when the ropes were being pulled.
Indeed, upon all these occasions, such alacrity and cheerfulness
was I obliged to display, that I was frequently held up as
an illustrious example of activity, which the rest were called
upon to emulate. “Pull—pull! you lazy lubbers! Look at
White-Jacket, there; pull like him!”
Oh! how I execrated my luckless garment; how often I
scoured the deck with it to give it a tawny hue; how often
I supplicated the inexorable Brush, captain of the paint-room,
for just one brushful of his invaluable pigment. Frequently,
I meditated giving it a toss overboard; but I had not the
resolution. Jacketless at sea! Jacketless so near Cape
Horn! The thought was unendurable. And, at least, my
garment was a jacket in name, if not in utility.
At length I essayed a “swap.” “Here, Bob,” said I, assuming
all possible suavity, and accosting a mess-mate with
a sort of diplomatic assumption of superiority, “suppose I was
ready to part with this `grego' of mine, and take yours in exchange—what
would you give me to boot?”
“Give you to boot?” he exclaimed, with horror; “I wouldn't
take your infernal jacket for a gift!”
How I hailed every snow-squall; for then—blessings on
them!—many of the men became white jackets along with
myself; and, powdered with the flakes, we all looked like
millers.
We had six lieutenants, all of whom, with the exception
of the First Lieutenant, by turns headed the watches. Three
of these officers, including Mad Jack, were strict disciplinarians,
and never permitted us to lay down on deck during the
night. And, to tell the truth, though it caused much growling,
it was far better for our health to be thus kept on our
feet. So promenading was all the vogue. For some of us,
however, it was like pacing in a dungeon; for, as we had to
keep at our stations—some at the halyards, some at the braces,
and elsewhere—and were not allowed to stroll about indefinitely,
and fairly take the measure of the ship's entire keel, we
were fain to confine ourselves to the space of a very few feet.
But the worst of this was soon over. The suddenness of the
change in the temperature consequent on leaving Cape Horn,
and steering to the northward with a ten-knot breeze, is a
noteworthy thing. To-day, you are assailed by a blast that
seems to have edged itself on icebergs; but in a little more
than a week, your jacket may be superfluous.
One word more about Cape Horn, and we have done with it.
Years hence, when a ship-canal shall have penetrated the
Isthmus of Darien, and the traveler be taking his seat in the
cars at Cape Cod for Astoria, it will be held a thing almost
incredible that, for so long a period, vessels bound to the Norwest
Coast from New York should, by going round Cape
Horn, have lengthened their voyages some thousands of miles
“In those unenlightened days” (I quote, in advance, the language
of some future philosopher), “entire years were frequently
consumed in making the voyage to and from the Spice
Islands, the present fashionable watering-place of the beaumonde
of Oregon.” Such must be our national progress.
Why, sir, that boy of yours will, one of these days, be sending
your grandson to the salubrious city of Jeddo to spend his
summer vacations.
