2. CHAPTER II.
“All hands up anchor! Man the capstan!”
“High die! my lads, we're homeward bound!”
Homeward bound!—harmonious sound! Were you ever
homeward bound?—No?—Quick! take the wings of the
morning, or the sails of a ship, and fly to the uttermost parts
of the earth. There, tarry a year or two; and then let the
gruffest of Boatswains, his lungs all goose-skin, shout forth
those magical words, and you'll swear “the harp of Orpheus
were not more enchanting.”
All was ready; boats hoisted in, stun' sail gear rove, messenger
passed, capstan-bars in their places, accommodation-ladder
below; and in glorious spirits, we sat down to dinner.
In the ward-room, the lieutenants were passing round their
oldest Port, and pledging their friends; in the steerage, the
middies were busy raising loans to liquidate the demands of
their laundress, or else—in the navy phrase—preparing to pay
their creditors with a flying fore-topsail. On the poop, the
captain was looking to windward; and in his grand, inaccessible
cabin, the high and mighty commodore sat silent and
stately, as the statue of Jupiter in Dodona.
We were all arrayed in our best, and our bravest; like
strips of blue sky, lay the pure blue collars of our frocks upon
our shoulders; and our pumps were so springy and playful,
that we danced up and down as we dined.
It was on the gun-deck that our dinners were spread; all
along between the guns; and there, as we cross-legged sat,
you would have thought a hundred farm-yards and meadows
were nigh. Such a cackling of ducks, chickens, and ganders;
such a lowing of oxen, and bleating of lambkins, penned up
here and there along the deck, to provide sea repasts for
the officers. More rural than naval were the sounds; continually
reminding each mother's son of the old paternal
homestead in the green old clime; the old arching elms; the
hill where we gambolled; and down by the barley banks of
the stream where we bathed.
“All hands up anchor!”
When that order was given, how we sprang to the bars,
and heaved round that capstan; every man a Goliath, every
tendon a hawser!—round and round—round, round it spun
like a sphere, keeping time with our feet to the time of the
fifer, till the cable was straight up and down, and the ship
with her nose in the water.
“Heave and pall! unship your bars, and make sail!”
It was done:—bar-men, nipper-men, tierers, veerers, idlers
and all, scrambled up the ladder to the braces and halyards;
while like monkeys in Palm-trees, the sail-loosers ran out on
those broad boughs, our yards; and down fell the sails like
white clouds from the ether—top-sails, top-gallants, and royals;
and away we ran with the halyards, till every sheet was
distended.
“Once more to the bars!”
“Heave, my hearties, heave hard!”
With a jerk and a yerk, we broke ground; and up to our
bows came several thousand pounds of old iron, in the shape
of our ponderous anchor.
Where was White-Jacket then?
White-Jacket was where he belonged. It was White-Jacket
that loosed that main-royal, so far up aloft there, it
looks like a white albatross' wing. It was White-Jacket
that was taken for an albatross himself, as he flew out on the
giddy yard-arm!
