2. LETTER II.
At Sea, October 20.—We have had fine weather
for progress, so far, running with north and north-westerly
winds from eight to ten knots an hour, and
making of course over two hundred miles a day. The
sea is still rough; and though the brig is light laden
and rides very buoyantly, these mounting waves break
over us now and then with a tremendous surge, keeping
the decks constantly wet, and putting me to many
an uncomfortable shiver. I have become reconciled,
however, to much that I should have anticipated with
no little horror. I can lie in my berth forty-eight
hours, if the weather is chill or rainy, and amuse myself
very well with talking bad French across the cabin
to the captain, or laughing at the distresses of my
friend and fellow-passenger, Turk (a fine setter dog,
on his first voyage), or inventing some disguise for the
peculiar flavor which that dismal cook gives to all his
abominations; or, at the worst, I can bury my head
in my pillow, and brace from one side to the other
against the swell, and enjoy my disturbed thoughts—
all without losing my temper, or wishing that I had
not undertaken the voyage.
Poor Turk! his philosophy is more severely tried.
He has been bred a gentleman, and is amusingly exclusive.
No assiduities can win him to take the least
notice of the crew, and I soon discovered that when
the captain and myself were below, he endured many
a persecution. In an evil hour, a night or two since,
I suffered his earnest appeals for freedom to work upon
my feelings, and, releasing him from his chain under
the windlass, I gave him the liberty of the cabin.
He slept very quietly on the floor till about midnight,
when the wind rose and the vessel began to roll very
uncomfortably. With the first heavy lurch a couple
of chairs went tumbling to leeward, and by the yelp
of distress, Turk was somewhere in the way. He
changed his position, and, with the next roll, the
mate's trunk “brought away,” and shooting across the
cabin, jammed him with such violence against the
captain's state-room door, that he sprang howling to
the deck, where the first thing that met him was a
washing sea, just taken in at mid-ships, that kept him
swimming above the hatches for five minutes. Half-drowned,
and with a gallon of water in his long hair,
he took again to the cabin, and making a desperate
leap into the steward's berth, crouched down beside
the sleeping creole with a long whine of satisfaction.
The water soon penetrated however, and with a “
sacré!”
and a blow that he will remember the remainder of the
voyage, the poor dog was again driven from the cabin,
and I heard no more of him till morning. His decided
preference for me has since touched my vanity,
and I have taken him under my more special protection—a
circumstance which costs me two quarrels a
day at least, with the cook and steward.
The only thing which forced a smile upon me during
the first week of the passage was the achievement
of dinner. In rough weather, it is as much as
one person can do to keep his place at the table at all;
and to guard the dishes, bottles, and castors, from a
general slide in the direction of the lurch, requires a
sleight and coolness reserved only for a sailor. “Prenez
garde!” shouts the captain, as the sea strikes, and
in the twinkling of an eye, everything is seized and
help up to wait for the other lurch, in attitudes which
it would puzzle the pencil of Johnson to exaggerate.
With his plate of soup in one hand, and the larboard
end of the tureen in the other, the claret bottle between
his teeth, and the crook of his elbow caught
around the mounting corner of the table, the captain
maintains his seat upon the transom, and with a look
of the most grave concern, keeps a wary eye on the
shifting level of his vermicelli; the old weather-beaten
mate, with the alacrity of a juggler, makes a long
leg back to the cabin panels at the same moment,
and with his breast against the table, takes his own
plate and the castors and one or two of the smaller
dishes under his charge; and the steward, if he can
keep his legs, looks out for the vegetables, or if he
falls, makes as wide a lap as possible to intercept the
volant articles in their descent. “Gentlemen that live
at home at ease” forget to thank Providence for the
blessing of a water-level.
Oct. 24.—We are on the Grand Bank, and surrounded
by hundreds of sea-birds. I have been watching
them nearly all day. Their performances on the wing
are certainly the perfection of grace and skill. With
the steadiness of an eagle and the nice adroitness of a
swallow, they wheel round in their constant circles
with an arrowy swiftness, lifting their long tapering
pinions scarce perceptibly, and mounting and falling
as if by a mere act of volition, without the slightest
apparent exertion of power. Their chief enjoyment
seems to be to scoop through the deep hollows of the
sea, and they do it so quickly that your eye can scarce
follow them, just disturbing the polish of the smooth
crescent, and leaving a fine line of ripple from swell to
swell, but never wetting a wing, or dipping their white
breasts a feather too deep in the capricious and wind-driven
surface. I feel a strange interest in these wild-hearted
birds. There is something in this fearless instinct,
leading them away from the protecting and
pleasant land to make their home on this tossing and
desolate element, that moves both my admiration and
my pity. I can not comprehend it. It is unlike the
self-caring instincts of the other families of heaven's
creatures. If I were half the Pythagorean that I used
to be, I should believe they were souls in punishment
—expiating some lifetime sin in this restless meempsychosis.
Now and then a land-bird has flown on board, driven
to sea probably by the gale, and so fatigued as
hardly to be able to rise again upon the wing. Yesterday
morning a large curlew came struggling down
the wind, and seemed to have just sufficient strength
to reach the vessel. He attempted to alight on the
main yard, but failed and dropped heavily into the
long-boat, where he suffered himself to be taken without
an attempt to escape. He must have been on the
wing two or three days without food, for we were at
least two hundred miles from land. His heart was
throbbing hard through his ruffled feathers, and he
held his head up with difficulty. He was passed aft,
but while I was deliberating on the best means for resuscitating
and fitting him to get on the wing again,
the captain had taken him from me and handed him
over to the cook, who had his head off before I could
remember French enough to arrest him. I dreamed
all that night of the man “that shot the albatross.”
The captain relieved my mind, however, by telling me
that he had tried repeatedly to preserve them, and that
they died invariably in a few hours. The least food,
in their exhausted state, swells in their throats and
suffocates them. Poor curlew! there was a tenderness
in one breast for him at least—a feeling, I have
the melancholy satisfaction to know, fully reciprocated
by the bird himself—that seat of his affections
having been allotted to me for my breakfast the morning
succeeding his demise.
Oct. 29.—We have a tandem of whales ahead
They have been playing about the ship an hour, and
now are coursing away to the east, one after the other,
in gallant style. If we could only get them into traces
now, how beautiful it would be to stand in the foretop
and drive a degree or two on a summer sea! It
would not be more wonderful, de novo, than the discovery
of the lightning-rod, or navigation by steam!
And, by the way, the sight of these huge creatures
has made me realize, for the first time, the extent to
which the sea has grown upon my mind during the
voyage. I have seen one or two whales, exhibited in
the docks, and it seemed to me always that they were
monsters—out of proportion, entirely, to the range of
the ocean. I had been accustomed to look out to
the horizon from land (the radius, of course, as great
as at sea), and, calculating the probable speed with
which they would compass the diagonal, and the disturbance
they would make in doing it, it appeared that
in any considerable numbers, they would occupy more
than their share of notice and sea-room. Now—after
sailing five days, at two hundred miles a day, and not
meeting a single vessel—it seems to me that a troop
of a thousand might swim the sea a century and
chance to be never crossed, so endlessly does this eternal
horizon open and stretch away!
Oct. 30.—The day has passed more pleasantly than
usual. The man at the helm cried “a sail,” while
we were at breakfast, and we gradually overtook a
large ship, standing on the same course, with every
sail set. We were passing half a mile to leeward,
when she put up her helm and ran down to us, hoisting
the English flag. We raised the “star-spangled
banner” in answer, and “hove too,” and she came
dashing along on our quarter, heaving most majestically
to the sea, till she was near enough to speak us
without a trumpet. Her fore-deck was covered with
sailors dressed all alike and very nearly, and around
the gangway stood a large group of officers in uniform,
the oldest of whom, a noble-looking man with
gray hair, hailed and answered us. Several ladies
stood back by the cabin-door—passengers apparently.
She was a man-of-war, sailing as a king's packet between
Halifax and Falmouth, and had been out from
the former port nineteen days. After the usual courtesies
had passed, she bore away a little, and then kept
on her course again, the two vessels in company at
the distance of half a pistol shot. I rarely have seen
a more beautiful sight. The fine effect of a ship under
sail is entirely lost to one on board, and it is only
at sea and under circumstances like these, that it can
be observed. The power of the swell, lifting such a
huge body as lightly as an egg-shell on its bosom, and
tossing it sometimes half out of water without the
slightest apparent effort, is astonishing. I sat on deck
watching her with undiminished interest for hours.
Apart from the spectacle, the feeling of companionship,
meeting human beings in the middle of the
ocean after so long a deprivation of society (five days
without seeing a sail, and nearly three weeks unspoken
from land), was delightful. Our brig was the faster
sailer of the two, but the captain took in some of
his canvass for company's sake; and all the afternoon
we heard her half-hour bells, and the boatswain's
whistle, and the orders of the officer of the deck, and
I could distinguish very well with a glass, the expression
of the faces watching our own really beautiful
vessel as she skimmed over the water like a bird. We
parted at sunset, the man-of-war making northerly for
her port, and we stretching south for the coast of
France. I watched her till she went over the horizon,
and felt as if I had lost friends when the night closed
in and we were once more
“Alone on the wide, wide sea.”
Nov. 3.—We have just made the port of Havre, and
the pilot tells us that the packet has been delayed by
contrary winds, and sails early to-morrow morning.
The town bells are ringing “nine” (as delightful a
sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I
close in haste, for all is confusion on board.
