An Old Sailor's Yarns Part 13

The second officer, who was walking the deck, being the officer of the watch, was also a very good-looking young man, with large black whiskers, and was two or three years younger than his messmate in the rigging. His frequent stoppages at the caboose-house, to confer with the cooks, indicated the second mate, who is always, for some reason or other, a sort of "Betty," or "cot-quean," as Shakspeare calls it, continually quiddling about the galley, to the annoyance of the doctor, as the ship's cook is generally called.

About the after-hatchway were seated the gunner and sailmaker, both engaged patching old clothes,--while the old carpenter, like the captain, was reading the bible,--and the armorer was lying flat on his back, and singing. A very pretty boy of fourteen, an apprentice to the captain, was playing, or in sea language "skylarking," with a huge Newfoundland dog. I might as well complete the _role d'equipage_ of the good ship Albatross, by observing that Mr. Jonathan Bolton, M.D., the surgeon of the ship, and Mr. Elnathan Bangs, the supercargo, were neither of them on deck. Perhaps they were engaged with their breakfasts, or their toilets, or their devotions, or their studies, or--in short they were below.

Just forward of the mainmast were what a painter would call the deeper shades of the picture, for there the black cook and his equally sable adjunct, the cook's mate, held their vaporous and dish-washing levee; while forth from the cloudy sanctuary occasionally pealed a burst of obstreporous laughter, that the most unpractised hearer might swear came from the lungs of a negro, without the trouble of invading their premises for further evidence. Upon either of these culinary worthies, to use the somewhat hyperbolical language of sailors, "lampblack would make a white mark."

I cannot avoid taking occasion to remark here, that sailors, like the orientals, are exceedingly addicted to the use of tropes and figures of speech, to similes and metaphors. In fact, if any gentleman was about compiling a treatise on elocution, I would recommend to him to pa.s.s a year or two on board one of our men of war, where he would daily hear specimens of eloquence, known and unknown to exclusively terrestrial orators, whether in the halls of Congress, at a public dinner-table, or on a stump. There is the _narratio_, or anecdote, or sometimes the _long yarn_; the _aprosiopesis_, or sudden pause, very powerful when in good hands; the _apostrophe_, or addressing an absent person as though he was present; the _obtestatio_ and _invocatio_, two different modes of invoking the G.o.ds celestial or infernal; and lastly, the _simile_, or comparison, in which sailors are a thousand times more fruitful than Homer himself. The steward--who came up with the breakfast-dishes, &c., or "dog-basket," as it is called by them of the forecastle--was a thought lighter skinned than the cooks.

The crew were lounging about the forecastle and weather gangway; some walking fore and aft, with their hands in their jacket pockets, some washing or mending their clothes, and some stretched out in the sun, chatting and laughing in utter disregard and carelessness of what to-morrow might bring forth, and most literally obeying the divine command, to "take no thought of what they should eat, or what they should drink, or wherewithal they should be clothed."

The crew mustered forty-four in number; for forty years since, ships that traded to the coast of California, or any part of His Catholic Majesty's American possessions, or to the North West Coast, calculated upon a brush, either with the guarda-costas or the savages, before their voyage was up, and accordingly went well manned and armed.

A group of ten or a dozen were collected around the fore-hatch, where one of their number sat reading to them the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters of Acts--two favorite chapters with seamen generally, not that they contain any peculiarly glad tidings of great joy, but because they give a sort of log-book account of almost the only nautical transactions of moment recorded in holy writ.

The reader, like all who are so unfortunate as to be persuaded to read to a company, was perpetually interrupted by some one of his auditors to ask a question, or make a comment. He had, however, this advantage over the ill-starred wight who essays to read to a party of ladies, that he stopped and asked as many questions, and made as many remarks and comments, as any of his auditors.

The reader, after a few verses, describing St. Paul's voyage, came to the eighth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter: "And hardly pa.s.sing it, came unto a place which is called the Fair Havens," &c.; when old Tom Jones, the boatswain, an old English man-of-war's man, who was lying on his breast across the weather end of the windla.s.s, interrupted:

"Now, as to all them places you've been reading about, I never heard of none on 'em before, except Cyprus, and I've been cruising off there in a frigate; but your Sea lashes and Pump fill ye (Cilicia and Pamphylia), I never heard on in all my born days; and as for Fairhaven, why every body knows that's right acrost the river from New Bedford; though how the d--l they got there so soon I don't see, unless so be Paul worked a marricle, and it's like enough he did, to let the rest on 'em know what kind of a chap they'd got for a shipmate."

"Nevertheless," continued the reader, at the eleventh verse, "the centurion believed the master and owner of the ship more than those things that were spoken by Paul."

"Well, now I don't see no great harm in that," said one of the audience; "Paul was nothing but a kind of Methodist parson, goin' about and preachin' for his vittles and drink, and whatever folks was a mind to give him; so 'taint likely he knowed any more about a ship than any other minister."

"Yes, but you know he was a saint," said the reader, "and could foretell the weather, aye, a year aforehand."

"Could he, faith?" said another, "then I wonder he did not make his eternal fortin making almanacs."

"But what is a centurion?" asked a third.

"Centurion?" said old Jones, "why she's a sixty-four gun ship; I've seen her often enough at Spithead, but I forget now whether she was in the first of June[4] or not."

"Then I 'spose she was convoying the craft that Paul was in," observed another blue-jacket.

This knotty point being satisfactorily cleared up, the reader proceeded: "And when the south wind blew softly, supposing they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete."

"Now you see," said the boatswain, "just so sure as you have gentle breezes from the south'ard, you'll have a thundering Levanter at the back of 'em."

"Yes, yes," said a tar, "I know that to my sorrow. I was up the Straits last v'y'ge, 'way up to Smyrna and Zante, arter reasons,[5] and we ketch'd one of these thundering Levanters, and was druv 'way to h--ll, away up the Gulf of Venus (Venice); yes, I've been boxing about the Arch of the Billy Goat[6] 'most too long, not to know a little so'thin' about the weather there."

The reader continued: "But not long after, there arose against it a tempestuous wind."

"There," said Jones, "didn't I tell you so? I knowed you'd have a real sneezer in a va.r.s.e or two."

"Called Euroclydon," continued the reader, finishing the verse.

"What! avast there! overhaul that last word again."

"A tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," repeated the reader.

"Well, you may call it a Rock-me-down, but I say the regular-built name on't is Levanter; but then I s'pose them thunderin' printers puts in any thing they're a mind to."

The reading proceeded without much more interruption, except that the honest tars, who had been up the Mediterranean, were not a little puzzled by the strange names of places, and could not imagine what part of the world the saint had got into.

"About midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country; and sounded, and found it twenty fathoms; and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms."

"Egad, I should think they was drawin' nigh to some country pretty thunderin' fast too, when they shoalened their water so quick, from twenty to fifteen faddom."

"Then fearing lest they should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for day."

"Four anchors out of the starn!" shouted the boatswain, "what the h--was that for?"

"Why, you see," said the reader, "they used to bring up by the head or starn in them days--it didn't make a ropeyarn's odds which--they didn't know no better."

"But four anchors out of the starn," continued the man-of-war's man, "why, d--it, the very first sea would onhung the rudder, if she was pitching into it, and knock the whole thunderin' starn-frame into _smithareens_ in a quarter less no time."

"Now you see," said one of the audience, "I've a notion that the craft in them days was built with goose starns, like a Dutch galliot."

"May be," said another, "she had all her anchors stowed aft, to bring her down by the starn."

"But four anchors out of the starn!" murmured the still perplexed Tom Pipes, "I wonder what old Lord Howe, or Admiral Duncan, would have said, if they'd heard a first leftenant give out such orders in a gale of wind."

"Why, there couldn't have been no sailors aboard the hooker, or they would have let go one anchor first, and if that didn't bring her up, then another, and so on; but letting all four anchors go at once right under foot, is what I call a d--d lubberly piece of business, let who will do it, whether St. Paul or St. Devil, and I don't believe they could get insurance on the craft in any insurance office in the United States."

"Yes they could, and I'll tell you why; if a ship goes ash.o.r.e with an anchor on her bows, the owners can't recover no insurance; but if the skipper will swear that all his anchors were down, and good cables clinched to 'em, he can get his insurance."

"Yes, but there's a thunderin' sight of odds betwixt letting go your anchors in a ship-shape, sea-man-like manner, and bundling 'em all overboard at once in such a lubberly way as that you was readin' about."

The reading proceeded, leaving the law question respecting insurance "open for discussion" at some more appropriate season. Much indignation was expressed by the round-jacketed audience at the thirty-second verse: "Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her fall off." A vast deal of satire was expended upon "the thunderin'

troops," of all cla.s.ses, periods, and nations, the whole clinched and concluded by a remark from the boatswain:

"Aye, sojers, and pigs, and women, is always in the way, or else always in mischief, aboard a ship, more 'specially in bad weather."

The reading afterwards progressed without much interruption, except at the fortieth verse: "They--hoised up the mainsail to the wind, and made toward sh.o.r.e," and then only to remark, "Aye, she was a schooner, or else a morfredite brig, and they was goin' to beach her; she'd steered better if they'd sot the foresail too."

The eleventh verse of the twenty-eighth chapter gave occasion for question and explanation.

"And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux."

"Sign!" said Tom Pipes, "what does that mean?"

"Why, her figure-head, I s'pose," said the _questionee_.

"Yes, but, d--n my b.u.t.tons, there's two on 'em."

"Well, I s'pose they fixed 'em as the Dutchmen does De Ruyter and Von Tromp, put one on the knight-heads and t'other on the rudder-head."

"Ay, that indeed."