Jack In The Forecastle; Or, Incidents In The Early Life Of Hawser Martingale Part 5

This was a damper, with a vengeance, to my aspirations and hopes.

The ladder on which I was about to ascend to fame and fortune was unfeelingly knocked away, and I was laid prostrate flat on my back almost before I began to mount! I was deceived in Captain Turner; and what was of greater consequence to me, my self-confidence was terribly shaken I was deceived in myself. My shipmates, nevertheless, sympathized with me in my abas.e.m.e.nt; gave me words of encouragement; bade me be of good cheer; keep a stiff upper lip; look out sharper for squalls in the future, and I should yet "weather the cape."

An awkward accident happened to me the following day, which tended still further to diminish the self-confidence I had so recently cherished. The small boat had returned about sunset from a mission to the city, and as I formed one of the boat's crew, the mate ordered me to drop the boat astern, and hook on the tackles that it might be hoisted to the davits.

But the tide running furiously, the boat when under the quarter took a sudden sheer. I lost my hold on the brig, and found myself adrift.

I shouted l.u.s.tily for help, but no help could be afforded; the long-boat being snugly stowed amidships, and the tide sweeping me towards the bar at the rate of several knots an hour. Sculling was a manoeuvre of which I had heard, and seen practised, but had never practised myself. I therefore took one of the oars and made a desperate attempt to PADDLE towards the brig. The attempt was unsuccessful; the distance between the brig and the boat was rapidly increasing, darkness was coming on, a strong breeze was springing up, and I was in a fair way to be drifted among the breakers, or swept out to sea over the bar!

It happened, fortunately, for me, that a large brig was riding at anchor within a short distance of the Dolphin. This was the very slaver whose captain was so mysteriously a.s.sa.s.sinated. The mate of the brig was looking around the harbor at the time; he espied my misfortune, and forthwith despatched a boat, pulled by four men, to my a.s.sistance. They took me in tow, and, after an hour of hard work, succeeded in towing the boat and myself safely alongside the brig.

I was soundly rated by the mate for my carelessness in allowing the boat to get adrift, and my shipmates were unsparing in their reproaches for my ignorance of the important art of sculling. I was completely crest-fallen; but during the few remaining days we remained in port I applied myself with zeal to gain a practical knowledge of the art, and could soon propel a boat through the water with a single oar over the stern, with as much dexterity as the most accomplished sailor.

A new cable an anchor were brought on board, the wind became favorable, and the rig Dolphin proceeded to sea, bound NOMINALLY for Cayenne. I carried with me, engraven on my memory in characters which have never been effaced, THE ART OR SCULLING A BOAT, and the admonition "NEVER FALL ASLEEP IN YOUR WATCH!"

Chapter VII. DELIBERATE ROGUERY

After we reached the blue water, and the wind began to blow and the sea to rise, the old brig, with corresponding motion, tossed and wallowed about as if for a wager. Although while in port her bottom had been calked and graved, the leak, which gave so much trouble the previous voyage, had not been stopped. In a fresh breeze and a head sea the seams would open, and a good "spell at the pump," every twenty minutes at least, was required to keep her free.

The captain grumbled and swore like a pirate; but this had no perceptible effect in stopping the leak. On the contrary, the more he raved, denouncing the brig as a humbug, and the man who sold her to him as a knave and a swindler, the more the brig leaked. And what was remarkable, after the first ten days, the brig leaked as much in a light breeze and a smooth sea as in rough weather. It was necessary to keep one pump in action the whole time. But when the men, wearied by their unremitting exertions, talked of abandoning the vessel to her fate, and taking refuge in the first vessel they might fall in with, the leak seemed suddenly to diminish, until the bottom of the old craft was comparatively tight!

All this was inexplicable to me, and the mystery caused much philosophical discussion and sage remark among the ship's company. As we were in a part of the ocean which abounded in flying fish, it was the general opinion that the stoppage of the leak was caused by the involuntary action of a flying fish! The theory was, that an unfortunate fish, swimming beneath the bottom of the vessel, in the neighborhood of the crevice through which the water rushed, unsuspicious of danger, was suddenly "sucked in," and plugged up the hole until it was drawn through or removed by decomposition!

One day the cook, a negro not remarkable for quickness of apprehension or general intelligence, received such an unmerciful beating from the captain that he was unable to attend to his manifold duties, and a portion of them fell to my share. Among them was the task of drawing off the regular allowance of rum, half a pint to each man, and serving it out to the crew. The rum was in the after part of the vessel, beneath the cabin, a place designated as "the run." It was approached by a scuttle in the cabin floor, and of course could not be explored by any of the crew without the especial permission of the captain or mate.

I entered the dark hole, aided by the glimmering light of a lantern, groped my way to the barrel which contained the liquid so highly prized by the sons of Neptune as the liquor of life, the pure AQUA VITAE, and filled my can with the precious fluid.

When I inserted the spigot I still heard a gurgling sound, as of the rush of water through a narrow pa.s.sage. I listened, and examined further, and became convinced I had discovered the leak. I hastily emerged from "the run," and pa.s.sed up on deck. The captain was taking a meridian observation of the sun, when, with a radiant countenance and glistening eye, my whole frame trembling with joy and antic.i.p.ated triumph, I communicated the important information that I had discovered the leak; it was in the run, could be easily reached, and with a little ingenuity and labor stopped.

Instead of rewarding me for my intelligence and zeal with a smile of approbation and a word of encouragement, the captain gave me a look which petrified me for a time, and would have killed me on the spot if looks could kill in those degenerate days. Seizing me roughly by the shoulder, he addressed me in a hissing, hoa.r.s.e voice, yet so low that his words, although terribly intelligible to me, could be distinctly heard by no other person: "Mind your own business, my lad, and let the leaks take care of themselves! Go about your work; and if you whisper a syllable of what you have told me to any other person, I WILL THROW YOU OVERBOARD, you officious, intermeddling little vagabond!" And he indorsed his fearful threat by an oath too impious to be transcribed.

This unexpected rebuke, coupled with the fact that I had seen in "the run" the large screw auger which had been missing from the tool-chest for more than a week, furnished a key to unlock the mysteries connected with the leak. The captain, for some purpose which he did not choose to reveal, with the connivance and aid of the mate, had bored holes through the bottom of the brig, and could let in the water at his pleasure!

A few days after this interesting incident which threw a new light on the character of the man to whose charge I had been intrusted, we reached the lat.i.tude of Martinico. As the brig now leaked more than ever, and the men, one and all, were worn out with continued pumping, the captain proclaimed to the crew that in consequence of the leaky condition of the brig, he did not consider it safe to proceed further on the voyage to Cayenne, and had determined to make the first port.

This determination met the approbation of all hands, without a dissenting voice. The yards were squared, the helm was put up, the course was given "due west," and with a cracking trade wind, away we bowled off before it for the Island of Martinico.

Captain Turner, although not remarkable for the strictness of his principles, was a shrewd and intelligent man. On sh.o.r.e he had the semblance of a gentleman. On shipboard he was a good sailor and a skilful navigator. If to his energy, talents, and intelligence had been added a moderate share of honesty, he would probably have been successful in his struggle for wealth, and might have attained respectability. I have often had occasion to note that "a rogue in grain" finds it more difficult to achieve success in life than an honest man. Shakespeare, the great exponent of human nature, makes the unscrupulous Cardinal Wolsey say, when crushed by the hand of royalty, deserted by his friends, and a prey to disgrace and ignominy,

"Had I but served my G.o.d with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies."

On the morning after this change in our course, the high land of Martinico was seen in the distance; and in the afternoon, before the sun had reached the horizon, we were snugly anch.o.r.ed in the roadstead of St. Pierre. This port, at the bottom of a wide bay, with good anchorage close to the beach, is open to the sea. But being on the lee of the island, it is protected from the trade winds, which, with rare exceptions, blow throughout the year. From a westerly tempest there is no protection, and a hurricane always carries destruction among the shipping.

The reason why the brig was made to spring a leak was now evident.

Captain Turner never intended to go to Cayenne, but wished to be justified in the eye of the law in proceeding to what he considered a better market. The non-intercourse act being in operation, American vessels were prohibited from entering an English or a French port, EXCEPTING IN CASES OF DISTRESS. It was therefore determined that the Dolphin should spring a leak, and SEEM in danger of foundering, in order to furnish a pretext for entering the harbor of St. Pierre!

Captain Turner expected to find no American vessels in port, and of course no American produce. He calculated to realize a high price for his cargo, and was surprised and disappointed to ascertain that other Yankees were as shrewd and unscrupulous as himself. The anchorage was thickly sprinkled with American vessels, and the market was overstocked with American produce. These vessels had been driven into St. Pierre by "stress of weather" or "dangerous leaks," and their commanders cherished as little respect for the revenue laws, or any other mandates of the United States government, as Captain Turner. A protest, carefully worded, and signed and sworn to by the mate and two seamen, and a survey of the vessel made by persons JUDICIOUSLY selected, acted as a protecting shield against any subsequent troublesome interference on the part of the American authorities.

The wisdom of the "Long Embargo," and the "Non-intercourse Act" is greatly doubted by the statesmen of the present day. Besides crippling our own resources, and paralyzing the whole commercial interest of the United States, a craven spirit was thus manifested on the part of our rulers, which exposed us to insults and outrages from the belligerent powers. And if the policy of these extraordinary measures can be defended, it must be admitted that they were the direct cause of more roguery than would compensate for an immense amount of good.

Having arrived at Martinico in distress, we were precluded from proceeding to any other port in search of a better market. The cargo was sold at prices that would hardly pay the expenses of the voyage. In delivering the lumber, however, an opportunity offered in making up in QUANt.i.tY the deficiency in price, of which our honest captain, following the example, I regret to say, of many of the West India captains OF THOSE DAYS, eagerly availed himself.

The lumber was taken to the sh.o.r.e on large rafts, and hauled up on the beach by men belonging to the brig. The mark on every separate board or plank was called out in a clear voice by the man who dragged it from the raft to the beach, and was noted down by the mate of the brig and a clerk of the mercantile house that purchased the lumber. Those parties were comfortably seated beneath the shade of a tamarind tree, at some distance, smoking cigars and pleasantly conversing. They compared notes from time to time, and there was no difference in their accounts. Every thing on our part was apparently conducted on the strictest principles of honesty. But each sailor having received a hint from the mate, who had been posted by the captain, and a promise of other indulgences, often added from fifteen to twenty per cent, to the mark which had been actually scored by the surveyor on every board or plank. Thus, if a board was MARKED twelve feet, the amount given was fifteen feet; a board that measured only eighteen or twenty feet, would be represented as twenty-five; and sometimes a large, portly-looking board, measuring thirty or thirty-five feet, not only received an addition of eight or ten feet, but was suddenly transformed into a PLANK, which was counted as containing DOUBLE the measurement of a board of the same superficial dimensions. Thus a board actually measuring only thirty feet was pa.s.sed off upon the unsophisticated clerk of the purchaser as a piece of lumber measuring seventy feet. In this way Captain Turner managed, in what he contended was the usual and proper manner among the Yankees, to make a cargo of lumber "hold out!" Another attempt which this gentleman made to realize a profit on merchandise greater than could be obtained by a system of fair trading was not attended with so favorable a result.

A portion of the cargo of the Dolphin consisted of barrels of salted provisions. This part of the cargo was not enumerated among the articles in the manifest. Captain Turner intended to dispose of it to the shipping in the harbor, and thus avoid the payment of the regular duties. He accordingly sold some ten or a dozen barrels of beef and pork, at a high price, to the captain of an English ship. The transaction, by some unknown means, was discovered by the government officials, who, in a very grave and imposing manner, visited the brig with a formidable posse. They found in the hold a considerable quant.i.ty of the salted provisions on which no duty had been paid; this they conveyed on sh.o.r.e and confiscated to the use of His Majesty the King of Great Britain. The brig also was seized, but was subsequently released on payment of a heavy fine.

The merchant vessels lying in St. Pierre are generally moored head and stern, one of the anchors being carried ash.o.r.e, and embedded in the ground on the beach. A few days after we were thus moored, a large Spanish schooner from the Main hauled in and moored alongside, at the distance of only a few fathoms. Besides the captain, there were several well-dressed personages on board, who appeared to take an interest in the cargo, and lived in the cabin. But harmony did not characterize their intercourse with each other. At times violent altercations occurred, which, being carried on in the Spanish language, were to us neither edifying nor amusing.

One Sunday morning, after the Spanish schooner had been about a week in port, and was nearly ready for sea, a fierce quarrel took place on the quarter-deck of the vessel, which, being attended with loud language, menacing looks, and frantic gesticulations, attracted the attention of all who were within sight or hearing.

Two of the Spaniards, large, good-looking men, were apparently very bitter in their denunciations of each other. They suddenly threw off their coats, which they wrapped around the left arm, and each grasping a long Spanish knife, the original of the murderous "bowie-knife,"--attacked each other with a ferocity terrible to behold.

Every muscle seemed trembling and convulsed with pa.s.sion, their eyes flashed with desperation, and their muscles seemed endued with superhuman power, as they pushed upon each other.

Many furious pa.s.ses were made, and dexterously parried by the left arm, which was used as a buckler in which to receive the thrusts. At length one of the combatants received a wound in the chest, and his shirt bosom was instantly stained with blood. This served only to rouse him to more desperate exertions if possible; and, like two enraged tigers, these men no longer thought of defending themselves, but were bent only on a.s.sailing each other.

Such a combat could not last long. One of the Spaniards sank to the deck, covered with wounds and exhausted with blood, while the victor, who, from the gory condition of his linen, his pallid cheeks, and staggering steps seemed in little better plight, was a.s.sisted into the cabin by his companions.

Duels of a similar character, fought on the spot with knives, the left arm protected with a garment used as a shield, were by no means unfrequent among the Spaniards in the New World, and the barbarous custom is not yet obsolete.

The vessel, on whose decks this horrible scene of butchery was enacted, left the harbor on the following day, to the great gratification of her neighbors; and a rusty, ill-looking schooner, called the John, hauled from another part of the roadstead, and took the berth vacated by the Spaniards. Like other American vessels that had been coquetting with the revenue laws, neither the name of the schooner nor the place to which she belonged was painted on her stern. A close intimacy, intended doubtless for their mutual advantage, existed between Captain Turner and the master of the John. The crews of the two vessels also became acquainted, and when the day's work was ended, often a.s.sembled on board one of the vessels, and indulged in singing, conversing, skylarking, or spinning yarns.

Swimming was an agreeable and refreshing exercise, in which we often indulged, notwithstanding the harbor of St. Pierre was an open bay in a tropical climate; the very place which the shark would be likely to frequent. It was said, however, that sharks were seldom seen in the bay, and NEVER among the shipping. This statement was regarded as a sufficient a.s.surance of safety; and although I retained a vivid recollection of the dreadful tragedy I had seen enacted a few months before in Demarara, with all the recklessness or a young sailor I hesitated not to indulge freely in this pleasant and healthy exercise in the harbor of St. Pierre.

I was careful, however, to follow the advice of a veteran tar, to KEEP IN MOTION WHILE IN THE WATER. The shark, unless very ferocious and hungry, will not attack a man while he is swimming, or performing other aquatic evolutions. At such times he will remain quiet, close at hand, eyeing his intended victim with an eager and affectionate look; but the moment the unsuspecting swimmer throws himself on his back, begins to tread water, or discontinues the exercise of swimming preparatory to getting on board, this man-eating rascal will pounce on a leg or an arm, drag his victim beneath the surface, and accomplish the dreadful work.

After the many unfavorable specimens of "old salts" I had met with, I was agreeably surprised to find that two of the crew of the John were educated men. One of these was the son of a wealthy merchant of Boston, who lived in the style of a prince at the "North End." This young sailor had been wild and dissipated, and had lost for a time the confidence of his relatives, and as a matter of course, WENT TO SEA. He made a good sailor; and while I knew him in St. Pierre, and during the subsequent years of his life, his conduct was in every way correct. His conversation was improving, and his chest was well stored with books, which he cheerfully loaned, and to which I was indebted for many happy hours.

The other was an Irishman by birth, prematurely aged, of diminutive stature, and unprepossessing appearance. He had been many years at sea; had witnessed perilous scenes; had fought for his life with the savages on board the Atahualpa on "the north-west coast"; had served in an English man-of-war, from which he escaped by swimming ash.o.r.e, a distance of several miles, one night while cruising off the island of Antigua.

He reached the land completely exhausted more dead than alive and was concealed for a time among the slave habitations on one of the plantations.

Little Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a type of the old sailor of those days, so far as his habits and general conduct was concerned.

He was reckless, bold, dissolute, generous, never desponding, ever ready for a drunken frolic or a fight, to do a good deed, plan a piece of mischief, or head a revolt. He seemed to find enjoyment in every change which his strange destiny presented. And this man, who seemed at home in a ship's forecastle, or when mingling with the lowest dregs of society, had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was well read in the cla.s.sics, and familiar with the writings of the old British poets.

He could quote elaborate pa.s.sages from the best authors, and converse fluently and learnedly on almost any subject.

Notwithstanding his cultivated mind and intellectual powers, which should have placed him in a high position in society, he appeared satisfied with his condition, and aspired to no loftier sphere than that of a common sailor. We often meet with anomalies in the human character, for which it would puzzle the most learned psychologist to account.

What strange and sad event had occurred in the early part of that man's career, to change the current of his fortune, and make him contented in a condition so humble, and a slave to habits so degrading? His story, if faithfully told, might furnish a record of ambitious projects and sanguine expectations, followed by blighted hopes which palsied all succeeding exertions, and plunged him into the depths of dissipation and vice.

Captain Turner and the worthy master of the John, the better to conceal their iniquities from the lynx-eyed satellites of the law, agreed to make an exchange of vessels, both having been officially condemned as unseaworthy. For an equivalent, the schooner was to be laden with a cargo, princ.i.p.ally of mola.s.ses, and properly furnished with stores, provisions, and water, for a pa.s.sage to the United States by the way of St. Bartholomew. The crews of the two vessels were then to be interchanged, and Captain Turner his mate and crew, were to take up their quarters in the John.

The arrangement was carried into effect; but two of the Dolphin's crew, dissatisfied with the proceedings on board the brig, and thinking matters would not be improved by a transfer to the schooner, and being under no obligation to follow Captain Turner to another vessel, demanded their discharge. In their stead he shipped a boy, about fourteen years of age, whom he had persuaded to run away from an English merchant ship, in which he was an apprentice, and an old Frenchman, who had served many years in the carpenter's gang in a French man-of-war, and who understood hardly a word of the English language.

We sailed from St. Pierre the day after we had taken possession of the schooner, bound directly for St. Bartholomew.

Chapter VIII. THE WINDWARD ISLANDS