This gave us a new start, and we were soon through our work and on deck; and there lay the land, fair upon the larboard beam, and slowly edging away upon the quarter. All hands were busy looking at it,– the captain and mates from the quarter-deck, the cook from his galley, and the sailors from the forecastle; and even Mr. Nuttall, the passenger, who had kept in his shell for nearly a month, and hardly been seen by anybody, and whom we had almost forgotten was on board, came out like a butterfly, and was hopping round as bright as a bird.
The land was the island of Staten Land, just to the eastward of Cape Horn; and a more desolate-looking spot I never wish to set eyes upon,– bare, broken, and girt with rocks and ice, with here and there, between the rocks and broken hillocks, a little stunted vegetation of shrubs. It was a place well suited to stand at the junction of the two oceans, beyond the reach of human cultivation, and encounter the blasts and snows of a perpetual winter. Yet, dismal as it was, it was a pleasant sight to us; not only as being the first land we had seen, but because it told us that we had passed the Cape,– were in the Atlantic,– and that, with twenty-four hours of this breeze, we might bid defiance to the Southern Ocean. It told us, too, our latitude and longitude better than any observation; and the captain now knew where we were, as well as if we were off the end of Long Wharf.
In the general joy, Mr. Nuttall said he should like to go ashore upon the island and examine a spot which probably no human being had ever set foot upon; but the captain intimated that he would see the island, specimens and all, in– another place, before he would get out a boat or delay the ship one moment for him.
We left the land gradually astern; and at sundown had the Atlantic Ocean clear before us.
CHAPTER XXXIII
It is usual, in voyages round the Cape from the Pacific, to keep to the eastward of the Falkland Islands; but as there had now set in a strong, steady, and clear southwester, with every prospect of its lasting, and we had had enough of high latitudes, the captain determined to stand immediately to the northward, running inside the Falkland Islands. Accordingly, when the wheel was relieved at eight o’clock, the order was given to keep her due north, and all hands were turned up to square away the yards and make sail. In a moment the news ran through the ship that the captain was keeping her off, with her nose straight for Boston, and Cape Horn over her taffrail. It was a moment of enthusiasm. Every one was on the alert, and even the two sick men turned out to lend a hand at the halyards. The wind was now due southwest, and blowing a gale to which a vessel close hauled could have shown no more than a single close-reefed sail; but as we were going before it, we could carry on. Accordingly, hands were sent aloft, and a reef shaken out of the topsails, and the reefed foresail set. When we came to mast-head the topsail yards, with all hands at the halyards, we struck up “Cheerly, men,” with a chorus which might have been heard half-way to Staten Land. Under her increased sail, the ship drove on through the water. Yet she could bear it well; and the captain sang out from the quarter-deck, “Another reef out of that fore topsail, and give it to her!” Two hands sprang aloft; the frozen reef-points and earings were cast adrift, the halyards manned, and the sail gave out her increased canvas to the gale. All hands were kept on deck to watch the effect of the change. It was as much as she could well carry, and with a heavy sea astern it took two men at the wheel to steer her. She flung the foam from her bows, the spray breaking aft as far as the gangway. She was going at a prodigious rate. Still everything held. Preventer braces were reeved and hauled taut, tackles got upon the backstays, and everything done to keep all snug and strong. The captain walked the deck at a rapid stride, looked aloft at the sails, and then to windward; the mate stood in the gangway, rubbing his hands, and talking aloud to the ship, “Hurrah, old bucket! the Boston girls have got hold of the tow-rope!” and the like; and we were on the forecastle, looking to see how the spars stood it, and guessing the rate at which she was going, when the captain called out “Mr. Brown, get up the topmast studding-sail! What she can’t carry she may drag!” The mate looked a moment; but he would let no one be before him in daring. He sprang forward. “Hurrah, men! rig out the topmast studding-sail boom! Lay aloft, and I’ll send the rigging up to you!” We sprang aloft into the top; lowered a girt-line down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will. Some, indeed, looked as though they thought the “old man” was mad, but no one said a word. We had had a new topmast studding-sail made with a reef in it,– a thing hardly ever heard of, and which the sailors had ridiculed a good deal, saying that when it was time to reef a studding-sail it was time to take it in. But we found a use for it now; for, there being a reef in the topsail, the studding-sail could not be set without one in it also. To be sure, a studding-sail with reefed topsails was rather a novelty; yet there was some reason in it, for if we carried that away we should lose only a sail and a boom; but a whole topsail might have carried away the mast and all.
While we were aloft the sail had been got out, bent to the yard, reefed, and ready for hoisting. Waiting for a good opportunity, the halyards were manned and the yard hoisted fairly up to the block; but when the mate came to shake the catspaw out of the downhaul, and we began to boom-end the sail, it shook the ship to her centre. The boom buckled up and bent like a whip-stick, and we looked every moment to see something go; but, being of the short, tough upland spruce, it bent like whalebone, and nothing could break it. The carpenter said it was the best stick he had ever seen. The strength of all hands soon brought the tack to the boom-end, and the sheet was trimmed down, and the preventer and the weather brace hauled taut to take off the strain. Every rope-yarn seemed stretched to the utmost, and every thread of canvas; and with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed. The sail being nearly all forward, it lifted her out of the water, and she seemed actually to jump from sea to sea. From the time her keel was laid, she had never been so driven; and had it been life or death with every one of us, she could not have borne another stitch of canvas.
Finding that she would bear the sail, the hands were sent below, and our watch remained on deck. Two men at the wheel had as much as they could do to keep her within three points of her course, for she steered as wild as a young colt. The mate walked the deck, looking at the sails, and then over the side to see the foam fly by her,– slapping his hands upon his thighs and talking to the ship,– “Hurrah, you jade, you’ve got the scent!– you know where you’re going!” And when she leaped over the seas, and almost out of the water, and trembled to her very keel, the spars and masts snapping and creaking,– “There she goes!– There she goes,– handsomely?– As long as she cracks she holds!”– while we stood with the rigging laid down fair for letting go, and ready to take in sail and clear away, if anything went. At four bells we hove the log, and she was going eleven knots fairly; and had it not been for the sea from aft which sent the chip home, and threw her continually off her course, the log would have shown her to have been going somewhat faster. I went to the wheel with a young fellow from the Kennebec, Jack Stewart, who was a good helmsman, and for two hours we had our hands full. A few minutes showed us that our monkey-jackets must come off; and, cold as it was, we stood in our shirt-sleeves in a perspiration, and were glad enough to have it eight bells, and the wheel relieved. We turned-in and slept as well as we could, though the sea made a constant roar under her bows, and washed over the forecastle like a small cataract.
At four o’clock we were called again. The same sail was still on the vessel, and the gale, if there was any change, had increased a little. No attempt was made to take the studding-sail in; and, indeed, it was too late now. If we had started anything toward taking it in, either tack or halyards, it would have blown to pieces, and carried something away with it. The only way now was to let everything stand, and if the gale went down, well and good; if not, something must go,– the weakest stick or rope first,– and then we could get it in. For more than an hour she was driven on at such a rate that she seemed to crowd the sea into a heap before her; and the water poured over the spritsail yard as it would over a dam. Toward daybreak the gale abated a little, and she was just beginning to go more easily along, relieved of the pressure, when Mr. Brown, determined to give her no respite, and depending upon the wind’s subsiding as the sun rose, told us to get along the lower studding-sail. This was an immense sail, and held wind enough to last a Dutchman a week,– hove-to. It was soon ready, the boom topped up, preventer guys rove, and the idlers called up to man the halyards; yet such was still the force of the gale that we were nearly an hour setting the sail; carried away the outhaul in doing it, and came very near snapping off the swinging boom. No sooner was it set than the ship tore on again like one mad, and began to steer wilder than ever. The men at the wheel were puffing and blowing at their work, and the helm was going hard up and hard down, constantly. Add to this, the gale did not lessen as the day came on, but the sun rose in clouds. A sudden lurch threw the man from the weather wheel across the deck and against the side. The mate sprang to the wheel, and the man, regaining his feet, seized the spokes, and they hove the wheel up just in time to save the ship from broaching to, though as she came up the studding-sail boom stood at an angle of forty-five degrees. She had evidently more on her than she could bear; yet it was in vain to try to take it in,– the clew-line was not strong enough, and they were thinking of cutting away, when another wide yaw and a come-to snapped the guys, and the swinging boom came in with a crash against the lower rigging. The outhaul block gave way, and the topmast studding-sail boom bent in a manner which I never before supposed a stick could bend. I had my eye on it when the guys parted, and it made one spring and buckled up so as to form nearly a half-circle, and sprang out again to its shape. The clew-line gave way at the first pull; the cleat to which the halyards were belayed was wrenched off, and the sail blew round the spritsail yard and head guys, which gave us a bad job to get it in. A half-hour served to clear all away, and she was suffered to drive on with her topmast studding-sail set, it being as much as she could stagger under.
During all this day and the next night we went on under the same sail, the gale blowing with undiminished violence; two men at the wheel all the time; watch and watch, and nothing to do but to steer and look out for the ship, and be blown along;– until the noon of the next day,–
Sunday, July 24th, when we were in lat. 50° 27′ S., lon. 62° 13′ W., having made four degrees of latitude in the last twenty-four hours. Being now to the northward of the Falkland Islands, the ship was kept off, northeast, for the equator; and with her head for the equator, and Cape Horn over her taffrail, she went gloriously on; every heave of the sea leaving the Cape astern, and every hour bringing us nearer to home and to warm weather. Many a time, when blocked up in the ice, with everything dismal and discouraging about us, had we said, if we were only fairly round, and standing north on the other side, we should ask for no more; and now we had it all, with a clear sea and as much wind as a sailor could pray for. If the best part of a voyage is the last part, surely we had all now that we could wish. Every one was in the highest spirits, and the ship seemed as glad as any of us at getting out of her confinement. At each change of the watch, those coming on deck asked those going below, “How does she go along?” and got, for answer, the rate, and the customary addition, “Aye! and the Boston girls have had hold of the tow-rope all the watch.” Every day the sun rose higher in the horizon, and the nights grew shorter; and at coming on deck each morning there was a sensible change in the temperature. The ice, too, began to melt from off the rigging and spars, and, except a little which remained in the tops and round the hounds of the lower masts, was soon gone. As we left the gale behind us, the reefs were shaken out of the topsails, and sail made as fast as she could bear it; and every time all hands were sent to the halyards a song was called for, and we hoisted away with a will.
Sail after sail was added, as we drew into fine weather; and in one week after leaving Cape Horn, the long top-gallant-masts were got up, top-gallant and royal yards crossed, and the ship restored to her fair proportions.
The Southern Cross and the Magellan Clouds settled lower and lower in the horizon; and so great was our change of latitude that each succeeding night we sank some constellation in the south, and raised another in the northern horizon.
Sunday, July 31st. At noon we were in lat. 36° 41′ S., lon. 38° 08′ W.; having traversed the distance of two thousand miles, allowing for changes of course, in nine days. A thousand miles in four days and a half! This is equal to steam.
Soon after eight o’clock the appearance of the ship gave evidence that this was the first Sunday we had yet had in fine weather. As the sun came up clear, with the promise of a fair, warm day, and, as usual on Sunday, there was no work going on, all hands turned-to upon clearing out the forecastle. The wet and soiled clothes which had accumulated there during the past month were brought up on deck; the chests moved; brooms, buckets of water, swabs, scrubbing-brushes, and scrapers carried down and applied, until the forecastle floor was as white as chalk, and everything neat and in order. The bedding from the berths was then spread on deck, and dried and aired; the deck-tub filled with water; and a grand washing begun of all the clothes which were brought up. Shirts, frocks, drawers, trousers, jackets, stockings, of every shape and color, wet and dirty,– many of them mouldy from having been lying a long time wet in a foul corner,– these were all washed and scrubbed out, and finally towed overboard for half an hour; and then made fast in the rigging to dry. Wet boots and shoes were spread out to dry in sunny places on deck; and the whole ship looked like a back yard on a washing-day. After we had done with our clothes, we began upon our persons. A little fresh water, which we had saved from our allowance, was put in buckets, and, with soap and towels, we had what sailors call a fresh-water wash. The same bucket, to be sure, had to go through several hands, and was spoken for by one after another, but as we rinsed off in salt water, pure from the ocean, and the fresh was used only to start the accumulated grime and blackness of five weeks, it was held of little consequence. We soaped down and scrubbed one another with towels and pieces of canvas, stripping to it; and then, getting into the head, threw buckets of water upon each other. After this came shaving, and combing, and brushing; and when, having spent the first part of the day in this way, we sat down on the forecastle, in the afternoon, with clean duck trousers and shirts on, washed, shaved, and combed, and looking a dozen shades lighter for it, reading, sewing, and talking at our ease, with a clear sky and warm sun over our heads, a steady breeze over the larboard quarter, studding-sails out alow and aloft, and all the flying kites abroad,– we felt that we had got back into the pleasantest part of a sailor’s life. At sunset the clothes were all taken down from the rigging,– clean and dry,– and stowed neatly away in our chests; and our southwesters, thick boots, Guernsey frocks, and other accompaniments of bad weather, put out of the way, we hoped, for the rest of the voyage, as we expected to come upon the coast early in the autumn.
Notwithstanding all that has been said about the beauty of a ship under full sail, there are very few who have ever seen a ship, literally, under all her sail. A ship coming in or going out of port, with her ordinary sails, and perhaps two or three studding-sails, is commonly said to be under full sail; but a ship never has all her sail upon her, except when she has a light, steady breeze, very nearly, but not quite, dead aft, and so regular that it can be trusted, and is likely to last for some time. Then, with all her sails, light and heavy, and studding-sails, on each side, alow and aloft, she is the most glorious moving object in the world. Such a sight very few, even some who have been at sea a good deal, have ever beheld; for from the deck of your own vessel you cannot see her, as you would a separate object.
One night, while we were in these tropics, I went out to the end of the flying-jib-boom upon some duty, and, having finished it, turned round, and lay over the boom for a long time, admiring the beauty of the sight before me. Being so far out from the deck, I could look at the ship as at a separate vessel; and there rose up from the water, supported only by the small black hull, a pyramid of canvas, spreading out far beyond the hull, and towering up almost, as it seemed in the indistinct night air, to the clouds. The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade-wind was gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark blue sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and the sails were spread out, wide and high,– the two lower studding-sails stretching on each side far beyond the deck; the topmast studding-sails like wings to the topsails; the top-gallant studding-sails spreading fearlessly out above them; still higher, the two royal studding-sails, looking like two kites flying from the same string; and, highest of all, the little skysail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming actually to touch the stars, and to be out of reach of human hand. So quiet, too, was the sea, and so steady the breeze, that if these sails had been sculptured marble they could not have been more motionless. Not a ripple upon the surface of the canvas; not even a quivering of the extreme edges of the sail, so perfectly were they distended by the breeze. I was so lost in the sight that I forgot the presence of the man who came out with me, until he said (for he, too, rough old man-of-war’s-man as he was, had been gazing at the show), half to himself, still looking at the marble sails,– “How quietly they do their work!”
The fine weather brought work with it, as the ship was to be put in order for coming into port. To give a landsman some notion of what is done on board ship, it may be truly said that all the first part of a passage is spent in getting a ship ready for sea, and the last part in getting her ready for port. She is, as sailors say, like a lady’s watch, always out of repair. The new, strong sails, which we had up off Cape Horn, were to be sent down, and the old set, which were still serviceable in fine weather, to be bent in their place; all the rigging to be set up, fore and aft; the masts stayed; the standing rigging to be tarred down; lower and topmast rigging to be rattled down, fore and aft; the ship scraped inside and out, and painted; decks varnished; new and neat knots, seizings and coverings, to be fitted; and every part put in order, to look well to the owner’s eye, and to all critics, on coming into Boston. This, of course, was a long matter; and all hands were kept on deck at work for the whole of each day, during the rest of the voyage. Sailors call this hard usage; but the ship must be in crack order; and “We’re homeward bound” was the answer to everything.
We went on for several days, employed in this way, nothing remarkable occurring; and, at the latter part of the week, fell in with the southeast trades, blowing about east-southeast, which brought them nearly two points abaft our beam. They blew strong and steady, so that we hardly started a rope, until we were beyond their latitude. The first day of “all hands” one of those little incidents occurred, which are nothing in themselves, but are great matters in the eyes of a ship’s company, as they serve to break the monotony of a voyage, and afford conversation to the crew for days afterwards. These things, too, are often interesting, as they show the customs and states of feeling on shipboard.
In merchant vessels, the captain gives his orders, as to the ship’s work, to the mate, in a general way, and leaves the execution of them, with the particular ordering, to him. This has become so fixed a custom that it is like a law, and is never infringed upon by a wise master, unless his mate is no seaman; in which case the captain must often oversee things for himself. This, however, could not be said of our chief mate, and he was very jealous of any encroachment upon the borders of his authority.
On Monday morning the captain told him to stay the fore topmast plumb. He accordingly came forward, turned all hands to, with tackles on the stays and backstays, coming up with the seizings, hauling here, belaying there, and full of business, standing between the knight-heads to sight the mast,– when the captain came forward, and also began to give orders. This made confusion, and the mate left his place and went aft, saying to the captain:–
“If you come forward, sir, I’ll go aft. One is enough on the forecastle.”
This produced a reply, and another fierce answer; and the words flew, fists were doubled up, and things looked threateningly.
“I’m master of this ship.”
“Yes, sir, and I’m mate of her, and know my place! My place is forward, and yours is aft.”
“My place is where I choose! I command the whole ship, and you are mate only so long as I choose!”
“Say the word, Captain Thompson, and I’m done! I can do a man’s work aboard! I didn’t come through the cabin windows! If I’m not mate, I can be man,” &c., &c.
This was all fun for us, who stood by, winking at each other, and enjoying the contest between the higher powers. The captain took the mate aft; and they had a long talk, which ended in the mate’s returning to his duty. The captain had broken through a custom, which is a part of the common law of a ship, and without reason, for he knew that his mate was a sailor, and needed no help from him; and the mate was excusable for being angry. Yet, in strict law, he was wrong, and the captain right. Whatever the captain does is right, ipso facto, and any opposition to it is wrong on board ship; and every officer and man knows this when he signs the ship’s articles. It is a part of the contract. Yet there has grown up in merchant vessels a series of customs, which have become a well-understood system, and have somewhat the force of prescriptive law. To be sure, all power is in the captain, and the officers hold their authority only during his will, and the men are liable to be called upon for any service; yet, by breaking in upon these usages, many difficulties have occurred on board ship, and even come into courts of justice, which are perfectly unintelligible to any one not acquainted with the universal nature and force of these customs. Many a provocation has been offered, and a system of petty oppression pursued towards men, the force and meaning of which would appear as nothing to strangers, and doubtless do appear so to many “’long-shore” juries and judges.
The next little diversion was a battle on the forecastle, one afternoon, between the mate and the steward. They had been on bad terms the whole voyage, and had threatened a rupture several times. Once, on the coast, the mate had seized the steward, when the steward suddenly lowered his head, and pitched it straight into Mr. Brown’s stomach, butting him against the galley, grunting at every shove, and calling out “You Brown!” Mr. Brown looked white in the face, and the heaviest blows he could give seemed to have no effect on the negro’s head. He was pulled off by the second mate, and Mr. Brown was going at him again, when the captain separated them; and Mr. Brown told his tale to the captain, adding “and, moreover, he called me Brown!” From this time “moreover, he called me Brown,” became a by-word on board. Mr. Brown went aft, saying, “I’ve promised it to you, and now you’ve got it.” But he did not seem to be sure which had “got it”; nor did we. We knew Mr. Brown would not leave the thing in that equivocal position all the voyage, if he could help it. This afternoon the mate asked the steward for a tumbler of water, and he refused to get it for him, saying that he waited upon nobody but the captain; and here he had the custom on his side. But, in answering, he committed the unpardonable offence of leaving off the handle to the mate’s name. This enraged the mate, who called him a “black soger,” and at it they went, clenching, striking, and rolling over and over; while we stood by, looking on and enjoying the fun. The darkey tried to butt him, as before, but the mate got him down, and held him, the steward singing out, “Let me go, Mr. Brown, or there’ll be blood spilt!” In the midst of this, the captain came on deck, separated them, took the steward aft, and gave him half a dozen with a rope’s end. The steward tried to justify himself, but he had been heard to talk of spilling blood, and that was enough to earn him his flogging; and the captain did not choose to inquire any further. Mr. Brown was satisfied to let him alone after that, as he had, on the whole, vindicated his superiority in the eyes of the crew.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The same day, I met with one of those narrow escapes which are so often happening in a sailor’s life. I had been aloft nearly all the afternoon, at work, standing for as much as an hour on the fore top-gallant yard, which was hoisted up, and hung only by the tie; when, having got through my work, I balled up my yarns, took my serving-board in my hand, laid hold deliberately of the top-gallant rigging, took one foot from the yard, and was just lifting the other, when the tie parted, and down the yard fell. I was safe, by my hold upon the rigging, but it made my heart beat quick. Had the tie parted one instant sooner, or had I stood an instant longer on the yard, I should inevitably have been thrown violently from the height of ninety or a hundred feet, overboard; or, what is worse, upon the deck. However, “a miss is as good as a mile”; a saying which sailors very often have occasion to use. An escape is always a joke on board ship. A man would be ridiculed who should make a serious matter of it. A sailor knows too well that his life hangs upon a thread, to wish to be often reminded of it; so, if a man has an escape, he keeps it to himself, or makes a joke of it. I have often known a man’s life to be saved by an instant of time, or by the merest chance,– the swinging of a rope,– and no notice taken of it. One of our boys, off Cape Horn, reefing topsails of a dark night when there were no boats to be lowered away, and where, if a man fell overboard, he must be left behind, lost his hold of the reef-point, slipped from the foot-rope, and would have been in the water in a moment, when the man who was next to him on the yard, French John, caught him by the collar of his jacket, and hauled him up upon the yard, with, “Hold on, another time, you young monkey, and be d—d to you!”– and that was all that was heard about it.
Sunday, August 7th. Lat. 25° 59′ S., lon. 27° 0′ W. Spoke the English bark Mary Catherine, from Bahia, bound to Calcutta. This was the first sail we had fallen in with, and the first time we had seen a human form or heard the human voice, except of our own number, for nearly a hundred days. The very yo-ho-ing of the sailors at the ropes sounded sociably upon the ear. She was an old, damaged-looking craft, with a high poop and top-gallant forecastle, and sawed off square, stem and stern, like a true English “tea-wagon,” and with a run like a sugar-box. She had studding-sails out alow and aloft, with a light but steady breeze, and her captain said he could not get more than four knots out of her, and thought he should have a long passage. We were going six on an easy bowline.
The next day, about three P.M., passed a large corvette-built ship, close upon the wind, with royals and skysails set fore and aft, under English colors. She was standing south-by-east, probably bound round Cape Horn. She had men in her tops, and black mast-heads; heavily sparred, with sails cut to a t, and other marks of a man-of-war. She sailed well, and presented a fine appearance; the proud, feudal-looking banner of St. George– the cross in a blood-red field– waving from the mizzen. We probably were nearly as fine a sight, with our studding-sails spread far out beyond the ship on either side, and rising in a pyramid to royal studding-sails and skysails, burying the hull in canvas and looking like what the whalemen on the Banks, under their stump top-gallant-masts, call “a Cape Horn-er under a cloud of sail.”
Friday, August 12th. At daylight made the island of Trinidad, situated in lat. 20° 28′ S., lon. 29° 08′ W. At twelve M., it bore N.W. 1/2 N., distant twenty-seven miles. It was a beautiful day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades, and the island looking like a small blue mound rising from a field of glass. Such a fair and peaceful-looking spot is said to have been, for a long time, the resort of a band of pirates, who ravaged the tropical seas.
Thursday, August 18th. At three P.M., made the island of Fernando Naronha, lying in lat. 3° 55′ S., lon. 32° 35′ W.; and between twelve o’clock Friday night and one o’clock Saturday morning crossed the equator, for the fourth time since leaving Boston, in lon. 35° W.; having been twenty-seven days from Staten Land,– a distance, by the courses we had made, of more than four thousand miles.
We were now to the northward of the line, and every day added to our latitude. The Magellan Clouds, the last sign of south latitude, had long been sunk, and the North Star, the Great Bear, and the familiar signs of northern latitudes, were rising in the heavens. Next to seeing land, there is no sight which makes one realize more that he is drawing near home, than to see the same heavens, under which he was born, shining at night over his head. The weather was extremely hot, with the usual tropical alternations of a scorching sun and squalls of rain; yet not a word was said in complaint of the heat, for we all remembered that only three or four weeks before we would have given our all to be where we now were. We had a plenty of water, too, which we caught by spreading an awning, with shot thrown in to make hollows. These rain squalls came up in the manner usual between the tropics. A clear sky; burning, vertical sun; work going lazily on, and men about decks with nothing but duck trousers, checked shirts, and straw hats; the ship moving as lazily through the water; the man at the helm resting against the wheel, with his hat drawn over his eyes; the captain below, taking an afternoon nap; the passenger leaning over the taffrail, watching a dolphin following slowly in our wake; the sailmaker mending an old topsail on the lee side of the quarter-deck; the carpenter working at his bench, in the waist; the boys making sinnet; the spun-yarn winch whizzing round and round, and the men walking slowly fore and aft with the yarns. A cloud rises to windward, looking a little black; the skysails are brailed down; the captain puts his head out of the companion-way, looks at the cloud, comes up, and begins to walk the deck. The cloud spreads and comes on; the tub of yarns, the sail, and other matters, are thrown below, and the sky-light and booby-hatch put on, and the slide drawn over the forecastle. “Stand by the royal halyards”; and the man at the wheel keeps a good weather helm, so as not to be taken aback. The squall strikes her. If it is light, the royal yards are clewed down, and the ship keeps on her way; but if the squall takes strong hold, the royals are clewed up, fore and aft; light hands lay aloft and furl them; top-gallant yards are clewed down, flying-jib hauled down, and the ship kept off before it,– the man at the helm laying out his strength to heave the wheel up to windward. At the same time a drenching rain, which soaks one through in an instant. Yet no one puts on a jacket or cap; for if it is only warm, a sailor does not mind a ducking; and the sun will soon be out again. As soon as the force of the squall has passed, though to a common eye the ship would seem to be in the midst of it,– “Keep her up to her course again!”– “Keep her up, sir,” (answer.)[1]– “Hoist away the top-gallant yards!”– “Run up the flying-jib!”– “Lay aloft, you boys, and loose the royals!” and all sail is on her again before she is fairly out of the squall; and she is going on in her course. The sun comes out once more, hotter than ever, dries up the decks and the sailors’ clothes; the hatches are taken off; the sail got up and spread on the quarter-deck; spun-yarn winch set a whirling again; rigging coiled up; captain goes below; and every sign of an interruption disappears.
These scenes, with occasional dead calms, lasting for hours, and sometimes for days, are fair specimens of the Atlantic tropics. The nights were fine; and as we had all hands all day, the watch were allowed to sleep on deck at night, except the man at the wheel, and one lookout on the forecastle. This was not so much expressly allowed as winked at. We could do it if we did not ask leave. If the lookout was caught napping, the whole watch was kept awake. We made the most of this permission, and stowed ourselves away upon the rigging, under the weather rail, on the spars, under the windlass, and in all the snug corners; and frequently slept out the watch, unless we had a wheel or a lookout. And we were glad enough to get this rest; for under the “all-hands” system, out of every other thirty-six hours we had only four below; and even an hour’s sleep was a gain not to be neglected. One would have thought so to have seen our watch some nights, sleeping through a heavy rain. And often have we come on deck, and, finding a dead calm and a light, steady rain, and determined not to lose our sleep, have laid a coil of rigging down so as to keep us out of the water which was washing about decks, and stowed ourselves away upon it, covering a jacket over us, and slept as soundly as a Dutchman between two feather-beds.
For a week or ten days after crossing the line, we had the usual variety of calms, squalls, head winds, and fair winds,– at one time braced sharp upon the wind, with a taut bowline, and in an hour after slipping quietly along, with a light breeze over the taffrail, and studding-sails set out on both sides,– until we fell in with the northeast trade-winds; which we did on the afternoon of–
Sunday, August 28th, in lat. 12° N. The trade-wind clouds had been in sight for a day or two previously, and we expected to take the trades every hour. The light southerly breeze, which had been breathing languidly during the first part of the day, died away toward noon, and in its place came puffs from the northeast, which caused us to take in our studding-sails and brace up; and, in a couple of hours more, we were bowling gloriously along, dashing the spray far ahead and to leeward, with the cool, steady northeast trades freshening up the sea, and giving us as much as we could carry our royals to. These winds blew strong and steady, keeping us generally upon a bowline, as our course was about north-northwest; and, sometimes, as they veered a little to the eastward, giving us a chance at a main top-gallant studding-sail, and sending us well to the northward, until–
Sunday, September 4th, when they left us in lat. 22° N., lon. 51° W., directly under the tropic of Cancer.
For several days we lay “humbugging about” in the Horse latitudes, with all sorts of winds and weather, and occasionally, as we were in the latitude of the West Indies,– a thunder-storm. It was hurricane month, too, and we were just in the track of the tremendous hurricane of 1830, which swept the North Atlantic, destroying almost everything before it.
The first night after the trade-winds left us, while we were in the latitude of the island of Cuba, we had a specimen of a true tropical thunder-storm. A light breeze had been blowing from aft during the first part of the night, which gradually died away, and before midnight it was dead calm, and a heavy black cloud had shrouded the whole sky. When our watch came on deck at twelve o’clock, it was as black as Erebus; the studding-sails were all taken in, and the royals furled; not a breath was stirring; the sails hung heavy and motionless from the yards; and the stillness and the darkness, which was almost palpable, were truly appalling. Not a word was spoken, but every one stood as though waiting for something to happen. In a few minutes the mate came forward, and in a low tone, which was almost a whisper, told us to haul down the jib. The fore and mizzen top-gallant sails were taken in in the same silent manner; and we lay motionless upon the water, with an uneasy expectation, which, from the long suspense, became actually painful. We could hear the captain walking the deck, but it was too dark to see anything more than one’s hand before the face. Soon the mate came forward again, and gave an order, in a low tone, to clew up the main top-gallant-sail; and so infectious was the awe and silence that the clew-lines and buntlines were hauled up without any singing out at the ropes. An English lad and myself went up to furl it; and we had just got the bunt up, when the mate called out to us something, we did not hear what,– but, supposing it to be an order to bear-a-hand, we hurried and made all fast, and came down, feeling our way among the rigging. When we got down we found all hands looking aloft, and there, directly over where we had been standing, upon the main top-gallant mast-head, was a ball of light, which the sailors call a corposant (corpus sancti), and which the mate had called out to us to look at. They were all watching it carefully, for sailors have a notion that if the corposant rises in the rigging it is a sign of fair weather, but if it comes lower down there will be a storm. Unfortunately, as an omen, it came down, and showed itself on the top-gallant yard-arm. We were off the yard in good season, for it is held a fatal sign to have the pale light of the corposant thrown upon one’s face. As it was, the English lad did not feel comfortably at having had it so near him, and directly over his head. In a few minutes it disappeared, and showed itself again on the fore top-gallant yard; and, after playing about for some time, disappeared once more, when the man on the forecastle pointed to it upon the flying-jib-boom-end. But our attention was drawn from watching this, by the falling of some drops of rain, and by a perceptible increase of the darkness, which seemed suddenly to add a new shade of blackness to the night. In a few minutes, low, grumbling thunder was heard, and some random flashes of lightning came from the southwest. Every sail was taken in but the topsails; still, no squall appeared to be coming. A few puffs lifted the topsails, but they fell again to the mast, and all was as still as ever. A moment more, and a terrific flash and peal broke simultaneously upon us, and a cloud appeared to open directly over our heads, and let down the water in one body, like a falling ocean. We stood motionless, and almost stupefied; yet nothing had been struck. Peal after peal rattled over our heads, with a sound which seemed actually to stop the breath in the body, and the “speedy gleams” kept the whole ocean in a glare of light. The violent fall of rain lasted but a few minutes, and was followed by occasional drops and showers; but the lightning continued incessant for several hours, breaking the midnight darkness with irregular and blinding flashes. During all this time there was not a breath stirring, and we lay motionless, like a mark to be shot at, probably the only object on the surface of the ocean for miles and miles. We stood hour after hour, until our watch was out, and we were relieved, at four o’clock. During all this time hardly a word was spoken; no bells were struck, and the wheel was silently relieved. The rain fell at intervals in heavy showers, and we stood drenched through and blinded by the flashes, which broke the Egyptian darkness with a brightness that seemed almost malignant; while the thunder rolled in peals, the concussion of which appeared to shake the very ocean. A ship is not often injured by lightning, for the electricity is separated by the great number of points she presents, and the quantity of iron which she has scattered in various parts. The electric fluid ran over our anchors, topsail sheets and ties; yet no harm was done to us. We went below at four o’clock, leaving things in the same state. It is not easy to sleep when the very next flash may tear the ship in two, or set her on fire; or where the deathlike calm may be broken by the blast of a hurricane, taking the masts out of the ship. But a man is no sailor if he cannot sleep when he turns-in, and turn out when he’s called. And when, at seven bells, the customary “All the larboard watch, ahoy!” brought us on deck, it was a fine, clear, sunny morning, the ship going leisurely along, with a soft breeze and all sail set.
[1] A man at the wheel is required to repeat every order given him. A simple “Aye, aye, sir,” is not enough there.
CHAPTER XXXV
From the latitude of the West Indies, until we got inside the Bermudas, where we took the westerly and southwesterly winds, which blow steadily off the coast of the United States early in the autumn, we had every variety of weather, and two or three moderate gales, or, as sailors call them, double-reef-topsail breezes, which came on in the usual manner, and of which one is a specimen of all. A fine afternoon; all hands at work, some in the rigging, and others on deck; a stiff breeze, and ship close upon the wind, and skysails brailed down. Latter part of the afternoon, breeze increases, ship lies over to it, and clouds look windy. Spray begins to fly over the forecastle, and wets the yarns the boys are knotting;– ball them up and put them below. Mate knocks off work and clears up decks earlier than usual, and orders a man who has been employed aloft to send the royal halyards over to windward, as he comes down. Breast back-stays hauled taut, and a tackle got upon the martingale back-rope. One of the boys furls the mizzen royal. Cook thinks there is going to be “nasty work,” and has supper ready early. Mate gives orders to get supper by the watch, instead of all hands, as usual. While eating supper, hear the watch on deck taking in the royals. Coming on deck, find it is blowing harder, and an ugly head sea running. Instead of having all hands on the forecastle in the dog watch, smoking, singing, and telling yarns, one watch goes below and turns-in, saying that it’s going to be an ugly night, and two hours’ sleep is not to be lost. Clouds look black and wild; wind rising, and ship working hard against a heavy head sea, which breaks over the forecastle, and washes aft through the scuppers. Still, no more sail is taken in, for the captain is a driver, and, like all drivers, very partial to his top-gallant-sails. A top-gallant-sail, too, makes the difference between a breeze and a gale. When a top-gallant-sail is on a ship, it is only a breeze, though I have seen ours set over a reefed topsail, when half the bowsprit was under water, and it was up to a man’s knees in the lee scuppers. At eight bells, nothing is said about reefing the topsails, and the watch go below, with orders to “stand by for a call.” We turn-in, growling at the “old man” for not reefing the topsails when the watch was changed, but putting it off so as to call all hands, and break up a whole watch below– turn-in “all standing,” and keep ourselves awake, saying there is no use in going to sleep to be waked up again. Wind whistles on deck, and ship works hard, groaning and creaking, and pitching into a heavy head sea, which strikes against the bows, with a noise like knocking upon a rock. The dim lamp in the forecastle swings to and fro, and things “fetch away” and go over to leeward. “Doesn’t that booby of a second mate ever mean to take in his top-gallant-sails? He’ll have the sticks out of her soon,” says Old Bill, who was always growling, and, like most old sailors, did not like to see a ship abused. By and by, an order is given; “Aye, aye, sir!” from the forecastle; rigging is thrown down on deck; the noise of a sail is heard fluttering aloft, and the short, quick cry which sailors make when hauling upon clew-lines. “Here comes his fore top-gallant-sail in!” We are wide awake, and know all that’s going on as well as if we were on deck. A well-known voice is heard from the mast-head singing out to the officer of the watch to haul taut the weather brace. “Hallo! There’s Ben Stimson aloft to furl the sail!” Next thing, rigging is thrown down directly over our heads, and a long-drawn cry and a rattling of hanks announce that the flying-jib has come in. The second mate holds on to the main top-gallant-sail until a heavy sea is shipped, and washes over the forecastle as though the whole ocean had come aboard; when a noise further aft shows that that sail, too, is taking in. After this the ship is more easy for a time; two bells are struck, and we try to get a little sleep. By and by,– bang, bang, bang, on the scuttle,– “All ha-a-ands, aho-o-y!” We spring out of our berths, clap on a monkey-jacket and southwester, and tumble up the ladder. Mate up before us, and on the forecastle, singing out like a roaring bull; the captain singing out on the quarter-deck, and the second mate yelling, like a hyena, in the waist. The ship is lying over half upon her beam-ends; lee scuppers under water, and forecastle all in a smother of foam. Rigging all let go, and washing about decks; topsail yards down upon the caps, and sails flapping and beating against the masts; and starboard watch hauling out the reef-tackles of the main topsail. Our watch haul out the fore, and lay aloft and put two reefs into it, and reef the foresail, and race with the starboard watch to see which will mast-head its topsail first. All hands tally-on to the main tack, and while some are furling the jib and hoisting the staysail, we mizzen-top-men double-reef the mizzen topsail and hoist it up. All being made fast,– “Go below, the watch!” and we turn-in to sleep out the rest of the time, which is perhaps an hour and a half. During all the middle, and for the first part of the morning watch, it blows as hard as ever, but toward daybreak it moderates considerably, and we shake a reef out of each topsail, and set the top-gallant-sails over them; and when the watch come up, at seven bells, for breakfast, shake the other reefs out, turn all hands to upon the halyards, get the watch-tackle upon the top-gallant sheets and halyards, set the flying-jib, and crack on to her again.
Our captain had been married only a few weeks before he left Boston, and, after an absence of over two years, it may be supposed he was not slow in carrying sail. The mate, too, was not to be beaten by anybody; and the second mate, though he was afraid to press sail, was still more afraid of the captain, and, being between two fears, sometimes carried on longer than any of them. We snapped off three flying-jib-booms in twenty-four hours, as fast as they could be fitted and rigged out; sprung the spritsail yard, and made nothing of studding-sail booms. Beside the natural desire to get home, we had another reason for urging the ship on. The scurvy had begun to show itself on board. One man had it so badly as to be disabled and off duty, and the English lad, Ben, was in a dreadful state, and was daily growing worse. His legs swelled and pained him so that he could not walk; his flesh lost its elasticity, so that if pressed in it would not return to its shape; and his gums swelled until he could not open his mouth. His breath, too, became very offensive; he lost all strength and spirit; could eat nothing; grew worse every day; and, in fact, unless something was done for him, would be a dead man in a week, at the rate at which he was sinking. The medicines were all, or nearly all, gone, and if we had had a chest-full, they would have been of no use, for nothing but fresh provisions and terra firma has any effect upon the scurvy. This disease is not so common now as formerly, and is attributed generally to salt provisions, want of cleanliness, the free use of grease and fat (which is the reason of its prevalence among whalemen), and, last of all, to laziness. It never could have been from the last cause on board our ship; nor from the second, for we were a very cleanly crew, kept our forecastle in neat order, and were more particular about washing and changing clothes than many better-dressed people on shore. It was probably from having none but salt provisions, and possibly from our having run very rapidly into hot weather, after our having been so long in the extremest cold.
Depending upon the westerly winds which prevail off the coast in the autumn, the captain stood well to the westward, to run inside of the Bermudas, and in the hope of falling in with some vessel bound to the West Indies or the Southern States. The scurvy had spread no further among the crew, but there was danger that it might; and these cases were bad ones.
Sunday, September 11th. Lat. 30° 04′ N., lon. 63° 23′ W.; the Bermudas bearing north-northwest, distant one hundred and fifty miles. The next morning about ten o’clock, “Sail ho!” was cried on deck; and all hands turned up to see the stranger. As she drew nearer, she proved to be an ordinary-looking hermaphrodite brig, standing south-southeast, and probably bound out from the Northern States to the West Indies, and was just the thing we wished to see. She hove-to for us, seeing that we wished to speak her, and we ran down to her, boom-ended our studding-sails, backed our main topsail, and hailed her: “Brig ahoy!” “Hallo!” “Where are you from, pray?” “From New York, bound to Curaçoa.” “Have you any fresh provisions to spare?” “Aye, aye! plenty of them!” We lowered away the quarter-boat instantly, and the captain and four hands sprang in, and were soon dancing over the water and alongside the brig. In about half an hour they returned with half a boat-load of potatoes and onions, and each vessel filled away and kept on her course. She proved to be the brig Solon, of Plymouth, from the Connecticut River, and last from New York, bound to the Spanish Main, with a cargo of fresh provisions, mules, tin bake-pans, and other notions. The onions were fresh; and the mate of the brig told the men in the boat, as he passed the bunches over the side, that the girls had strung them on purpose for us the day he sailed. We had made the mistake, on board, of supposing that a new President had been chosen the last winter, and, as we filled away, the captain hailed and asked who was President of the United States. They answered, Andrew Jackson; but, thinking that the old General could not have been elected for a third time, we hailed again, and they answered, Jack Downing, and left us to correct the mistake at our leisure.
Our boat’s crew had a laugh upon one of our number, Joe, who was vain and made the best show of everything. The style and gentility of a ship and her crew depend upon the length and character of the voyage. An India or China voyage always is the thing, and a voyage to the Northwest coast (the Columbia River or Russian America) for furs is romantic and mysterious, and if it takes the ship round the world, by way of the Islands and China, it out-ranks them all. The grave, slab-sided mate of the schooner leaned over the rail, and spoke to the men in our boat: “Where are you from?” Joe answered up quick, “From the Nor’west coast.” “What’s your cargo?” This was a poser; but Joe was ready with an equivoke. “Skins,” said he. “Here and there a horn?” asked the mate, in the dryest manner. The boat’s crew laughed out, and Joe’s glory faded. Apropos of this, a man named Sam, on board the Pilgrim, used to tell a story of a mean little captain in a mean little brig, in which he sailed from Liverpool to New York, who insisted on speaking a great, homeward-bound Indiaman, with her studding-sails out on both sides, sunburnt men in wide-brimmed hats on her decks, and a monkey and paroquet in her rigging, “rolling down from St. Helena.” There was no need of his stopping her to speak her, but his vanity led him to do it, and then his meanness made him so awestruck that he seemed to quail. He called out, in a small, lisping voice, “What ship is that, pray?” A deep-toned voice roared through the trumpet, “The Bashaw, from Canton, bound to Boston. Hundred and ten days out! Where are you from?” “Only from Liverpool, sir,” he lisped, in the most apologetic and subservient voice. But the humor will be felt by those only who know the ritual of hailing at sea. No one says “sir,” and the “only” was wonderfully expressive.
It was just dinner-time when we filled away, and the steward, taking a few bunches of onions for the cabin, gave the rest to us, with a bottle of vinegar. We carried them forward, stowed them away in the forecastle, refusing to have them cooked, and ate them raw, with our beef and bread. And a glorious treat they were. The freshness and crispness of the raw onion, with the earthy taste, give it a great relish to one who has been a long time on salt provisions. We were ravenous after them. It was like a scent of blood to a hound. We ate them at every meal, by the dozen, and filled our pockets with them, to eat in our watch on deck; and the bunches, rising in the form of a cone, from the largest at the bottom, to the smallest, no larger than a strawberry, at the top, soon disappeared. The chief use, however, of the fresh provisions, was for the men with the scurvy. One of them was able to eat, and he soon brought himself to, by gnawing upon raw potatoes and onions; but the other, by this time, was hardly able to open his mouth, and the cook took the potatoes raw, pounded them in a mortar, and gave him the juice to drink. This he swallowed, by the teaspoonful at a time, and rinsed it about his gums and throat. The strong earthy taste and smell of this extract of the raw potato at first produced a shuddering through his whole frame, and, after drinking it, an acute pain, which ran through all parts of his body; but knowing by this that it was taking strong hold, he persevered, drinking a spoonful every hour or so, and holding it a long time in his mouth, until, by the effect of this drink, and of his own restored hope (for he had nearly given up in despair), he became so well as to be able to move about, and open his mouth enough to eat the raw potatoes and onions pounded into a soft pulp. This course soon restored his appetite and strength, and in ten days after we spoke the Solon, so rapid was his recovery that, from lying helpless and almost hopeless in his berth, he was at the mast-head, furling a royal.
With a fine southwest wind we passed inside of the Bermudas, and, notwithstanding the old couplet, which was quoted again and again by those who thought we should have one more touch of a storm before our long absence,–
“If the Bermudas let you pass,
You must beware of Hatteras,”–
we were to the northward of Hatteras, with good weather, and beginning to count, not the days, but the hours, to the time when we should be at anchor in Boston harbor.
Our ship was in fine order, all hands having been hard at work upon her, from daylight to dark, every day but Sunday from the time we got into warm weather on this side the Cape.
It is a common notion with landsmen that a ship is in her finest condition when she leaves port to enter upon her voyage, and that she comes home, after a long absence,–
“With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails; Lean, rent, and beggared by the strumpet wind.”
But so far from that, unless a ship meets with some accident, or comes upon the coast in the dead of winter, when work cannot be done upon the rigging, she is in her finest order at the end of the voyage. When she sails from port, her rigging is generally slack; the masts need staying; the decks and sides are black and dirty from taking in cargo; riggers’ seizings and overhand knots in place of nice seamanlike work; and everything, to a sailor’s eye, adrift. But on the passage home the fine weather between the tropics is spent in putting the ship in the neatest order. No merchant vessel looks better than an Indiaman, or a Cape Horn-er, after a long voyage, and captains and mates stake their reputation for seamanship upon the appearance of their ships when they haul into the dock. All our standing rigging, fore and aft, was set up and tarred, the masts stayed, the lower and topmast rigging rattled down (or up, as the fashion now is); and so careful were our officers to keep the ratlines taut and straight, that we were obliged to go aloft upon the ropes and shearpoles with which the rigging was swifted in; and these were used as jury ratlines until we got close upon the coast. After this, the ship was scraped, inside and out, decks, masts, booms, and all; a stage being rigged outside, upon which we scraped her down to the water-line, pounding the rust off the chains, bolts, and fastenings. Then, taking two days of calm under the line, we painted her on the outside, giving her open ports in her streak, and finishing off the nice work upon the stern, where sat Neptune in his car, holding his trident, drawn by sea horses; and retouched the gilding and coloring of the cornucopia which ornamented her billet-head. The inside was then painted, from the skysail truck to the waterways,– the yards, black; mast-heads and tops, white; monkey-rail, black, white, and yellow; bulwarks, green; plank-shear, white; waterways, lead-color, &c., &c. The anchors and ring-bolts, and other iron work, were blackened with coal-tar; and the steward was kept at work, polishing the brass of the wheel, bell, capstan, &c. The cabin, too, was scraped, varnished, and painted; and the forecastle scraped and scrubbed, there being no need of paint and varnish for Jack’s quarters. The decks were then scraped and varnished, and everything useless thrown overboard; among which, the empty tar barrels were set on fire and thrown overboard, of a dark night, and left blazing astern, lighting up the ocean for miles. Add to all this labor the neat work upon the rigging,– the knots, flemish-eyes, splices, seizings, coverings, pointings, and graffings which show a ship in crack order. The last preparation, and which looked still more like coming into port, was getting the anchors over the bows, bending the cables, rowsing the hawsers up from between decks, and overhauling the deep-sea lead-line.
Thursday, September 15th. This morning the temperature and peculiar appearance of the water, the quantities of gulf-weed floating about, and a bank of clouds lying directly before us, showed that we were on the border of the Gulf Stream. This remarkable current, running northeast, nearly across the ocean, is almost constantly shrouded in clouds and is the region of storms and heavy seas. Vessels often run from a clear sky and light wind, with all sail, at once into a heavy sea and cloudy sky, with double-reefed topsails. A sailor told me that, on a passage from Gibraltar to Boston, his vessel neared the Gulf Stream with a light breeze, clear sky, and studding-sails out, alow and aloft; while before it was a long line of heavy, black clouds, lying like a bank upon the water, and a vessel coming out of it, under double-reefed topsails, and with royal yards sent down. As they drew near, they began to take in sail after sail, until they were reduced to the same condition; and, after twelve or fourteen hours of rolling and pitching in a heavy sea, before a smart gale, they ran out of the bank on the other side, and were in fine weather again, and under their royals and skysails. As we drew into it, the sky became cloudy, the sea high, and everything had the appearance of the going off, or the coming on, of a storm. It was blowing no more than a stiff breeze; yet the wind being northeast, which is directly against the course of the current, made an ugly, chopping sea, which heaved and pitched the vessel about, so that we were obliged to send down the royal yards, and to take in our light sails. At noon, the thermometer, which had been repeatedly lowered into the water, showed the temperature to be seventy; which was considerably above that of the air,– as is always the case in the centre of the Stream. A lad who had been at work at the royal-mast-head came down upon deck, and took a turn round the long-boat; and, looking pale, said he was so sick that he could stay aloft no longer, but was ashamed to acknowledge it to the officer. He went up again, but soon gave out and came down, and leaned over the rail, “as sick as a lady passenger.” He had been to sea several years, and had, he said, never been sick before. He was made so by the irregular pitching motion of the vessel, increased by the height to which he had been above the hull, which is like the fulcrum of the lever. An old sailor, who was at work on the top-gallant yard, said he felt disagreeably all the time, and was glad, when his job was done, to get down into the top, or upon deck. Another hand was sent to the royal-mast-head, who stayed nearly an hour, but gave up. The work must be done, and the mate sent me. I did very well for some time, but began at length to feel very unpleasantly, though I never had been sick since the first two days from Boston, and had been in all sorts of weather and situations. Still, I kept my place, and did not come down, until I had got through my work, which was more than two hours. The ship certainly never acted so before. She was pitched and jerked about in all manner of ways; the sails seeming to have no steadying power over her. The tapering points of the masts made various curves against the sky overhead, and sometimes, in one sweep of an instant, described an arc of more than forty-five degrees, bringing up with a sudden jerk, which made it necessary to hold on with both hands, and then sweeping off in another long, irregular curve. I was not positively sick, and came down with a look of indifference, yet was not unwilling to get upon the comparative terra firma of the deck. A few hours more carried us through, and when we saw the sun go down, upon our larboard beam, in the direction of the continent of North America, we had left the banks of dark, stormy clouds astern, in the twilight.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Friday, September 16th. Lat. 38° N., lon. 69° 00′ W. A fine southwest wind; every hour carrying us nearer in toward the land. All hands on deck at the dog watch, and nothing talked about but our getting in; where we should make the land; whether we should arrive before Sunday; going to church; how Boston would look; friends; wages paid; and the like. Every one was in the best spirits; and, the voyage being nearly at an end, the strictness of discipline was relaxed, for it was not necessary to order in a cross tone what all were ready to do with a will. The differences and quarrels which a long voyage breeds on board a ship were forgotten, and every one was friendly; and two men, who had been on the eve of a fight half the voyage, were laying out a plan together for a cruise on shore. When the mate came forward, he talked to the men, and said we should be on George’s Bank before to-morrow noon; and joked with the boys, promising to go and see them, and to take them down to Marblehead in a coach.
Saturday, 17th. The wind was light all day, which kept us back somewhat; but a fine breeze springing up at nightfall, we were running fast in toward the land. At six o’clock we expected to have the ship hove-to for soundings, as a thick fog, coming up, showed we were near them; but no order was given, and we kept on our way. Eight o’clock came, and the watch went below, and, for the whole of the first hour the ship was driving on, with studding-sails out, alow and aloft, and the night as dark as a pocket. At two bells the captain came on deck, and said a word to the mate, when the studding-sails were hauled into the tops, or boom-ended, the after yards backed, the deep-sea-lead carried forward, and everything got ready for sounding. A man on the spritsail yard with the lead, another on the cat-head with a handful of the line coiled up, another in the fore chains, another in the waist, and another in the main chains, each with a quantity of the line coiled away in his hand. “All ready there, forward?”– “Aye, aye, sir!”– “He-e-ave!”– “Watch! ho! watch!” sings out the man on the spritsail yard, and the heavy lead drops into the water. “Watch! ho! watch!” bawls the man on the cat-head, as the last fake of the coil drops from his hand, and “Watch! ho! watch!” is shouted by each one as the line falls from his hold, until it comes to the mate, who tends the lead, and has the line in coils on the quarter-deck. Eighty fathoms and no bottom! A depth as great as the height of St. Peters! The line is snatched in a block upon the swifter, and three or four men haul it in and coil it away. The after yards are braced full, the studding-sails hauled out again, and in a few minutes more, the ship had her whole way upon her. At four bells backed again, hove the lead, and– soundings! at sixty fathoms! Hurrah for Yankee land! Hand over hand we hauled the lead in, and the captain, taking it to the light, found black mud on the bottom. Studding-sails taken in; after yards filled, and ship kept on under easy sail all night, the wind dying away.
The soundings on the American coast are so regular that a navigator knows as well where he has made land by the soundings, as he would by seeing the land. Black mud is the soundings of Block Island. As you go toward Nantucket, it changes to a dark sand; then, sand and white shells; and on George’s Banks, white sand; and so on. As our soundings showed us to be off Block Island, our course was due east, to Nantucket Shoals and the South Channel; but the wind died away and left us becalmed in a thick fog, in which we lay the whole of Sunday. At noon of–
Sunday, 18th, Block Island bore, by calculation, N.W. 1/4 W. fifteen miles; but the fog was so thick all day that we could see nothing.
Having got through the ship’s duty, and washed and changed our clothes, we went below, and had a fine time overhauling our chests, laying aside the clothes we meant to go ashore in, and throwing overboard all that were worn out and good for nothing. Away went the woollen caps in which we had carried hides upon our heads, for sixteen months, on the coast of California; the duck frocks for tarring down rigging; and the worn-out and darned mittens and patched woollen trousers which had stood the tug of Cape Horn. We hove them overboard with a good will; for there is nothing like being quit of the very last appendages, remnants, and mementos of our hard fortune. We got our chests all ready for going ashore; ate the last “duff” we expected to have on board the ship Alert; and talked as confidently about matters on shore as though our anchor were on the bottom.
“Who’ll go to church with me a week from to-day?”
“I will,” says Jack; who said aye to everything.
“Go away, salt water!” says Tom. “As soon as I get both legs ashore, I’m going to shoe my heels, and button my ears behind me, and start off into the bush, a straight course, and not stop till I’m out of the sight of salt water!”
“Oh! belay that! If you get once moored, stem and stern, in old Barnes’s grog-shop, with a coal fire ahead and the bar under your lee, you won’t see daylight for three weeks!”
“No!” says Tom, “I’m going to knock off grog and go and board at the Home, and see if they won’t ship me for a deacon!”
“And I,” says Bill, “am going to buy a quadrant and ship for navigator of a Hingham packet!”
Harry White swore he would take rooms at the Tremont House and set up for a gentleman; he knew his wages would hold out for two weeks or so.
These and the like served to pass the time while we were lying waiting for a breeze to clear up the fog and send us on our way.
Toward night a moderate breeze sprang up; the fog, however, continuing as thick as before; and we kept on to the eastward. About the middle of the first watch, a man on the forecastle sang out, in a tone which showed that there was not a moment to be lost,– “Hard up the helm!” and a great ship loomed up out of the fog, coming directly down upon us. She luffed at the same moment, and we just passed each other, our spanker boom grazing over her quarter. The officer of the deck had only time to hail, and she answered, as she went into the fog again, something about Bristol. Probably a whaleman from Bristol, Rhode Island, bound out. The fog continued through the night, with a very light breeze, before which we ran to the eastward, literally feeling our way along. The lead was heaved every two hours, and the gradual change from black mud to sand showed that we were approaching Nantucket South Shoals. On Monday morning, the increased depth and dark-blue color of the water, and the mixture of shells and white sand which we brought up, upon sounding, showed that we were in the channel, and nearing George’s; accordingly, the ship’s head was put directly to the northward, and we stood on, with perfect confidence in the soundings, though we had not taken an observation for two days, nor seen land; and the difference of an eighth of a mile out of the way might put us ashore. Throughout the day a provokingly light wind prevailed, and at eight o’clock, a small fishing schooner, which we passed, told us we were nearly abreast of Chatham lights. Just before midnight, a light land-breeze sprang up, which carried us well along; and at four o’clock, thinking ourselves to the northward of Race Point, we hauled upon the wind and stood into the bay, west-northwest, for Boston light, and began firing guns for a pilot. Our watch went below at four o’clock, but could not sleep, for the watch on deck were banging away at the guns every few minutes. And indeed, we cared very little about it, for we were in Boston Bay; and if fortune favored us, we could all “sleep in” the next night, with nobody to call the watch every four hours.
We turned out, of our own will, at daybreak, to get a sight of land. In the gray of the morning, one or two small fishing smacks peered out of the mist; and when the broad day broke upon us, there lay the low sand-hills of Cape Cod over our larboard quarter, and before us the wide waters of Massachusetts Bay, with here and there a sail gliding over its smooth surface. As we drew in toward the mouth of the harbor, as toward a focus, the vessels began to multiply, until the bay seemed alive with sails gliding about in all directions; some on the wind, and others before it, as they were bound to or from the emporium of trade and centre of the bay. It was a stirring sight for us, who had been months on the ocean without seeing anything but two solitary sails; and over two years without seeing more than the three or four traders on an almost desolate coast. There were the little coasters, bound to and from the various towns along the south shore, down in the bight of the bay, and to the eastward; here and there a square-rigged vessel standing out to seaward; and, far in the distance, beyond Cape Ann, was the smoke of a steamer, stretching along in a narrow black cloud upon the water. Every sight was full of beauty and interest. We were coming back to our homes; and the signs of civilization and prosperity and happiness, from which we had been so long banished, were multiplying about us. The high land of Cape Ann and the rocks and shore of Cohasset were full in sight, the light-houses standing like sentries in white before the harbors; and even the smoke from the chimneys on the plains of Hingham was seen rising slowly in the morning air. One of our boys was the son of a bucket-maker; and his face lighted up as he saw the tops of the well-known hills which surround his native place. About ten o’clock a little boat came bobbing over the water, and put a pilot on board, and sheered off in pursuit of other vessels bound in. Being now within the scope of the telegraph stations, our signals were run up at the fore; and in half an hour afterwards, the owner on ‘Change, or in his counting-room, knew that his ship was below; and the landlords, runners, and sharks in Ann Street learned that there was a rich prize for them down in the bay,– a ship from round the Horn, with a crew to be paid off with two years’ wages.
The wind continuing very light, all hands were sent aloft to strip off the chafing gear; and battens, parcellings, roundings, hoops, mats, and leathers came flying from aloft, and left the rigging neat and clean, stripped of all its sea bandaging. The last touch was put to the vessel by painting the skysail poles; and I was sent up to the fore, with a bucket of white paint and a brush, and touched her off, from the truck to the eyes of the royal rigging. At noon we lay becalmed off the lower light-house; and, it being about slack water, we made little progress. A firing was heard in the direction of Hingham, and the pilot said there was a review there. The Hingham boy got wind of this, and said if the ship had been twelve hours sooner he should have been down among the soldiers, and in the booths, and having a grand time. As it was, we had little prospect of getting in before night. About two o’clock a breeze sprang up ahead, from the westward, and we began beating up against it. A full-rigged brig was beating in at the same time, and we passed each other in our tacks, sometimes one and sometimes the other working to windward, as the wind and tide favored or opposed. It was my trick at the wheel from two till four; and I stood my last helm, making between nine hundred and a thousand hours which I had spent at the helms of our two vessels. The tide beginning to set against us, we made slow work; and the afternoon was nearly spent before we got abreast of the inner light. In the meanwhile, several vessels were coming down, outward bound; among which, a fine, large ship, with yards squared, fair wind and fair tide, passed us like a race-horse, the men running out upon her yards to rig out the studding-sail booms. Toward sundown the wind came off in flaws, sometimes blowing very stiff, so that the pilot took in the royals, and then it died away; when, in order to get us in before the tide became too strong, the royals were set again. As this kept us running up and down the rigging, one hand was sent aloft at each mast-head, to stand by to loose and furl the sails at the moment of the order. I took my place at the fore, and loosed and furled the royal five times between Rainsford Island and the Castle. At one tack we ran so near to Rainsford Island that, looking down from the royal yard, the island, with its hospital buildings, nice gravelled walks, and green plats, seemed to lie directly under our yard-arms. So close is the channel to some of these islands, that we ran the end of our flying-jib-boom over one of the outworks of the fortifications on George’s Island; and had an opportunity of seeing the advantages of that point as a fortified place; for, in working up the channel, we presented a fair stem and stern, for raking, from the batteries, three or four times. One gun might have knocked us to pieces.
We had all set our hearts upon getting up to town before night and going ashore, but the tide beginning to run strong against us, and the wind, what there was of it, being ahead, we made but little by weather-bowing the tide, and the pilot gave orders to cock-bill the anchor and overhaul the chain. Making two long stretches, which brought us into the roads, under the lee of the Castle, he clewed up the topsails, and let go the anchor; and for the first time since leaving San Diego,– one hundred and thirty-five days,– our anchor was upon bottom. In half an hour more, we were lying snugly, with all sails furled, safe in Boston harbor; our long voyage ended; the well-known scene about us; the dome of the State House fading in the western sky; the lights of the city starting into sight, as the darkness came on; and at nine o’clock the clangor of the bells, ringing their accustomed peals; among which the Boston boys tried to distinguish the well-known tone of the Old South.
We had just done furling the sails, when a beautiful little pleasure-boat luffed up into the wind, under our quarter, and the junior partner of the firm to which our ship belonged, Mr. Hooper, jumped on board. I saw him from the mizzen-topsail yard, and knew him well. He shook the captain by the hand, and went down into the cabin, and in a few minutes came up and inquired of the mate for me. The last time I had seen him I was in the uniform of an undergraduate of Harvard College, and now, to his astonishment, there came down from aloft a “rough alley” looking fellow, with duck trousers and red shirt, long hair, and face burnt as dark as an Indian’s. We shook hands, and he congratulated me upon my return and my appearance of health and strength, and said that my friends were all well. He had seen some of my family a few days before. I thanked him for telling me what I should not have dared to ask; and if–
“The first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office; and his tongue Sounds ever after like a sullen bell,”–
certainly I ought ever to remember this gentleman and his words with pleasure.
The captain went up to town in the boat with Mr. Hooper, and left us to pass another night on board ship, and to come up with the morning’s tide under command of the pilot.
So much did we feel ourselves to be already at home, in anticipation, that our plain supper of hard bread and salt beef was barely touched; and many on board, to whom this was the first voyage, could scarcely sleep. As for myself, by one of those anomalous changes of feeling of which we are all the subjects, I found that I was in a state of indifference for which I could by no means account. A year before, while carrying hides on the coast, the assurance that in a twelvemonth we should see Boston made me half wild; but now that I was actually there, and in sight of home, the emotions which I had so long anticipated feeling I did not find, and in their place was a state of very nearly entire apathy. Something of the same experience was related to me by a sailor whose first voyage was one of five years upon the Northwest Coast. He had left home a lad, and when, after so many years of hard and trying experience, he found himself homeward bound, such was the excitement of his feelings that, during the whole passage, he could talk and think of nothing else but his arrival, and how and when he should jump from the vessel and take his way directly home. Yet, when the vessel was made fast to the wharf and the crew dismissed, he seemed suddenly to lose all feeling about the matter. He told me that he went below and changed his dress; took some water from the scuttle-butt and washed himself leisurely; overhauled his chest, and put his clothes all in order; took his pipe from its place, filled it, and, sitting down upon his chest, smoked it slowly for the last time. Here he looked round upon the forecastle in which he had spent so many years, and being alone and his shipmates scattered, began to feel actually unhappy. Home became almost a dream; and it was not until his brother (who had heard of the ship’s arrival) came down into the forecastle and told him of things at home, and who were waiting there to see him, that he could realize where he was, and feel interest enough to put him in motion toward that place for which he had longed, and of which he had dreamed, for years. There is probably so much of excitement in prolonged expectation that the quiet realizing of it produces a momentary stagnation of feeling as well as of effort. It was a good deal so with me. The activity of preparation, the rapid progress of the ship, the first making land, the coming up the harbor, and old scenes breaking upon the view, produced a mental as well as bodily activity, from which the change to a perfect stillness, when both expectation and the necessity of labor failed, left a calmness, almost an indifference, from which I must be roused by some new excitement. And the next morning, when all hands were called, and we were busily at work, clearing the decks, and getting everything in readiness for going up to the wharves,– loading the guns for a salute, loosing the sails, and manning the windlass,– mind and body seemed to wake together.
About ten o’clock a sea-breeze sprang up, and the pilot gave orders to get the ship under way. All hands manned the windlass, and the long-drawn “Yo, heave, ho!” which we had last heard dying away among the desolate hills of San Diego, soon brought the anchor to the bows; and, with a fair wind and tide, a bright sunny morning, royals and skysails set, ensign, streamer, signals, and pennant flying, and with our guns firing, we came swiftly and handsomely up to the city. Off the end of the wharf, we rounded-to, and let go our anchor; and no sooner was it on the bottom than the decks were filled with people: custom-house officers; Topliff’s agent, to inquire for news; others, inquiring for friends on board, or left upon the coast; dealers in grease, besieging the galley to make a bargain with the cook for his slush; “loafers” in general; and, last and chief, boarding-house runners, to secure their men. Nothing can exceed the obliging disposition of these runners, and the interest they take in a sailor returned from a long voyage with a plenty of money. Two or three of them, at different times, took me by the hand; pretended to remember me perfectly; were quite sure I had boarded with them before I sailed; were delighted to see me back; gave me their cards; had a hand-cart waiting on the wharf, on purpose to take my things up; would lend me a hand to get my chest ashore; bring a bottle of grog on board if we did not haul in immediately; and the like. In fact, we could hardly get clear of them to go aloft and furl the sails. Sail after sail, for the hundredth time, in fair weather and in foul, we furled now for the last time together, and came down and took the warp ashore, manned the capstan, and with a chorus which waked up half North End, and rang among the buildings in the dock, we hauled her in to the wharf.[1] The city bells were just ringing one when the last turn was made fast and the crew dismissed; and in five minutes more not a soul was left on board the good ship Alert but the old ship-keeper, who had come down from the counting-house to take charge of her.
[1] [Sept. 21, 1836.]
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AFTER
It was in the winter of 1835-6 that the ship Alert, in the prosecution of her voyage for hides on the remote and almost unknown coast of California, floated into the vast solitude of the Bay of San Francisco. All around was the stillness of nature. One vessel, a Russian, lay at anchor there, but during our whole stay not a sail came or went. Our trade was with remote Missions, which sent hides to us in launches manned by their Indians. Our anchorage was between a small island, called Yerba Buena, and a gravel beach in a little bight or cove of the same name, formed by two small, projecting points. Beyond, to the westward of the landing-place, were dreary sand-hills, with little grass to be seen, and few trees, and beyond them higher hills, steep and barren, their sides gullied by the rains. Some five or six miles beyond the landing-place, to the right, was a ruinous Presidio, and some three or four miles to the left was the Mission of Dolores, as ruinous as the Presidio, almost deserted, with but few Indians attached to it, and but little property in cattle. Over a region far beyond our sight there were no other human habitations, except that an enterprising Yankee, years in advance of his time, had put up, on the rising ground above the landing, a shanty of rough boards, where he carried on a very small retail trade between the hide ships and the Indians. Vast banks of fog, invading us from the North Pacific, drove in through the entrance, and covered the whole bay; and when they disappeared, we saw a few well-wooded islands, the sand-hills on the west, the grassy and wooded slopes on the east, and the vast stretch of the bay to the southward, where we were told lay the Missions of Santa Clara and San José, and still longer stretches to the northward and northeastward, where we understood smaller bays spread out, and large rivers poured in their tributes of waters. There were no settlements on these bays or rivers, and the few ranchos and Missions were remote and widely separated. Not only the neighborhood of our anchorage, but the entire region of the great bay, was a solitude. On the whole coast of California there was not a light-house, a beacon, or a buoy, and the charts were made up from old and disconnected surveys by British, Russian, and Mexican voyagers. Birds of prey and passage swooped and dived about us, wild beasts ranged through the oak groves, and as we slowly floated out of the harbor with the tide, herds of deer came to the water’s edge, on the northerly side of the entrance, to gaze at the strange spectacle.
On the evening of Saturday, the 13th of August, 1859, the superb steamship Golden Gate, gay with crowds of passengers, and lighting the sea for miles around with the glare of her signal lights of red, green, and white, and brilliant with lighted saloons and staterooms, bound up from the Isthmus of Panama, neared the entrance to San Francisco, the great centre of a world-wide commerce. Miles out at sea, on the desolate rocks of the Farallones, gleamed the powerful rays of one of the most costly and effective light-houses in the world. As we drew in through the Golden Gate, another light-house met our eyes, and in the clear moonlight of the unbroken California summer we saw, on the right, a large fortification protecting the narrow entrance, and just before us the little island of Alcatraz confronted us,– one entire fortress. We bore round the point toward the old anchoring-ground of the hide ships, and there, covering the sand-hills and the valleys, stretching from the water’s edge to the base of the great hills, and from the old Presidio to the Mission, flickering all over with the lamps of its streets and houses, lay a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants. Clocks tolled the hour of midnight from its steeples, but the city was alive from the salute of our guns, spreading the news that the fortnightly steamer had come, bringing mails and passengers from the Atlantic world. Clipper ships of the largest size lay at anchor in the stream, or were girt to the wharves; and capacious high-pressure steamers, as large and showy as those of the Hudson or Mississippi, bodies of dazzling light, awaited the delivery of our mails to take their courses up the Bay, stopping at Benicia and the United States Naval Station, and then up the great tributaries– the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Feather Rivers– to the far inland cities of Sacramento, Stockton, and Marysville.
The dock into which we drew, and the streets about it, were densely crowded with express wagons and hand-carts to take luggage, coaches and cabs for passengers, and with men,– some looking out for friends among our hundreds of passengers,– agents of the press, and a greater multitude eager for newspapers and verbal intelligence from the great Atlantic and European world. Through this crowd I made my way, along the well-built and well-lighted streets, as alive as by day, where boys in high-keyed voices were already crying the latest New York papers; and between one and two o’clock in the morning found myself comfortably abed in a commodious room, in the Oriental Hotel, which stood, as well as I could learn, on the filled-up cove, and not far from the spot where we used to beach our boats from the Alert.
Sunday, August 14th. When I awoke in the morning, and looked from my windows over the city of San Francisco, with its storehouses, towers, and steeples; its court-houses, theatres, and hospitals; its daily journals; its well-filled learned professions; its fortresses and light-houses; its wharves and harbor, with their thousand-ton clipper ships, more in number than London or Liverpool sheltered that day, itself one of the capitals of the American Republic, and the sole emporium of a new world, the awakened Pacific; when I looked across the bay to the eastward, and beheld a beautiful town on the fertile, wooded shores of the Contra Costa, and steamers, large and small, the ferryboats to the Contra Costa, and capacious freighters and passenger-carriers to all parts of the great bay and its tributaries, with lines of their smoke in the horizon,– when I saw all these things, and reflected on what I once was and saw here, and what now surrounded me, I could scarcely keep my hold on reality at all, or the genuineness of anything, and seemed to myself like one who had moved in “worlds not realized.”
I could not complain that I had not a choice of places of worship. The Roman Catholics have an archbishop, a cathedral, and five or six smaller churches, French, German, Spanish, and English; and the Episcopalians a bishop, a cathedral, and three other churches; the Methodists and Presbyterians have three or four each, and there are Congregationalists, Baptists, a Unitarian, and other societies. On my way to church, I met two classmates of mine at Harvard standing in a door-way, one a lawyer and the other a teacher, and made appointments for a future meeting. A little farther on I came upon another Harvard man, a fine scholar and wit, and full of cleverness and good-humor, who invited me to go to breakfast with him at the French house,– he was a bachelor, and a late riser on Sundays. I asked him to show me the way to Bishop Kip’s church. He hesitated, looked a little confused, and admitted that he was not as well up in certain classes of knowledge as in others, but, by a desperate guess, pointed out a wooden building at the foot of the street, which any one might have seen could not be right, and which turned out to be an African Baptist meeting-house. But my friend had many capital points of character, and I owed much of the pleasure of my visit to his attentions.
The congregation at the Bishop’s church was precisely like one you would meet in New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. To be sure, the identity of the service makes one feel at once at home, but the people were alike, nearly all of the English race, though from all parts of the Union. The latest French bonnets were at the head of the chief pews, and business men at the foot. The music was without character, but there was an instructive sermon, and the church was full.
I found that there were no services at any of the Protestant churches in the afternoon. They have two services on Sunday; at 11 A.M., and after dark. The afternoon is spent at home, or in friendly visiting, or teaching of Sunday Schools, or other humane and social duties.
This is as much the practice with what at home are called the strictest denominations as with any others. Indeed, I found individuals, as well as public bodies, affected in a marked degree by a change of oceans and by California life. One Sunday afternoon I was surprised at receiving the card of a man whom I had last known, some fifteen years ago, as a strict and formal deacon of a Congregational Society in New England. He was a deacon still, in San Francisco, a leader in all pious works, devoted to his denomination and to total abstinence,– the same internally, but externally– what a change! Gone was the downcast eye, the bated breath, the solemn, non-natural voice, the watchful gait, stepping as if he felt responsible for the balance of the moral universe! He walked with a stride, an uplifted open countenance, his face covered with beard, whiskers, and mustache, his voice strong and natural,– and, in short, he had put off the New England deacon and become a human being. In a visit of an hour I learned much from him about the religious societies, the moral reforms, the “Dashaways,”– total abstinence societies, which had taken strong hold on the young and wilder parts of society,– and then of the Vigilance Committee, of which he was a member, and of more secular points of interest.
In one of the parlors of the hotel, I saw a man of about sixty years of age, with his feet bandaged and resting in a chair, whom somebody addressed by the name of Lies.[1] Lies! thought I, that must be the man who came across the country from Kentucky to Monterey while we lay there in the Pilgrim in 1835, and made a passage in the Alert, when he used to shoot with his rifle bottles hung from the top-gallant studding-sail-boom-ends. He married the beautiful Doña Rosalía Vallejo, sister of Don Guadalupe. There were the old high features and sandy hair. I put my chair beside him, and began conversation, as any one may do in California. Yes, he was the Mr. Lies; and when I gave my name he professed at once to remember me, and spoke of my book. I found that almost– I might perhaps say quite– every American in California had read it; for when California “broke out,” as the phrase is, in 1848, and so large a portion of the Anglo-Saxon race flocked to it, there was no book upon California but mine. Many who were on the coast at the time the book refers to, and afterwards read it, and remembered the Pilgrim and Alert, thought they also remembered me. But perhaps more did remember me than I was inclined at first to believe, for the novelty of a collegian coming out before the mast had drawn more attention to me than I was aware of at the time.
Late in the afternoon, as there were vespers at the Roman Catholic churches, I went to that of Notre Dame des Victoires. The congregation was French, and a sermon in French was preached by an Abbé; the music was excellent, all things airy and tasteful, and making one feel as if in one of the chapels in Paris. The Cathedral of St. Mary, which I afterwards visited, where the Irish attend, was a contrast indeed, and more like one of our stifling Irish Catholic churches in Boston or New York, with intelligence in so small a proportion to the number of faces. During the three Sundays I was in San Francisco, I visited three of the Episcopal churches, and the Congregational, a Chinese Mission Chapel, and on the Sabbath (Saturday) a Jewish synagogue. The Jews are a wealthy and powerful class here. The Chinese, too, are numerous, and do a great part of the manual labor and small shop-keeping, and have some wealthy mercantile houses.
It is noticeable that European Continental fashions prevail generally in this city,– French cooking, lunch at noon, and dinner at the end of the day, with café noir after meals, and to a great extent the European Sunday,– to all which emigrants from the United States and Great Britain seem to adapt themselves. Some dinners which were given to me at French restaurants were, it seemed to me,– a poor judge of such matters, to be sure,– as sumptuous and as good, in dishes and wines, as I have found in Paris. But I had a relish-maker which my friends at table did not suspect,– the remembrance of the forecastle dinners I ate here twenty-four years before.
August 17th. The customs of California are free; and any person who knows about my book speaks to me. The newspapers have announced the arrival of the veteran pioneer of all. I hardly walk out without meeting or making acquaintances. I have already been invited to deliver the anniversary oration before the Pioneer Society, to celebrate the settlement of San Francisco. Any man is qualified for election into this society who came to California before 1853. What moderns they are! I tell them of the time when Richardson’s shanty of 1835– not his adobe house of 1836– was the only human habitation between the Mission and the Presidio, and when the vast bay, with all its tributaries and recesses, was a solitude,– and yet I am but little past forty years of age. They point out the place where Richardson’s adobe house stood, and tell me that the first court and first town council were convened in it, the first Protestant worship performed in it, and in it the first capital trial by the Vigilance Committee held. I am taken down to the wharves, by antiquaries of a ten or twelve years’ range, to identify the two points, now known as Clark’s and Rincon, which formed the little cove of Yerba Buena, where we used to beach our boats,– now filled up and built upon. The island we called “Wood Island,” where we spent the cold days and nights of December, in our launch, getting wood for our year’s supply, is clean shorn of trees; and the bare rocks of Alcatraz Island, an entire fortress. I have looked at the city from the water, and at the water and islands from the city, but I can see nothing that recalls the times gone by, except the venerable Mission, the ruinous Presidio, the high hills in the rear of the town, and the great stretches of the bay in all directions.
To-day I took a California horse of the old style,– the run, the loping gait,– and visited the Presidio. The walls stand as they did, with some changes made to accommodate a small garrison of United States troops. It has a noble situation, and I saw from it a clipper ship of the very largest class, coming through the Gate, under her fore-and-aft sails. Thence I rode to the Fort, now nearly finished, on the southern shore of the Gate, and made an inspection of it. It is very expensive and of the latest style. One of the engineers here is Custis Lee, who has just left West Point at the head of his class,– a son of Colonel Robert E. Lee, who distinguished himself in the Mexican War.[2]
Another morning I ride to the Mission Dolores. It has a strangely solitary aspect, enhanced by its surroundings of the most uncongenial, rapidly growing modernisms; the hoar of ages surrounded by the brightest, slightest, and rapidest of modern growths. Its old belfries still clanged with the discordant bells, and Mass was saying within, for it is used as a place of worship for the extreme south part of the city.
In one of my walks about the wharves, I found a pile of dry hides lying by the side of a vessel. Here was something to feelingly persuade me what I had been, to recall a past scarce credible to myself. I stood lost in reflection. What were these hides– what were they not?– to us, to me, a boy, twenty-four years ago? These were our constant labor, our chief object, our almost habitual thought. They brought us out here, they kept us here, and it was only by getting them that we could escape from the coast and return to home and civilized life. If it had not been that I might be seen, I should have seized one, slung it over my head, walked off with it, and thrown it by the old toss– I do not believe yet a lost art– to the ground. How they called up to my mind the months of curing at San Diego, the year and more of beach and surf work, and the steeving of the ship for home! I was in a dream of San Diego, San Pedro,– with its hill so steep for taking up goods, and its stones so hard to our bare feet,– and the cliffs of San Juan! All this, too, is no more! The entire hide-business is of the past, and to the present inhabitants of California a dim tradition. The gold discoveries drew off all men from the gathering or cure of hides, the inflowing population made an end of the great droves of cattle; and now not a vessel pursues the– I was about to say dear– the dreary, once hated business of gathering hides upon the coast, and the beach of San Diego is abandoned and its hide-houses have disappeared. Meeting a respectable-looking citizen on the wharf, I inquired of him how the hide-trade was carried on. “O,” said he, “there is very little of it, and that is all here. The few that are brought in are placed under sheds in winter, or left out on the wharf in summer, and are loaded from the wharves into the vessels alongside. They form parts of cargoes of other materials.” I really felt too much, at the instant, to express to him the cause of my interest in the subject, and only added, “Then the old business of trading up and down the coast and curing hides for cargoes is all over?” “O yes, sir,” said he, “those old times of the Pilgrim and Alert and California, that we read about, are gone by.”
Saturday, August 20th. The steamer Senator makes regular trips up and down the coast, between San Francisco and San Diego, calling at intermediate ports. This is my opportunity to revisit the old scenes. She sails to-day, and I am off, steaming among the great clippers anchored in the harbor, and gliding rapidly round the point, past Alcatraz Island, the light-house, and through the fortified Golden Gate, and bending to the southward,– all done in two or three hours, which, in the Alert, under canvas, with head tides, variable winds, and sweeping currents to deal with, took us full two days.
Among the passengers I noticed an elderly gentleman, thin, with sandy hair and a face that seemed familiar. He took off his glove and showed one shrivelled hand. It must be he! I went to him and said, “Captain Wilson, I believe.” Yes, that was his name. “I knew you, sir, when you commanded the Ayacucho on this coast, in old hide-droghing times, in 1835-6.” He was quickened by this, and at once inquiries were made on each side, and we were in full talk about the Pilgrim and Alert, Ayacucho and Loriotte, the California and Lagoda. I found he had been very much flattered by the praise I had bestowed in my book on his seamanship, especially in bringing the Pilgrim to her berth in San Diego harbor, after she had drifted successively into the Lagoda and Loriotte, and was coming into him. I had made a pet of his brig, the Ayacucho, which pleased him almost as much as my remembrance of his bride and their wedding, which I saw at Santa Barbara in 1836. Doña Ramona was now the mother of a large family, and Wilson assured me that if I would visit him at his rancho, near San Luis Obispo, I should find her still a handsome woman, and very glad to see me. How we walked the deck together, hour after hour, talking over the old times,– the ships, the captains, the crews, the traders on shore, the ladies, the Missions, the southeasters! indeed, where could we stop? He had sold the Ayacucho in Chili for a vessel of war, and had given up the sea, and had been for years a ranchero. (I learned from others that he had become one of the most wealthy and respectable farmers in the State, and that his rancho was well worth visiting.) Thompson, he said, hadn’t the sailor in him; and he never could laugh enough at his fiasco in San Diego, and his reception by Bradshaw. Faucon was a sailor and a navigator. He did not know what had become of George Marsh (ante, pp. 255-258), except that he left him in Callao; nor could he tell me anything of handsome Bill Jackson (ante, p. 104), nor of Captain Nye of the Loriotte. I told him all I then knew of the ships, the masters, and the officers. I found he had kept some run of my history, and needed little information. Old Señor Noriego of Santa Barbara, he told me, was dead, and Don Carlos and Don Santiago, but I should find their children there, now in middle life. Doña Angustias, he said, I had made famous by my praises of her beauty and dancing, and I should have from her a royal reception. She had been a widow, and remarried since, and had a daughter as handsome as herself. The descendants of Noriego had taken the ancestral name of De la Guerra, as they were nobles of Old Spain by birth; and the boy Pablo, who used to make passages in the Alert, was now Don Pablo de la Guerra, a Senator in the State Legislature for Santa Barbara County.
The points in the country, too, we noticed, as we passed them,– Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Point Año Nuevo, the opening to Monterey, which to my disappointment we did not visit. No; Monterey, the prettiest town on the coast, and its capital and seat of customs, had got no advantage from the great changes, was out of the way of commerce and of the travel to the mines and great rivers, and was not worth stopping at. Point Conception we passed in the night, a cheery light gleaming over the waters from its tall light-house, standing on its outermost peak. Point Conception! That word was enough to recall all our experiences and dreads of gales, swept decks, topmast carried away, and the hardships of a coast service in the winter. But Captain Wilson tells me that the climate has altered; that the southeasters are no longer the bane of the coast they once were, and that vessels now anchor inside the kelp at Santa Barbara and San Pedro all the year round. I should have thought this owing to his spending his winters on a rancho instead of the deck of the Ayacucho, had not the same thing been told me by others.
Passing round Point Conception, and steering easterly, we opened the islands that form, with the main-land, the canal of Santa Barbara. There they are, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa; and there is the beautiful point, Santa Buenaventura; and there lies Santa Barbara on its plain, with its amphitheatre of high hills and distant mountains. There is the old white Mission with its belfries, and there the town, with its one-story adobe houses, with here and there a two-story wooden house of later build; yet little is it altered,– the same repose in the golden sunlight and glorious climate, sheltered by its hills; and then, more remindful than anything else, there roars and tumbles upon the beach the same grand surf of the great Pacific as on the beautiful day when the Pilgrim, after her five months’ voyage, dropped her weary anchors here; the same bright blue ocean, and the surf making just the same monotonous, melancholy roar, and the same dreamy town, and gleaming white Mission, as when we beached our boats for the first time, riding over the breakers with shouting Kanakas, the three small hide-traders lying at anchor in the offing. But now we are the only vessel, and that an unromantic, sail-less, spar-less, engine-driven hulk!
I landed in the surf, in the old style, but it was not high enough to excite us, the only change being that I was somehow unaccountably a passenger, and did not have to jump overboard and steady the boat, and run her up by the gunwales.
Santa Barbara has gained but little. I should not know, from anything I saw, that she was now a seaport of the United States, a part of the enterprising Yankee nation, and not still a lifeless Mexican town. At the same old house, where Señor Noriego lived, on the piazza in front of the court-yard, where was the gay scene of the marriage of our agent, Mr. Robinson, to Doña Anita, where Don Juan Bandini and Doña Angustias danced, Don Pablo de la Guerra received me in a courtly fashion. I passed the day with the family, and in walking about the place; and ate the old dinner with its accompaniments of fríjoles, native olives and grapes, and native wines. In due time I paid my respects to Doña Angustias, and, notwithstanding what Wilson told me, I could hardly believe that after twenty-four years there would still be so much of the enchanting woman about her. She thanked me for the kind and, as she called them, greatly exaggerated compliments I had paid her; and her daughter told me that all travellers who came to Santa Barbara called to see her mother, and that she herself never expected to live long enough to be a belle.
Mr. Alfred Robinson, our agent in 1835-6, was here, with a part of his family. I did not know how he would receive me, remembering what I had printed to the world about him at a time when I took little thought that the world was going to read it; but there was no sign of offence, only a cordiality which gave him, as between us, rather the advantage in status.
The people of this region are giving attention to sheep-raising, wine-making, and the raising of olives, just enough to keep the town from going backwards.
But evening is drawing on, and our boat sails to-night. So, refusing a horse or carriage, I walk down, not unwilling to be a little early, that I may pace up and down the beach, looking off to the islands and the points, and watching the roaring, tumbling billows. How softening is the effect of time! It touches us through the affections. I almost feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear,– the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates! Death, change, distance, lend them a character which makes them quite another thing from the vulgar, wearisome toil of uninteresting, forced manual labor.
The breeze freshened as we stood out to sea, and the wild waves rolled over the red sun, on the broad horizon of the Pacific; but it is summer, and in summer there can be no bad weather in California. Every day is pleasant. Nature forbids a drop of rain to fall by day or night, or a wind to excite itself beyond a fresh summer breeze.
The next morning we found ourselves at anchor in the Bay of San Pedro. Here was this hated, this thoroughly detested spot. Although we lay near, I could scarce recognize the hill up which we rolled and dragged and pushed and carried our heavy loads, and down which we pitched the hides, to carry them barefooted over the rocks to the floating long-boat. It was no longer the landing-place. One had been made at the head of the creek, and boats discharged and took off cargoes from a mole or wharf, in a quiet place, safe from southeasters. A tug ran to take off passengers from the steamer to the wharf,– for the trade of Los Angeles is sufficient to support such a vessel. I got the captain to land me privately, in a small boat, at the old place by the hill. I dismissed the boat, and, alone, found my way to the high ground. I say found my way, for neglect and weather had left but few traces of the steep road the hide-vessels had built to the top. The cliff off which we used to throw the hides, and where I spent nights watching them, was more easily found. The population was doubled, that is to say, there were two houses, instead of one, on the hill. I stood on the brow and looked out toward the offing, the Santa Catalina Island, and, nearer, the melancholy Dead Man’s Island, with its painful tradition, and recalled the gloomy days that followed the flogging, and fancied the Pilgrim at anchor in the offing. But the tug is going toward our steamer, and I must awake and be off. I walked along the shore to the new landing-place, where were two or three store-houses and other buildings, forming a small depot; and a stage-coach, I found, went daily between this place and the Pueblo. I got a seat on the top of the coach, to which were tackled six little less than wild California horses. Each horse had a man at his head, and when the driver had got his reins in hand he gave the word, all the horses were let go at once, and away they went on a spring, tearing over the ground, the driver only keeping them from going the wrong way, for they had a wide, level pampa to run over the whole thirty miles to the Pueblo. This plain is almost treeless, with no grass, at least none now in the drought of midsummer, and is filled with squirrel-holes, and alive with squirrels. As we changed horses twice, we did not slacken our speed until we turned into the streets of the Pueblo.
The Pueblo de los Angeles I found a large and flourishing town of about twenty thousand inhabitants, with brick sidewalks, and blocks of stone or brick houses. The three principal traders when we were here for hides in the Pilgrim and Alert are still among the chief traders of the place,– Stearns, Temple, and Warner, the two former being reputed very rich. I dined with Mr. Stearns, now a very old man, and met there Don Juan Bandini, to whom I had given a good deal of notice in my book. From him, as indeed from every one in this town, I met with the kindest attentions. The wife of Don Juan, who was a beautiful young girl when we were on the coast, Doña Refugio, daughter of Don Santiago Argüello, the commandante of San Diego, was with him, and still handsome. This is one of several instances I have noticed of the preserving quality of the California climate. Here, too, was Henry Mellus, who came out with me before the mast in the Pilgrim, and left the brig to be agent’s clerk on shore. He had experienced varying fortunes here, and was now married to a Mexican lady, and had a family. I dined with him, and in the afternoon he drove me round to see the vineyards, the chief objects in this region. The vintage of last year was estimated at half a million of gallons. Every year new square miles of ground are laid down to vineyards, and the Pueblo promises to be the centre of one of the largest wine-producing regions in the world. Grapes are a drug here, and I found a great abundance of figs, olives, peaches, pears, and melons. The climate is well suited to these fruits, but is too hot and dry for successful wheat crops.
Towards evening, we started off in the stage-coach, with again our relays of six mad horses, and reached the creek before dark, though it was late at night before we got on board the steamer, which was slowly moving her wheels, under way for San Diego.
As we skirted along the coast, Wilson and I recognized, or thought we did, in the clear moonlight, the rude white Mission of San Juan Capistrano, and its cliff, from which I had swung down by a pair of halyards to save a few hides,– a boy who could not be prudential, and who caught at every chance for adventure.
As we made the high point off San Diego, Point Loma, we were greeted by the cheering presence of a light-house. As we swept round it in the early morning, there, before us, lay the little harbor of San Diego, its low spit of sand, where the water runs so deep; the opposite flats, where the Alert grounded in starting for home; the low hills, without trees, and almost without brush; the quiet little beach;– but the chief objects, the hide-houses, my eye looked for in vain. They were gone, all, and left no mark behind.
I wished to be alone, so I let the other passengers go up to the town, and was quietly pulled ashore in a boat, and left to myself. The recollections and the emotions all were sad, and only sad.
Fugit, interea fugit irreparabile tempus.
The past was real. The present, all about me, was unreal, unnatural, repellant. I saw the big ships lying in the stream, the Alert, the California, the Rosa, with her Italians; then the handsome Ayacucho, my favorite; the poor dear old Pilgrim, the home of hardship and hopelessness; the boats passing to and fro; the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls; the peopled beach; the large hide-houses, with their gangs of men; and the Kanakas interspersed everywhere. All, all were gone! not a vestige to mark where one hide-house stood. The oven, too, was gone. I searched for its site, and found, where I thought it should be, a few broken bricks and bits of mortar. I alone was left of all, and how strangely was I here! What changes to me! Where were they all? Why should I care for them,– poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and beach-combers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever-climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck,–
“When for a moment, like a drop of rain,