Читать книгу The South-West (Vol. 1&2) - J. H. Ingraham - Страница 7

Table of Contents

A tar's headway on land—A gentleman's at sea—An agreeable trio—Musical sounds—Helmsman—Supper—Steward—A truism—Helmsman's cry—Effect—Cases for bipeds—Lullaby—Sleep.

The motion was just sufficiently lively to inspirit one—making the blood frolic through the veins, and the heart beat more proudly. The old tars, as they cruised about the decks, walked as steadily as on land. This proves nothing, you may say, if you have witnessed Jack's pendulating, uncertain—"right and left oblique" advance on a shore cruise.

Our tyros of the sea, in their venturesome projections of their persons from one given point in their eye to another, in the hope of accomplishing a straight line, after vacillating most appallingly, would finally succeed "haud passibus æquis" in reaching the position aimed for, fortunate if a lee-lurch did not accommodate them with a dry bed in the "lee scuppers."

Of all laughter-exciting locomotives which most create sensations of the ludicrously serious, commend me to an old land-crab teaching its young one to "go ahead"—a drunkard, reeling homeward through a broad street on a Saturday night—and a "gentleman passenger" three days at sea in his strange evolutions over the deck.

Stretched before me upon the weather hen-coop, enveloped in his cloak, lay one of our "goodlie companie." If his sensations were such as I imagined them to be, he must have felt that the simplest chicken under him wore the stoutest heart.

On the lee hen-coop reposed another passenger in sympathy with his fellow, to whose feelings I felt a disposition to do equal justice. Abaft the wheel, coiled up in the rigging, an agreeable substitute for a bed of down, lay half obscured within the shadow of the lofty stern, another overdone toper—a victim of Neptune, not of the "jolly god"—but whose sensations have been experienced by many of the latter's pupils, who have never tasted other salt water than their own tears.

It has been said or sung by some one, that the "ear is the road to the heart." That it was so to the stomach, I already began to feel, could not be disputed; and as certain "guttural sounds" began to multiply from various quarters, with startling emphasis, lest I should be induced to sympathize with the fallen novitiates around me, by some overt act, I hastily glided by the helmsman, who stood alone like the sole survivor of a battle-field—his weather-beaten visage illuminated at the moment with a strange glare from the "binnacle-lamp" which, concealed within a case like a single-windowed pigeon house, and open in front of him, burned nightly at his feet. The next moment I was in the cabin, now lighted up by a single lamp suspended from the centre of the ceiling, casting rather shade than light upon a small table—studiously arranged for supper by the steward—that non-descript locum tenens for valet—waiter—chambermaid—shoe-black—cook's-mate, and swearing-post for irascible captains to vent stray oaths upon, when the wind is ahead—with a flying commission for here, there, and nowhere! when most wanted.

But the supper! ay, the supper. Those for whom the inviting display was made, were, I am sorry to say it, most unhesitatingly "floored" and quite hors du combat. What a deal of melancholy truth there is in that aphorism, which teaches us that the "brave must yield to the braver!"

As I stood beside the helmsman, I could feel the gallant vessel springing away from under me, quivering through every oaken nerve, like a high-mettled racer with his goal but a bound before him. As she encountered some more formidable wave, there would be a tremendous outlay of animal-like energy, a momentary struggle, a half recoil, a plunging, trembling—onward rush—then a triumphant riding over the conquered foe, scattering the gems from its shivered crest in glittering showers over her bows. Then gliding with velocity over the glassy concave beyond, swaying to its up-lifting impulse with a graceful inclination of her lofty masts, and almost sweeping the sea with her yards, she would majestically recover herself in time to gather power for a fresh victory.

Within an hour after clearing the last head-land, whose lights, level with the plain of the sea, gleamed afar off, twinkling and lessened like stars, with which they were almost undistinguishably mingled on the horizon—we had exchanged the abrupt, irregular "seas" of the bay, for the regular, majestically rolling billows of the ocean.

I had been for some time pacing the deck, with the "officer of the watch" to recover my sea-legs, when the helmsman suddenly shouted in a wild startling cry, heard, mingling with the wind high above the booming of the sea, the passing hour of the night watch.—"Four bells."—"Four bells," repeated the only one awake on the forecastle, and the next moment the ship's bell rung out loud and clear—wildly swelling upon the gale, then mournfully dying away in the distance as the toll ceased, like the far-off strains of unearthly music—

"—— Died the solemn knell

As a trumpet music dies,

By the night wind borne away

Through the wild and stormy skies."

There is something so awful in the loud voice of a man mingling with the deep tones of a bell, heard at night upon the sea, that familiar as my ear was with the sounds—the blood chilled at my heart as this "lonely watchman's cry" broke suddenly upon the night.

When he again told the hour I was safely stowed away in a comfortable berth, not so large as that of Goliah of Gath by some cubits, yet admirably adapted to the sea, which serves most discourteously the children of Somnus, unless they fit their berths like a modern M. D. his sulkey, lulled to sleep by the rattling of cordage, the measured tread of the watch directly over me, the moanings, et cætera, of sleepless neighbours, the roaring of the sea, the howling of the wind, and the gurgling and surging of the water, as the ship rushed through it, shaking the waves from her sides, as the lion scatters the dew from his mane, and the musical rippling of the eddies—like a glassichord, rapidly run over by light fingers—curling and singing under the keel.