Читать книгу Life and Adventure in the South Pacific - John D. Jones - Страница 6

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The ship being by this time “shipshape and Bristol fashion,” and the crew pretty well acquainted with each other, we will give a brief description of the officers and crew. Our captain is a man of about fifty, and has “beat the wash” for the past twenty-six years. He is a thorough sailor, a skillful navigator, and an impartial and decisive judge, and one who commands the respect of both officers and crew. His lady is an agreeable, intelligent woman, well fitted to be the wife of such a man; his son, a lad of about ten years, a smart, active boy, and cut out for a sailor.

Our chief mate, Mr. C., is a seaman of the first water, one thoroughly versed in the mysteries of sailorship, prompt and efficient, kind and obliging, and, above all, a most skillful whaleman.

Our second officer, Mr. L., is also an excellent seaman, an experienced whaleman, and one whom the whole ship’s company love, for he is a good man, and to them all a kind friend.

Quite the contrary is our third officer, Mr. K. He is a pompous, windy sort of a being, who knows more than the captain and all hands, and one whom the men detest.

Our fourth officer, Mr. F., is a fine jovial fellow, as smart as a steel trap, and perfectly at home on board ship. He is also an excellent whaleman.

The boat-steerers are good-natured boys, always ready in the discharge of their duties; and the cooper, a quiet, peaceable man, who attends to his own business, which he thoroughly understands, and does not trouble himself with other people’s.

The crew represent most of the states of the Union, England, and France. We have with us, also, a Kanaka, a native of the island of Roratongo, one of the Society Islands; a good-natured, lazy fellow, with but one eye, who goes by the very expressive name of Jo Bob. He speaks but little English, and that so broken as to make it difficult to understand him; nevertheless, in the first watch at night, he takes our wild Portuguese on the heel of the bowsprit, and endeavors to teach him English, and rather comical work they make of it. Most of the mechanical trades we find represented among our crew, as well as the professions, and the “art preservative of all arts.” One or two, from their appearance and conversation, would lead a person to suppose they had never before been beyond the boundaries of a cow pasture. Some have been driven to the sea to escape the consequence of rascalities at home; others from family difficulties; some have come to sea to repair their broken health; a few have run away from home to escape the fancied tyrannies of parents, and still others from an inclination to follow the sea and a love of adventure; and all have come to a good school, in one sense of the word. Shut out from all society; prescribed to a certain portion of the ship; to go when told, come when called, and that without grumbling; put upon sailor’s fare, which generally consists of coffee and tea, without milk or sugar, and sea-bread, with cold salt pork, for breakfast, beef and pork for dinner, with “duff” for dessert—and we will give a brief description of this beautiful dish: Take flour, which has previously been dug out of a cask with mallet and chisel, and then pounded fine, mix it with water to the consistency of a paste, and then “dump” it into a canvas bag, and boil for three hours, with about the third quality of West India molasses, well diluted with water, for sauce, and you have the sailor’s delicacy—“duff!” This food, with the manner of living, generally brings them to their senses; they begin to realize the comforts and blessings of a good home, and make the important discovery that their wisdom is not quite so extensive as Solomon’s, and that they were sadly mistaken in supposing they knew more than their parents. If any young men who may chance to read this book should have a longing for the sea and all its pleasures, we will inform them how they may obtain a slight foretaste of those joys. Let them choose a dark, cold, rainy night, such as we often have in the month of November, and be roused suddenly out of a snug, cozy sleep, mount into the top of the tallest tree they can find, and there stand and endure the pitiless beatings of the storm for four long hours, and we think they will get a slight foretaste of the joys of a sailor’s life. But still, whenever we have been asked the question by such, we say, “Go, by all means, and then you will be satisfied.” The old adage proves true here as well as elsewhere, “Experience is a dear school.”

We will here give one or two anecdotes in relation to life on shipboard, which will serve to illustrate the tricks and games often practiced. We had with us, by some means unaccountable, a young fellow from Taunton, Mass., a lazy, half-foolish, soft piece of humanity, to whom we soon gave the dignified appellation of “Barney.” When only a few days out, and Barney was partially recovering from his sea-sickness, the poor fellow, missing the accustomed good things at home, and not relishing the hard fare of ship-life, complained sadly of his want of appetite; that he could not relish the fat salt pork and hard bread which he was obliged to eat. One of the old seamen, who are always up to such jokes, said to him, “Why, Barney, you fool, why don’t you go and ask the captain or mate to break out that cask of pies that they have got in the main hold, and give you one? They were put on board expressly for the green hands when recovering from their sea-sickness.”

“Cask of pies!” replied Barney, opening his eyes and mouth wide with astonishment. “Is there a cask of pies aboard?”

“Certainly,” replied his tormentor, “and it was put aboard on purpose for the green hands, and you’re a fool if you don’t go and tell the old man[1] you want some.”

So off Barney posts aft to the captain and mate, who were walking the quarter-deck together. It was not long before he returned to the forecastle, his countenance considerably elongated, and feeling very much crestfallen.

“What’s the matter, Barney? Didn’t you get any pies?”

“No, I didn’t get any pies, and there ain’t any aboard the ship either, and you knew there was not.”

“Why, what did the old man say?”

“He said that some one was making a fool of me, and if I came to him after any more pies he would stop my watch below for the whole cruise.”

Poor Barney was obliged to submit, not only to sailor’s food, but to be one of the butts of the ship’s company for the voyage.

We had on board a fellow from Nova Scotia by the name of Mackey. It was the delight of some of the watch to “stuff” Mackey with all sorts of imaginable stories on divers subjects, and to get the poor fellow, who was very credulous withal, into some scrape. One night, when it was blowing very hard, and the ship lying-to under easy sail, rolling heavily, some one of the watch told Mackey to place a handspike in one of the lee scupper-holes to prevent the ship rolling so badly. Off posts Mackey for a handspike, but, finding none, he contented himself with using a scrub-broom handle, which he placed in the scupper-hole, and commenced jumping upon it, until he finally broke it. The officer of the watch espied him, and sang out,

“What are you about there, you Mackey?”

“Stopping the old ship from rolling, sir.”

“Well, I guess you have worked at that about long enough; now point yourself aloft, and try your hand at slushing down the masts; away you go!”

Poor Mackey starts off, grumbling that they should give him a work-up job for trying to stop the ship from pitching about so. He gets up aloft, and finds rather a difficult job before him.

“How shall I hang on, sir?”

“By your eyelids.”

“But I can’t do it, sir.”

“Then let go; probably the deck will bring you up.”

As this is all the consolation Mackey gets, he goes to work, muttering all sorts of invectives against whale-ships and mean men, and wishing them all in Tophet, and that he was at home, down in Nova Scotia, and guesses he would not trouble salt water again.

Our pompous third officer was very much opposed to allowing the men to sit down in the night watches, for fear they should take a short nap now and then. We had one fellow on board who was one of the laziest fellows in existence, so very lazy that before we were two weeks out he had received the appropriate sobriquet of “Lazy Lawrence.” He possessed, in addition to the excellent trait of character above mentioned, that of being the most inveterate liar ever known, and at the same time the greatest sleepyhead on board. As soon as he would come on deck in the middle, or morning watch, he would invariably bring himself to an anchor somewhere, and then—he was fast asleep. One night one of the crew, stationed on the look-out, espied him, and, thinking to have a little sport, goes aft to the binnacle lamp (which is the lamp that gives the light to the helmsman at night), covered his hands with oily smut, and, coming forward to the place where Lawrence was so quietly reposing, probably dreaming of his home, “’way down East, in the State of Maine,” and the farm, drew both hands very quietly across the poor fellow’s face several times, giving him very much the appearance of a molasses-colored darkey. Next morning all hands were called to go through the usual process of washing decks, etc. Lawrence, making his appearance with the rest, presented a comical spectacle. All hands roared with laughter; he, not imagining what was the cause of their merriment, joined in. At last the chief mate, who had an inkling of the matter, sang out,

“What is the matter with you this morning, Lawrence; are you sick?”

“No, thir,” lisped Lawrence.

“I guess you got asleep during your watch last night, did you not?”

“No, thir; I never closed my eyes the whole watch!”

“Don’t lie to me; what were you doing on the windlass, just after four bells?”

“Only thinking, thir.”

“There, that will do; go wash, and point yourself aloft, and stay there till I call you down; and learn, when I ask you a question, to tell the truth; away you go!”

So away goes Lawrence, imagining himself the most abused man in existence, and says a state prison would be preferable to an old blubber-hunter. After he had been kept aloft two or three hours, he was called down, told to tell the truth after this, and sent about his business.

[1] The captain.