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TWENTY YEARS AT SEA
OR
LEAVES FROM MY OLD LOG-BOOKS

TWENTY YEARS AT SEA
OR
LEAVES FROM MY OLD LOG-BOOKS

BY
FREDERIC STANHOPE HILL

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893

Copyright, 1893,
By FREDERIC STANHOPE HILL.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

TO MY WIFE,
TO WHOSE SUGGESTION THE PUBLICATION OF THESE
EPISODES IN A BUSY LIFE IS MAINLY DUE,
I dedicate this book.

INTRODUCTION

In the old days, fifty years ago, when I first went to sea, it was the custom in fine weather, in most ships, after supper had been leisurely discussed and pipes lighted, for both watches to gather on the forecastle deck to listen to the yarns of some old tar, or to join in one of the many ballads with a rattling chorus, in which the exploits of Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, or some other dashing knight of the road were set forth in glowing terms and endless verses.

Many an evening, when a boy, I have coiled myself up on the deck, close to the windlass bitts, with my jacket rolled up under my head as a pillow, and have listened with eager interest to those tough yarns, while the good ship, with every inch of canvas, from courses to moonsails, drawing, gently rose and fell with rhythmic motion, as she ploughed her way through the long rolling swells of the broad Pacific.

A hundred feet above our heads, the tapering point of the skysail mast swayed; in the heavens about us blazed the brilliant constellations of the southern hemisphere; beneath us the waves gently swished as the sharp forefoot clave them asunder, and the story-teller droned on with his tales of peril by storm and wreck, or, perchance, in a lighter vein, dwelt upon the charms of that lass in some far-away port who loved a sailor.

That was indeed the poetry of sea life! But like everything else that is pleasant in this world, the hour in which we enjoyed it was brief and it came to an end, often in the very midst of the most exciting episode of a story, with the harsh cry from the quarter deck: “Strike eight bells! Set the watch, and lay aft here and heave the log!”

I here propose, in my turn, as though sitting on the windlass bitts, to give some chapters from my old log-books, which, however, are somewhat more veracious than many of the stories often told in that way. For barring a little—a very little—license, such as must be allowed any old barnacle-back when he starts out to spin a yarn, these sketches may be considered very truthful pictures of a sailor’s life fifty years ago, and veritable experiences in the navy during our civil war.

Such as they are, then, I offer these sea stories to my young friends for their approval, premising by saying that a few of the sketches have already appeared in the “Youth’s Companion” and in the “Cambridge Tribune.”

F. STANHOPE HILL.

Cambridge, 1893.

CONTENTS

TWENTY YEARS AT SEA

PART I

IN THE MERCHANT SERVICE

CHAPTER I
HOW I WENT TO SEA

It was a blazing hot morning of the first week in September, 1842. The sun was pouring down with the fierce heat that so often marks the departing days of our Northern summers, and the evil smells in the filthy gutters of the southern section of Brooklyn were more than usually noxious.

A Knickerbocker ice-wagon had stopped at the corner beer saloon, and the sturdy, blue-shirted driver was carrying in a great block of ice, while the children of the tenement overhead were picking up the fragments from behind the wagon. Across the street, half a dozen frowsy, tow-headed boys were striving to drive an unwilling goat, harnessed to a soap-box on wheels, in which was seated one of their number, and the little wretches were cheerfully beating the unfortunate animal with a piece of iron hoop, when it stopped, to bleat forth its complaint.

A marine in blue uniform coat and white trousers, on duty at the Navy Yard gate, hard by, walked his beat, keeping close to the grateful shade of the high brick wall of the inclosure, and covertly watching the struggle between the children and the goat. The corporal of the guard lounged on a bench beneath the wooden porch of the guard-house, deeply interested in the morning paper.

Two persons, evidently strangers, came down the street, stopped hesitatingly at the gate, and asked a question of the corporal.

“The Bombay, is it?” said the marine. “You will find her at the dock near the shears. Keep down that path to the right, pass the commandant’s house, then take the first turn to the left, and you will see her.”

The elder of the two strangers, who thanked the corporal, was a grave, respectable, middle-aged man, with the general appearance of a trusted bookkeeper in some mercantile house, as indeed he was; his companion, evidently under his charge, was a bright-looking lad of thirteen, dressed in a blue sailor suit, with a tarpaulin hat with long ribbons hanging down his back. The boy’s fair skin and delicate appearance, however, indicated very plainly that he could not have had a very extended experience as a sailor.

Following the directions given them, the man and the boy soon reached the dock, where a good-sized merchant ship was moored, taking on board the cargo that filled the wharf.

Here we paused. I say we, for the boy was the writer, who is about to tell you his life story; and his companion was Mr. Mason, my uncle’s bookkeeper, sent over from New York to see me safely bestowed on board the good ship Bombay for my first voyage to sea.

“Well, Robert,” said Mr. Mason, “here we are; and now, before I take you on board, I am instructed by your uncle to ask you for the last time if you still persist in your resolution of going to sea. It is a hard life, lad, and I almost wonder that you should desire to undertake it. Come! take my advice; it is not yet too late: hadn’t you better turn around and go back? there is no harm done yet.”

“You are very kind, Mr. Mason, and I thank you for what you have said; but I shan’t change my mind. We will go on board, if you please.”

But before leaving the wharf, as I shall have a long story of my sea life to tell, suppose I go back a bit and explain how I came to be starting out for myself in this manner at such a tender age.

I was always a delicate lad, and had never been very strong, after I recovered from a fever that brought me well-nigh to death’s door several years before, and I had never cared much for the usual out-door sports of boyhood. Then I had an untiring passion for reading; and when I could curl myself up in a big arm-chair with dear old “Robinson Crusoe” or “Midshipman Easy,” I was perfectly happy, and forgot all the world in the adventures of one hero and the frolics of the other.

I have no doubt that my favorite books had something to do with it; for by the time I reached the age of thirteen and had been in the High School a couple of years, I had firmly decided in my own mind that I would be a sailor and nothing else. I had not lived in a seaport, and knew nothing of ships or sailors except what I had gathered from reading, and there seemed to be no very good reason for this decision. But it was just possible that my old grandfather, who was a famous sea captain in his day, had transmitted to me a strain of his sailor blood, rather than my poet father; so instead of fitting for college or going into a counting-room, my parents at last consented that I should go to sea.

My seafaring books had prepared me to expect hardships in the merchant service that I would not find in the navy, and I was boy enough to be thoroughly alive to the attractions of a middy’s uniform and dirk, for they wore dirks in those days; so when it appeared that a midshipman’s warrant might possibly be obtained for me by family influence, I was very anxious to enter the navy. This was before the establishment of the Naval Academy in 1843, and when midshipmen were appointed and sent at once to sea.

But my father wisely said: “No; let Robert try one year in the merchant service, and then if he finds a sea life distasteful he can easily abandon it, without any breach of good faith. But if he enters the navy, he will not feel the same liberty to resign, nor indeed have the opportunity of doing so, until after the expiration of a three years’ cruise.”

So it was settled that I should enter as a boy on board the ship Bombay, Leonard Gay, master, bound from New York to Rio Janeiro with a cargo of naval stores for the Brazil squadron. The ship was owned by a relative of ours.

How well I remember one fine summer day, fifty years ago, going down on Commercial Street in Boston with my father to order my outfit. I never pass along there now and inhale the mingled odors of tarred rigging, salt fish and New England rum, that seem perennial in that locality, that this important visit to the outfitter is not recalled. The mist of half a century of years rolls back, and I, a grave, gray-haired, somewhat rheumatic old man, seem for a moment a light-hearted boy again.

My father had been directed to the establishment of an old sailor turned tradesman, quite an original character in his way, and very well known in those days for his good wares and honest dealing. He was instructed to provide me with everything necessary for a voyage to the tropics and a winter on the English coast; and while my father was discussing the requisites for such a cruise with the proprietor, I was taking in the strange surroundings of the shop, so novel to a boy just down from Vermont.

It was a small, irregular shaped store, very low studded, which had enabled the old fellow to avail himself of the beams, from which hung specimens of his wares, all of them new to me. Upon one hook was a complete suit of oil clothing, southwester (as the head covering is called) and all, dangling and swaying about in the summer breeze and looking very much indeed like some mutinous tar or heavy weather pirate expiating his nautical crimes upon a gallows. Brilliant red flannel shirts were stacked up in great piles upon the shelves, and formidable sea boots overflowed from boxes ranged beneath the counter; gay bandanna handkerchiefs and glossy black silk neckerchiefs were temptingly displayed in the showcase; while on one side was a miscellaneous assortment of ironmongery utterly strange to me at that time, that I afterward came to know better as marline-spikes, prickers, fids, palms and sail needles, and sheath knives and belts.

Jack’s lass had not been forgotten; for in the window were hung, as a special attraction, certain printed handkerchiefs with pictorial representations of the “Sailor’s Farewell,” the “Jolly Tar’s True Love,” and other subjects of a sentimental character. In the rear of the store was an old-fashioned desk, with a fly-blown calendar hanging above it, and a ship’s chronometer ticking away in its case on one side; while above it, hung a spy-glass in brackets, and upon the shelf were an odd looking mahogany case and a ponderous leather-bound volume. These I came to know better, subsequently, as a sextant and the sailors’ vade mecum, “Bowditch’s Epitome of Navigation.”

This collection interested me amazingly, but I was soon called upon to select my “chist,” as the dealer called the gayly painted box he exhibited for my inspection. It was dark blue with vermilion trimmings, and had green-covered “beckets,” as the handles are called. This one, he said, “was neat and not gaudy, and had a secret till where a feller could stow away his tobacco and his ditty box,” which he seemed to think a very important consideration. This ditty box, by the way, is not, as one might well suppose, a special receptacle for ballads, but is for the thread, needles, buttons, etc., which are such necessaries on a long voyage, where every man is perforce his own tailor.

Into my chest were packed, under the advice of the proprietor, an assortment of red flannel shirts and drawers, with thick woolen stockings for cold weather and blue drilling trousers and white duck frocks for the tropics. Stout shoes and sea boots and a full suit of oil-clothes were provided for rainy weather, and two suits of blue cloth went in—one for ordinary wear of satinet, the other of broadcloth, with brass anchor buttons, for a Sunday go-ashore suit. These, with a tin cup and plate, a spoon, and fork for my mess, and a belt and sheath knife, completed the outfit, to which the dealer added, as a gratuity or “lanyap,” as he called it, a dozen clay pipes, a pound package of smoking tobacco, and a bundle of matches, “to make the fit out reglar.”

These gifts, rather scorned at the time, came in good play at a later date, and gained me many desired favors with my future shipmates.

By the time my chest was filled, locked, and the key deposited in my pocket, I was full of excitement and crazy to have it sent home for my mother’s inspection. The business completed by paying the bill, we returned home to Summer Street, where we were staying for a week with my uncle, and I answered every ring at the bell myself until the anxiously expected box was at last received.

Nothing then would do but I must try everything on for my cousin’s delectation, and the entire afternoon was devoted to a series of dress rehearsals with the different costumes. Poor, dear, little mother! many a tear she shed that night as she repacked those strange, rough garments that were to take the place in the future of the delicately made clothing it had been her pride and joy to fashion for her dearly loved boy.

The days now flew swiftly while I made my farewell visits to friends and relations, and my chest was filled in every corner with their last offerings. These, in most cases, took the form of rich cakes, mittens, or comforters for my neck; but I well remember an eccentric uncle bringing down a pair of dueling pistols as his parting gift, to the great horror of my mother, but to my infinite delight, as all boys can well understand.

Under the excitement of these preparations I had kept my courage up very bravely, but I almost broke down when the time came for parting and my mother clasped me in her arms in an agony of grief, exclaiming, “I cannot let him go from me!”

But when I was at last in the cars and had really started off on my journey, I felt that I must put aside all childish feelings and show myself a man and an American sailor. I had insisted upon traveling in full sea rig, and I wore my new blue suit, with white shirt and black silk neckerchief tied in a sailor’s knot, and a shiny tarpaulin hat, with long streaming ribbons hanging down my neck. I was, in fact, a veritable nautical dandy.

As I was only thirteen and small for my age, I have no doubt I presented rather a noticeable appearance. At any rate I know that quite a number of passengers spoke to me very pleasantly on board the Sound boat; and as I was walking through the saloon an old lady called me to her, and, after asking me no end of questions, gave me a kiss and a warm, motherly hug, rather to my mortification, I must confess.

The day after my arrival in New York I was sent over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard with my uncle’s bookkeeper to report for duty, and here we were.

As I walked up the Bombay’s gang-plank a rough looking man in his shirt sleeves eyed me rather sharply, and said, “Well, youngster, what do you want?”

“I wish to see the captain, sir.”

“What do you want of him? The captain isn’t on board, but I am the mate.”

“I am Robert Kelson, sir, and I am sent to go to sea in this ship. Mr. Mason, here, has a letter to the captain.”

At this juncture my companion interposed and explained the matter to the mate, giving him the letter to the captain, and then, evidently very much disgusted at our reception, endeavored again to dissuade me from my project; but I would not listen to him, and, shaking his hand, bade him good-by and accompanied him on shore.

When I returned the mate said: “Go down in the steerage; you will find your chest there; it came early this morning; get those longshore togs off and put on your working clothes. Then come up here, and I will find something for you to do.”

I looked about, not discovering anything answering at all to my idea of a stairway, when the mate, evidently understanding my dilemma, shouted: “You Jim! come here and take this greenhorn down into the steerage and show him his chest, and be quick about it! do you hear? Don’t you two boys stay loafing down there spinning yarns!”

I had never been spoken to so roughly before in my life, and for a moment I half regretted that I had not listened to Mr. Mason’s advice; but it was now too late, so I choked down a sob and followed Jim into that portion of the between decks from the mainmast aft which was called the steerage.

My companion informed me that I was to sleep and mess there with him and the ship’s carpenter. After looking about for a time we discovered my chest, half hidden beneath a pile of sails, and proceeded to pull it out to the light.

“What in thunderation have you got in this dunnage barge?” said Jim, as he sat down on the hatch coaming and looked at my beloved chest, half in admiration at its brilliant coloring and half in scorn at its size and weight. “Why, it weighs pretty nigh half a ton, and it’s big enough to hold a fit-out for a three years’ v’y’ge!”

As I deemed it advisable to placate Jim at the outset, I unlocked the chest, and hunting out one of the plum-cakes, divided it with my comrade, who watched this proceeding with ill-concealed anxiety and interest.

“Well, by gosh, you’re a lucky feller; how many more of these ’ere you got, anyhow? Lem’me look at your knife,” as my new sheath knife turned up; “what did you give for that knife? I got mine down by Fulton Market for a quarter, and I’ll bet it’s as good as yours! Yes, sir!” he shouted, in response to an imperative call from the mate above; “I’m coming right along!” And he half choked himself in his effort to swallow the rich cake as he said, “Look here, young feller, you’d better hurry up too; old Bowker will give you rats if you don’t get on deck mighty quick!”

I put on my second best suit, all too good, as it proved, for what was expected of me, and hurried on deck. Mr. Bowker hunted up a scraper, which is a triangular piece of steel with a wooden handle, and initiated me into its use in scraping the pitch from a portion of the decks that had lately been calked; and this, the first real work I had ever done in my life, was also my first lesson in “the sailor’s art.”

At noon Jim and I were “knocked off,” as stopping work is termed, and told to go to the galley and carry the dinner down into the steerage. Jim seized the kid, a small wooden tub containing a rough piece of boiled beef, and left me to bring the “spuds,” as he called the potatoes. While the cook, who was as black as the ace of spades, was fishing these out of the coppers, he looked me over critically and said, “Wot’s yo’ name, boy?”

“Robert Kelson,” I replied.

“Look yere, boy, we don’t pomper no boys here wid no ‘Roberts.’ Yo’ name’s Bob ’board dis ship; you understand? Now, Bob, is dis yo’ fust voyage to sea?”

“Yes.”

“Co’se it is; any one can see dat. Well, Bob, if you ’haves yo’se’f and don’t cut up monkey shines, like dat boy Jim does, I no doubt you’ll get on very well. But you mus’n’t ’spect to be pompered. I reckon you done had too much ob dat a’ready by yo’ looks. Now you go ’long down and eat yo’ dinner, and den you come up and pick dis chicken fer me, and I gwine gib you dese tapioca puddin’ scrapin’s fer yo’ dessert. I likes yo’ looks, and I gwine stand friend to you, boy!”

I had learned at boarding-school the lesson that it is a good thing to be friends with the cook, so I assented to this proposal and went below with the potatoes.

“Chips,” as the carpenter is called on shipboard, although we boys were not permitted to take this liberty, was a gaunt, red-headed, surly, opinionated Dane, a good mechanic and a splendid seaman, but anything but an agreeable messmate. As I came down he hailed me: “Vot, in de name of Heffen, you been doin’ all dis time wid dose potatoes, you boy? You ’spose I am goin’ to wait all day for my dinner while you’re gorming ’round the galley, you lazy hound? If you try any of your games on me, my lad, I’ll warm you up wid a fathom of rattlin’ stuff!” and so he grumbled on, while I endeavored to explain that the cook had detained me.

“Vell, don’t you do it again; that’s all,” and he picked out the best of the potatoes and cut off the choicest part of the beef, leaving me the fat, which I detested, for my share.

After we had finished eating this meal, which nothing but a healthy young appetite, strengthened by my morning’s unaccustomed work, could have rendered endurable, I was instructed by Jim that it was the duty of the new boy to carry up the pots and pans to the galley to be washed, and Chips told me to hurry up and bring him a light for the pipe he was then industriously filling for an after-dinner smoke.

I submitted to these orders with an ill grace; and when I had seated myself on the spare spars lashed by the side of the galley, with the cook, whom I instinctively felt was a friend, I put the case to him and asked his advice.

“Now, Bob,” said he, “I tole you I gwine to be yo’ friend, and I means what I said. I done tuck yo’ measure, my son, soon’s you come on board, and I know’d you’se a quality youngster immegitely. You’se different breed o’ dog fum dat low-down Jim, and dat’s why I tole you dat you wasn’t gwine to be pompered here, cos I wanted to prepare you fer what was comin’. Bob, you’se like a young bar; yo’ trouble’s all befo’ you. But you des keep a quiet tongue in yo’ head, and watch out wid yo’ eyes open, and learn all you can, and ’fore you know it you’ll be jest as good as any ob ’em!”

“Yes, cook, that’s all right, but I can’t let Jim impose on me, you know.”

The old darky grinned from ear to ear. “Dat’s so, honey! Blood will tell, sho’s you born, and you’se got some of what my ole marse used to call ‘diwine ’flatus’; wotever dat is, dat belongs to quality folks and always fotches ’em on top ob de heap. So if dat Jim runs you too hard, why I ’speck you’se duty bound to take yo’ own part. You know wot de good S’marikan said: ’Ef de Farisee hit you on one cheek, you hit him on de udder.’ Now Bob, here’s yo’ pudden’, and don’t let de mate see you eatin’ it on deck.”

The doctor, as the cook is always called on board ship, had been a plantation darkey, and possessed that keen insight peculiar to his race in certain matters. He recognized at once that I was of gentle birth, and attached himself to me from the first. He was my firm friend as long as we were shipmates together, and many a surreptitious pot of coffee in the morning watch and plate of “menavalins” from the cabin table I owed to his kind offices during the voyage.

For the remainder of the week I was kept busily engaged from early morning until dark, so that I was only too glad to crawl into my hammock soon after our simple evening meal each day, and I was not sorry when at last our hold was filled, our hatches calked down, and a gang of riggers bent our sails, and we were ready for sea. Then one afternoon our crew was brought down by a shipping-master, a tug came alongside, we cast off our fasts from the Navy Yard wharf, and steamed down the bay.

As all my good-bys had been made in Boston, I experienced no particular feelings of regret as we passed down the harbor and bay, and at last made sail, cast off the tug, dropped the pilot, and saw Sandy Hook light sink away below the horizon. I had indeed no time for much sentiment; for as the good ship began to rise and fall to the long ocean swell, increased by the strong breeze that was blowing from the southeast, I soon became oblivious to everything, for I was quickly in the agony of seasickness.

Meanwhile the wind was freshening, and, the top-gallant sails having been taken in, the ship was plunging into the head beat sea and creaking and groaning in what seemed to me a very ominous manner. I had already paid my devoirs to Neptune several times until I was fearfully weak; and the last time, as I came from the lee rail, I fell prone into a convenient tub that contained a large coil of rope—the main topsail halyards, as it proved, unfortunately.

Just then a stronger flaw of wind struck the ship, and the mate, coming into the waist, shouted out: “All hands stand by to reef topsails! Let go the topsail halyards! Clew down and haul out the reef-tackles! Be sharp, men! Be sharp!”

The words were meaningless to me, but I saw a form near me casting off a rope from a belaying pin over my head; there was a whizzing sound; I was thrown from the tub into the air with great violence, and I knew nothing further!

CHAPTER II
MY FIRST VOYAGE

When I returned to consciousness I could not at first imagine where I was, but the creaking and groaning of the ship as she labored in the heavy seaway and the abominable smell of bilge water soon brought me to a realizing sense of the fact that I was in my hammock in the steerage. After some mental effort I recollected that I had been thrown from the tub in which I had been sitting on deck, though how or why this had happened I could not understand. But I was too deathly seasick just then to care to follow out this train of thought, and I languidly dozed and wondered whether we should all go to the bottom together in this gale. I fancy I rather hoped we might thus end the matter with the least personal exertion, and that death under existing circumstances would prove a happy release.

But I was recalled to myself by the cook, coming softly up to my hammock with a shaded light and gazing down at me with evident interest.

“Robert,” said he, for the first and last time calling me by my full name, “is you come to yo’se’f, honey, sure enough?”

I moaned, as a reply.

“Oh, I reckon you’se all right now, Bob! De ole man says dere’s no bones broke, and ef dat is so I specs you come out first-rate soon’s yo’ stummick’s done settle down. But you certainly did have a mighty narrer squeak! Whatever put it into yo’ head, boy, to squat down into dat topsail halyard tub? It’s a clean wonder you didn’t get carried chock up to de main-top! Well, I don’t reckon you ever try dat seat again in a hurry. Now, honey, you drink dis ’ere pot of cabin tea, and den go to sleep, and by ter-morrow you’ll be as bright as a button.”

Any one who remembers a first voyage can imagine what I suffered in that abominable hole, alone and uncared for, save for the friendly ministrations of that poor negro cook, during the next three days. I really believe I should have died from mere exhaustion if it had not been for the little delicacies he smuggled down to me. But fortunately there is an end to seasickness, and on the third day the captain condescended to remember that I was on board, and that he had not seen me since he had examined me after my involuntary feat of ground and lofty tumbling. So down he came into the steerage, and by his order I was carried up on deck into the pure, fresh air, where I soon rallied; and before another day I was myself again, or nearly so, at any rate.

During my illness the ship had been prepared for sea by work that is always done by the crew the first few days out from port. This consists in securing the anchors in board, lashing the spare spars on deck, and clearing away all rubbish that has accumulated in port. Then there is “chafing gear” to be put on aloft and a thousand odd jobs to be done that no one but a sailor can understand, all of them very necessary on a long voyage, however.

The Bombay was, for those days, a good sized ship of about six hundred tons register, but she would seem a mere tender by the side of the marine monsters of the present time. Her crew included twelve men and two boys, with captain, two mates, carpenter, cook, and steward. The men had been, as usual, divided into two watches, and I had fallen into the mate’s, or port watch. “It was Hobson’s choice” in my case, as Mr. Bowker delicately remarked in informing me of my station. It was very evident that I was not, as yet, considered a very valuable acquisition to his force.

“Now look here, you Bob,” said the mate one fine afternoon when I was barely convalescent, “you’ve been playing seasick passenger about long enough. It’s time you began to be of some use on board and to earn your grub. I’m going to be doctor myself! Look up aloft there, my lad; do you see that royal yard?”

I looked up, as he bade me, at the royal masthead, where the yard seemed to me to be about five hundred feet above the deck where we stood.

“Yes sir, I see it.”

“Very well, now suppose you waltz up there and take a closer look at it! It’s going to be a very familiar road for you this voyage, and you had better make yourself acquainted with the way at once;” and he smiled at his wit, which I failed to appreciate just then.

The ship was on the wind, with all sail set and drawing well, and she was reasonably steady; but as I gazed aloft the mast was sweeping about in a very dazing manner, and the rigging away up there seemed to me about the size of a fishing line. Remember, I had never been aloft in my life! I hesitated.

“Well, Bob, I am waiting for you, but I shan’t wait very long, my son;” and he picked up a piece of rattling stuff, a cord about the thickness of one’s finger, and ostentatiously swayed it to and fro.

I saw that he meant business, and I started on the trip at once. I have been aloft, since that beautiful afternoon, many times in howling gales of wind to close-reef topsails. I have crawled out to storm furl a sail in a typhoon in the Straits of Sunda when the force of the wind pinned me to the yard and I felt that every moment might be my last. I went through that hell of fire in the old Richmond, astern of Farragut in the Hartford, when we passed Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans, but I am sure that I have never since experienced the abject fear I endured that day before I reached the Bombay’s royal yard!

But I stuck to it and I accomplished the task at last, and my first lesson in seamanship, and the severest one, was past. Perhaps some of my readers may think that I magnify the undertaking, but, as I have said, I was a country lad, and in those days boys did not have gymnasiums, as they have now, to prepare them for such tests.

“Very well done, Bob, for a first attempt,” said the mate laughingly, as I reached the deck and busied myself in getting my trousers pulled down my legs after my frantic struggle aloft; “but I thought you would have squeezed all the tar out of the royal backstay, you gripped it so savagely. Oh, you’ll make a sailor yet, lad, or I’ll know the reason why. Now go forward and turn the grindstone for the carpenter.”

From that day on I was kept constantly in practice in going aloft, and was soon given the main royal to loose and furl; so that in my watch on deck no other person was ever sent aloft for that purpose, and what had been but a few weeks before such a terrible task, became mere play to me.

Meanwhile we were making our southing all the time, and in due course we approached the equator. Here both Jim and I were subjected to the usual horse-play that in those days marked the event of “crossing the line,” a custom now almost obsolete.

Neptune, represented by one of the men, came on board over the bows rigged out in a wig of tow, with a long beard, carrying as a trident a pair of grains, a kind of four-pronged fish spear. He asked us neophytes if we would promise never to eat brown bread when we could get white, unless we liked it better; never to kiss the maid when we could kiss the mistress, unless she were the prettier, and a lot more of such nonsense. As we attempted to reply one of the attendants forced a brush dipped in tar and ashes into our mouths, and they ended up by pulling away the board on which we were seated, thus giving us a ducking in a large tub of salt water.

However, the mate would not permit the men to go too far with us; so we at last escaped from our tormentors, and from that time were forever “free of the line” and at liberty to exercise our ingenuity in torturing other greenhorns when we had the opportunity.

I have failed to mention that our only passenger was a young passed-midshipman going out to join the Brazil squadron. His name was Clemson, and he was a general favorite fore and aft. Some years later he was drowned while striving to rescue one of his brother officers at the time of the loss of the United States brig Somers, capsized in the Gulf of Mexico. A handsome monument was afterward erected to his memory in the grounds of the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

As the days slipped along I was steadily gaining in the knowledge of my profession. On fine days, when there was little wind, I was sent to the wheel and taught to steer; at odd times I learned the mystery of making short and long splices and the various knots and “bends.” From the drudgery of turning the winch I was gradually promoted to making spun yarn myself, as well as plain and French sennit and other stuffs used in such quantities on board ship. Sometimes I was set at work ripping up old sails with the sailmaker’s gang; again at cleaning out paint pots and brushes in the paint-room, and I was taught how to handle a brush and lay on paint evenly. A boy at sea thus really serves an apprenticeship at several trades, and a good sailor is, or should be, a seaman, a rigger, a sailmaker, and a painter; he is in reality a “Jack of all trades.”

Kept busily engaged in this way, it was not strange that the time slipped by so quickly, and it did not seem long when, on the fifty-eighth day from New York, we made the land on the starboard bow, which proved to be Pernambuco, and five days afterward we sighted the Sugar Loaf, which rises abruptly twelve hundred feet from the sea at the entrance to the bay of Rio de Janeiro, one of the finest and most picturesque harbors in the world.

As soon as our anchor was dropped in the lower bay, we were surrounded by a fleet of boats of curious construction filled with jabbering negroes and native Brazilians, but none were permitted to come on board until after we had been inspected by the customs officer. He was a very great man indeed, who came alongside in a barge, with a wooden awning over the stern, flying a large Brazilian flag. This boat was pulled by twelve coal-black Congo negroes, naked from the waist up, who rose to their feet at every stroke, and fell back on the thwarts with a kind of rhythmic grunt that they gave in unison.

The officer was a shriveled-up little Brazilian, looking like a cross between a chimpanzee and a parrot, with his wizened face and gorgeous uniform of green and yellow—the bilious colors of the Brazilian Empire. After satisfying all the formalities, we were permitted to have the natives on board, and they came with great bunches of bananas, bags of luscious oranges and fragrant pineapples, and other tropical fruits in bewildering variety, and at what seemed absurdly low prices.

Every one on board, fore and aft, invested in fruit, and we sat up late into the night to devour it, for it seemed that we could never be satisfied. Fifty years ago tropical fruits were not hawked about the streets of Boston as they are to-day, and I do not think that I had ever seen a banana before. So that after two months of salt-beef diet these delicacies were thoroughly appreciated.

The day after our arrival was Sunday; and after washing down decks in the morning and cleaning all the brass-work about the ship, a duty that especially devolved upon Jim and myself, we were informed by the mate that the port watch was to have liberty on shore for the day.

How I did crow over Jim when this order was promulgated, for Jim was in the starboard watch, who were to remain on board, while we fortunate “larbowlins” were to pass the day amid the wonders of the strange city that looked so attractive from our deck.

Jim took occasion to upset some dirty water over my newly cleaned shoes while I was getting dressed, and then laughed spitefully at my discomfiture. This was by no means the first unpleasant trick Jim had served me since we left New York, and I had heretofore borne everything patiently; but this was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. So we decided, after considerable mutual recrimination, to settle the feud then and there comfortably in the retirement of the steerage.

I had gained immensely in physical strength during the past two months, yet Jim was still rather the larger boy of the two; but I sailed in and succeeded, at last, in giving him about the most thorough trouncing he had ever had in his life. When he cried “enough” and I hauled off to repair damages, I caught a glimpse of the old cook gazing in an interested manner down the hatchway at the affray. He grinned and shook his head approvingly. “Didn’t I tole you so?” he said as he vanished.

After re-cleaning my shoes and effacing all evidences of the passage at arms from my face, I arrayed myself, for the first time since I came on board, in my best blue suit, and, topping it off with a new white sennit hat, I took my seat in the boat and was rowed on shore with the others of the port watch.

We passed through a great fleet of ships of all nations at anchor, gayly dressed in flags, among which the bright American ensign largely predominated,—for in those days our flag was found in every foreign port,—and were speedily deposited upon the landing stage, and made our way on shore.

Here a strange scene was presented. The plaza was filled with people of all shades of color, from the Congo African to the pure white Europeans, scattered here and there. All were in their Sunday best, and with the fondness of the negroes for the most brilliant colors, the brightest reds and yellows were everywhere seen. All were chattering in Portuguese in the most animated manner; and as every one seemed to be talking at once it was indeed a very babel.

While I looked about me a tall, willowy mestizo girl came along carrying a tray upon her head, which at first I supposed contained some very elaborate confectionery; but to my astonishment, upon closer inspection I found she was bearing a little dead infant, dressed in white and covered with flowers. She was on her way to the Campo Santo, as I learned, to have it buried, and carried it, as they carried everything, very naturally upon her head. At the cemetery the bodies of the poor were piled each day in a long pit, which at night was filled with quicklime and closed up.

Strolling about, I came to a square with a large cathedral, near the Imperial Palace. While I looked around me a gay carriage, with six horses and outriders and a brilliant cavalry escort, came dashing up, and the youthful Emperor, Dom Pedro II., then scarce twenty years old, alighted and passed into the church. This was the same Dom Pedro who a few years since visited the United States so unostentatiously and who was such an admirer of our country and of our countrymen and countrywomen. He died in exile a year or two ago, poor fellow!

As this was my first glimpse of royalty, it was, of course, very interesting, and I deemed myself quite fortunate at having seen this spectacle on my first day ashore. After the grandees had passed into the church, I continued on my tour of inspection, and soon came to the Rua de Ouvidor, where the jewelers had their shops. Here the show of diamonds so lavishly displayed recalled to my mind the stories I had read in the Arabian Nights; and as I passed into the adjoining Rua Direta I was equally charmed with the wondrous feather flowers, for which Brazil was then so noted.

But by this time, boylike, my appetite was asserting itself, and I began to look about for something more satisfying than diamonds and feather flowers. I had been eating oranges and bananas in the market-place, but these trifles didn’t count for much, and I felt an overpowering desire for a good square meal. But I could not speak a single word of Portuguese, and those now about me evidently spoke no English, so I was in rather a bad way.

I walked on and on; but as I had passed into the residential quarter of the city I could see nothing looking at all like a restaurant, and I became a little uneasy for fear I might lose my way. At this juncture I saw a very sweet-looking old lady standing in a doorway watching me as I approached her. I hesitated, half paused, and she spoke to me in Portuguese.

I shook my head to indicate that I could not understand, and, in despair resorting to pantomime, pointed to my mouth to show that I was hungry.

“Poor little fellow!” said she in English to a little girl by her side; “he must be dumb!”

Oh, what a relief it was to hear those words! Did my own language ever before sound so sweet! I hastened to convince the lady of her error, and to ask her where I could find a restaurant.

“Why, bless your soul, you dear little midget, come in and dine with me! Whatever brought such a wee fellow as you all alone to Brazil?”

I attempted to decline this hearty invitation of my countrywoman, as she proved to be, but it was of no avail, and I was taken in and dined; and later, when it turned out that Mrs. —— was an old friend of my uncle in Boston, I was given a very charming drive in the suburbs, and finally returned in great state, soon after sunset, to the landing stage with my new friends. Before leaving the kind lady made me promise to call upon her again when I next came ashore.

CHAPTER III
THE MUTINY

I had been kept so late by my kind entertainer that I found, by inquiry of the boat-keeper of a man-of-war cutter at the landing stage, that the Bombay’s boat with the liberty men had been gone for nearly an hour; and the coxswain, seeing my dilemma, called in a shore boat pulled by a couple of darkeys, who agreed to take me off to my ship for a few reis.

As we neared the Bombay I saw evidences of unusual commotion on board, and observed a signal of distress hoisted in the mizzen rigging. We pulled alongside, and scrambling on deck I discovered what was the trouble.

Among the naval stores which composed our cargo were six hundred barrels of whiskey. In those days liquor was served out as a daily ration in the United States Navy, but the practice did not prevail in the merchant service, liquor being allowed on board but few ships, and it was served as a ration in no American vessels.

Sailors have always been noted for their ingenuity in stealing liquor; and to keep this out of his men’s reach, our captain had stored the barrels in the fore and after runs, or lowest part of the lower hold. The sailors were aware of this, and on this Sunday had found their opportunity.

Mr. Bowker, the chief mate, and the port watch were on shore, and Captain Gay had gone on board another ship, the Angier, to pass the day and dine with her commander. This left Mr. Daniels, the second mate, in charge. He was a rather easy-going young man, and soon retired to his stateroom to enjoy the quiet day in reading an interesting novel.

Chips, the carpenter, after smoking a pipe, went to sleep in his bunk, and the crew found little difficulty in taking from his chest such tools as they wished. With these the starboard watch proceeded to cut a hole through the forecastle deck, and succeeded so well that by dinner-time they had broken out the upper tier of stores and exposed the barrels of whiskey.

The cargo they removed they piled up carefully in the quarters of the absent port watch, filling their side of the forecastle up to the carlines.

Not satisfied with broaching one barrel for immediate use, they providently decided to lay in a stock for future consumption, and to this end hoisted three barrels of whiskey up into the forecastle, and concealed them underneath their berths.

They then restored the remainder of the cargo to its place, and refitted the deck planks so carefully as scarcely to leave a trace of their work.

After dinner the watch settled down to the business of drinking and carousing. When at five o’clock in the afternoon Mr. Daniels, having finished his novel, came forward to call away the boat to bring the liberty men on board, he was startled at finding the entire watch drunk and inclined to be very quarrelsome.

He at once sent the carpenter and the boy Jim in the dingey on board the Angier to state the case to our captain, and he accepted the offer of Captain Edson to send the Angier’s boat for our liberty men. The two captains then came at once on board the Bombay, in the dingey. The arrival, an hour later, of the liberty men, who were also drunk, made matters worse, instead of better, for the two watches fell to fighting in the forecastle.

This was the disturbance that was going on when I arrived on board. Captain Gay, who was one of the old-time sea captains and a very “taut hand” with his crews, ordered the second mate to go down into the forecastle and bring up any rum he might find there. He supposed, of course, that the liquor the men had obtained had been smuggled on board from the bumboat.

Mr. Daniels went down with a very ill grace, I thought. The forecastle was just then a very lion’s den, and he did not stay long, but came up with a rush through the hatchway with a bleeding nose and puffed eyes.

When he could regain his breath, he exclaimed: “Captain Gay, they’ve got a barrel of whiskey there on tap, and they are fighting over it like a lot of wild Indians! It was all I could do to get out of the forecastle alive!”

“A barrel! What do you mean?”

“It’s just so, sir; there is a barrel on tap, and they are drinking it out of their pint cups! I am almost sure it is one of the barrels from the hold, but how on earth they got it out I can’t imagine. The hatches haven’t been opened to-day; that I will swear to!”

This was certainly a very bad state of affairs, and Captain Gay felt that he must take summary action. Going to the cabin, he returned with four revolvers and gave one each to the officers and to the carpenter. Then looking down the hatch, he shouted, “Men, come on deck at once, every one of you!”

A howl of derision was the only reply.

“I will give you five minutes to get up here, or I’ll come down there and find out the reason why!” he cried.

They simply yelled defiantly in drunken chorus.

“Come along, Mr. Bowker,” said the captain. “You and I will start these fellows up. Mr. Daniels, you and the carpenter put the irons on them as they come up the hatchway!”

The captain and mate bravely started down the hatchway, revolvers in hand. They were taking desperate chances. It was no small thing for two men, even with arms in their hands, to face a dozen sailors, maddened with drink, at close quarters, in a hand-to-hand encounter such as this must needs be. But those old-time skippers were accustomed to rough-and-tumble fights, and they never shirked an encounter of the kind, even at long odds.

Jim and I had gone forward to see the outcome of the affair, and we were, of course, in a high state of excitement as the captain and mate disappeared below.

For several minutes there was a terrible confusion of voices in the forecastle, and then a sound of blows and oaths, followed by the sharp crack of a pistol shot. Then a brief pause, followed by a renewal of the uproar. Another shot was fired, and almost immediately the captain appeared on the ladder, struggling with a stalwart fellow who had grasped the pistol by the barrel, and was striving to get possession of it.

The carpenter leaned over the scuttle and struck the sailor a heavy blow on the head with a pair of iron handcuffs, whereupon the fellow let go his grasp of the pistol and fell heavily down the ladder. The captain then came up, bleeding from a cut on the side of his face, evidently the result of a blow, and with his clothing fairly torn to shreds. Mr. Bowker quickly followed, in an even worse condition, and without his pistol, which he had lost in the affray.

Mr. Daniels pulled over the scuttle and slipped in the hatch-bar; and, feeling that the wild beasts were at least caged, our side called a parley.

“I shot one of the scoundrels in the arm,” said the captain. “Did your shot take effect, Mr. Bowker?”

“I think so, sir; but I am not sure of it. They closed in on me so I could not very well see.”

I happened just then to glance through a port and saw a boat coming alongside. “Here’s a boat with some officers, sir,” I reported.

The captain went to the gangway and received a Brazilian officer who came on board. Looking curiously at the captain’s disordered condition, he said, “I am sent by the port captain to inquire what trouble you are in, as you have a distress signal flying.”

The captain explained and the lieutenant went forward to investigate. Mr. Bowker opened the scuttle, and the officer called down in his broken English, “Mariners, I command that you come on deck at once!”

“Who are you, monkey-face?” shouted a man from below. “Get out of this, or we will serve you worse than we did old Bowker!” At the same time a pistol shot whistled ominously past the young lieutenant, while a chorus of oaths and yells saluted him.

“But, captain,” said the young man, “this is truly a mutiny! I must report to my commanding officer and obtain further assistance.” And he hurried to his boat and left the ship.

By this time it was growing dark, and affairs were in a very bad state for the night. The two captains consulted together as to the best course to pursue. As discipline had now become almost a dead letter in the ship, we all gathered aft, having first secured the forward hatchway, and several propositions were discussed by the officers.

“Captain Gay,” said Captain Edson, “if you take my advice you will not allow the authorities to interfere in the matter, at this stage of the mutiny at least. If they undertake to settle it they will put you to no end of trouble and expense, and possibly delay your voyage. I have had some experience with them in a similar affair. I would at least exhaust my own resources first.”

“That is good advice, as far as the Brazilians are concerned,” replied Captain Gay, “but what shall I do with those wild men down in the forecastle?”

“Come below and we will talk over a plan by ourselves, where we haven’t quite so many listeners,” said Captain Edson, as he glanced at my companion Jim, who, with mouth and ears both wide open, was pushing forward to catch every word.

They went below, and Mr. Bowker, now that the excitement was over for the moment, found time to give us his attention; and we were set at work cleaning up the decks, securing the boats, and making all snug for the night.

In a short time the steward brought up an order to the mate to take the Angier’s boat and go on board the Brazilian man-of-war Independenzia, with Captain Gay’s compliments, and to say that we should not require any assistance that night, but should be glad to have the police boat sent in the morning to take the prisoners on shore. Before going the mate was directed to see that the forward hatch was well lashed down and that a kedge anchor was put on it as an additional precaution against its being lifted off by a combined effort of the men below.

As the “prisoners” were as yet a long way from being secured, we were all very much mystified by this message from the captain, and the mate remarked to Mr. Daniels in my hearing that he “thought the old man had better catch his chickens before he counted them.”

But all the same, he obeyed the order, and we went down into the steerage to supper, there to discuss the mutiny in all its various aspects. When the Angier’s boat returned, Captain Edson went back to his own ship.

That night the mates and the carpenter kept the anchor watches between them, and the crew long before midnight succumbed to the effects of the liquor, and were all quiet in the forecastle.

The next morning we were aroused at daylight, and for once found the captain on deck as early as any one. Jim and I were sent off at once in the dingey to bring Captain Edson on board, who came, bringing with him a mysterious package of something that smelled very much like matches.

Captain Gay received him at the gangway; and after they had drunk a cup of coffee, they both went forward with the mates and the carpenter, who to his and our surprise was ordered to bring: his broad-axe with him. The captain then looked about carefully, and at last directed the carpenter to cut a hole through the deck planks something more than a foot square, between the beams. The carpenter was rather astonished, but obeyed orders, and the chips at once began to fly.

The captain then went to the galley and returned with an iron pot, to which he attached a line, and Captain Edson poured the contents of his package into the kettle. By this time the hole was cut through the deck.

“Stand by to open the scuttle, Mr. Bowker,” said the captain. “Now, men,” he called down, as the hatch was opened carefully, “are you coming up like men, or shall I make you come up like sheep?”

The crew greeted this request with shouts and oaths. Many of them had waked and were again drinking the liquor.

The captain closed the hatch and called out, “Cook, bring me a shovelful of live coals here!”

The cook came with the hot coals, which he put, as directed, into the pot.

As the dense white smoke of the burning brimstone in the vessel curled up, the captain lowered the pot through the hole in the deck, keeping it close up to the beams and out of reach of the men below, and then placed two wet swabs over the hole, so that none of the fumes could escape above.

Flesh and blood could not endure the suffocating vapors that immediately filled the forecastle. In less than five minutes there was a terrific rush up the ladder, and a violent effort was made to raise the hatch, which was prevented by the lashings and the heavy kedge anchor.

“Stand by, now, all of you!” cried the captain to the mates, “and clap the handcuffs on them as I let them through, one at a time!”

He opened one door of the scuttle, through which the first man precipitated himself. He was at once secured and the door was closed. Then it was re-opened, and the crew were let out one by one until the whole twelve lay handcuffed on the deck in a row. The last men were scarcely able to crawl up, so dense were the noxious fumes in the forecastle.

When the work was completed, Captain Gay walked up and down the deck in a high state of glee at the entire success of his experiment, and addressed the captives as he passed:

“Oh, you are a precious lot of scoundrels, aren’t you? You thought you had the weather-gage of me, did you? I think you will sing a different tune when you find yourselves in the calaboose! I have more than half a mind to give you a round dozen apiece before I send you there, just to warm myself up this morning! But I won’t soil my fingers with you, you drunken brutes, much as I should enjoy it! Mr. Bowker, signal for the police boat, and send these fellows off as quickly as possible and let us be rid of them!”

He turned aft, and went down to breakfast with Captain Edson.

When the police boat came, the officer was greatly surprised at finding so large a number of prisoners awaiting him. They were taken on shore; and after remaining in the city prison until we sailed, they were, as we subsequently learned, released, and were shipped by a whaler who came in short of hands.

Our captain picked up another crew without much difficulty, and we went on unlading. We then took on board a cargo of coffee and carried it to New Orleans, where we loaded with cotton for Liverpool.

CHAPTER IV
NOT BORN TO BE DROWNED

The next voyage of the Bombay was to Mobile for a cargo of cotton, to be carried to Liverpool. It was the custom in those days for ships of any great size to discharge and take in their cargoes in the lower bay. The city is on the Mobile River, fully twenty-five miles above the entrance to the lagoon-like bay, cut off from the Gulf of Mexico by a narrow isthmus, upon the point of which the lighthouse stands.

The Bombay came to Mobile in ballast, so there was no cargo to discharge, very much to our satisfaction, as everything had to be loaded into large lighters, which made hard work for the crew.

Captain Gay, as was the custom, went up to the city as soon as the ship was safely anchored, to superintend the work of the brokers in obtaining freight, and to forward the cotton to the ship with all possible expedition. The chief mate remained on board in charge of the ship.

Of all the dismal holes I had ever seen, the lower bay of Mobile was the worst. The low shores are either alluvial mud or clear sand; there were no trees, no inhabitants but a very few ignorant fishermen, and absolutely nothing to relieve the monotony of life on shipboard, divested even of the excitement that is found when at sea in the changes of wind and weather, and the making and taking in sail that follows calm or storm.

We were supposed to be in port, and Jack dearly loves his “Sunday liberty,” with its attendant run ashore; but here no one cared to go on shore on Sundays or any other day, merely to wander about in the sand, half devoured by mosquitoes, and without a living soul to exchange a word with. Then, to make it even more disagreeable, as the bay is unprotected, and it was in the winter season, we were compelled to stand anchor watches at night, and keep our sails bent in readiness to slip our anchors and work off shore if a norther should strike us.

I have since lain at anchor off some very inhospitable and uninteresting shores, but I do not remember anything more detestable than life in Mobile Bay in 1844, unless, indeed, it was my blockading experience outside of that same bay in 1862, of which you will hear before you finish this volume.

Our only relaxation was crabbing. For this sport we took old iron hoops and wove upon them coarse nets of heavy twine, the meshes being very open. In these nets we fastened three or four pounds of the most ancient and malodorous salt beef we could find in the harness casks,—and these pieces could be scented the length of the ship. At night, the nets, heavily weighted, were thrown overboard with a stout line attached to them, and allowed to sink to the bottom.

The next morning we hauled the nets in, and rarely failed to find from one to half a dozen enormous hard-shelled crabs entangled in the meshes of each net and viciously fighting with each other. The result of these contests was frequently seen in an unfortunate crab minus half of his legs.

But the pleasure of crab-fishing soon palled upon us, and not even a hardened sailor’s stomach could endure a steady diet of these crustaceans. So, after the first week the crab nets were neglected, and we were forced into spending our few hours of leisure in sleep, an unfailing resource for a sailor.

However, the first lighter laden with cotton soon came down from Mobile, and with it a gang of stevedores who were to stow this precious cargo. At that time freights to Liverpool were quoted at “three half-pence a pound,” which represented the very considerable sum of fifteen dollars a bale. So it was very much to the interest of our owners to get every pound or bale squeezed into the ship that was possible.

The cotton had already been subjected to a very great compression at the steam cotton presses in Mobile, which reduced the size of the bales as they had come from the plantations fully one half. It was now to be forced into the ship, in the process of stowing by the stevedores, with very powerful jackscrews, each operated by a gang of four men, one of them the “shantier,” as he was called, from the French word chanteur, a vocalist. This man’s sole duty was to lead in the rude songs, largely improvised, to the music of which his companions screwed the bales into their places. The pressure exerted in this process was often sufficient to lift the planking of the deck, and the beams of ships were at times actually sprung.

A really good shantier received larger pay than the other men in the gang, although his work was much less laborious. Their songs, which always had a lively refrain or chorus, were largely what are now called topical, and often not particularly chaste. Little incidents occurring on board ship that attracted the shantier’s attention were very apt to be woven into his song, and sometimes these were of a character to cause much annoyance to the officers, whose little idiosyncrasies were thus made public.

One of their songs, I remember, ran something like this:—

“Oh, the captain’s gone ashore,

For to see the stevedore.

Chorus: Hie bonnie laddie, and we’ll all go ashore.

“But the mate went ashore,

And got his breeches tore,

Hie bonnie laddie,” etc.

As Mr. Bowker had returned to the ship the day before, after a visit to the lighthouse, with his best broadcloth trousers in a very dilapidated condition, this personal allusion to the unfortunate incident, shouted out at the top of their hoarse voices by “Number One” gang was, to say the least, painful. We boys, however, thought the sentiment and the verse equally delightful.

The second lighter of cotton was towed down to us by quite a large high-pressure steamer, the Olive Branch, that was going on to Pass Christian with passengers. After dinner that day, Mr. Bowker, who was in an unusually amiable mood, called out, “You, Bob, take Charlie with you in the dingey, and go on board that steamer, and see if you can’t get me some newspapers.”

Charlie was the new boy, the successor to Jim, who had unostentatiously departed from the ship, “between two days,” in Liverpool, last voyage. As Charlie was my junior, I took a great and not unnatural pleasure in making him as uncomfortable as possible when an opportunity presented. So I hauled the dingey up at once to the gangway, and, rousing Charlie up from his unfinished dinner, started off for the steamer.

I had already become quite a good boatman, but this was a novel experience for me, and indeed it was quite a delicate matter to lay a small boat safely alongside one of those great side wheel steamers while she was still in motion,—for the Olive Branch had not anchored, but had only stopped her engines and was slowly drifting.

As I approached the steamer I saw a man standing well forward of the wheel-house with a line ready to throw to us, and I headed the boat for him. As we came within good distance we tossed in our oars, the line was thrown, Charlie caught it, but stumbled and fell, and in a moment the dingey had capsized, and we were in the water and under the wheel of the steamer!

Unfortunately I had never learned to swim; and as I was heavily clad I went down in the cold salt water of the bay like a stone, and for a few seconds experienced all the agonies of drowning!

Then I rose and, as I came to the surface, found myself among the “buckets” of the great wheel of the steamer, which were green and slimy with river moss, and as slippery as ice. By a tremendous physical effort I succeeded in getting astride of one of these buckets, and obtained a precarious position of comparative safety, as I thought at first.

But, to my horror, I was scarcely out of the water when the wheel commenced very slowly revolving. The terror of that moment I shall never forget. The recollection of it returns to me now, after all these years, and in my bad attacks of nightmare I sometimes fancy myself clinging again with desperation to a slowly revolving wheel, drenched, shivering with cold, and expecting each moment a horrible death!

In my agony I shouted aloud; but, inclosed on all sides as I was by the wheel-box, I felt sure that my cries could not be heard. In the darkness of this prison box the wheel slowly, very slowly revolved, carrying me up toward the top of the cover, where I fully expected to be ground to pieces; or if perchance I escaped that fate, I knew that I would be drowned when I was drawn under the water in the fearful suction beneath the wheel.

Escape seemed impossible, but frantic with fear I again shouted at the top of my shrill young voice till my lungs seemed ready to burst. Then the wheel stopped. There was a pause; I heard the noise of hurried feet upon the wheel-box above me, a trap door was opened, and the blessed light of day came struggling in.

I saw a man looking earnestly down into the darkness of the space beneath him, and I tried to call out, but my voice seemed paralyzed, and, for the moment, I could not make a sound.

Neither seeing nor hearing anything, the man rose from his knees and was about to close the trap-door, when I made another effort, and, thank God, a faint cry burst from my parched throat.

The man paused, then sprang upon the wheel, picked me up in his arms, and I fainted dead away!

After what seemed a long time, although, as I was told, it was but a few minutes, I recovered consciousness to find myself stretched out on a mattress, covered with a blanket, and surrounded by a number of kind-hearted women. The passengers had seen the boat upset and noticed my sudden disappearance. Charlie, who could swim like a fish, was picked up, and declared that I was drowned. Indeed, he “saw me go down and never come up again.”

By the merest chance the captain had not started the steamer ahead. If that had been done I should, of course, have been killed.

My clothes were soon dried in the engine-room, the dingey and her oars had been recovered, a generous bag of fruit and cake was packed for me by the sympathetic ladies, and we returned to the Bombay.

As I came up over the side, Mr. Bowker greeted me with, “Where have you been all this time, Bob?”

I explained to him my narrow escape from a dreadful death, to which he cheerfully responded:—

“Well, Bob, you certainly were not born to be drowned; look sharp to it, lad, that you do live to be hanged!”

CHAPTER V
A “SHANGHAEING” EPISODE

The next three years of my life at sea were but a repetition of the first three months of my experience, with a slight change in the scene of the incidents and a natural increase in my knowledge of seamanship. For when I returned to Boston in the Bombay from Liverpool, at the end of my first year of probation, and the opportunity was again presented to me of going into the navy as midshipman, I declined the offer of my own free will.

My views had changed during the past year, for I had learned how slow promotion was in the naval service, and I had seen in our squadron in Brazil gray-haired lieutenants who were vainly hoping for one more step before going on the retired list. In fact, Farragut, who entered the navy as a midshipman in 1810, had passed through the War of 1812, and after thirty-one years’ service was still a lieutenant in 1841.

During my year at sea my dear mother had died, my home was broken up, and when my cousin, who owned the Bombay, promised me that I should have the command of one of his ships when I was twenty-one, if I proved myself competent, I decided to stay where I was.

I received my first promotion to the position of second mate, when I was barely seventeen years of age, and a very proud youngster I was when I heard myself called “Mr.” Kelson, for the first time on the quarter-deck of the old Bombay, where less than four years before I had made my appearance as a green boy.

We were lying at this time at the levee in New Orleans, not far from Bienville Street, and abreast of the old French Market. The Bombay was the inner vessel of three in the tier, and formed a portion of the tow just made up by the tugboat Crescent City, and we were only waiting for our crew, soon to be brought on board by the boarding-house runners and the shipping-master.

There was a fine old custom that prevailed in New Orleans in those days of bringing the crew on board at night, at the last moment, comfortably drunk, counting them as received, and bundling them into their berths in the forecastle, to sleep off the fumes of their debauch. And by the next morning, when the ship would be down the river at the Belize, the tugboat was cast off, and then, and not until then, would the ship’s crew be needed to make sail and clear up the decks for sea.

It was the duty of the junior officer to receive and count the men as they came on board ship in every stage of intoxication. Some were brought over the gangway, absolutely helpless, by two stalwart runners; and when the ship’s quota had been duly delivered in the forecastle the shipping and boarding-house masters received a month’s advance pay for each man.

Whatever else might be said against this system, it certainly had the merit of simplicity; for as the voyage to Liverpool rarely exceeded thirty or thirty-five days, it was quite customary for the men to “jump the ship” in Liverpool as soon as she was docked, and, having little or no wages due them, they were cared for by another set of boarding-house sharks, who kept them during a very brief carouse in the “Sailor’s Paradise,” as Liverpool was then called, and then quietly bundled them on board of another ship, bagging their advance pay, after the fashion of their New Orleans brothers in iniquity.

All this, however, is but the prelude to my little story. That Christmas eve in 1845 I, as second mate, stood at the starboard gangway of the old Bombay, crammed to her upper deck beams with cotton, and with a deck load beside, and had checked off thirteen men drunk and semi-drunk, as they came on board in squads of two and three.

“Now then, Mr. Kelson,” said the chief mate, as he came up from the cabin, “have we got these men all aboard yet?”

“Only thirteen yet, Mr. Ackley,” I responded, looking at my list by the light of the lantern hanging in the main rigging. “But here comes the shipping-master, sir.”

“Where in thunder is that other man, Thompson?” said the mate. “The old man is as savage as a meat-axe down in the cabin, and you had better not see him till we have got our full complement on board.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Ackley,” replied the shipping-master. “Here’s Dago Joe, now, coming with his man. Well, Joe, you almost missed your chance. They are just ready to cast off the breast lines. What have you got in your handcart?”

“Oh, Mis’ Thompson, he reglar ole’ shellback, he is. He boad wid me six week. Came here bossun of de Susan Drew. You’ll ’member dis feller soon’s you see him. He say he won’t ship less’n sixteen dollar mont’. Dat’s de advance I giv’ him, ’cos I know Mis’ Ackley like good sailor man.”

“Why, he looks as though he were dead,” said I, peering at the prone body in the cart.

“Who, he? Oh no, sir; he been takin’ lil’ drop too much dis evenin’, but he be ol’ right ’fore mawnin’. Oh, he sober fust-class sailor man. ’Sure you of dat, Mis’ Ackley!”

At this moment our towboat gave an impatient whistle, and Captain Gay came up from the cabin, two steps at a time.

“Mr. Ackley, what are we waiting for? The tow has been made up for an hour, and we ought to have been a dozen miles down the river by this time!”

“The last man has just come on board, sir,” replied the mate, “and I shall cast off at once.”

“Be sharp about it then, sir!”

“Aye, aye, sir. Go forward, Mr. Kelson, and see to those head lines; take the cook, steward, and carpenter with you to haul them in. You, Joe, tumble that man of yours into the forecastle and get ashore yourself, or you’ll have a chance to take a trip down to the Southwest Pass! Let go the breast lines! Stand by forward!”

We cast off, the tugboat steamed ahead, the strong current struck us on the starboard bow, we slowly turned, and went on our way down the river, leaving the long line of twinkling lights of the Crescent City behind us.

The next morning at daylight the chief mate and I, after serious difficulties, succeeded in “rousing out” our befuddled crew, and then commenced clearing up decks and getting ready for making sail, for we were nearly abreast of Pilot Town, and would soon be over the bar.

Thirteen hard-looking subjects presented themselves from the forecastle, after some little time, but where was the fourteenth? A diligent search of the men’s quarters was at last rewarded by the discovery of the missing man—but such a man! A wretched-looking, frowsy-headed little creature, bandy-legged and narrow chested, a most unmistakable landsman, dressed in thin, blue cottonade trousers with a long-skirted, threadbare alpaca coat, buttoned over a calico shirt; with no waistcoat, or hat, and with well-worn lasting shoes on his feet. Trembling, blear-eyed, wild with evident astonishment at his surroundings, this unfortunate wretch was haled up before the mate by the carpenter, who had found him still asleep under one of the berths, hidden behind a large sea chest.

“Who the devil are you?” said Mr. Ackley roughly, looking contemptuously at the man, shivering in the chill of the early morning.

“Vere you vos takin’ me?” inconsequently replied the man, staring about him. “I want to go by my home. Lisbeth must ogspect me. Please stop the boat, lieber Herr; I must go home!”

“He’s got ’em bad, sir,” said the carpenter; “that New Orleans whiskey is mean stuff, sure. He’s got the ’trimmins, sir!”

“Who shipped you, you measly dog?” shouted the mate, paying no attention to the carpenter. “Come, speak up, or I’ll lather the hide off of you! Who shipped you I say?” raising a rope in a threatening manner.

“Please, goot gentleman, don’t strike me! I vant to go home. Lisbeth must ogspect me long ago. Why did you bring me here, goot gentleman?”

“I’ll ‘goot gentleman’ you! Here, Chips, take this fellow and put him under the head pump. Freshen him up a bit, and then I’ll warm him with a rope’s end and see if I can’t get some sense into him!”

The carpenter and one of the crew dragged the struggling man forward, and held him while one of the boys, delighted at the opportunity, pumped the cold river water over the poor creature, whose screams were drowned in the rough merriment of the sailors.

I look back at this scene now, as I record it, and at many others, even worse, that followed during the next month, and wonder if we were all—officers and men—brutes, in “those fine old days” of the Black Ball liners and the Liverpool trade!

Poor Shang—that was the name that fell to him in playful allusion to the fact that he had been made a victim to the “Shanghaeing” process, as it was called—had been drugged and brought on board helpless by Dago Joe to make up our full complement.

When we came to choose watches that evening Shang fell to me; he was left until the last, and Mr. Achley said, “Well, Mr. Kelson, you allowed Joe to bring this duffer on board, and its only fair that you should take him in your watch. I don’t want him!”

Shang, as I found out by questioning him, had gone out that Christmas Eve in New Orleans to buy a few little presents for their Christmas-tree. He was a poor journeyman tailor, a German who had come to this country from his native village of Pyrmont, several years ago, had married a fellow-countrywoman, Lisbeth, and they had one child,—a crippled girl, Greta,—whom the little man loved with his whole heart; and for her he had gone out to purchase something with his scanty, hard-earned wages, paid him that day.

He had stepped into a beer saloon for “ein glas bier,” as he said, had drunk it, felt drowsy, and—“Gott in Himmel, gnädiger Herr, nothing more know I more till I find myself in this strange ship! When think you, sir, we will get there—where we go—is it perhaps far?”

When I told poor Shang the real facts of the case, and that it would be months before he could again see his Lisbeth and Greta, the poor fellow was dumb with horror, and I almost feared he would make away with himself.

I did the best I could to make life endurable for the poor wretch. An old thick suit of mine he deftly made over for himself, and some of his shipmates helped him out with a few other clothes. But, even with the best intention, I could not make a sailor of poor Shang,—it was not in him, for he was a most helpless lubber,—and that was the misery of it.

He had been shipped and entered on our ship’s articles as an able seaman, and Joe had received sixteen dollars of monthly wages on his account. Our crew was short, at best, the winter voyage was a stormy one, and poor Shang could not be favored.

Mr. Ackley seemed to have taken an unconquerable dislike to the man from the first, and led him a dog’s life, beating him unmercifully several times for his shortcomings. Aloft he must go, though he clung helplessly to the ratlines in an agony of terror.

“You alone are goot to me, lieber Herr,” said the poor fellow. “I know you cannot help me more, but how can I live it? I know that I shall perish before we get there! Ach, lieber Gott, vot become of my lieblinge! Aber des Himmels Wege; sind des Himmels Wege!”

At last the long voyage was nearly at an end. Cape Clear was in sight one night as I came up to take the watch at midnight, and a very pleasant sight it was to all of us. There was a stiff all-sail breeze from the southward, and we were laying our course fairly up channel. I was looking over the quarter-rail at the light, now well abeam, as Shang came aft and drew near me.

“Is it then true, mein Herr, as they say, that we are almost there?”

“Yes, Shang, we are now almost there. If this breeze holds we will be in Liverpool day after to-morrow. And then,” I added, as I saw how anxiously he listened to me, “you can ship as a landsman, perhaps, and get back to Lisbeth and little Greta.”

“Gott sei dank,” he murmured, as he reverently lifted his hat, “if they have but live all this time.”

I endeavored to reassure the poor fellow, and then, as the breeze was freshening, I took in the topgallant sails, and later, finding the wind still increasing, called Captain Gay, who ordered all hands called and a single reef put in the topsails.

The watch below tumbled up, the yards were clewed down, reef-tackles hauled out, and both watches went aloft to the fore-topsail. As my station as second mate was at the weather earing, I was, of course, first aloft, and had just passed my earing and sung out, “Haul out to leeward,” when I noticed, to my great surprise, that the man next inside of me on the yard was Shang, who usually on such occasions was discreetly found in the bunt.

“Why, Shang,” said I, “you are really getting to be a sailor.”

“Ach, mein Herr,” said he cheerfully, “ich bin so glücklich und so frölich, now that I am really so near there and that I shall so soon see Lisbeth”—

A strong gust of wind struck us; there was a vicious slat of the sail that sent the heavy canvas over our heads; the ship made a desperate roll and a plunge into the rising sea, and then, as we all clung closely for our lives, the sail bellied out and filled again,—but the man next me was gone from the yard!

In the pitchy darkness of the moonless night he had fallen into the sea, and without a cry he was swept into eternity.

Poor Shang’s earthly troubles were forever ended!

CHAPTER VI
TO CALIFORNIA BEFORE THE GOLD DISCOVERY

In 1846, while the Mexican War was in progress, it was decided by President Polk, acting upon the advice of Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, to send a volunteer regiment around Cape Horn to California for the occupation of that country, then a province of Mexico. In pursuance of this scheme a commission as colonel was given to a Mr. Thomas Stevenson, a well-known New York politician and a stanch Democrat, and he was authorized to raise and equip a full regiment of one thousand men, to be known as the First Regiment of California Volunteers.

It was found that three ships would be required to transport the regiment with its commissary stores and ammunition; and the Thomas H. Perkins, of which I was at the time second mate, was one of the three vessels chartered for the purpose. Accordingly we hauled into a berth at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in September, 1846, and commenced taking in a cargo of military stores in the lower hold, while the between decks were fitted up with berths to accommodate three hundred and fifty men.

Having completed this work, we were towed into the East River, and there three full companies, H, I, and K, with a portion of Company F, were sent on board from their camps on Governor’s Island. We were also notified that Colonel Stevenson and his headquarters staff would take up their quarters on board our ship for the voyage out, which gave us the distinction of being the flagship.

The men of the regiment were a tough lot of fellows. “Stevenson’s Lambs,” as they had been nicknamed, were recruited in and about the Five Points and the worst purlieus of the notorious Fourth Ward, and from the very first they gave their officers no end of trouble.

The officers, moreover, were but a shade better; for with the exception of the colonel’s son, Captain Matthew Stevenson, who was a West Pointer, and the staff officers, who were of the better class, the great majority of the company officers were mere ward politicians, elected by their men to their positions, and having little idea of military discipline.

The colonel had to come on board secretly at night to avoid arrest for debt, and one energetic deputy sheriff actually chased us down the harbor in an ineffectual attempt to serve a writ upon this impecunious officer.