MASTER ROCKAFELLAR’S VOYAGE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

• MY DANISH SWEETHEART
• HIS ISLAND PRINCESS
• ABANDONED

“BE PLEASED TO GET IN AND GO AWAY.”

[See page 175.]

MASTER ROCKAFELLAR’S
VOYAGE

BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF “MY DANISH SWEETHEART,” ETC., ETC.

WITH 27 ILLUSTRATIONS BY GORDON BROWNE

FIFTH EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

CONTENTS

Master Rockafellar’s Voyage

CHAPTER I.
HE BEGS TO GO TO SEA.

My name is Thomas Rockafellar; father and mother always called me Tommy, and by that name was I known until I grew too old to be called by anything more familiar than Tom. I have seen people look at one another, and smile, perhaps, when they have heard the name Rockafellar mentioned as that of a family; but I here beg leave to state that the Rockafellars are an exceedingly ancient race, who, if they do not claim to have arrived in this country with William the Conqueror, can excuse themselves for not having landed with that chieftain by being able to prove that they had been many years established when the keels of the Norman galleys grounded on the Hastings shore.

EBENEZER ROCKAFELLAR.

Amongst my ancestors were several sailors, who had served the king or queen of their times in the navy of the state. A portrait of Ebenezer Rockafellar, who was a rear-admiral in the early years of George the Second’s reign, hung in the dining-room at home, and represented a face like that of the man in the moon when the planet rises very crimson out of the sea on a hot summer’s evening. He had a tail on his back and a great copper speaking-trumpet under his arm and his forefinger, on which was a huge ring, rested upon a globe of the world. The artist had painted in a picture of a thunderstorm happening through a window, with the glimpse of a rough sea, and an old-fashioned ship like a castle tumbling about in it resembling a toy Noah’s ark tossing on the strong ripples of a pond.

It might have been my looking at this red-faced ancestor of mine, and admiring his speaking-trumpet, and the noble colour of weather which stained his face that first put it into my head to go to sea. I cannot say. Who can tell where little boys get their notions from? I would stand before that picture, and in my small way dream about the ocean, about sharks, tropic islands full of cocoa-nut trees, and monkeys, and parrots gorgeous as shapes of burnished gold; and I would dream also, all in my small way, of flying-fish like little lengths of pearl flashing out of the dark-blue brine on wings of gossamer, and elephants and ivory tusks, and of black men in turbans and robes glittering with jewels, like the dark velvet sky on a midsummer night; and so on, and so on, until there arose in me a passion to go to sea, and behold with my own little eyes the wonders of the world.

Father and mother tried hard to conquer my desire; and then, when they found I would still be a sailor, they pretended to consent, secretly meaning to weary me out, or to give me a good long chance of changing my views by delaying to take any steps to humour my wishes. At last, finding my mind to be wonderfully resolved, my father talked to my mother gravely about my disposition for the sea—told her that when a boy exhibited a strong inclination for a walk, no matter of what nature if honest, he should not be baulked—that I might have the makings of another Captain Cook in me, or at all events of a Vancouver, and end my days as a great man.

“Besides, my dear,” said he, “one voyage at least cannot harm him; it will fill his mind with new experiences, it will also test his sincerity; it will act as the strongest possible persuasion one way or the other. It will be cheaper too than a year of schooling, and more useful, I don’t doubt. So, my dear, let us make up our minds to send him into the Merchant Service for one voyage.”

However, it was some time before my mother consented. She would not very strongly have objected to the Royal Navy, she said, but she considered the Merchant Service too vulgar for a Rockafellar.

“Vulgar, my dear!” cried my father; “why, do you forget that your own Uncle Martin was in the service of the Honourable East India Company?”

“Ah but,” she answered, “Uncle Martin was always a perfect gentleman, and even had he been a common sailor on board a barge, he would have carried himself with as much dignity and been as fully appreciated by people capable of distinguishing as if he had been an Admiral of the Blues.”

“MY FATHER TALKED TO MY MOTHER.”

“Of the Blue, I think it is,” said my father.

“The Red is cock of the walk,” said I, who had been listening to this conversation with much interest.

Well, it ended, after many talks, in my mother agreeing with my father that one voyage could do me no harm, and that if I returned as eager for the sea life as I now was, it might prove as good a calling for me as any other vocation that could be named. So after making certain inquiries, my father one day took me to London with him, to call upon a shipowner who lived close by Fenchurch Street. He had five vessels, three of them large ships, of which two had formerly been Indiamen, and the others were barques. They were all regular traders to Australia: that is to say, to the different ports of that colony, and one or more of them were always to be found in the East India Docks discharging the wool with which they returned home full of, or taking in merchandise for the outward passage.

The shipowner, Mr. Duncan, was a large, fat, cheerful man, “with a very knowing eye, and supposed to be already worth, my dear, about a million and a half,” as I afterwards heard my father tell my mother. We passed through an office full of clerks into a little back room, where we were received by Mr. Duncan, who seemed delighted to make our acquaintance. He patted me on the head, said that he was always fond of boys whose hair curled, declared that he could not remember ever having set eyes on a more likely sailorly-looking lad, promised me that I should become the captain of a ship if I worked hard, and then he and my father went to business.

The terms were a premium of sixty guineas for the first voyage, together with ten guineas for what was called mess-money; “and with regard to pocket money,” said Mr. Duncan, “I should say if you give the captain enough to enable him to put half-a-crown a week into the lad’s pocket whilst he’s in harbour the boy will have more than he needs for simple enjoyment, and too little,” said he, closing one eye, “for what Jack calls larks.”

The name of the ship was the Lady Violet, and Mr. Duncan told us that she was commanded by Captain Tempest, who, notwithstanding his stormy name, was a gentleman-like person of a mild disposition, one of the best navigators out of the Port of London, and beloved by all who sailed with him.

“There is no flogging now, I think, sir, at sea?” said my father.

“Oh dear no,” cried Mr. Duncan, smiling all over his immense crimson face: “a barbarous practice, sir, very happily suppressed ages ago.”

“How are boys punished,” asked my father, “at sea when they deserve it?”

“Why, sir,” answered Mr. Duncan, “the captain usually sends for them to his cabin, and lectures them paternally and tenderly. His admonitions rarely fail, but if there be great perversity, then possibly a little extra duty of a trifling kind is given to them. But there is very little naughtiness amongst boys at sea, sir! very little naughtiness indeed. Perhaps I should add, in my ships, where no bad language is allowed, where sobriety is strictly encouraged, and where even smoking is regarded as objectionable, though of course,” added Mr. Duncan, drawing a deep breath that sounded like a sigh, “we do not prohibit it.”

A good deal more to this effect passed between my father and Mr. Duncan, and then certain arrangements having been made, we took our leave.

The ship was to sail in three weeks; she lay in the East India Docks, and as she would not be hauling out of the gates until the afternoon, there was no need for me to present myself on board sooner than the morning of the day of her sailing.

My outfit was procured at a well-known marine establishment in Leadenhall Street. I very well recollect the pride with which I tried on a blue cloth jacket, embellished with brass buttons, and surveyed my appearance in a large pier-glass. I had never before been dressed in brass buttons, and felt, now that I was thus decorated, that I was a man indeed. Also the glittering badge of a sort of wreath of gold, embracing a gorgeous little flag on the cap which the outfitter placed on my head, enchanted me. Indeed, I could not but think that the privilege of wearing so beautiful a decoration would be cheaply earned by years of exposure and hardship, not to mention shipwreck, and even famine and thirst in an open boat.

“It seems to me,” said my father to the outfitter, “to judge by your list, that it is the practice of young gentlemen when they first go to sea to take a great number of shirts and fine duck trousers with them.”

“They need all their fathers allow them, sir,” said the outfitter, with a bow.

“Is it,” asked my father, “that they must always appear very clean?”

“No, sir,” answered the outfitter. “I regret to say that it is the habit of most young gentlemen when first they go to sea to swap their trousers and shirts with the baker for what is termed ‘soft-tack.’”

“What is soft-tack?” said I.

“Bread, the likes of which we eat ashore,” answered the outfitter.

“Don’t they get the same at sea?” said I.

“No, young gentleman,” answered the outfitter; “there’s nothing but biscuit eaten at sea by sailors, and it’s sometimes rather wormy. When it is so, soft-tack grows into a delicacy, compared with which midshipmen’s trousers and shirts count for nothing.”

“I’d rather have a biscuit any day,” said I, “than a slice of bread.”

I thought the smile the outfitter bestowed upon me a rather singular one. My father looked pleased, and said to the outfitter, “Master Rockafellar will keep his clothes, I know.”

“Not a doubt of it, sir,” responded the outfitter, and forthwith proceeded to show us the oilskins, sou’wester, sea-boots, bars of marine soap, clasp-knife, and the other articles which were to form the contents of the brand-new white-wood sea-chest, with grummets for handles, and with a little shelf for “curios,” and upon the lid of which my name, Thomas Rockafellar, was to be painted in strong, large black letters.

I will pass over my parting with my mother and sisters and little brother. My uniform came down a week before I sailed, and my wearing of the clothes greatly helped to sustain my spirits, whilst they made me feel that I was a sailor, and must not betray any sort of weakness that might seem girlish. I tried hard not to cry as my mother strained me to her heart, and I said good-bye with dry eyes; but I broke down when I was in the railway carriage as the engine whistled, and the familiar scene of the station slipped away. My father, who was accompanying me to the ship, put his hand upon mine, and said something in a low voice, that was, I think, a prayer to God that He would protect and bless and guard his boy, and then turned his face to the window, and when presently I peeped at him, I saw that he had been weeping too.

Ah, dear little friends! let us always love our father and mother, and be grateful to them. They suffer much for us when we are young, and when we are incapable of understanding their anxieties and griefs. Later on in life we find it all out ourselves, and it is as sweet as a blessing sent to us by them from heaven if we can remember that we were always good, and loving, and tender to them when we were little ones, and when they were alive to be made happy by our behaviour.

When I look back from the hour of my trotting into the docks at my father’s side, down to the time when I felt the ship heaving and plunging under me upon the snappish curl of the Channel waters, all that happened takes so misty a character that it is like peering at objects through a fog. Everything, of course, was new to me, and all was startling in its way, confusing my little brains; and it was a sort of Wonderland also.

The docks were full of business, and movement and hurry; huge cranes were swiftly swinging out tons’ weight of cargo from the holds of ships to the snorting accompaniment of steam machinery; dockyard labourers were chorussing on the decks of the vessels, or bawling to one another on the quayside; the earth trembled to the passage of heavy waggons; and the ear was distracted by the shrill whistling and roaring puffing of locomotives. There were fellows aloft on the ships, dismantling them of their spars, and rigging, or bending sails, and sending up masts, and crossing-yards, and reeving gear for a fresh voyage.

It was a brilliant October morning, with a keen shrill wind that made even the dirty Thames water of the docks tremble into a diamond-bright flashing, and in this wind you seemed to taste the aromas of many countries—coffee, and spices, and fragrant produce, the mere flavour of which in the atmosphere sent the fancy roaming into hot and shining lands.

The Lady Violet still lay alongside the quay. I recollect thinking her an immense ship as we approached. Aloft she looked as heavy and massive as a man-of-war, with her large tops, her canvas rolled up on the yards, and all her sea-gear—a bewildering complication of ropes—in its place. She had a broad white band along her sides, upon which were painted black squares to imitate portholes. She was an old-fashioned ship, as I know now—though then I saw but little difference between her and the rest of them that lay about. Her stern was square and very handsomely gilt; there were large windows in it, and the sunlight flashing in them made the long white letters of her name stare out as though they were formed of silver. She had a handsome flag flying at the mainmast head, exactly like the one that I wore in the badge on my cap. The red ensign floated gaily at her peak, and at the fore-royalmast head the Blue Peter—signal for sailing—was rippling against the light azure of the sky.

My father seemed as much confused as I was by the bustle and novelty. He grasped my hand, and we stepped over a broad gangway bridge on to the ship’s deck. Here was confusion indeed! all sorts of ropes’ ends knocking about, men on deck shouting to men in the hold, pigs grunting, babies crying, cocks crowing, and hens cackling; steerage passengers bound out as emigrants wandering dejectedly about; unshorn, melancholy men in slouched hats, pale-faced women with hollow cheeks stained by recent tears, cowering under the break of the poop, and gazing forlornly around them; and drunken sailors on the forecastle bawling out coarse joking farewells to friends ashore. We went up a ladder that conducted us to the upper-deck or poop, and I noticed that along the rails on either side were stowed a great number of bales of compressed hay as fodder for the sheep, which were bleating somewhere forward, and for a cow that was now and then giving vent to a sullen roar, as though she were vexed at being imprisoned in a great box.

There were several midshipmen on the poop running about. They glanced at me out of the corner of their eyes as they passed. I could not but envy them, for they seemed quite at home, whilst here was I, trembling nervously by the side of my papa, staring up at the masts, and wondering if ever I should be made to creep up those great heights, and if so, what was to become of me when I had reached the top? There was no need, indeed, to glance at my buttons to know that I was a “first voyager.” My wandering eyes and open mouth were assurance as strong as though I had been labelled “greenhorn.” My father, stepping up to one of the midshipmen, asked if the captain was on board.

“I don’t think he is,” said the youngster.

“This is my son,” said my father, “who has come to join the Lady Violet. Are there any formalities to go through—any book to be signed by him—we are rather at a loss?”

All too young as I was to be an observer, I could yet see a spirit of laughing mischief flash into the lad’s brown handsome face, and I have no doubt that he would have told me to go forward and seek for the cook and report myself, or have started me on some other fool’s errand of a like sort, but for a sunburnt man in a blue-cloth coat coming up to us, and asking my father what he wanted; on which the midshipman slunk away and joined two other midshipmen, who, on his speaking to them, began to shake with laughter.

“No, there is nothing to be done, sir,” said the weather-stained man in answer to my father’s question. “I suppose your chest is aboard?” he exclaimed, looking at me. “Better go below and see that your kit’s arrived. We shall be warping out in a few minutes.”

“Are you one of the officers, sir,” asked my father.

“I am the second mate, sir, and my name is Jones,” answered the other.

My father was about to put some further questions to him, but just then Mr. Jones, bawling out “Right you are!” to some one who had called to him from some part of the ship or the shore, rushed away.

CHAPTER II.
HIS FIRST DAY ON BOARD SHIP.

“Well, Tommy,” said my father, “as the ship will soon be leaving I had better be off, as I do not want to go to Australia with you. God bless thee, my son. Be a good lad; do not forget your prayers; remember to write to us as often as you can send a letter”—and here his voice breaking, he ceased and stooped to kiss me; but I drew away. I did not like to be kissed by my father in the presence of the little bunch of midshipmen who were viewing us from near the wheel. I feared they would regard it as an unmanly act, and sneer at me afterwards as being girlish.

My father, with a sad smile, squeezed my hand and left me. Little boys are often very sensitive on points of what they consider manliness. They will laugh at this weakness when they grow older, but I think it is wise to humour them. I afterwards heard—but I did not then know—that my father when he stepped ashore walked straight to the building that was then called the Brunswick Hotel, and posting himself at a window where I could not see him, sat watching me with the tears in his eyes, until the ship had hauled through the lock gates and I was no longer visible.

No one who has stood on board a large sailing ship for the first time, and witnessed the proceeding of getting her under way, will wonder at the confusion my mind was in as the Lady Violet hauled out into the river, and at my inability therefore to recollect all that passed, I took very little heed of my father’s leaving the vessel. I stood lost in amazement, staring about me like a fool, my mouth wide open. I remember noticing the pier heads gliding past the ship as we warped out stern first; people standing on the quayside shouting to us, waving hats and handkerchiefs, some of them weeping; whilst our passengers in groups along the line of bulwarks responded to these farewells with kissing of hands, broken cries of “God bless you!” “Good-bye!” and the like. I remember the sharp shouts of the mate on the forecastle repeating the pilot’s orders, the half-tipsy chorusing of seamen heaving at the capstan, the figure of a fellow at the helm revolving the spokes, first one way, then another, the manœuvring of a little snorting tug to receive the line for the hawser by which our great ship was to be towed down the river. Nobody took any notice of me. I stood at the head of one of the poop ladders leaning against the rail, wondering at the swiftness with which the people on the pier heads, who continued to gesticulate towards us, were diminished into dwarf-like proportions.

Four or five midshipmen hung about the poop, but they seemed too busy with their thoughts, now that we were in the actual throes of leave-taking, and had started in earnest upon our long voyage, to favour me with their glances and grins.

The river was full of life—of barges and wherries, of dark-winged colliers, swarming along under full breasts of sail; of Thames steamers cutting through the sparkling grey waters with knife-like stems; of ships in tow like ourselves, bound up or down; of huge majestic metal fabrics, gliding to their homes in the docks after days of thunderous passage through the great oceans, or floating regally past us on the way to the distant west or far more distant east.

I know not how long I had thus stood staring, when a big, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a face like a prize-fighter’s, yet of a kindly expression, stepped up to me, and said, in a gruff, deep-sea note—

“Well, youngster, and who are you?”

“I am Master Rockafellar, sir,” I answered.

“That’s our livery you’ve got on,” said he; “you’re one of the midshipmen, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir,” said I; “and are you a midshipman, please?”

“No,” he answered; “I’m third mate. What’s your name, again?”

“Master Rockafellar,” said I.

“Ha!” he exclaimed; “the right sort of name to go to sea with. Every ‘wave,’ as one’s grandmother calls it, would speak of itself as a ‘rock-a-fellow.’” He burst into a mighty laugh, and then said kindly, “Well, well; I’ve heard of even queerer names than ‘Rockafellar.’ Been below yet?”

“No, sir,” said I.

“Haven’t you seen your bedroom?”

“No, sir,” I answered again.

“Well, take my advice,” said he, “and jump below at once, and secure a bunk, and see that your chest is all right—I suppose you’ve brought one—or some of those ’tween-deck passengers down there will be borrowing your mattress and forgetting to return it, and rigging themselves out in your clothes.”

“My chest is locked, sir,” said I.

“And what of that?” he roared. “D’ye think there never was a handspike aboard a ship since the days of Nelson? Jump below, jump below, I tell ye!”

“Please, sir, which is the way?” said I, trembling.

“Go down those steps,” said he, pointing to the poop ladder, “and just over against the cuddy front there’s a black hole. Drop down it, for that’s the way.”

I at once stepped on to the main-deck, and saw a square aperture, which I was afterwards informed was called the “booby hatch.” There was a little crowd of third-class passengers standing round it, looking very wretched and melancholy, two or three of the women holding babies, who cried incessantly.

I looked into the hatch; it seemed very dark beneath, and a close, most unpleasant, but quite indescribable smell rose up through it—a sort of atmosphere of onions, yellow soap, fumes of lamp-oil, the whole tinctured with a peculiar flavour of shipboard. A short flight of perpendicular steps fell to the bottom. I was too manly to ask my way of the women; so, perceiving a sailor coiling away a rope upon a pin near the main-shrouds, I went up to him, and said, “I want my bedroom; d’ye know where it is?”

He turned his eyes slowly on me, took a somewhat sneering survey of my buttons, spat a mouthful of tobacco-juice into a scupper-hole, and then said, whilst he proceeded with his work, “Better ask the capt’n.”

The sailor was too grumpy and surly a man for a little boy like me to address a second time; so I made my way to the hatch, and put my leg over into it, concluding that I should find somebody to tell me where my bedroom was when I had descended. The ladder was perpendicular, and I was very slow in stepping down it.

“HE TURNED HIS EYES SLOWLY UPON ME.”

“Now then!” bawled a powerful voice: “up or down; one ways or t’other. There ain’t too much light here; and who’s bin and made you think you’re made o’ sheet glass?”

This remark, I found, was uttered by a seafaring man, one of the sailors of the ship, I afterwards came to know, who had been told off to help our handful of emigrants to secure their boxes. I think he was slightly in liquor; at all events, I grew sensible of a distinct taste of rum-and-water on the air as I jumped backwards on to the lower deck close beside him.

“Where is my bedroom?” said I.

“No bedrooms at sea, young ’un,” he answered. “What callin’s yourn? Are ’ee a sailor man? My precious eyes! there’s buttons! See here, my lively: when the shanks of them buttons is worn off, I’ll give ye the value of a fardenswuth of silver spoons for the whole boiling of ’em.”

“I promised my father not to sell my clothes,” I answered, with dignity. “Where’s my bedroom, I say?”

“Why, there,” said he, pointing with a tar-stained stump of forefinger into the dusk. “Shut your eyes and walk straight, and your nose’ll steer ye the right course, I lay.”

I spied a door to the right some little distance abaft the part of the deck that was pierced by the great mainmast, and making for it, entered, and found myself in a long narrow cabin fitted on either hand with a double row of bunks, or sleeping-shelves, and lighted by three little round portholes, called “scuttles.” Bright as the day was outside, in this cabin it was no better than twilight, and I hung for some moments in the doorway, scarcely able to distinguish objects.

When presently I could fairly use my sight I took notice of a thin slip of a table, penetrated by stanchions, up or down which it could be made to travel as space happened to be wanted. At the aftermost extremity athwart this interior were two or three shelves containing tin dishes, pannikins, coarse black-handled knives and forks, jars of pickles, red tins of preserved potatoes, and other such commodities: the produce, as I afterwards heard, of the amount which each midshipman had to subscribe in a sum of ten guineas to what was called “the mess”—and a mess it was!

Under these shelves stood a cask of flour, and another of exceedingly moist sugar, and an immense jar of vinegar. Here and there against the bulkhead partitions between the bunks hung a sou’wester or a coat of oilskin; whilst under the lower tier of bunks you caught a glimpse of the soles and heels of sea boots and shoes, with a thin canvas bag, perhaps, like a man’s leg. In most of the bunks lay a heap of rude bedding, roughly-made mattresses, and stout blankets.

Immediately facing the door there was stretched, in one of the upper sleeping-shelves, a young red-faced youth. He was in his shirt and trousers, and was smoking a short sooty clay pipe. He eyed me out of a pair of little black eyes, which winked drowsily on either side of his immense nose, the polished point of which caught the ruddy glow of his pipe-bowl as he sucked at it, and shone over the edge of his bunk as though it were a glowworm. There was nobody else in the cabin but this youth.

“‘IS THIS A BEDROOM?’ SAID I.”

“Is this a bedroom?” said I.

He expelled several mouthfuls of smoke before answering, and then exclaimed, “Yeth.”

“Am I to sleep here, do you know?” said I.

“Can’t thay,” said he, lazily. “If you’re a midthipman, you do; if you aint, you’ll be kicked out.” Saying which, he closed his eyes, and refused to answer other questions, though, by his continuing to smoke, I knew he had not fallen asleep.

I entered the cabin, and after peering a bit into the bunks, saw my bedding in one of the two sleeping-places which ran athwartships. At this point my memory grows misty again. I have some dim recollection of attempting to make my bed, of hunting about for the sheets—not then knowing that sailors do not use sheets at sea—of moodily getting into the bunk, and wishing that I was at home again; of stretching myself, after a little, and falling asleep; of being awakened by a hubbub of voices, and discovering that the berth was full of midshipmen—nine “young gentlemen” in all, including myself—who were sitting round the table, using the edge of their bunks for chairs, and drinking tea out of pannikins, and hacking at a lump of cold roast meat.

This, I say, I recollect; also that I was invited by the third mate, who sat on a cask at the head of the table, to arise and join the others, and drink tea with them, which I did; that the handsome young fellow whom my father had spoken to on the poop began with a grave face to ask me questions intended to raise a laugh at my expense, and that he was abruptly silenced by the third mate (whose name was Cock), who said to him, “See here, my lad: this is your second voyage, and you are giving yourself airs on the strength of it. Now, what are your talents as a sailor? Could you put a ship about? Could you send a yard down? Could you take a star? D’ye know anything about stowing a hold? See here, my heart of oak!—until you’ve got some knowledge of your calling, don’t you go and try and make a fool of a lad who comes fresh to it. Everybody’s got to begin, and so I tell you; and if before six months of shipboard this young Master Rockafellar hasn’t more seamanship in any one of his fingers than you’ve got in all your body, though this is your second year at sea, then you shall call me a Chinaman, without risk of earning a kick for the compliment.”

The lad blushed to the roots of his hair, and looked subdued. He was a great powerful man was this third mate, and I seemed to feel with the instincts of a boy that no sort of bullying or mean sneaking tyranny was likely to be attempted so long as he made one of our company.

The tea was very strong, and the bottom of my pannikin was full of black leaves. The liquor had a flavour of old twigs and stale molasses; the beef was so hard that I could scarcely make my teeth meet in it, yet it was fresh, and it was not long before the salt food upon which we had to live made me think yearningly of it as a delicacy—as something for even a bite of which I would have gladly “swapped” a shirt.

All this while the ship was being towed down the river. I was still in the midshipman’s cabin when there was a great noise on deck—voices of men shouting, sounds of feet running hastily—and on looking through one of the portholes I saw the houses of a town just abreast, and noticed that they moved slowly, and yet more slowly, until they came to a dead halt. We had come to a mooring-buoy, for the night, off Gravesend; but one of the midshipmen told me that we should be underway again long before this side of the world was awake; by which he meant that the tug would take us in tow at daybreak.

It was dark by this time. A boy who acted as our servant lighted a lamp that was shaped like a coffee-pot, with the end of the wick coming out of the spout. By this weak and fitful light the scene of the berth looked very strange to my young, inexperienced eyes. All the midshipmen were below, some smoking, some cutting up pipefuls from squares of black tobacco, jabbering loudly about the pleasures they had taken during three months ashore. The language was not of the choicest, and my young ears were frequently startled by terms and expressions which I had never before heard. The third mate sat with his legs over the edge of his bunk listening grimly.

“Well, young gentlemen,” he presently roared out, “three of you are new to this ship this voyage, but there are six of you who sailed in her last year, and when those six went ashore they were a deal more gentlemanly and careful in their language than I now find ’em. Where, pray, did you pick up these fine words? Not in your homes, I’ll warrant. Now hearken to me, mates; you’re not going to make the better sailors for employing language which you wouldn’t tolerate in the mouth of any man, speaking in the presence of your mothers and sisters. You’re in my charge understand, and since you come to me as young gentlemen, young gentlemen you shall be; so stand by and mind your words!” saying which he looked at them one after the other, directing an emphatic nod at each of the lads as he stared. After this I heard no more bad words, and if I except a slip or two, I may truthfully say that when the voyage had fairly commenced, and the lads had come well under the influence of Mr. Cock, there never was afloat a better spoken body of youths than those which occupied the midshipmen’s berth aboard the Lady Violet.

CHAPTER III.
HE SAILS FROM GRAVESEND.

The ship lay motionless as a rock on the smooth water off Gravesend; nevertheless, owing to the strong fumes of the tobacco, probably coupled with the close atmosphere of the berth, and its warm flavouring of lamp oil, water-proof clothes, pickled onions, and black tea, I felt somewhat sick and crept quietly out of the cabin, trusting that the fresh air on deck might revive me. Just outside our berth, in the open space of ’tween-decks, which was entered from above by means of the booby-hatch, were the emigrants’ quarters. We carried about thirty of these poor people, and here they now were all of a jumble, using mine as well as the chests of the other midshipmen for seats and tables, the women talking vehemently, some of them still crying, here and there a man smoking in a sullen posture, others sitting over greasy packs of cards, whilst a few children played at hide-and-seek in and out of the sleeping-places, and amongst the emigrant’s bundles; three or four quite young babies meanwhile setting the whole picture to music with shrill, melancholy cries. A single lamp of the same pattern as ours illuminated this grimy grotesque scene.

A SCENE IN THE EMIGRANTS’ QUARTERS.

I pushed my way on deck, but on my arrival found that it was raining hard, which accounted for the emigrants being crowded below. There was shelter to be had under the break of the poop, as the ledge of deck is called that overhangs the entrance to the cuddy; and there I stood awhile, gazing along the dark length of gleaming, streaming deck that was deserted, and listening to the complaining of the wind, amid the stirless shadow of the spars and rigging on high, or watching the damp and dusky winking of the lamps ashore, or of the lights of ships at anchor round about us. Ah! thought I, this is not so comfortable as being in my father’s snug parlour at home, with a sweet and airy bedroom all to myself to pass the night in, and a kind mother at the fresh and fragrant breakfast table next morning to help me to a plateful of eggs and bacon, and a cup of fine aromatic coffee and cream! Maybe I shed a tear or two; I was but a little boy fresh from home, and amidst a great strange scene, with the darkness and the sobbing of the rain and the deserted deck, and the cold noise of the running waters of the river washing along the ship’s side to bitterly increase the sense of loneliness in my childish heart.

It was not long before I went below. Most of the midshipmen were turned in, that is to say, they were lying down in their clothes and shoes with nothing but their jackets removed. I thought I could not do better than follow their example and how wearied I was I could not have imagined till I put my head down upon the bolster at the end of my bunk, when I almost instantly fell asleep.

Being a very green, raw, quite young hand, I could be of no use on deck for the present, and it was for this reason, I suppose, they let me sleep in the morning, for when I woke I was the only midshipman in the cabin. There was a queer noise of scraping overhead, sounds as of the flinging down of coils of rope, the noises of water being swooshed along the planks; and the sunlight that shone through the portholes was tremulous with the play of glittering, moving waters. I went on deck and found the ship in tow of the tug, with the land a long way past Gravesend gliding astern, and the river so wide that over the bows it looked like the ocean. There were jibs and staysails hoisted, and the ship appeared to be sailing along. It was a fresh, windy morning; there were great white clouds rolling from off the distant land over our mast-heads, and the dark brown smoke of the tug ahead fled in a wild scattering low down upon the waters. The decks were being “washed down” as it is called at sea; sailors on legs naked to the knees were scrubbing and pounding away with brushes, buckets of water were being emptied over the planks, and a sturdy mariner with a whistle round his neck and great whiskers standing out from his cheeks, went about amongst the seamen, directing them in a voice that sounded like a roll of thunder. He was the boatswain. I was not a little surprised to find the midshipmen with scrubbing brushes in their hands washing down the poop. I mounted the ladder and stood a moment looking on. One of them worked a pump just before the mizzen-mast, whilst another filled buckets at it, the third mate threw the water about, and the middies plied their brooms with the energy of a crossing-sweeper. The youth with a great nose who spoke with a lisp was polishing the brass-rail that ran athwartship in front of the poop. A man in a long coat and a tall rusty hat paced the deck alone. His face might have been carved out of a large piece of mottled soap. I afterwards found out that he was the pilot. There was another man standing near the wheel. He had a ginger-coloured beard that forked out from under his chin, pleasant dark-blue eyes and a copper-coloured face. It was not long before I discovered that he was Mr. Johnson, the chief officer. He came along in a pleasant way to where I stood staring.

“How is it you’re not at work, youngster?” said he.

“I’ve just woke up,” said I.

“Look here,” said he, “if you don’t call me sir, I shall have to call you sir, and I am sure it’s easier for you to say it than for me. Pull your boots and stockings off like a man, put them in that coil of rope there upon the hencoop, tuck your trousers up, lay hold of that scrubbing brush yonder and see what sort of job you’re going to make at whitening these decks.”

In a minute I was scrubbing with the rest of them, and it made me feel as if I was on the Margate sands to be trotting about with bare feet, with the salt brine sparkling and flashing about my ankles.

My memory at this point grows dim again, for I was rapidly approaching the unpleasant experience of sea-sickness. I recollect that I helped to dry the decks with a swab that was so heavy I could scarcely flourish it, and that I was shown by the third mate how to coil away a rope over a pin, also that I dragged with the others upon some gear which caused a staysail between the mainmast and the mizzen-mast to ascend; I then went below to breakfast, at which there was served up a dish of hissing brown steaks, each of them wide enough to have served as a garment for my young ribs. But by this time something of the weight of the wide sea beyond was in the river, the ship was faintly pitching, much too faintly perhaps to be taken notice of by anything but a delicate young stomach like mine. I felt that I was pale, and the sight of the heap of great brown steaks floating handsomely in grease, which took a caking of white, even as the eye watched, added not a little to the uncomfortable sensation that possessed me. The others plunged their knives and forks into the layers of meat and ate with avidity; but for my part I could only look on.

“Take and turn in, my lad,” said the third mate kindly; “it’s bound to occupy you a day or two to get rid of your longshore swash, and then we’ll be having you jockeying the weather mizzen-topsail yard-arm, and bawling ‘haul out to leeward’ in a voice loud enough to be heard at Blackwall.”

I was glad to take his advice, and was presently at my length in the bunk, too ill to speak, yet with a glimmering enough of mind in me to bitterly deplore that I had not heeded my mother’s counsel and remained at home.

The wind hardened as the river widened, and much dismal creaking and groaning rose out of the hold and sides, the bulkheads, strong fastenings and freight of the lofty fabric as she went rolling stately in the wake of the tug that was thrashing through the hard green Channel ridges in a smother of foam. The wind was south-east, I heard some of our fellows say, with a lot of loose black scud flying along the marble face of the sky, and a gloomy thickness to windward, that was promise of tough weather, ere we should have settled the South Foreland well down upon the quarter. One of the lads said that if the wind headed us yet more, we should bring up in the Downs, and lie there till it blew a fair breeze, which might signify a fortnight’s waiting.

“If so,” says he, “I shall put on a clean shirt and go straight ashore, then button my ears behind me, and never stop running till I get to London town; for twenty miles of salt water’s enough for me; and here we are bound away for six thousand leagues of it, with all the way back again on top!”

In this fashion the lads would talk as they came below from the deck, and sick as I was I managed to heed enough of their conversation to pick up what was going forward. I cannot express how I envied their freedom from sea-sickness. Some were making their third voyage, others their second. I was the only “first-voyager” as they call it. It sometimes rained on deck, and the fellows would come below gleaming in oilskins, the sight of which made me feel pitifully girlish, insomuch that on three several occasions I made a desperate effort to get up and act my part of a sailor as they did theirs; but the oppression of nausea was too violent, and down I lay again, saving the third time when, contriving to feel my feet, the ship at the instant gave a lurch which sent me headlong into one of the fore and aft bunks where I lay half stunned, and so miserably sick that the third mate had to lift me in his arms to enable me to return to my own bed.

Sea-nausea is at all times distressing, and I do not know that one is easier for suffering in a fine saloon, with looking-glasses and flowers and the electric-light, and the fresh breezes of heaven blowing through the open skylights to keep the place sweet. But if this mal de mer, as the French call it, is more unendurable in one interior than in another it must be so I think in a midshipmen’s berth—at least such a berth as ours was:—Twelve sleeping shelves and nine lads to sleep in them, with a huge giant of a third mate to fill the tenth; a sort of twilight draining in through the three scuttles, the immensely thick glass of which was often eclipsed by the roaring wash of a green sea sweeping along the sides; a lamp burning night and day, from whose untrimmed flame there arose to the ceiling of the cabin a pestilential coil of smoke.

In these narrow gloomy quarters we lived and moved, and had our being. Here we ate our meals, here we slept, here we washed ourselves, here the youngsters smoked. Hardest part of all were the confusing noises made by the emigrants just outside our berth. Unlashed chests slided to and fro; children were incessantly falling down and squealing; many heart-disturbing lamentations arose from such of the poor wretches as lay sick and helpless in their dark bulkheaded compartments. They had to fetch their meals from the galley, and not yet having acquired the art of walking on a tumbling deck, those who had to bring the rations of beef or pork along, would repeatedly come with a run through the booby-hatch, and lie at the bottom of the ladder badly scalded in a little lake of pease-soup, or with the beef rolling away among the chests, whilst the air resounded with execrations, scarcely stifled by the complaining sounds of the ship’s fabric.

The third mate was very kind to me; told me there was no hurry; I was welcome to lie in my bunk till I felt equal to coming on deck.

“I was sick for a fortnight when I first went to sea,” I heard him say. “I was one of four apprentices. Those shipmates of mine were brutes, and the very first night we were out they hauled me from my hammock and ran me to the mizzen shrouds, up which they forced me to go, saying that the topgallant sail would be clewing up shortly, and I must be in the cross-trees in readiness to help furl it. A ratline carried away, and I fell through the rigging on to the deck. I broke no bones, but I lay senseless, which so terrified the young bullies that when I was taken to my hammock they never more offered to trouble me. I was ill for a fortnight, I say, and the memory of it makes me sorry for every youngster when he first comes to the life and is sea-sick.”

However, on the morning of the third day from our quitting Gravesend, though I was still very ill, I could stand no longer the miseries of my confinement to the cabin. Since I was bound to suffer, I thought it was better to feel wretched in the open air than amid the smells and noise and gloom of the midshipmen’s berth.

“I FELL THROUGH THE RIGGING.”

It was the forenoon watch, as the hours from eight to twelve are called. The fellows who had been on deck since four o’clock had come below at eight bells, and after breakfasting had turned in to smoke a pipe and then get some sleep. They were in the port or chief mate’s watch, to which division of the ship’s company I was supposed to belong, though I don’t remember how I came to know this. We were still in “soundings” as it is termed—that is to say, not yet out of the Channel, though we were a long way down it.

On this morning there was a strong sea running on the bow, but not so much wind as the motion of the ship would have led one to suppose. The mids, when they came below, had told the others who were to relieve them that the vessel was under all plain sail saving the flying jib and fore and mizzen royals, and that the “old man” as they termed the captain, was driving her; that they had heard the mate say that he expected it would be an “all hands” job before four bells had gone—ten o’clock. I caught all this, scarce comprehending it, and lay drowsily and stupidly watching the lads get their breakfast and then vault into their bunks with all their clothes on—“all standing” as the sea saying is—ready to rush on deck to the first summons. The ship was lying over at a sharp angle, and there was a great roaring and seething along her sides of swollen waters smitten into yeast, and the cabin portholes came and went like the winking of eyes to the shrouding of the glass by the liftings and leapings of the green billows. Presently there were certain sounds on deck which unmistakably denoted that sail was being shortened.

“It’s ‘in main royal’ now, I suppose,” said one of the middies, sleepily, “and about time too. What’s the hurry all this side of Sydney, New South Wales?”

Presently more hoarse songs resounded on deck, along with the echo of tramping feet and of rigging dropped hastily from the hand.

“Old man’th growing alarmed, I reckon!” exclaimed the lisping long-nosed midshipman, whose name was Kennet. “Oh, how I do with,” he cried, feigning to speak in a voice as though he wept, “that I had thtoptht at home to bottle vinegar for my poor deah mamma. Eh, Rockafellar? Better to bottle vinegar athore, my beauty, than to lie thick and hungry in a nathty cabin.”

As he spoke, the third mate’s voice was to be heard ringing like the roar of a bull down through the booby-hatch—“All hands reef topsails! Up you come, all you young gentlemen bee-low there! Lively, now! before the ship falls overboard!”

The youngsters sprang from their bunks, and were out of the cabin in a breath. Then it was that I made up my mind to linger no longer sea-sick in this dismal, straining cabin. I pulled on my shoes, plunged into my jacket, and, setting my cap firmly upon my head, went clawing my way to the steps of the hatch, up which I staggered, feeling exceedingly ill and weak, but determined now to push on even to perishing sooner than suffer in darkness and loneliness below.

CHAPTER IV.
HE GOES ALOFT.

Talk of the confusion of hauling the ship out of dock! Here was uproar thrice confounded with a vengeance! The ship seemed to be almost on her beam ends; there was an ugly livid squall over the trucks and howling through the masts; they had put the helm up to ease off the weight of the first outfly, and the Lady Violet was thrashing and foaming through it with the spume blowing in snow-storms over her forecastle; all three topsail yards were on the caps, and the huge sails—for we carried single topsails—were blowing out like giant bladders in the grip of their gear. The outer jib was slatting on the jibboom; the clewed-up main topgallant-sail was making its mast up there whip to and fro like the end of an angler’s rod; the immense mainsail was thundering at its clews and sides and slowly rose to the yard to the drag of the sailors, who were roaring out at the ropes which belonged to it; the captain, standing near the wheel, was shouting out orders to the mate; the mate was bellowing to the second mate, who was forward; the second mate was vociferating to the boatswain; in all directions gangs of sailors were delivering their working choruses at the top of their lungs. The wind shrieked, the rain hissed through it like volleys of small shot; the shaking of the loose canvas on high might have passed for the discharge of the batteries of a frigate; the foam flew over the ship; the water washed in angry sobs along the scuppers. Preserve us!

To such a greenhorn as I was then, very young, very sick, with consternation and astonishment working in me like a passion, there was distraction and uproar enough here to have justified me in concluding that the end of all things was at hand.

In a few moments I found myself on the poop where the midshipmen were hard at work with the reef tackle and other gear preparing the mizzen topsail for reefing, snugging the spanker, and so forth. Their station was aft, and their duty lay in attending to all the sails on the mizzen-mast under the charge of the third mate. He was swinging off upon a rope, when he caught sight of me.

“Come along! come along!” he roared. “All the beef we can get is wanted here!”

I went in a staggering run to where the group were pulling and laid hold of the rope.

“Belay!” shouted the third mate, and sprang into the weather mizzen rigging, whither he was followed by the rest of the midshipmen. For a moment I hung in the wind, sending one thirsty, dizzy look aloft. “Well, now or never!” thought I; and with that I got on to the hencoop, swung myself into the rigging, and began the ascent.

“I SEEMED TO BE PINNED TO THE RATLINES.”

The wind came so hard that I seemed to be pinned to the ratlines, and I felt as though all the breath were blown out of my body. I sent a yearning look up, and saw the third mate on the weather mizzen-top-sail yard-arm, striding the spar as though it were a horse, his muscular legs dangling between the dark heavens and the wool-white water. The lads were sliding out upon the foot-ropes, some to windward, some to leeward. I tried to make haste, but the sweep of the blast reduced my struggles to a mere crawling. It took me a full five minutes to reach to the height of the futtock shrouds—thin bars of iron which stretch at a sharp angle from the masts to the rim of the platform called “the top.” I took these irons in my little hands, but lacked the courage to swing myself by them over into the top. How on earth, then, was I to gain the yard upon which the midshipmen were working? Through the irons I spied a hole in the platform, and with great trouble and a deal of trembling I contrived to squeeze through it, and then I found myself on a sort of stage with the ship looking as if she were a mile below me, and the mizzen-royal yard as if it were two miles above me.

The wind screamed frantically in my ears, yet not so loudly but that I could hear my small heart thumping in them. I clutched a rope, and stood staring wildly at the yard on which my shipmates were knotting the reef-points. I thought Mr. Cock a much more wonderful man than Blondin or any tight-rope walker that ever I had heard of, to be able to sit upon that rocking point of spar without tumbling off, and to be passing the earing as coolly as if he were tying his shoes.

“Stop where you are!” he bawled to me; “we’ll endeavour to manage without you this once.”

The sea looked five times bigger than ever I had before seen it. The worst of the squall was over, and past the edge of the flying gloom to windward there was a sort of faintness in the sky, with curls and wisps of scud blowing up it out of the hard green of the distant water that looked calm, so far away it was; and right out in the midst of the distant ocean, over which the dim light of the sky was breaking, I saw a ship, like a toy, vanishing and reappearing amongst the surges, flinging the foam away from her in bursts of steam-light cloud; and so little did she look with her three milk-white bands of topsails and marble-like round of foresail, that whilst my eye dwelt upon her, I could scarce persuade myself that she was real: rather, indeed, some craft of fairy-land, which a great strong fellow, such a man as Mr. Cock for instance, might be able to hold in the hollow of his hand.

I was at no great height, yet the captain looked an insignificant little creature as he stood at the rail sending his gaze aloft; the man at the wheel resembled one of those dolls which you purchase as sailors for your model boat, and the decks of the ship from poop to forecastle showed like a long wet plank. It was wonderful to think so narrow a base should support the tall, wide-spreading fabric of mast, yard, and gear that was now somewhat nakedly shearing through the dusk of the squall, to the plunging and long floating rushes of the hull over whose side a sea would now and again fling a head of water that swept with the sparkle of a fountain clear into the milk-white race to leeward.

“Two reefs, Mr. Cock!” bawled the mate from the foremost end of the poop.

I watched the lads swinging in a row upon the foot-ropes, tossing up their heels as they brought the reef-points upon the yard, and wondered how long it would take me to learn their trick of working aloft, as coolly as though they toiled with the solid earth under them. All three topsails were being reefed at the same time. I could not see forward, but I could hear the voices of the men chorusing as they, lighted, the sails over. Evidently the captain expected dirty weather; and, to be sure, out abeam it looked ugly enough, with a kind of rusty light growing in the atmosphere that threw a malevolent complexion of storm upon the sky.

Presently the last knot had been tied in the mizzen topsail, and the midshipmen were in the act of descending.

“Jump aloft two of you and secure that t’gallants’l before it blows adrift!” roared the captain.

A couple of the mids sprang into the topmast rigging, and in a few moments were giving battle to the sail, that, even as the captain called, began to flog upon the yard.

Well, thought I, as I stood staring up at them, some day I dare say I shall be able to do that too; but I declare the possibility seemed mighty remote from me just then. Indeed, once again I was beginning to feel horribly sea-sick. The higher you mount above the hull of a ship, the wilder of course grows the rolling, and the mizzen-top in which I stood seemed to me to swing through the air a score of times more furiously than the decks below were swaying. It increased my nausea moreover to look up and see the two youngsters dizzily whirling under the dark sky, plunging and hauling at the thrashing sail, as though the hold they had with their boots was enough to save their lives if they fell backwards.

But now the others were swarming into the top, and swinging themselves over into the lower rigging, and dancing down the shrouds till, taut as those huge ropes were, they leapt again.

“Come along! come along!” bawled the third mate, as he plumped like a cannon ball alongside of me, and with a sinewy arm poised himself an instant before putting his foot on the futtock ratlines: “There’s nothing good enough to look at up here, to keep you staring open mouth as though you were a newly landed cod. Lay down smartly now, youngster, and tail on to the topsail halliards.”

His prize-fighter’s face vanished over the rim of the top.

“Lay down!” thought I, “what does he mean?” and I went nervously to the edge of the platform to ask him to explain himself, but saw that he was already on deck.

“Mizzen-top there!” cried the captain, “Lay down, will you?”

There can be no mistake about that, thought I. I am not deaf. Twice I had been told to lay down; and with that I stretched myself along on my back, taking care however to keep a hearty good hold of some ropes which passed through the top within reach of my grasp.

“Mizzen-top there!” after a little came a roaring hail from the mate; “what are you about up there, sir? Do you mean to lay down or not?”

On hearing this, I crept on my knees to the rim of the top, and looking over, cried out in the shrill voice of my childhood, “Please, sir, I am lying down.”

The captain was staring up at me, but on hearing this, he turned his back with a shake of his figure.

“Come down, Master Rockafellar,” sung out the mate in a voice full of laughter.

When I heard this I crawled over to another edge of the top where I could see him, and piped out, “The captain said I was to lay down, sir.”

“‘PLEASE, SIR, I AM LYING DOWN.’”

It was wonderful that my thin voice should have carried in such a wind, yet I was heard plainly enough. Then arose a shout of laughter from the midshipmen; the mate called something to Mr. Cock, who in a trice came bundling up the mizzen rigging, and flounded with a crimson face into the top.

“Why you young guinea pig, why don’t you obey orders?” he bawled; “to lay down at sea means to come down, and you know it too; I see it in your eye! Over with’ee, over with’ee.”

His large nervous fist closed upon the collar of my jacket, and I found myself lifted over the rim at the top.

“Catch hold of the futtock shrouds!” he roared, “those iron bars, d’ye hear?—quick, before I let you go!”

I gripped at something, but whether it was iron or rope I was too horrified to know. He let go, and my legs swung out into the air. But green-horns cling too tightly to be in much danger on such occasions as this. A heave of the ship swung me in again, my toes struck something hard, and with the swiftness of a monkey I coiled my little shanks round it. Down I slid, breathless, and with the eyes half out of my head, and was not a little astonished and rejoiced to find my foot upon a ratline in the mizzen rigging, whence the descent was as easy as walking the deck.

“That’s your lesson,” exclaimed the third mate as he jogged down the rigging past me. “You’ll never shirk the futtock shrouds again, will you?”

But I had no breath with which to answer him. It was a rough lesson, but it did me good. It made me see that climbing and descending were no such terrifying processes as they looked. Possibly I might not have got so much confidence out of this adventure had I known that the third mate had only pretended to let go; that in reality he was maintaining his hold of my collar after my legs had swung out, though I was too much terrified to be sensible of this.

I have always considered that the alarm of this little business cured me of sea-sickness. Whilst in the top, as I have told you, the nausea was over-poweringly strong upon me; but when I had come down I was no longer sensible of it, and from that moment, indeed, I never had a return of it. There can be no doubt that this distressing malady lies mainly in the nerves, and the fright I had received by being hung out over the top, so to speak, had acted upon me as an electric shock, healing and ending the prostrating complaint.

It blew a gale of wind for three days. I don’t doubt I should have heard a deal about my adventure aloft from the midshipmen but for the weather. The wet on deck and the discomforts below were too much for the youngsters’ spirits, and until the sun shone forth again we were a very sulky lot. The ship was miserably uncomfortable. It rained incessantly, with such a continuous blowing of spray over us, that it was sometimes above one’s ankles on the main deck. There were tarpaulins over the hatchways, and the ’tween-decks were as dark as the hold. There had been no time yet for the passengers to grow seasoned to the sea life; most of those in the “cuddy,” as the saloon was then called, kept their cabins. Now and again one of them at long intervals crawled into the companion-hatch, where he exhibited a face white as a spectre’s.

But the chief of the misery was amongst the emigrants. Boxes and chests were incessantly breaking loose, and menacing their lives as the poor creatures sat huddled in sea-sick groups under the booby-hatch, for the sake of the dim light that sifted down through it. There were times when the galley fire was washed out, and the emigrants had to content themselves with biscuit and molasses and cold water, and small doses of that nauseous food called “soup and boulli,” nick-named by the sailors soap and bullion. I have seen a little family of them squatting round a sea-chest belonging to one of us midshipmen, an old towel for a table-cloth, and on it a tin dish or two containing hard ship’s biscuit, a mess of soup and boulli, a lump of pork fat, probably two or three days’ old, along with other such cold and throttling fare as the ship’s third-class larder yielded; and while they were attempting to make a meal off this trough-like collection of victuals, I have seen the chest slip away from them, the food tumble on to the deck, and the whole family capsized on their backs.

I do not know that the emigrant in these days is a person very carefully and hospitably looked after at sea; but in my time the treatment he met with on shipboard—that is to say, the utter indifference to his comfort exhibited by owners and captains—rendered him the most miserable wretch afloat.

CHAPTER V.
HE SIGHTS A SHIP.

These three days of storm brought me into a tolerably close acquaintance with some of the hardships of the sailor’s life. Our cabin did not leak, yet somehow or other the deck of it was always damp, with a noise as of the bubbling of water under the bunks. The scuttles were incessantly under water, and all the light we had was imparted by the dingy flare of our malodorous coffee-pot-shaped lamp.

The food was perhaps the hardest part to my young stomach. Every midshipman’s father had been called upon to pay ten guineas mess money; yet I do not know that this ninety guineas obtained any stores for us, if it were not a cask or two of flour, a cask of sugar, a few dozens of pickles, and some cases of “preserved spuds,” as potatoes are called at sea. We were therefore thrown upon the ship’s stores, and fed as the sailors forward did. This I say was the hardest part to me, since, though my sickness had passed, my appetite had not recovered its old strength, and for a long time I was never hungry enough to eat with the least relish the greenish masses of salt pork, and the iron-hearted rounds and squares and cubes of salt horse, and the pans of lukewarm slush-flavoured water, at the bottom of which rolled a handful of peas, as digestible as musket-balls, and the dark-skinned puddings, compounded of the coarsest flour and the skimmings of the greasy water of the cook’s copper, which the lad who waited upon us would come staggering with from the galley, and place upon the narrow slip of table, scarce visible in our twilight.

I believe I should have starved but for the biscuit, which was crisp and good, though Kennet, the long-nosed midshipman, endeavoured to cheer me by saying—

“Thtoph a bit, Rockafellah—wait till we’re a fortnight out, and then ththand by! They’ll be broaching the regular provithionth then, and if there don’t go a thcore of wormth to every chap’th bithcuith I’m a lobthter.”

The crying of children outside, the growling of men, and the shrill complaining of women combined with the crazy creaking and groaning of the fabric, so that it was very hard to get any sleep.

It was on the night of the day of my adventure in the mizzen-top that I stood my first watch. It was eight o’clock in the evening, and the moment after the last of the chimes of the bell on deck had been swept away by the gale, the four midshipmen who were in the starboard, or second mate’s watch, came bundling below. Their oilskins were streaming wet, and they blew upon their fingers’-ends as they entered the berth.

“Still raining, is it?” asked a fellow named Poole.

“Ay, murderously,” was the answer; “but the wind’s quartering us, and you’ll be making sail, I allow, before we turn out.”

“What’s been doing?”

“Nothing. But talk of the Bay of Biscay! Why, the Straits of Magellan might be close aboard. That’s right, my sweet and lively hearty! On with your boots, my noble fellow! One, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, open the door; five, six, cut all your sticks!”

And the youth who had thus spoken, and whose closing observations were levelled at me, thrust a short black length of clay pipe into the flame of the lamp, and sprang into his bed to refresh himself with a smoke before going to sleep.

I got into my sea-boots, which were very new and creaked noisily, wrapped my body in an oiled coat, wedged a sou’wester securely upon my little head, and followed the others on deck. The night seemed very black after the lamplight, dim as it was, in the cabin. It was the darker at that moment for a heavy squall of rain that was blowing with a note of shrieking in it over the bulwark rail, and splitting in shouts and whistlings through the masts and rigging. I clambered on to the poop, and stood holding on to the brass rail staring about me in a blind way, for there was a deal to daze a raw-head like me coming new to the scene, I assure you. The ship was tearing through the water under three-reefed topsails and foresail. She made a great swirling and roaring of white water all round her, and the snow of it put an illumination into the black air till you seemed able to see a mile away. There was a high sea running, but it had quartered us along with the wind, and the Lady Violet sank and rose very nobly and easily upon the long black seething coils of brine which chased her thundering to her counter, and expiring there in foam.

The other midshipmen hung about the quarter-deck, under the shelter of the break of the poop. Now and again they showed themselves, but at long intervals. The shadowy figure of the chief mate paced the weather-deck. Through the glass of the skylights I could see the people sitting in the cuddy below. Some played at chess or cards; others lolled in a sickly posture upon sofas; the captain, with his face burnished by weather, conversed with two ladies; a small chart lay before him, and he was explaining something to them, running his forefinger over the paper, and smiling into their puzzled faces. It was more like a fancy than a reality to witness that shining interior set in the black frame of the night—that handsome cuddy, with its soft carpets, its brilliant lamps, its gleaming swinging trays, its globes of gold fish, its ferns and richly-painted panels, in which the lustre of the oil flames rippled; the whole showing, as it were, like a picture flung by some magic-lantern upon an atmosphere of sooty blackness.

I crept aft, and stood looking a little while at the man that steered. The light in the binnacle touched his face and figure, and threw him into relief. His sou’wester came low over his brow, and the rest of him, saving a knob of a nose and a pair of cheeks compounded of warts, freckles, and wrinkles, was formed of an oilskin coat, oiled leggings, and huge sea-boots. He grasped the wheel with hands of iron, often bending a reddish glittering eye upon the compass-card that swung in the bowl, and I watched him thrusting the spokes first a little way up and then a little way down, and wondered why he did not keep the wheel steady. But I did not like to speak to him, for what little of his face was visible looked very sour; and then, again, I was certain that he must be in a bad temper, through having to stand exposed to the lashing wet and strong cold wind of the night.

I went to the taffrail, and looked down over the stern of the ship at the frothing cataract of water that boiled out from round about her rudder, and streamed away pale and paler yet into the darkness, where I could see the dim line of it rising and falling upon the black surges. It resembled a footpath passing over a hilly country. The ocean looked a dreadfully desolate immense surface in that darkness, wider than the sky, it seemed to me, for the reason of the fancy of prodigious measureless distance coming to one out of the obscurity that lay in ink upon it, with the fitful flashings of the heads of seas showing in the heart of the murkiness. I shuddered as I thought how cold a death drowning must be. I shuddered again at the imagination of being alone in an open boat upon the vast surface of weltering gloom. I recalled what I had read of the sufferings of shipwrecked people, of fire at sea, of leaks which gained upon the pumps and sunk the vessel deeper and deeper, of sudden fierce storms which tore the masts out of ships, and left them helpless as logs of wood to slowly drown.

“‘WHAT D’YE SEE, MY LAD?’ SAID HE.”

Whilst my little brains were thus busy, my eye was taken by what appeared to be a sort of smudge far away astern in the windy shadow of the night. If I looked straight at it, it vanished, but on gazing a little away from it I could see it very clearly. I continued to peer for some time, and was quite sure that the blotch—whatever it might be—was hardening, so to speak, and enlarging. I turned my head to see if the mate observed it, but was sure he had not by his manner of walking the deck. I stepped up to him, and said:

“If you please, sir, I think there’s something catching us up out there!” and I levelled my small arm at the ocean over the stern.

“Why, what d’ye see, my lad?” said he, very kindly; “you must have gimblet-like eyes to be able to bore a hole into such a night as this. It’s Master Rockafellar, isn’t it?” stooping to get a sight of my face. “Overtaking us, do you say?”

He walked right aft, I following him, and stood staring a moment or two, then with a start cried, “By George, the Flying Dutchman, I do believe! A big ship coming through the air it looks, and overhauling us as though she were a roll of smoke. Jump below, my lad, and fetch me my night-glass.”

He told me where his cabin was, and where I should find the glass, and off I rushed, proud to be employed. His cabin window overlooked the quarter-deck, and against the bulkhead the four middies of our watch were grouped, smoking and yarning in the shelter there.

“Why, what are you up to?” shouted one of them; “that’s the chief mate’s cabin. He’ll hang you up by the neck at that yard-arm, you young Rockafellar, if he catches you in his berth.”

“He has sent me for his night-glass,” answered; “there is a big ship coming up astern.”

“O-ho!” cried they, and emptying the bowls of their pipes, they fled like startled deer on to the poop.

I found the glass—a binocular—and ran with all my might with it to the mate, who, as he took it from me, said, “That’s right. You’re a smart boy!” a piece of commendation which so inspirited me that, I believe, had he told me to go up to the main-royal-yard, I should have promptly and comfortably have made my way to that great height.

The sight I had been the first to descry was, indeed, well worth watching. The speed of our own ship through the water, though she was under very small canvas, could not have been less than nine knots in the hour, yet the vessel astern grew upon us as though we were in tow of one of our own quarter-boats, and scarcely moving. She showed pale as the watery moon dimly glancing through a body of vapour.

“She is dead in our wake,” the chief mate said, as though talking to himself. “Does she see us, I wonder? Heavens alive! what is she under—skysails can it be? It’s enough to make one think oneself in a dream.”

I saw him send a glance towards the companion-hatch, as though he had a mind to call the captain.

“THE VESSEL ASTERN GREW UPON US.”

“Here, one of you,” he shouted to the midshipmen, who were grouped on the other side of the wheel, staring with all their eyes at the approaching ship, “whip that binnacle lamp out and show it.”

Kennet sprang to the compass-stand, unshipped the light, vaulted on to the grating, and there stood holding, at the height of his arm, the will-o’-the-wisp spark of flame.

The pursuing vessel was doubtless much closer to us when I first perceived her than I should have supposed by the pallid shadow she made on the troubled darkness of the waters. I think it must have been in less than half-an-hour’s time from the moment of my sighting her that she became a huge, easy-distinguishable shape in the heart of our wake. You saw sail upon sail towering upon her in pale spaces, which glimmered as though she reflected a strong starlight. By this time the news had reached the cuddy, and the captain had come on deck, together with most of the passengers, and we stood in a crowd, watching, and waiting, and wondering; for not yet had the tall and rushing phantom astern of us offered to shift her helm, and to my young eyes it seemed as though she was bound to steer right into us, cleaving us to amidships, like splitting a log with the blow of a hatchet.

“What does he mean to do? There seems no look-out on board!” called the captain to the mate. “Show more lights, Mr. Johnson, and let it be done quickly.”

The officer delivered some orders in a sharp, eager voice, and in a few minutes three or four sailors came running aft with large lanterns swinging in their hands.

“She has the cut of a Yankee,” I heard the captain say to the mate; “her high bows and crowd of canvas forward screen us from her quarter-deck. Great thunder! is she in a madman’s hands? She will be into us, sir. Fire a rocket!”

These signals were kept somewhere below. A midshipman shot away like an arrow, and returned, and then up soared the thing, the fire of it hissing as it sped javelin-like into the flying thickness on high, where it burst like a flash of lightning, flinging a green radiance far and wide, and sailing in a ball of flame slowly over our mizzen-mast-head on to the lee-bow.

Almost simultaneously with the detonation it made, like the blast of a blunderbuss, we saw the head of the vessel astern falling off. As she rose foaming to the head of a sea, her flying jibboom went majestically rounding away to leeward of us, opening out the fabric behind into a ship of some fifteen hundred tons, with high black sides and cotton-white canvas of the Yankee swelling from the water-ways to the trucks. A sort of groan of astonishment and admiration, mingled with a deep note of the fear that had been excited, arose from amongst the crowd of us. Indeed, but for her putting her helm over, her long bowsprit and tapering jibbooms must have been spearing our rigging in another five minutes, and her sharp clipper stem grinding into our counter.

A voice hailed us from her; our captain sprang on to the grating abaft the wheel, and roared back, “What d’ye say?” But no response was made to this. She swept past to leeward, within a musket-shot. You could hear the thunder of the wind in her canvas, and the roaring of the water crushed into yeast at her stem. It was like hearkening to the beating of surf on a stormy night on the sea-coast. She showed no light of any kind, not a spot of brightness on her deck or in her side to relieve the deep dye of blackness her hull made upon the obscurity. In a few minutes she had forged ahead, and a little later she had melted out upon the gloom over the port bow.

CHAPTER VI.
HE IS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

This was an incident to kill the tediousness of my first watch on deck very pleasantly. It was seeing life at sea too, tasting the excitement of it, and when eight bells sounded, and I went below, I began in good truth to feel myself something of a sailor.

But it was “watch and watch,” with us on board that ship, as in all other ships of those days, though what the practice is now in this age of steamboats I will not undertake to say. By “watch and watch,” I mean that one division of the crew went below for four hours, whilst the other division kept the deck. Those below then came up again for another four hours’ duty, and so on till the dog watches came round, when each watch had two hours of duty only, the object of the change being to vary the time of the four hours’ watches; so that, for example, if one division had to keep the middle watch, say on a Monday the dog watches contrived that that spell of duty would next night fall to the lot of the other division.

What “watch and watch” signified I never could have imagined till four o’clock in the morning was struck on the ship’s bell, and the midshipmen who had been on deck since midnight came in their headlong way below to rout us up.

“Eight bells! eight bells, my honeys!” they roared. “Out you come, and up you go! It rains beautifully, and is still as black as thunder all round.”

I was in a dead sleep, and could scarcely open my eyes. By way of helping me to wake up, one of the lads who had just descended threw his streaming sou’-wester at my face.

“Who’d be a sailor?” yawned the long midshipman named Poole. “This is a part of the life that they know nothing about ashore.”

“Oh, what would I give for my feather bed at home!” groaned another youngster, drowsily thrusting his arms into a damp jacket.

“Lively now, or I’ll feather bed ye!” shouted Mr. Cock from his corner bunk. “A sailor who talks of a feather bed should be tarred first before the down’s applied. My precious limbs! Was it out of such whinings as this that Trafalgar’s victory was manufactured?”

But there was no magic in the thoughts of Nelson to inspirit one at such a moment as this. For my part, my sympathies were wholly with the lad who yearned for a feather bed, and though I had promised my father not to swap my clothes, I would have gladly given half my outfit for the privilege of turning in again. Oh the misery of the cold and wet of the deck, going to it as I did with lids of lead, and trembling in oilskins, from the comfort and warmth of the blankets! I shall give up the sea, I thought as I climbed the poop ladder with chattering teeth: I have already had enough of it. I would go on shore at once if I could. What is there in brass buttons to render this sort of thing tolerable?

There were no signs of daybreak till about six o’clock, and then down away in the east there stole out upon the gloom a faint, most melancholy grey light, against which the ridge horizon washed in a tumbling line of ink. How am I to express the cheerless aspect of the ship in the illumination of this dull and dismal dawn? Her reefed canvas was dark with wet, her slack gear was blown into semi-circles by the gale, her scuppers sobbed with wet, and the water floated from side to side of her deck with her rolling. But all the same, the planks had to be washed down, the hencoops cleansed, and the poop made tidy; so as soon as light enough came to see by, the pump was rigged, buckets got along, and there we were scrubbing for our lives, with smoke from the newly-kindled galley fire breaking from the chimney, the boatswain on the main-deck pointing his hose, and bawling to the sailors to scrub with a will, the wide-awake pigs under the long-boat grunting for their breakfast, the cow lowing gloomily at catching sight of the butcher’s mate, and the ship all the while rushing before the strong gale, with the chasing seas breaking in foam to the height of the main-brace bumpkins, and a grim and yellow salt in a tight sou’-wester swinging off upon the wheel, and mumbling upon a quid that stood high in his cheek, as though he were muttering sea-blessings to himself on the ocean life in general, and on the Lady Violet in particular.

Well, when the gale broke we had fine weather, and nothing noticeable happened for some days. The passengers got the better of their sea-sickness, and came on deck, and the ship looked hospitable and homely, with ladies reading or knitting, or walking the decks aft, and with the poor women of the steerage forward sitting in the sun, with coloured handkerchiefs tied round their heads, their children romping about their feet, and the men belonging to their company lounging against the bulwarks, pipes between their teeth, their hats slouched, and their arms folded.

We were sliding towards the warm parallels, and Mr. Cock told me to keep a bright look-out for flying fish, as we should be seeing them spark out of the blue water alongside before long, “like silver paper-cutters, Master Rockafellar,” said he, “on the gauze wings of the dragon-fly.” By this time I was able to crawl aloft without a beating heart and trembling body. I could shin over the mizzen-top as lightly and easily as the rest of them, and had been once on to the mizzen-royal-yard, the highest yard on the mizzen-mast, to watch Kennet roll the sail up, that I might know how to furl it for myself another time.

In fact, I had now climbed the rigging often enough to enjoy being aloft. I would think as I poised myself upon a foot-rope, and overhung the yard it belonged to, that nothing nearer to the sensation of flying could be imagined. I swung between heaven and sea. The soft cream-coloured clouds looked to be rolling close over my head. Far away down was the narrow white deck of the ship, with sail upon sail swelling in curves of snow-white softness betwixt where I was perched, and the ivory-like planks deep down below. The blue ocean swept away into boundless distance, and the world of waters looked as huge as though the sight of them was a dream.

At last came a day that was to be marked by an incident of terror. The captain and mates had taken the sun at noon; the sailors had eaten their dinner, and the port-watch, the one that I belonged to, was on deck, to remain there till four. Two of the midshipmen were on the cross-jack-yard at work on some job there, the third was below, and I, the fourth of them, hung about the break of the poop in readiness to run on an errand, and to jump to any order given me.

It was a fine warm day, the wind right aft, and the ship was buzzing along with studding sails out on both sides. The tiffin bell had just sounded; there was nobody on the poop but the chief mate, myself, and the man at the wheel. Through the skylight I could see the passengers assembling at the luncheon table. Presently noticing that Mr. Johnson, the chief officer, was staring with unusual steadfastness at the horizon over the stern, I sent a look in that direction, and observed that there was a large black cloud sailing up the sky, exactly on a line with the course we were making. I never had before, and have never since, seen a body of vapour with so ugly a look. Its hinder part was tufted into the true aspect of thunder; its brow was a pale sulphur colour, which darkened into a swollen curve of livid belly; its wild extraordinary shape too made you think of it as of some leviathan flying beast, a mighty dragon, such as one reads about, or some huge and horrible creation descending from another world. The black shadow it threw upon the sea contrasted oddly with the flashing blue that was streaming merrily with us along the path of the wind.