Part 12 (2/2)
But for all this, the pa.s.sage out was one long paternal sort of a shabby flirtation between this hoydenish nymph and the ill-dressed captain. And surely, if her good mother, were she living, could have seen this young lady, she would have given her an endless lecture for her conduct, and a copy of Mrs. Ellis's Daughters of England to read and digest. I shall say no more of this anonymous nymph; only, that when we arrived at Liverpool, she issued from her cabin in a richly embroidered silk dress, and lace hat and veil, and a sort of Chinese umbrella or parasol, which one of the sailors declared ”spandangalous;” and the captain followed after in his best broadcloth and beaver, with a gold-headed cane; and away they went in a carriage, and that was the last of her; I hope she is well and happy now; but I have some misgivings.
It now remains to speak of the steerage pa.s.sengers. There were not more than twenty or thirty of them, mostly mechanics, returning home, after a prosperous stay in America, to escort their wives and families back.
These were the only occupants of the steerage that I ever knew of; till early one morning, in the gray dawn, when we made Cape Clear, the south point of Ireland, the apparition of a tall Irishman, in a shabby s.h.i.+rt of bed-ticking, emerged from the fore hatchway, and stood leaning on the rail, looking landward with a fixed, reminiscent expression, and diligently scratching its back with both hands. We all started at the sight, for no one had ever seen the apparition before; and when we remembered that it must have been burrowing all the pa.s.sage down in its bunk, the only probable reason of its so manipulating its back became shockingly obvious.
I had almost forgotten another pa.s.senger of ours, a little boy not four feet high, an English lad, who, when we were about forty-eight hours from New York, suddenly appeared on deck, asking for something to eat.
It seems he was the son of a carpenter, a widower, with this only child, who had gone out to America in the Highlander some six months previous, where he fell to drinking, and soon died, leaving the boy a friendless orphan in a foreign land.
For several weeks the boy wandered about the wharves, picking up a precarious livelihood by sucking mola.s.ses out of the casks discharged from West India s.h.i.+ps, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He pa.s.sed his nights sometimes in a stall in the markets, sometimes in an empty hogshead on the piers, sometimes in a doorway, and once in the watchhouse, from which he escaped the next morning, running as he told me, right between the doorkeeper's legs, when he was taking another vagrant to task for repeatedly throwing himself upon the public charities.
At last, while straying along the docks, he chanced to catch sight of the Highlander, and immediately recognized her as the very s.h.i.+p which brought him and his father out from England. He at once resolved to return in her; and, accosting the captain, stated his case, and begged a pa.s.sage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to the s.h.i.+p's sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the between-decks; and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow s.p.a.ce between two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his head for air. And once a steerage pa.s.senger rose in the night and poked in and rattled about a stick where he was, thinking him an uncommon large rat, who was after stealing a pa.s.sage across the Atlantic. There are plenty of pa.s.sengers of that kind continually plying between Liverpool and New York.
As soon as he divulged the fact of his being on board, which he took care should not happen till he thought the s.h.i.+p must be out of sight of land; the captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough shaking, and threatening to toss her overboard as a t.i.t-bit for John Shark, he told the mate to send him forward among the sailors, and let him live there. The sailors received him with open arms; but before caressing him much, they gave him a thorough was.h.i.+ng in the lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though thin and pale with the hards.h.i.+ps he had suffered. However, by good nursing and plenty to eat, he soon improved and grew fat; and before many days was as fine a looking little fellow, as you might pick out of Queen Victoria's nursery. The sailors took the warmest interest in him. One made him a little hat with a long ribbon; another a little jacket; a third a comical little pair of man-of-war's-man's trowsers; so that in the end, he looked like a juvenile boatswain's mate. Then the cook furnished him with a little tin pot and pan; and the steward made him a present of a pewter tea-spoon; and a steerage pa.s.senger gave him a jack knife. And thus provided, he used to sit at meal times half way up on the forecastle ladder, making a great racket with his pot and pan, and merry as a cricket. He was an uncommonly fine, cheerful, clever, arch little fellow, only six years old, and it was a thousand pities that he should be abandoned, as he was. Who can say, whether he is fated to be a convict in New South Wales, or a member of Parliament for Liverpool?
When we got to that port, by the way, a purse was made up for him; the captain, officers, and the mysterious cabin pa.s.senger contributing their best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage pa.s.sengers something like fifteen dollars in cash and tobacco. But I had almost forgot to add that the daughter of the dock-master gave him a fine lace pocket-handkerchief and a card-case to remember her by; very valuable, but somewhat inappropriate presents. Thus supplied, the little hero went ash.o.r.e by himself; and I lost sight of him in the vast crowds thronging the docks of Liverpool.
I must here mention, as some relief to the impression which Jackson's character must have made upon the reader, that in several ways he at first befriended this boy; but the boy always shrunk from him; till, at last, stung by his conduct, Jackson spoke to him no more; and seemed to hate him, harmless as he was, along with all the rest of the world.
As for the Lancas.h.i.+re lad, he was a stupid sort of fellow, as I have before hinted. So, little interest was taken in him, that he was permitted to go ash.o.r.e at last, without a good-by from any person but one.
XXIV. HE BEGINS TO HOP ABOUT IN THE RIGGING LIKE A SAINT JAGO's MONKEY
But we have not got to Liverpool yet; though, as there is little more to be said concerning the pa.s.sage out, the Highlander may as well make sail and get there as soon as possible. The brief interval will perhaps be profitably employed in relating what progress I made in learning the duties of a sailor.
After my heroic feat in loosing the main-skysail, the mate entertained good hopes of my becoming a rare mariner. In the fullness of his heart, he ordered me to turn over the superintendence of the chicken-coop to the Lancas.h.i.+re boy; which I did, very willingly. After that, I took care to show the utmost alacrity in running aloft, which by this time became mere fun for me; and nothing delighted me more than to sit on one of the topsail-yards, for hours together, helping Max or the Green-lander as they worked at the rigging.
At sea, the sailors are continually engaged in ”parcelling,” ”serving,”
and in a thousand ways ornamenting and repairing the numberless shrouds and stays; mending sails, or turning one side of the deck into a rope-walk, where they manufacture a clumsy sort of twine, called spun-yarn. This is spun with a winch; and many an hour the Lancas.h.i.+re boy had to play the part of an engine, and contribute the motive power.
For material, they use odds and ends of old rigging called ”junk,” the yarns of which are picked to pieces, and then twisted into new combinations, something as most books are manufactured. This ”junk” is bought at the junk shops along the wharves; outlandish looking dens, generally subterranean, full of old iron, old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oak.u.m. They look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with keels and cordage, swept ash.o.r.e in a gale.
Yes, I was now as nimble as a monkey in the rigging, and at the cry of ”tumble up there, my hearties, and take in sail,” I was among the first ground-and-lofty tumblers, that sprang aloft at the word.
But the first time we reefed top-sails of a dark night, and I found myself hanging over the yard with eleven others, the s.h.i.+p plunging and rearing like a mad horse, till I felt like being jerked off the spar; then, indeed, I thought of a feather-bed at home, and hung on with tooth and nail; with no chance for snoring. But a few repet.i.tions, soon made me used to it; and before long, I tied my reef-point as quickly and expertly as the best of them; never making what they call a ”granny- knot,” and slipt down on deck by the bare stays, instead of the shrouds.
It is surprising, how soon a boy overcomes his timidity about going aloft. For my own part, my nerves became as steady as the earth's diameter, and I felt as fearless on the royal yard, as Sam Patch on the cliff of Niagara. To my amazement, also, I found, that running up the rigging at sea, especially during a squall, was much easier than while lying in port. For as you always go up on the windward side, and the s.h.i.+p leans over, it makes more of a stairs of the rigging; whereas, in harbor, it is almost straight up and down.
Besides, the pitching and rolling only imparts a pleasant sort of vitality to the vessel; so that the difference in being aloft in a s.h.i.+p at sea, and a s.h.i.+p in harbor, is pretty much the same, as riding a real live horse and a wooden one. And even if the live charger should pitch you over his head, that would be much more satisfactory, than an inglorious fall from the other.
I took great delight in furling the top-gallant sails and royals in a hard blow; which duty required two hands on the yard.
There was a wild delirium about it; a fine rus.h.i.+ng of the blood about the heart; and a glad, thrilling, and throbbing of the whole system, to find yourself tossed up at every pitch into the clouds of a stormy sky, and hovering like a judgment angel between heaven and earth; both hands free, with one foot in the rigging, and one somewhere behind you in the air. The sail would fill out Eke a balloon, with a report like a small cannon, and then collapse and sink away into a handful. And the feeling of mastering the rebellious canvas, and tying it down like a slave to the spar, and binding it over and over with the gasket, had a touch of pride and power in it, such as young King Richard must have felt, when he trampled down the insurgents of Wat Tyler.
As for steering, they never would let me go to the helm, except during a calm, when I and the figure-head on the bow were about equally employed.
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