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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11105 ***
+
+[Illustration: Jack telling his stories.]
+
+
+JACK MASON,
+THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+FOR CHILDREN.
+
+BY THEODORE THINKER.
+
+
+1850.
+
+
+THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+
+Jack Mason had been to sea a great many times when I first knew him,
+and he has been a great many times since. He has sailed in a ship
+almost all over the world. Such a host of stories as he can tell!
+Why, I do believe if he could find little boys and girls to talk to,
+he would begin in the morning as soon as he had got through his
+breakfast, and do nothing but tell stories about what he has seen,
+until it was time to go to bed at night. I don't know but he would
+want to stop once or twice to eat. Jack loves a good dinner as well
+as anybody.
+
+Jack is the one that you see in the picture, with his pea-jacket on,
+and a book in his hand. He is in a ship, telling his stories now to
+that boy sitting on a coil of rope. See, the boy is looking right at
+the old man, hearing all he says. I wonder what Jack is talking about
+now. He must be telling one of his best stories, I guess; for the boy
+lifts his head up, as much as to say, "Dear me! who ever heard of
+such a thing!"
+
+Jack is a good man. He is not like a great many sailors that I have
+seen. He does not use bad words. He never drinks rum, or any thing of
+the kind. Sailors are apt to swear; but Jack Mason never swears. He
+is a Christian: he loves to pray and read his Bible. The book which he
+holds in his hand, as he is talking to that boy, is a Bible. He often
+has a Bible in his jacket pocket, when he is on board of his ship; and
+once in a while he stops telling stories about what he has seen, and
+reads some of the stories in that good book.
+
+When I was a little boy, Jack fell from the high mast of the ship, and
+hurt himself so badly that he had to stay at home a long time after
+that. Poor fellow! he did not like to be shut up in the house. It was
+hard work for him. But he could not go out, until his hip got well.
+When he was able to sit up in a chair, I used to go and see him, and
+hear him tell his stories. I did not go every day, because my mother
+thought I had better not go every day. But I went as often as she
+would let me go, and staid as long as she would let me stay.
+
+Jack was always glad to see me, and glad to tell me stories. I was
+always glad to hear his stories. Some sailors, who have spent a great
+deal of time on board of a ship, and have seen a great many places,
+are not good men. They do not always tell the truth. So, when they
+tell stories about what they saw where they went, we do not know
+whether to believe them or not. But Jack Mason was a good man, and I
+knew he would not tell me what was not true.
+
+Shall I tell you some of the stories that this good old sailor told me
+when he had to stay at home, because he had broken his hip? I think I
+can remember some worth telling again.
+
+"O yes, Mr. Thinker, tell us all the stories the old sailor told you."
+
+"No, I cannot do that. I cannot remember them all."
+
+"Well, tell us all you do remember."
+
+"I will see about it. I will tell you some of them, at any rate. Let
+me see, what story shall I tell first? Shall I tell you his story
+about what he saw once, when he sailed a great way north? I guess I
+will."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+JACK MASON'S VISIT TO THE NORTH SEA.
+
+
+If you should go a great way north, you would find it very cold. The
+further you go north, the colder it is. I went so far that way one
+time, that I got almost frozen. The ship I sailed in came close to
+an iceberg once, and we all thought for a while that the ship would
+strike the iceberg. If it had struck, it would have been broken all
+in pieces, and we should have been drowned or frozen, every one of us.
+God was kind and good to us, though. The wind was blowing very hard,
+and right toward the iceberg. But just as we had got almost up to it,
+the wind changed, and blew us away from it.
+
+But I forgot that you do not know what an iceberg is. It is a great
+hill of ice. In the North Sea, these ice-hills are often as high as
+your church, and sometimes a great deal higher. These hills of ice
+are floating along the water there, and when it is foggy or dark, the
+sailors cannot always see them. So sometimes the ship strikes them,
+and is dashed to pieces. Sometimes it gets between two of these
+ice-hills, and gets crushed, as if it was a little boat. Then the men
+in the ship have to get out, and jump upon one of the ice-hills. But
+they are pretty likely to be frozen to death then.
+
+[Illustration: The Indians.]
+
+
+
+
+THE INDIANS.
+
+
+In that cold country I saw some Indians. They were dressed in skins.
+I never saw such dirty-looking men and women before in all my life,
+and I have never seen any such since. They had never seen a ship
+before, I should think. I thought they did not know much more than
+the white bears. Why, they would sell almost all the clothes they had
+on, if we would give them a few pieces of glass, or a nail or two.
+One of the women who came to the ship had a little girl about four
+years old, and she said she would give us that girl, if we would let
+her have a tin pan which she saw.
+
+These Indians tie their children on their backs, when they have to
+walk a great way. They licked the oil on the outside of our lamps,
+just as a dog or a cat would have done. Oh, what dirty people! They
+eat their meat raw. We killed a seal one day, and our captain gave it
+to one of the young women. She took it, and bit it into pieces with
+her teeth. Then she passed it round to the rest of the Indians, and
+they all helped eat it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE BEARS.
+
+
+There are a great many white bears in that country. Sometimes you can
+see two or three of them sitting on one of these ice-hills. How they
+ever got there, I am sure I cannot tell. I guess they went out on the
+ice only a little way from the shore, to get something which they saw
+was good to eat; and while they were on the ice, it started off, and
+they could not get to the shore again.
+
+One of the men who sailed in the same ship with me, told me a story
+about a white bear, which made me laugh for an hour after I heard it.
+He said he was in a small boat with another sailor once, about a mile
+away from the ship. I forget what they went out in the boat for, but I
+suppose the captain of the ship sent them out for something. They were
+rowing along in the boat, and they came close to an iceberg. They saw
+something alive on the iceberg, but they could not make out what it
+was: they did not know but it was a man. But they came a little nearer
+to the great ice-hill, and they soon found out what sort of a thing
+there was on it. _Splash_ something went into the water; and in a
+minute a great white bear jumped into the boat, as wet as a drowned
+rat.
+
+Well, the sailors thought they had got to die, sure enough. What could
+they do? The first thing that they thought of, was to try to kill the
+bear with their oars. But they soon gave that up. They saw that the
+bear was too large and strong to be killed in that way. The next thing
+they thought of doing, was to jump into the water. But they knew they
+would die if they did that. What should they do? "I wonder which of us
+the old fellow will take first," one of the men said to the other.
+Each of them had his oar ready, so that when the bear made a spring at
+them, he would get his ears boxed pretty sharply. That was all they
+could do.
+
+Well, the bear did not seem to be at all in a hurry. The first thing
+he did, after he got into the boat, was to shake himself as hard as he
+could, to get the water out of his coat. After that, he walked slowly
+to one end of the boat, just as if he was quite at home there, and lay
+down upon a coat which one of the men had brought along, and went to
+sleep.
+
+The sailors saw then that all they had to do was to row the bear to
+the shore. So they went to work. When they got to the ship, the
+captain and all the sailors laughed a good deal, you may be sure. The
+shore was not far off. The sailors rowed until the boat touched the
+shore, and the bear got out, and walked slowly away. He did not so
+much as thank the men for the ride he had been taking. But the men
+were glad to get rid of him, thanks or no thanks.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CATCHING WHALES.
+
+
+I went in a whale-ship once. I was gone from home that time more than
+three years. When we came back, we had our large ship all full of oil
+and whalebone. We got the oil and the whalebone out of the whales
+which we had caught. Whales, you know, are very large fish. They
+sometimes get two or three hundred barrels of oil from one single
+whale.
+
+I never shall forget what a long chase I had with a whale once. Shall
+I tell you about it, little friend? There was a man in the ship who
+was looking out for whales. In a whale-ship there is always one man
+who gets up as high as he can, and keeps a bright look-out all round
+for whales. Whales do not stay under water all the time. The trout,
+and the shad, and the eel, and most other kinds of fish can stay under
+water all the time. They cannot live out of the water only a few
+minutes, and I suppose they feel almost as bad out of the water as we
+do in it. But the whale wants to come up to the top of the water. He
+wants to come up to breathe. Well, all at once, the man who was
+looking out the day I speak of, when I had such a run, sung out as
+loud as he could, "There she blows!" We all knew what that meant. That
+is what they always say when they see a whale. It means, "There is a
+whale come up to breathe." This whale was a great way off. I should
+think he was a mile from the ship.
+
+Well, the captain told some of us to get into a boat, and to go out
+after the whale. We did so. The boats are always kept ready, and it
+takes only a minute to let the boat down, and start off. We rowed as
+fast as we could, until we came up near where the whale was lying.
+Oh, what a large whale! As soon as the boat got near enough, one man
+threw two harpoons at the whale, and they both stuck fast in his
+flesh. A harpoon is a long and sharp iron, made like a spear, so that
+when it strikes the whale, it goes in deep, and you cannot pull it
+out. The harpoon is fastened to a long rope, and the rope is tied to
+the boat.
+
+As soon as the whale felt these irons in his side, he began to run.
+I never knew before that a whale could swim so fast. It took him only
+a very little while to run out with all the loose rope; and our boat
+went through the water pretty fast, you may be sure. I was afraid the
+whale would take it into his head to dive down towards the bottom. If
+he had gone down, we should have gone with him, unless we could have
+cut the rope. But he did not go down. Away we went, as fast as if we
+had been on a railroad. He was all the time taking us further from the
+ship. "Well," we thought, "what is going to become of us!" The whale
+did not seem to care any thing about that. I suppose he thought that
+was our look-out, and not his.
+
+But the fellow got tired out by and by. He had bled so much, that he
+began to grow faint. At last he went so slow, that we rowed up to him,
+and stabbed him with a long knife. He died pretty soon after that,
+and we got more than two hundred barrels of oil out of him.
+
+Catching whales seems a cruel business to you. It is a cruel business.
+I never liked it. But somebody must do it. The butcher who kills
+oxen, and sheep, and calves, has to be cruel. But we must have
+butchers. We must have people to kill whales, though you never will
+catch me chasing after a whale again, as long as my name is Jack
+Mason.
+
+Whales do not always run like the one I have told you about. Sometimes
+they fight. After they are struck with the harpoon, they lift their
+tail, or _fluke_, as they call it, and strike the boat so hard as to
+dash it in pieces. Then the poor sailors have to swim to the ship if
+they can. If they cannot, and if there is no other boat near them that
+they can get into, they must drown.
+
+I once saw a whale that had been struck with a harpoon come up close
+to the ship, and give it such a blow with his fluke, that he tore the
+copper off at a great rate, and broke a thick plank in half a dozen
+pieces.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: The Indian, with his bow and arrows.]
+
+
+
+
+MORE INDIANS.
+
+
+When I went in the whale-ship, I saw another tribe of Indians, that
+were very different from those I told you of before. They knew more
+than those Indians. They used bows and arrows; and you would have been
+pleased to see how they would hit a mark a great way off, with their
+arrows.
+
+One of them, who had a name so long that I will not try to speak it,
+used to come every day to our ship, when we were lying near the shore.
+He liked pieces of glass, and nails and tin, and things of that kind,
+quite as well as the other Indians I told you of. He had seen white
+men before, so he was not at all afraid of us. I suppose that almost
+all the white men he had seen before used rum and tobacco. He asked
+all our sailors for these two things, and kept asking every day. I am
+sorry to say that some of the men gave him some rum once in a while,
+and one day he drank so much that he got drunk. Poor man! He was not
+so much to blame, I think, as the bad sailors that gave him the rum.
+What do you think about it?
+
+This man would dive in the water further than anybody I ever saw
+before or since. Some of the sailors used to throw pieces of tin into
+very deep water, and tell him he might have them if he would dive and
+bring them up. He was so fond of such things, that he would always
+gladly dive to get them.
+
+I once saw him dive for an old worn-out knife. The water was very deep
+where it was thrown. It was so deep that none of us thought he would
+get it. He went down, and staid a long, long time. We thought he never
+would come up again. The sailor that threw the knife into the water
+began to be sorry he had done it, because he thought the poor Indian
+was drowned. But, by and by, he came up again, with the knife in his
+mouth. He had been hunting after the knife on the bottom of the sea.
+
+These Indians had boats which were made of the bark of trees. They
+were so light, that an Indian could carry one of them on his shoulder.
+
+The man who used to come to the ship so often, brought his little
+girl with him one day. She was not more than six or seven years old.
+She had never seen any white men before, and at first she was afraid
+of us all. But when she saw that the white folks would not hurt her
+any more than the Indians would, she liked us very well, and wanted to
+stay with us all the time. The captain showed her his watch, and she
+looked at it a long time. She thought she had never seen so strange a
+thing before. "Is it alive?" she asked her father. He could not tell
+whether it was alive or not, any more than the little girl could.
+
+The captain liked the little girl very well. He wanted to take her
+home with him. So he asked her father if his little girl might go a
+great way off, where the white men lived. The Indians could not talk
+like us. They could talk, but they did not use the same words. The
+captain made out to tell the Indian what he wanted, by using signs,
+just as he would have done if he had been talking with a deaf and dumb
+man. And what do you think the father of that little girl said, when
+he knew that the captain wanted to take the girl home with him? If
+anybody should ask your father if he would let you go away and never
+come back again, you can tell what your father would say. He would
+say, "No, I cannot spare my dear little child."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But the Indian said, "Yes, give me some money, and you can take my
+little girl, and carry her away with you. I have got more girls in my
+house." The little Indian girl wanted to go with us, so the captain
+gave her father some money, and when the ship sailed, he took her
+along with him. But the poor Indian girl did not live till our ship
+got home. She was taken very sick, and died. We all felt very bad
+when she left us. We had taught her a great many things. She could
+read a little. She knew all her letters, and could spell out such easy
+words as there are in your little primers and picture books. She did
+not know any thing about God, and Christ, and heaven, before she came
+to the ship. But some of us told her about them. She was glad to hear
+about them. Oh, how her bright eyes did sparkle when she heard that
+Christ came into the world, and died for such little girls as she! How
+happy it made her, to think that He loved her! By and by, she used to
+pray every night, when she went to bed. I taught her to say that sweet
+little prayer which you know so well, and love so well:
+
+  Now I lay me down to sleep,
+  I pray the Lord my soul to keep:
+  If I should die before I wake,
+  I pray the Lord my soul to take.
+
+Oh, I was very sorry when our little Anna died! We called her Anna.
+She had another name at home, but we liked Anna better than we did
+her old name. I was very sorry when she died, and we were all sorry.
+
+[Illustration: The Fishermen.]
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE SAILOR BOY.
+
+
+The story I told you about the Indian girl makes me think of a little
+boy that we once had in our ship. He was a very good boy. The captain
+liked him very much. He was not the captain's child. But the captain
+used to say that he loved little George as much as if he was his child.
+The reason the captain loved him, and the reason everybody loved him,
+was because he was so kind and so good natured, and because he always
+did just as he was told to do.
+
+I must tell you how George first came to live with us in the ship. We
+were once a great many hundred miles off, and the wind blew very
+hard. It blew so hard that we could not sail where we wanted to go,
+and by and by the ship went upon a bank of sand. There we had to stay
+a good while. We could not get away. Nobody was drowned. We ought to
+have been very thankful for that. I hope we were thankful. While we
+were lying on the sand bank, the waves dashed against the ship so
+hard, that we were afraid it would break in pieces. We did not know
+what to do. Some of us thought we might as well jump into the water,
+and try to swim to the shore. But the captain said that we should
+certainly get drowned if we tried to do that.
+
+You wonder why we did not get into our boat, and row to the shore. We
+should have done so if we had not lost our boat. But we had no boat.
+The waves had dashed against it, and tore it away from the place where
+we kept it, so that we could not get it again.
+
+But when we thought we must all be lost, we saw a boat coming toward
+the ship. Some fishermen had seen us, and were so kind that they came
+to us in their boat, so that we could get to the shore. Oh, how glad
+we were when we saw them coming! But the waves were so high, that for
+a good while we thought it would sink before it got to us. The men had
+very hard work to row the boat. The wind blew very hard at one time,
+and the little boat was blown back again almost to the shore. But they
+tried again, and after a long time they got to the ship. Then some of
+us got into the boat, and the men rowed us to the shore. After that,
+the boat went back to the ship again, and got the rest of the men.
+
+But I have not told the best of the story yet. When we all got into
+the house, where it was warm, we told the fishermen that they were
+very good to come and help us get away from the ship. We thanked them
+very much. And then they told us that we must not thank them; and they
+pointed to a little boy about as old as you are, I guess. "There,"
+they said, "that little boy is the one to thank. We should not have
+gone, if it had not been for him. We were afraid the waves would dash
+over the boat, and that we should be drowned. We did not dare to go.
+But this good boy said, 'Do go! oh, do go! The poor men in the ship
+will get drowned, if you do not go. I will go if my father will let
+me. I do not think father's boat will get lost. God will not let us
+drown, if we go and try to save the men.'" Well, the boy said so much,
+that the fishermen told him they would go, and they did go.
+
+This little boy's name was George, and this is the one that I told you
+we all liked so well. The captain was so pleased with him, that he
+asked his father to let the little boy come and sail in his ship. His
+father said he wished his boy to be a sailor, and the boy wanted to be
+a sailor, too; and that if the captain would be kind to him, little
+George might go. So he went, and he was the very best boy I ever saw
+in my life. He used to talk to the sailors; and when they did wrong,
+when they said bad words, he would tell them it was naughty, and God
+would not love them if they did so. The sailors did not get angry with
+him, because they all saw that little George was good and kind, and
+that he wanted to do them good. I know of a good many sailors who
+stopped swearing, because little George told them, in his kind way,
+that he could not bear to hear them swear, and that God would not love
+them if they did so.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: Rocks in the Sea.]
+
+
+
+
+THE WRECK.
+
+
+The captain of this ship--the same one that loved little George so
+well--was drowned not long after that. My little friends, I cannot
+help crying when I think that this good captain, who used to be so
+kind to the sailors, was lost at sea. I was not in the ship at the
+time. I was in another ship. I got sick of catching whales, so I did
+not want to go in a whale-ship any more.
+
+The ship in which this captain was sailing was very near the shore,
+and there were some high rocks that stood quite down to the edge of
+the water. It was foggy at the time. The captain did not know that
+the ship was so near the rocks, because he could not see through the
+fog. The wind blew very hard, and blew the ship upon the rocks. In
+a minute the ship broke in pieces, and all but two or three of the
+men who were in it were lost. The captain was lost among the rest.
+So was little George. When the storm was over, and the wind stopped
+blowing, that dear boy was found on the shore, dead. There was a smile
+on his face, just such a smile as he used to have when he was living.
+There was a little Bible in his pocket. It was all wet with salt water.
+But there was some writing on one of the leaves which anybody could
+read. It said, "This book was given to little George by his dear
+mother."
+
+[Illustration: The Pyramids and the Sphynx.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PYRAMIDS.
+
+I once went to a place called Egypt. There I saw a great many strange
+things. The pyramids are wonderful enough. Did you ever hear about
+them? They are made of stone, and are very large. I should think it
+would take a great many years to make one of them, if there were a
+hundred men at work all the time. They must have been built a very
+long time. I hardly know how long, but it was a great while before
+Christ was born.
+
+I went to the top of the largest pyramid, and went all over it. It was
+one of the strangest things I ever saw. Some people think that the
+pyramids were built to bury kings in, when they died. If they were
+not built for that, I am sure I cannot tell what they were built for.
+
+There is another odd thing in that country, not far from the pyramids.
+It is called a _Sphinx_. I know you will say that the name must be
+as odd as the thing is itself. Well, it _is_ odd, sure enough. The
+Sphinx is a very large rock, made to look just like a lion with a
+man's head. It is as large as the house I live in. There is nothing
+but the head out of the ground. It was all out of the ground once,
+when it was first made, but the sand has now covered up that part
+which looks like a lion.
+
+A great while ago, people used to call such things as these _gods_.
+They used to pray to the Sphinx, just as if it was a god--just as if
+it could hear anybody pray, the same as God does.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE WHIRLPOOL.
+
+
+You have seen little whirlpools in the brook, I suppose. I once saw
+a very large one, a great deal larger than any you ever saw in the
+brook. It was in the North Sea. This whirlpool does mischief
+sometimes. When vessels happen to get on the edge of it, they begin
+to go round and round, all the time coming near the middle of the
+whirlpool. When the captain of the vessel knows that he is in the
+whirlpool, he can get his vessel out, if it has just begun to go
+round. But after it has been in a while, he cannot get out. The vessel
+keeps going round and round. The people on board hear the roar of the
+whirlpool. It is too late to get away. By and by, the water draws the
+vessel down. It is dashed to pieces, and all who were in it are lost!
+
+I have known little boys and girls get into a whirlpool, too; a
+different kind of a whirlpool, to be sure, but a great deal worse than
+this one in the North Sea. I mean the whirlpool of _sin_. When they
+first began to be wicked--when they first began to go round in the
+whirlpool--they went round very slowly. They could very easily have
+got out then, if they had tried, and if they had prayed to God to help
+them. But they did not try. So they kept growing worse and worse. They
+went round swifter and swifter. By and by, they got so far into the
+whirlpool that they could not get out. It was too late. They were
+lost--dashed to pieces on the rocks, in the whirlpool of sin!
+
+Little boy! little girl! take care that you do not venture even to the
+edge of this whirlpool. Give your heart to God, while you are young,
+and pray to him to keep you from sin, and to lead you to heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Jack Mason, The Old Sailor, by Theodore Thinker
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11105 ***